Guardian Games

Evil Empire creatives explain how it is playing to today’s ‘metroidvanias’ and honouring the original’s legacy with much fresh slaying to be doneSince the last Castlevania game hit the shelves (2014’s Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2), Konami’s dormant series has unexpectedly spawned a hit genre. With an entire generation raised on “metroidvanias” – a portmanteau of Metroid and Castlevania – millions of players have only ever seen the games inspired by Konami’s seminal games. Now with Belmont’s Cu

PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2; UndercodersColourful, counter-cultural and captivating – this rail riding game set in a dystopian Japan is as weird as it is exhilaratingEvery now and again a game appears with a premise so outrageous you stop in your tracks to take it all in. Denshattack!, a game about kickflipping trains across a dystopian future Japan, is the epitome of this feeling. Set in a post climate disaster world, people have retreated to corporate-owned domed cities to live

Brennan Lee Mulligan’s Dungeons and Dragons push is part of a wider trend using tabletop games for political actionJust before their election day, six Los Angeles city council candidates stood on stage at Hollywood’s Fonda Theatre. But they weren’t there for a debate or a black-tie gala. They were there to play Dungeons and Dragons.Comedian Brennan Lee Mulligan guided the politicians through a short D&D campaign to defeat corporate villains and an evil dragon. Hundreds of enthusiastic fans in th

As global anxieties multiply, ​v​ideo games from Resident Evil to Mouthwashing are providing rich source material to help decode society’s problems• Don’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereHorror is so hot right now. There’s Obsession, Evil Dead Burn and Hokum in the cinema, Widow’s Bay, From and Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen on TV, and, of course, a rotting smorgasbord of horror games including Resident Evil Requiem (pictured top) and Reanimal, soon to be joined b

PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2; Marimittu GamesA soft puzzle game makes a sharp point about the over-optimised future aheadIn the far future, on a planet that is not Earth, AI is in charge. This entity is no Skynet-esque killer robot but a machine that cares for humanity. Manifesting most visibly as cute droids, the technology is pervasive – embedded in everything from the design of the sleek architecture to the gorgeous, mostly sunny artificial weather. The so-call

Pokémon Go celebrated its 10th anniversary with a Times Square takeover in New York featuring a special event to defeat the Pokémon species Mewtwo. Nearly 2,000 people played the game together simultaneously in what organisers called one of the largest in-person Pokémon battles in history Continue reading...

Sony’s announcement spells the end of a whole ecosystem built by superfan collectors – and signals a troubling shift in the industry• Don’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereSony’s decision last week to quietly announce the end of physical games production for the PlayStation in 2028 is one of the most perfect PR disasters in recent gaming history – and considering what has been happening with Xbox, that’s saying something.First, there was the timing. Sony posted the news

Normal Golf Game takes a tiresomely easy genre and makes it infernally difficult. Which deserves a round of applauseI have always struggled playing golf. I wish I didn’t. It’s a beautiful game in concept. A leisurely walk in the sunshine, slapping a ball around, sandwiches and beer consumed during and after play. Sure, you have to dress like Huggy Bear from Starsky and Hutch, and getting membership of an actual club is more complex than joining the Freemasons (although many offer a two for one d

The blockbuster launch is expected to dwarf the box office takings of the year’s biggest movies with one industry analyst predicting it could make $1bn within an hourIt is, quite simply, the most anticipated piece of entertainment since the Star Wars prequels and now, at last, you can reserve a copy. At midnight last night, Rockstar opened preorders on Grand Theft Auto VI, the latest title in the epic open-world gangster adventure series, five months before its 19 November release date on PS5 an

As football fans revel in the real world tournament, its digital counterparts continue to stumble in capturing the ​hyped up ​atmosphere• Don’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereI come with a warning to all football fans: if you’ve been enjoying the World Cup enough to think, “I’d like to re-enact this on a football video game”, do not go to Netflix and play Fifa World Cup: Launch Edition, the officially licensed game of the tournament, which streams via your smart TV or c

