Features

During my time as a games journalist I have written literally thousands of articles - so here are some of my favourites.

Read on for interviews, community features, on-the-ground reporting and even some fiction writing. 

Viral sensation Dress to Impress has a secret ingredient: fabulous video game jank

Are you a member of Gen Z, a committed TikTok user, with an Instagram feed full of fashion content? Do you know what 'slay' now means? Have you been living a Brat summer? If you answered yes to any of those questions, chances are you're already familiar with the dress-up game currently taking over the internet. But if all those words sounded alarmingly unfamiliar… allow me to introduce you to Dress to Impress.
A Roblox game that first released in November last year, Dress to Impress has become e...

Mock reviews and game evaluations: what are they, and why are they useful for devs?

Mock reviews are a widespread practice within the games industry, yet due to the secretive nature of the work involved, they remain an under-discussed branch of the feedback process – particularly in comparison to fields such as QA and player testing. With most mock reviews and game evaluations written under heavy NDA, it's perhaps unsurprising that we hear little about this line of work.

With the help of experts in publishing, PR and game consultancy – combined with my own knowledge as a freel

Shadow of the Erdtree brings further depth and grandeur to FromSoftware's masterpiece

I got a pretty good sense of how things would go down in Shadow of the Erdtree when, mere seconds into my preview session, I found myself ambushed and fighting for my life. My scenic ride through golden fields was interrupted by a hunched monstrosity with dual discs, who pounced on my head and wouldn't give me a second to breathe. A boss fight, you might ask? Nope - this was just a regular enemy. There's a definite sense that even normal enemies in the Land of Shadow hit harder, and are simply m

Valheim's Ashlands biome is deadly - but with its new weapons, so are you

Spoiler warning: This article contains many details about the Ashlands update - now available to test publicly - that some players may wish to keep a surprise. You have been warned!

For those who have journeyed through Valheim's biomes, the prospect of facing a gruelling challenge in the upcoming Ashlands update will not be a major shock. Its predecessor, the Mistlands, brought with it formidable foes, steep cliffs and visibility challenges - and with only the Ashlands and Deep North left to co

Baldur's Gate 3 showed me I have a main story avoidance problem

Earlier this year, I was midway through my first playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3 when I suddenly started feeling a little funny. I had been bounding through the game as my druid character – picking whichever choices felt natural to me – and making fast progress through the acts. Then I arrived at the city of Baldur's Gate, and began to sense that I was approaching the endgame. The main bosses were within my grasp, the companion stories were wrapping up, and my build had hit the highest possible l

Emma's Adventures: I painted landscapes in the horribly violent world of Rust

Ah Rust, the perfect game for relaxing and enjoying the scenery, right? Wrong. It's a nightmare zone full of death, paranoia and the most irritating players you'll find in a multiplayer game. It's been made that way by design, of course - the driving idea behind Rust is survival, and having to watch your back for other players is a key part of this. Base-building becomes a matter of outwitting other players with solutions such as fake walls, impenetrable cave bases, and chests hidden under bear

The Iron Throne is Baldur's Gate 3's best dungeon, and also its most stressful

The first time I heard about an Iron Throne in Baldur's Gate 3 was through a cryptic message hidden inside a fireworks shop. "Hah! That clever Gortash," I thought as I read through the letter. "He's stashed a bunch of explosives under that chair in his throne room, doubtless in an attempt to blow me up should I ever agree to share power with him. Well no matter, I will not be fooled!" I tucked the note away again, feeling smug in the knowledge that I had uncovered Gortash's secret gunpowder plot

I became a medieval poet in Minecraft

Emma's Adventures is a monthly column exclusively for Eurogamer supporters, written by Emma Kent, who has an uncanny knack for finding strange adventures in games. You can support Eurogamer for £3/€3/$3 a month to gain access to this plus a whole variety of things.

I'm ready to admit that Baldur's Gate 3 has given me complete and total brain worms, in many senses of the term, over the past few weeks. When I'm not playing it, I've been thinking about it. My poor family has been subjected to exte

Selling Valheim part two - a king turns tyrant

Emma's Adventures is a monthly column exclusively for Eurogamer supporters, written by Emma Kent, who has an uncanny knack for finding strange adventures in games. You can support Eurogamer for £3/€3/$3 a month and gain access to a whole variety of things, including this piece. But we're currently offering a free month's trial so you don't have to pay a thing.

This is the second part of Emma's Valheim adventure. The first part - the one that follows her Selling Sunset dreams of running an estat

Selling Valheim, a real-estate saga

Emma's Adventures is a monthly column exclusively for Eurogamer supporters, written by Emma Kent, who has an uncanny knack for finding strange adventures in games. You can support Eurogamer for £3/€3/$3 a month and gain access to a whole variety of things. Better yet, we're currently offering a free trial so you can get a month's subscription for nothing!

We're also doing something slightly different with this instalment. This adventure took such an unexpected turn, and became so much longer th

Emma's Adventures: I did horse dressage in Red Dead Online

Emma's Adventures is a monthly column exclusively for Eurogamer supporters, written by Emma Kent, who has an uncanny knack for finding strange adventures in games. You can support Eurogamer for £3/€3/$3 a month to gain access to a whole variety of things.

