After a supposedly small update sent NieR: Automata's PC file size skyrocketing from a modest 50GB to over 366GB, the devs have finally been able to fix things so the action RPG won't eat up all your storage space.

The update in question arrived last week, and added Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and Korean as extra languages. All valuable additions, of course, but unfortunately, things clearly didn't go quite to plan with the patch, with the game inexplicably becoming 600% bigger in the process.

While the official NieR account apologized and offered a temporary workaround, advising players to uninstall the game's DLC to slim things down to the intended size, the situation obviously wasn't ideal. However, things should now be back to normal for everyone. "We have identified the cause and now resolved this issue," a new post reads. "Apologies for any inconvenience caused."

For most people, this whole situation was probably more amusing than it was genuinely inconvenient, because, again, how does this even happen? To put it into perspective, the septupled file size made NieR: Automata over 72% larger than the 212GB pre-load size for GTA 6 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S announced by Rockstar Games last week. Hell, it was even bigger than the monstrous 300GB that Phantom Blade Zero developer S-Game told players to reserve to pre-load its 145GB action RPG last month.

The NieR account's initial response to the situation was pretty funny, too, as it acknowledged that "installation requires significantly more storage space than intended." Yeah, just a bit.

For Nier Automata, Yoko Taro just made the RPG he wanted to and "tried to stay hidden from Square Enix as much as possible."

Super Smash Bros. and Kirby creator Masahiro Sakurai isn't thinking about retirement, as people still want him to make games.

Masahiro Sakurai confirmed back in 2022 that he is "semi-retired," whatever that means, which was roughly one year after Sora was released as the final Super Smash Bros. Ultimate DLC character, bringing an end to nine years of straight development that started with Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS in 2012. This was followed by a YouTube channel he ran for two years and by Kirby Air Riders, a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive that released a year ago.

Speaking at the Famitsu 40th Anniversary Festival (translated by Genki_JPN), Sakurai was asked about retirement, saying that as long as there is demand, or he can meet that demand, he won't consider it time to hang it up. He says, "Unfortunately, I’m still working at full throttle." And while there's been no confirmation of what he's up to, it's probably the next Super Smash Bros.

However, Sakurai says he has noticed a decline in some parts of his body, and his eyes are tiring far more easily. During that long Super Smash Bros. development, Sakurai suffered from calcific tendonitis but kept working on the game regardless. He notes that, because the demand for him to create remains, the only question left is "when will my spirit break?" He admits that it's "certainly not the case" when asked whether it's okay for him to maintain this workload, but that he's always thinking about what he can do for the games industry. He recently retired his Game Designers Award after 16 years due to being unable to find a successor, which should hopefully cut down on his workload a bit.

Super Smash Bros creator Masahiro Sakurai sometimes "sounds exactly like Goku," ex-Tekken boss says: "A Saiyan who genuinely believes he's just another ordinary human"

Everything began with an unloved game jam prompt. In August 2012, fresh off The Binding of Isaac's enormous success, Edmund McMillen took part in Ludum Dare 24. The theme for that competition's entries was put to the vote until, after five rounds, the organisers were left with a top 20. "Plus one joke theme," according to the now-deprecated webpage: "1,000 kittens."

This theme came dead last in public voting. McMillen took it as his inspiration regardless, and together with Team Meat co-founder Tommy Refenes began prototyping a game that featured not just 1,000 cats but – according to an early marketing tagline – 12 sextillion of them. "I just love the idea of going infinite," McMillen says. This number was achieved using a method McMillen had developed with his previous game, using Flash to add multiple layers of ‘animation clips' to augment the character's look. "I really liked how he'd change visually as you went," he says of Isaac. "And that was the initial spark. I could make a cat-like shape with a bunch of different clips for arms, legs, bodies, heads, whatever – randomise them. We could simulate those as DNA, and then you could have the cats breed and spit out all these different combinations."

