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Bethesda's highly anticipated next gen update for Fallout 4 is riddled with issues across PlayStation, Xbox, and PC. The next gen version was finally released on April 25, 2024 (around 18 months after it was announced) but the several gigabyte update hasn't been met with much fanfare. The Steam version of Fallout 4 appears most wrought with technical issues, though PlayStation 5 players have struggled to obtain the update at all due to an availability error and confusing messaging from Bethesda. Xbox players, on the other hand, don't have access to the game's Quality Mode, meaning they can't experience one of the main appeals of the next gen update: 4K resolution on ultra settings. This specific issue was confirmed on X/Twitter by tech expert Digital Foundry's Thomas Morgan. "I can confirm that only the 60 frames per second Performance Mode works right now. The update has a bug." PC players, meanwhile, have taken to Steam to flag myriad issues with the update. "Many of the bugs that existed and were promised to be fixed are actually still in the game after the patch," said Piglet in one review. "Finally updated the game and didn't fix a single issue," wrote birthdayjesus. "But now the mods I used to fix it don't work." The initial reaction to the patch notes wasn't positive either. "*****, the bugfix list is short," wrote DreamweaverWR on Reddit, a comment which has 921 upvotes. "I had very low expectations but this is much less than I expected. They didn't fix almost any of the bugs that annoyed me the most (VATS ****** and perception bug in Survival, for example)." FluffyBunBunKittens chimed in too. "It is kind of amazing," they said. "Now I'm just waiting with interest what new bugs we get with this update." One of these new bugs seemingly makes the game unplayable for some on Steam Deck. A Reddit post from prunebackwards said Fallout 4 can no longer be launched on the handheld PC, a sentiment corroborated by many in the comments and elsewhere. Some players who can launch the game are finding myriad issues upon doing so too, like having no graphics settings, no launcher, defaulting to low settings, having a poor frame rate, and more. Fallout 4's Next-Gen Update will be available for PS+ Extra members. We do not have any information regarding PS5 Catalogue or PS+ Essentials. — Bethesda Support (@BethesdaSupport) April 25, 2024 PlayStation users haven't been free from the issues either, though perhaps the biggest came in even trying to access the game. Fallout 4 was available for free through PlayStation Plus to all PS5 owners from November 2020 to May 2023, but this version of the game, nor the PlayStation Plus Essentials Catalogue version, wouldn't allow players to upgrade to the next gen update for free. A full $19.99 purchase was required instead, though Bethesda soon confirmed this was an unintentional bug. "We've seen some confusion regarding the free Fallout 4 next gen update for PlayStation Plus Extra members," wrote a Bethesda community manager on the company's official Discord, who clarified it should be free as expected. Bethesda wasn't able to offer any clarification regarding the free PS5 version nor the PS Plus Essentials version, however, saying on X/Twitter that "we do not have any information" regarding either. PS5 users were naturally left frustrated with the initial bug and unclear communication. Those who have been able to get into the game haven't had the best experience either, and have taken to social media to share their impressions. "The Fallout 4 PS5 upgrade looks amazing," wrote CSSJAZZ on Reddit, sarcastically, as they posted the comment alongside a video of one area with missing textures. Reddit user pasta_classic posted an image of the character creator screen, where the default man was missing a face completely. "Loving the update," wrote SnoopyTheDog_, who posted a video of their character locked in place while being ******* by roaches. "Gotta love that Bethesda polish," said UnwillingArsonist, whose post showed that makeshift weapons in the update are also missing textures, appearing as floating red exclamation marks in the world. The issues come as somewhat of a sour note in what's otherwise been a Fallout resurgence, spurred on by the critically acclaimed Amazon TV series. A huge upswing in the popularity of Fallout 4, multiplayer entry Fallout 76, and other games in the franchise even caused popular modding website NexusMods to struggle, and Fallout 76, once universally panned, saw one million players log in a single day following the show's release. Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He'll talk about The Witcher all day. View the full article

With the recent success of Prime Video's Fallout series, there's a real allure to returning to Fallout 4 and making it feel more like its television counterpart. The show is not based on any of the games before it, instead adapting the world but bringing it to life with different characters and a brand-new story. The series feels like an unapologetic and authentic member of the Fallout gaming franchise, but some mods can turn the tables and give Fallout 4 the same feel as the TV show. View the full article

Eco-conscious village builder The Wandering Village sees you raising a settlement on the back of a huge wandering creature called Onbu. For the most part, you live in a symbiotic relationship with this gentle giant, as your villagers keep the gargantuan trundlesaur healthy while being ferried about on its back. Awww. Well, the wholesome city-builder now lets you feed villagers to the creature and start a cult in the great devourer's name. Okay. Why not? Read more View the full article