PlayStation 5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch 2, PC; Team Asano/Square EnixUpbeat, charmingly retro RPG full of treasure-hunting, temple-roaming, monster-slaying and princess-saving is an absolute blast to playYou can’t help but wonder if developer Team Asano is in a private competition with itself to come up with the most ridiculous name for a video game. Following Project Triangle Strategy and Bravely Default: Flying Fairy we have this mouthful: The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales. It’s a pl

After the billion-dollar company’s leaders sent staff a memo saying the brand had ‘over-extended’, game studios may be in the firing lineDon’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereIn March 2000, Bill Gates stood onstage at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco and, to a packed crowd, officially announced the company’s long-anticipated video game console. “We want Xbox to be the platform of choice for the best and most creative game developers in the world,” he told

PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S; EA Vancouver/Electronic ArtsMicromanaging your fighter is a little tedious, but the action is thrilling in this authentically detailed sporting simulationBecoming a professional fighter takes years of repetition, drilling techniques and training footwork until everything is instinctual. Your body needs an automatic answer for every limb, from every angle. In MMA, which encompasses every martial art, it’s even harder.EA Sports’ UFC 6 realistically captures the grin

The world’s most successful gamer content creators, many of whom have spent their entire adult life on the platform, have met up at TwitchCon in RotterdamAimee Davies, better known as Aimsey to their fans, is 24 but looks much younger. Sitting in a bland meeting room above the annual TwitchCon event in Rotterdam, they’re a barely contained whirl of energy in a beanie hat and T-shirt, all smiles and lightning-fast chatter. Aimsey (who uses they/them pronouns) is also a Twitch veteran, having star

From horror galore to Chinese action games, the key trends, trailers and surprises from Summer Game Fest’s many, many hours of streams and broadcasts• Don’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereDid you spend hours of your weekend watching a relentless series of video game adverts? No? I don’t blame you – Summer Game Fest, the collection of livestreams that has arisen in place of the giant annual E3 video game expo in Los Angeles, is extremely overwhelming. There are the bigge

As Hollywood searches for its next iteration of the superspy, the actor explains how he earned pop culture’s most sought-after role – and how he’s taking 007 back to basicsThey expect you to die! The history of Bond in video games, from the good to the badIs any acting gig more contested than James Bond? Each week seems to bring a din of audition speculation so loud that it must be exhausting for the Elordis, Cavills and Dickinsons who are at the centre of it all. But when one of them does final

Interactive takes on MI6’s globetrotting spy have been around almost as long as the films, but that doesn’t mean all of them were a success. Here’s 007’s chequered past of hits, flops and oddities‘The enormity of the idea helped me’: how Patrick Gibson became gaming’s new James BondBond finally arrived in an official video game capacity in 1984, courtesy of Parker Brothers. The game grouped several 007 adventures (Diamonds Are Forever, The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker and For Your Eyes Only) toge

Though it feels as if it has little to do with the games series it is based on, this groundbreaking film endures as a milestone for CGI animation, with a stellar voice castIn 1987, after working on several games that were only moderate successes, Japanese game designer Hironobu Sakaguchi proposed a game that would be his last attempt to make a hit. Aptly titled Final Fantasy, Sakaguchi’s game achieved critical acclaim and commercial success, launching a franchise that has spanned 40 years and 16

Hundreds of video games were shown at June’s annual bonanza. After watching more than 15 hours of showcases, our video games editor picks the highlightsThe sequel to a revered 2014 horror game from British developer Creative Assembly: this time you must evade the xenomorph on the surface of a storm-ravaged colony world. Continue reading...

Released just before the World Cup kicks off, this upstart football game is positioning itself as a credible alternative to EA Sports FCThis month something extremely unusual happened in the video game world: someone launched a new football game. It used to be that the market could support a vast array of contenders, from arcade kickabouts such as Super Sidekicks and Hat Trick Hero, to serious simulations named Actua Soccer or This Is Football, to eccentric oddities such as Namco’s LiberoGrande