As a treat for those of you who aren't supporters, though, we've decided to make Emma's debut adventure, How I made a fashion boutique in Fallout 76, available to all.

Until recently, I knew very little about the world of dressage. My main ex

My job as an Elden Ring crab delivery driver

Emma's Adventures is a new monthly column for Eurogamer supporters written by Emma Kent - someone with an uncanny knack for finding strange adventures in games.

In the wild, abandoned wastes of the Consecrated Snowfield, a warrior stands on the precipice of a frozen ledge, his broad frame silhouetted against a soulless sky. His ragged cloak lifts in the wind, catching slightly on his armour. The crunch of snow behind him betrays the footsteps of something living, and he turns to face his oppone

How I made a fashion boutique in Fallout 76

Emma's Adventures is a brand new monthly series only for supporters of Eurogamer. It arrives as part of our recent supporter programme revamp which, among other things, significantly lowered the price. Emma's Adventures will air on the last Friday of every month, and this the debut instalment.

Tattered jackets, leather coats and hazmat suits? So hot right now. Or at least, they are in the world of Fallout 76, where parts of the landscape are literally on fire. And though high fashion may not im

Elden Ring is an impossible mystery that absolutely deserves to be recognized for its narrative

If there's one thing the internet loves to do, it's argue about industry awards, and the past few weeks have been no exception. In early November, The Game Awards nominees were announced, and on the 'Best Narrative' shortlist was a rather surprising choice. Elden Ring, with its strange and ambiguous story, was named as a nominee in a decision that apparently caused notable outrage.

"Elden Ring for best narrative is truly a farce," one Twitter user said. "Honestly the funniest nominee today is E

State of the Game: Red Dead Online - an untamed playground to make your own fun

Have you ever met a cheater in Red Dead Online? I have - a few times, in fact. The latest encounter came at the worst possible moment, after I had spent an hour painstakingly hunting animals to fill up my wagon with pelts. I had set off on a trader mission across the map, opting for a risky long-haul voyage that left me open to attack.

A potential shootout with a player was a risk I could accept: combating an invisible god-like assailant, however, was something I really hadn't signed up for. Ou

State of the Game: Valheim - a Viking epic in limbo

Eight months had passed since Valheim's launch, and my friends and I had finally completed our mission. We had found the perfect location. We had turfed out the local draugrs. We had constructed a luxurious hot tub overlooking a lake - we had even installed mood lighting. Yes, it was true: our Viking spa town was complete. Removing our padded armour sets, we crammed ourselves into the tub and began to take in our idyllic surroundings. A hush fell over the group, with only the bubbling of the wat

There's no such thing as an Elden Ring cheese

This piece contains spoilers for a few Elden Ring bosses.

For the first few hours of Elden Ring, I was miserable. I'd embarked on my journey into the Lands Between with a preconceived notion in my head: that I would be a serious swordswoman, sticking to the straight and narrow with my fighting style. I would use my powers of dodging, rolling and occasionally landing a hit to grind down my enemies' health bars. Nothing fancy, just good old-fashioned, no-nonsense melee combat. That's the way you'

Respawn would "love to deliver" more single-player PvE content for Apex Legends

If you somehow missed it, earlier this week Respawn unveiled some massive changes coming to Apex Legends in its upcoming Legacy season - the biggest being a new permanent game mode called Arenas. Set to run alongside Apex's standard battle royale matches, Arenas has been described as the "first step" in moving Apex Legends beyond battle royale. And as it turns out, the first pitch document for Arenas was inspired by Auto Chess: a pretty surprising choice given that battle royales and auto chess,

I went on a ride-along with Valheim's Body Recovery Squad

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article about Valheim's Body Recovery Squad - a group of players who risk virtual life and limb to help players get their items back, no matter the difficulty, and do it all for free. It's a wonderful community effort, but something you might not expect is that the BRS is also a well-oiled machine, with lots of work going on in the background to keep the wheels turning. Members file paperwork, take part in training exercises, and even carry out industrial-scale

Music Week: What Debussy can tell us about mood in games

Next on Music Week, a look at how a specific movement in art and music might be an especially good fit for games.

Despite being considered the most important composer in the impressionist movement, Claude Debussy was not fond of the label. "I am trying to do something different, an effect of reality... what the imbeciles call impressionism," Debussy wrote in 1908."A term which is as poorly used as possible, particularly by the critics, since they do not hesitate to apply it to [J.M.W.] Turner,

Assassin's Creed Valhalla made my home a magical wilderness

If you live in London, New York or another global metropolis, you're probably used to the idea of your local area being represented in big-budget media. But if you're from Gloucestershire, the closest things get is Hot Fuzz. Though the county is frequently used as a filming location, it's rarely the focus of the spotlight, and the list of video games set in Gloucestershire is... rather sparse. All of which meant I was shocked to discover that Gloucestershire is not only visitable in Assassin's C
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