Left-handed Counter-Strike 2 players, time to raise that left hand in what could be interpreted as a celebration. In the game's latest update, Valve have added the ability to swap from the default right-handed viewmodel to a left-handed one. There's also an update to the buy menu, making it easier to track your bank account and grab weapons your mates have dropped. Alongside further UI improvements for grenade line-ups, and a tweak to the Active Duty map pool. Read more View the full article

An absolute indie gem released in 2022 is Dome Keeper from developer Bippinbits that has you mine underground for resources, while you also defend your dome above land from aliens. It's good fun and some big updates are on the way. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

Escape From Tarkov, the extraction FPS from developer Battlestate, recently put up a new Unheard edition of the game for pre-order, and tarkov escapers aren't happy about it. The price for this bundle - which includes a new mode, a ******* stash, and assorted gubbins - comes in at $250, or around two actual hundred actual pounds, but the price alone isn’t necessarily what’s got a section of the player base so tarked-off that a few of them are even loudly considering a lawsuit. The actual issue is twofold: the edition is being called pay-to-win, and is also the only way to access said new PvE co-op mode, despite players previously shelling out notable nuggets for what was pitched as access to "all subsequent DLCs" as part of the now-delisted Edge of Darkness edition. Read more View the full article

To celebrate Alien Day, one developer decided to make a fan game with Aliens: Redacted now available on *****.io. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

No Rest for the Wicked has been in early access for eight days, and developer Moon Studios has already shipped its fifth hotfix patch. The hotfix includes lots of changes, from performance tweaks to quality-of-life updates. What caught my eye is that your cooking and crafting materials finally stack up to 25, you can put food in cupboards, and the durability of tools and armor has been enhanced. On top of that, the update adds eight new shields, for even more class diversity, as the No Rest for the Wicked devs put it. View the full article

Microsoft has suggested that Xbox is starting to reap the rewards of its increased multiplatform focus. While it already had a strong foothold on rival platforms thanks to perennial best-sellers Call of Duty and Minecraft, Xbox recently announced plans to bring more first-party games to PlayStation and Nintendo Switch, starting with Pentiment, Hi-Fi Rush, Sea of Thieves and Grounded. And during Microsoft’s third quarter earnings call on Thursday, CEO Satya Nadella said Xbox games have been performing strongly on the PlayStation Store. Read More... View the full article

Counter-Strike 2 is missing many features that are common in other FPS games, but that’s part of what makes it unique. Sprinting is one of these missing features, and now fans are joking that the April 25 update finally introduced it. Valve launched a massive CS2 patch on April 25 called “On The Other Hand.” The update’s name comes from the fact that players can finally switch hands with their guns and knives. You can do this at any time with a console command, and players discovered that doing it every half a second looks hilariously like sprinting. View the full article

Fallout 4’s fiercely anticipated next-gen update has wreaked havoc on the modding community, breaking a vital mod that many others rely on. Launched on April 25, Fallout 4‘s next-gen update brings the game up to date on consoles like PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, while PC players have only minor changes—but it’s enough to cause problems. View the full article

Well, Fallout 4's next-gen update arrived yesterday, as expected, though its deployment has been far from issue-free. The most noteworthy of these was a problem which has led to those who previously acquired the game via PlayStation Plus being unable to upgrade it to the PS5 version for free. Bethesda's said that it's working on rectifying this, with players being left to twiddle their thumbs in the interim. If you're just catching up on things, Fallout 4's next-gen update brings the game to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, as well as including some graphical tweaks and bug fixes that vary from platform to platform. There's also a fair amount of free Creation Club content bundled in with it. Sadly, when PlayStation players who'd previously acquired their PS4 version of the game via PlayStation Plus attempted to upgrade it to the new PS5 version for free - as they'd been told they'd be able to - they were instead only greeted with the option buy the PS5 version seperately. Naturally, this caused some backlash, especially given that the process seemed to be working as intended for those upgrading in similar fashion on Xbox. Read more View the full article

No Rest for the Wicked, the - initially divisive - new Early Access game from Moon Studios, has been available to play for one week. The developer has been diligently, and quite remarkably, releasing hotfixes almost every day since the game’s release. Just a few hours ago, the game received its fifth hotfix, and it’s the largest one by far. Read more View the full article

Developer ****** Ekstrand has written up a fresh blog post on Collabora which goes over implementing two extensions in NVK, the open source NVIDIA Vulkan driver, and how it ended up fixing actual games. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

The Fallout series on Amazon Prime is luring tons of new players to the Bethesda franchise, but veterans in the community have come up with a brutal initiation. While Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 have seen the biggest increase in player numbers following the release of the TV series, older titles like Fallout New Vegas have also seen a bump—and veteran players in the have been incredibly cruel. View the full article

