Co-developed by longtime Lara custodians Crystal Dynamics and Polish studio Flying Wild Hog, Legacy of Atlantis is a reimagining of the classic 1996 game Tomb Raider, and this familiar cliffside location is now brimming with new life and believable detail. Yet while our reunion gets off to an auspicious start, I have my concerns. It feels like reconnecting with an old friend at the pub, only for them to begin spouting conspiracy theories two pints in. Where the '96 original forced players to rely on their wits - or a pricey strategy guide - to figure out what to do, Lara can now straight-up cheat. She's equipped with an environmental scanner, so a button tap reveals extra environmental lore or simply the solution to a puzzle. It's a change that feels somewhat sacrilegious, and may detract from the eerily isolating atmosphere that made the original so beloved.

Big tech goes to Hollywood: is Silicon Valley ready for a silver-screen reckoning? The first teaser trailer of Luca Guadagnino's Artificial has been released. After being dropped by Amazon MGM Studios in June, the biopic of the OpenAI tech executive Sam Altman will be released in the US on 25 December by Neon after it premieres at the New York film festival this October. In the trailer, Andrew Garfield as Altman walks down the staircase of a luxurious mansion before entering a basement containing dozens of machine guns. Luca Guadagnino's Sam Altman movie dropped by Amazon after it announces OpenAI partnership "The future's inevitable," says Altman as ominous electronic music plays.

The ability for players to smoke marijuana to detect an enemy has resulted in the game being banned in Australia. The ability for players to smoke marijuana to detect an enemy has resulted in the game being banned in Australia. Illicit deeds have just gotten a new Halloween video game banned in Australia - and it's not because of the violence Academics - and a former director of Australia's Classification Board - say Halloween: The Game's ban due to'incentivised drug use' highlights an incoherent set of standards H alloween's Michael Myers is one of film's most feared boogeymen, responsible for some of the most brutal on-screen deaths in horror cinema. US video game developer Illfonic looked to reproduce those terrors in its upcoming title Halloween: The Game, with gruesome killings a major focus of the gameplay: for instance, you can stomp another player's head through a toilet seat, or fry their brain by throwing them through a television screen. But Australians will not be able to play Halloween: The Game, because it has been refused classification by the Classification Board, which means it is banned from sale within the country.

Actor Tori Thomas on set at the AI studio Promise in Los Angeles filming the studio's newly announced AI-enabled horror film, Touch Grass. Actor Tori Thomas on set at the AI studio Promise in Los Angeles filming the studio's newly announced AI-enabled horror film, Touch Grass. 'I see the incredible promise': on set of an AI film shoot as new studios embrace controversial tech N ear the collonaded entrance to Sony Pictures' historic Culver City film studio, a tech-powered rival has sprung up this summer. The artists at Promise, a new studio feeding off the potential of AI, can glimpse the lots where Singin' in the Rain and Men in Black were shot, but no longer do they need to get beyond the studio's high walls to make their visions come true. From far more modest premises, they are making movies with rapidly accelerating AI models that create backgrounds, special effects and even "synthetic performers" - using US models but also driven by market-leading Chinese AI.

And an awesome one,' says Pro Jank Footy developer David Ashby (left) with comedian Broden Kelly at the Great Northern Hotel in Carlton North. And an awesome one,' says Pro Jank Footy developer David Ashby (left) with comedian Broden Kelly at the Great Northern Hotel in Carlton North. 'People in Japan thought we made footy up': Pro Jank Footy, the video game taking Australian rules to the world T ry explaining Australian rules football to anyone outside Australia, and "it sounds like you're making it up," says David Ashby, the multi-hyphenate comedic mind behind deeply silly spoofs such as Italian Spider-Man and Danger 5. "Eighteen players a side, running around on a cricket oval with a rugby ball that has to be bounced every so often and gets kicked between posts - like, what the fuck is happening?" Two years ago at a fantasy footy barbecue, Ashby had a brainwave: why not make a video game where Australia's strange national sport becomes even stranger the more you play? Pro Jank Footy reimagines the sport as a high-octane fever dream, where every time your opponent kicks a goal, you get to change one rule so the game gets increasingly janky (and hilariously stupid). Your opponents turn into seagulls.

Sunset Visitor studio's founder tells us about their new, unnerving Captcha-filled world which prompts players to ask what it means to have a'meat body' S unset Visitor is a studio that has long engaged with the idea that video games are an effective vehicle for ruminating on societal problems. Its Peabody award-winning project, 1000XResist, incorporated the development team's complex feelings about the Covid pandemic. "We're pretty used to absorbing the world into the work," says studio founder Remy Siu. The outfit's latest game, Prove You're Human, continues this legacy of reflective game making, providing players with an AI-centric psychological horror experience where they must reason with a learning model convinced that it's alive. "We've tried to situate ourselves in [the question]: what is the effectual feeling of being a person inside of all of this?" Siu says.

Fearless, intelligent, devoted, determined Samus Aran in Metroid Prime 4. Fearless, intelligent, devoted, determined Samus Aran in Metroid Prime 4. Being a woman who loves video games has often felt lonely, like being on a hostile planet - but Metroid's female space hunter has been with me all the way Anyway, this new game has you in its grip. You are a lone astronaut exploring a hostile alien planet full of ancient, mysterious structures. This astronaut looks human enough - but this distinctly alien place is full of objects that power up their spacesuit's capabilities. Each new ability allows you to explore a new area, and as you do, you realise that the entirety of the planetary base you're exploring is one, massive, interconnected maze. Hours later, you finally defeat Mother Brain and set off a timed self-destruct sequence. Upon your escape, you're treated to an endgame screen: the little astronaut faces you as text on screen implores you to "pray for peace in space".

The games industry's obsession with visual fidelity is costing them money and talent Big developers are discovering that the technical progress of photorealism doesn't always translate into the creative spark that gives gamers joy - and keeps them playing Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. L ast week, Asha Sharma, the new head of Xbox, laid out her vision for the future of the console and interestingly, the two titles she picked out as potential areas of growth were Minecraft and Candy Crush Saga - games that don't exactly scream next-generation entertainment. Neither relies on hyper-realistic visuals, which is the north star that games consoles and gaming PCs have been aiming at for the past 40 years.

What is Fields of Mistria? F arming simulator games deliver on an escapist fantasy: going off-grid from the modern work grind, in exchange for charming small-town life and a farm to call your own. While these games have had dedicated fans since the days of Harvest Moon, the most popular today, Stardew Valley, contemporised the genre with a larger range of activities and lovable townspeople to befriend and romance. Created in 2016 by independent developer Eric Barone, it has now sold more than 50m copies and become the mould for so many other indie farming sims. Fields of Mistria is one of these farming sims in a post Stardew world - though it updates the core formula.

For the festival's 150th anniversary, the creative team have turned to AI to generate visuals reflecting Wagner's tetralogy's past, present - and future. U nveiled the same week in which tech company Anthropic admitted that its AI model Claude had gone rogue during testing, Bayreuth festival's new AI-generated staging of Wagner's four-part Ring of the Nibelungen is at least timely. But anyone who assumes that the cycle's obsession with knowledge, power and possession might make it an ideal forum for reflection on AI as a major contemporary frontier will be disappointed, as will anyone hopeful about AI's creative potential within opera. Commissioned to mark the festival's 150th anniversary, the production is "curated" - emphatically not "directed" - by a team led by German stage director Marcus Lobbes . He apparently spent weeks in dialogue with AI models about possible interpretations of the Ring.