Activision Blizzard helped drive Microsoft’s gaming division to a record third quarter, despite a significant decline in Xbox hardware sales. For the three months ended March 31, 2024, gaming revenue was up 51% year-over-year, including 55 points of net impact from Activision, to a record $5.45 billion. Xbox content and services revenue rose 62%, driven by 61 points of net impact from Activision, but Xbox hardware revenue declined 31% year-over-year. Read More... View the full article

When a League of Legends champion has a high ban rate, it usually means they’re overpowered and Riot Games needs to hit them with the nerf hammer. One champion has an incredibly high ban rate, but they’re not even close to being as broken as Skarner. [Hidden Content], Shaco is the second most banned champion in Patch 14.8, right behind Skarner. While Skarner holds a 32.7 percent ban rate, Shaco has 31 percent. Skarner’s ban rate doesn’t come as a surprise because this champion has been dominating Summoner’s Rift since their rework, and once they’re ahead, it’s hard to shut them down. Patch 14.9 will introduce a new set of nerfs to Skarner. View the full article

As every Dragon Ball fan will know by this point in time, Akira Toriyama sadly passed away in March of this year. I won't spend too much time eulogising him, many others closer to him have put it much better than I ever could, but it was obviously a monumental loss for the world of anime and manga. And games, too. There quite literally is no Dragon Quest or Chrono Trigger, amongst so much else that his work inspired within video games, so Sand Land – based on one of his own worlds and stories – finally getting its due in both the form of a film (later released as a series in the west) and as a video game felt more than appropriat. It felt like it was always meant to happen. The final result isn't perfect, granted, but I came away loving it specifically because of how strongly the themes you find in Toriyama's work come through. Before we get ahead of ourselves though, let's set the scene. Sand Land is a much lesser known manga title from Toriyama's catalogue, originally releasing in the year 2000, only consisting of a single volume following Beelzebub (the prince of all demons), Rao (the aforementioned old man), and Thief (another ****** that serves as a guide to Beelzebub). The game and series actually added a fourth member to the crew, Ann, a mysterious young woman and mechanic whose story ventures into spoiler territory. They all reside in Sand Land, a desert area ruined by climate disaster and war, and the main setting for the game which you traverse around as you set off on a quest to find a Legendary Spring so that the country's people have easy access to water again. Read more View the full article

More open source surprises for you today, coming from Microsoft too which is always interesting to see as they've now open sourced MS-DOS 4.0. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

Another surprise from NVIDIA here. On top of one developer contributing to Nouveau, we have another developer now contributing to NVK. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

Counter-Strike 2’s latest update delighted the community, with Valve finally adding a highly missed anti-cheat feature back to the tac shooter. The On The Other Hand (April 25) patch notes for CS2 mention the return of the Overwatch system, enabling “trusted partners” to review match demos to help Valve in a seemingly never-ending war against cheaters. Considering it’ll work in tandem with VAC, the community is hopeful about Overwatch notably improving the game’s destructive cheating problem. View the full article

After months of minor patches, Counter-Strike 2 got a significant update on April 25. It made lots of substantial changes, but the community hates one of them. The latest CS2 update reintroduced Overwatch, made numerous HUD/UI changes, allowed practice servers in close parties, and improved the buy menu. Players love all the changes except arguably the biggest one: replacing Overpass in the active map pool with a classic map from the franchise, Dust2. View the full article

Manor Lords is an early access survival city builder where you have to worry about more than harvesting food, building an industry, and surviving the winter. The Manor Lords map is broken into regions, and those regions contain small bandit camps, large brigand forces, and armies guided by other AI-controlled lords looking to conquer new lands for themselves. It's a dangerous world out there!.. Read more.View the full article

The game's team will have another unprecedented method of holding a crowdfunding session to mark the mobile game's end of life. View the full article

When you reach the town of Xion in Stellar Blade and get access to the bulletin board for side quests, you’ll come across a request titled Simple Puzzle.Unlike the other requests from Xion residents in Stellar Blade, this side quest requires you to solve a brain teaser involving seemingly random sequences of numbers. There’s no need to sharpen your blade for this one. Instead, you’ll need to sharpen your mind. This is a frustrating puzzle for most though, so here’s how to solve it.How to Solve the Simple Puzzle in Stellar BladeThe Simple Puzzle quest in Stellar Blade asks you to deduce the correct code for the input device at the elevator to the Presence Chamber. It gives you the following numerical sequences as a hint.4@7@8 = 2856849@3@5 = 2715426@2@7 = 1214265@6@7 = ?To solve this puzzle, you have to figure out what mathematical operations are being performed by the “@” symbol. To save you the trouble, here’s...View the full article