It was a simple idea, but one McMillen found himself "pretty obsessed with". Dig up his blog posts from the time, and the enthusiasm is evident. "It's been very hard to keep this one a secret," he wrote in the announcement post for Mew-Genics, as it was then known. This was in October 2012, just weeks after the game jam.

Of course, the game would go on to be a success that dwarfed even Binding of Isaac, selling a million copies in its first week of release. But it'd take an awfully long time to get there, and at the beginning, in the case of everyone but McMillen, the idea was as unloved as the prompt that had spawned it.

From Mew-Genics, to Mewgenics

A year on from that fateful Ludum Dare, McMillen and Refenes had a version of the game they reckoned they were ready to show in public – albeit not one that looked anything like the Mewgenics we know today. "There was a house you could upgrade over time, where you could interact with the cats, and they'd have these wacky animations, and then use those cats as avatars in minigames," McMillen recalls. "I think we only had one functional minigame, the cat fights, which was this Pokémon-esque turn-based combat game."

That was the version of the game Team Meat intended to demo at PAX Seattle in August 2013. At the very last minute, there was a change of mind, and the pair attended without the playable build they'd announced. It proved to be a turning point in more ways than one.

"When we came back from PAX, Tommy was like, ‘I can't work on this anymore," McMillen says. "And I begged, I pleaded… but it was cancelled. That was it. There was nothing I could really do about it." At the time, Refenes' sole interest was making a follow-up to Team Meat's hit platformer, which would be announced the following August as Super Meat Boy Forever. In the announcement blogpost, McMillen explained: "Mewgenics is not cancelled, we just put it on hold to work full time on this one."

Super Meat Boy Forever would eventually be released in 2020. By then, McMillen was no longer part of the project, or Team Meat. "I realised we wanted very different things," he reflects now. At the time, though, he kept trying to make the Mewgenics dream a reality. "I was still pitching it to Tommy before I left. I was trying to wrap it in a genre that I thought he would be excited about."

One version McMillen remembers was closer to Spelunky, the game that had inspired his step into Roguelikes with Isaac. Another came from his longtime friend and collaborator Tyler Glaiel, a fellow traveller in the '00s Flash webgame scene. "I remember suggesting back then: ‘Why not try Final Fantasy Tactics-style combat instead of Pokémon combat?'" Glaiel says. "Because they're on the same tree, kind of, but you can do a lot more with the positioning stuff." McMillen laughs: "Yeah. One has depth, and the other has the illusion of depth."

After McMillen left Team Meat in December 2016, he and Glaiel were free to work together again – not on Mewgenics, but on action platformer The End Is Nigh. "The whole time this was happening, I kept pushing these Mewgenics-like ideas at Tyler," McMillen says. One was a game featuring randomly generated aliens that the player could breed.

"There were some differences," Glaiel says. "The animation was weirder, because it was more rigged and physics-y, because the body parts were so different from each other." Still, Glaiel knew exactly what his old friend was up to. "You just wanted to make Mewgenics, I could tell," he says to McMillen. And, after working on the alien prototype for a week or so, he concluded: "This is a worse theme than cats." After all, it lacked the heartfelt motivations that had driven McMillen to this idea in the first place.

Because, despite the way Mewgenics encourages you to treat your cats, the developer is an animal lover. "Our first cat, Guppy, was a stray kitten that was abandoned in a planter box by its mother," he says. Guppy passed away in 2014 but was immortalised as a powerful character transformation in The Binding of Isaac. "And then, with money and whatever else, my wife was like, ‘I want a hairless cat.'"

That was his introduction to the world of designer cat breeding. The McMillen family have owned three hairless cats, the latest "a Russian import named Puggy", but he has little love for the industry that produces them, which he feels prioritises aesthetic features – unusual ear shapes or fur patterns – over the health of the cats themselves. "They're breeding for rare drops! It's the same as in the game!" These words are delivered with a righteous fury that seems to have burned in McMillen through the long journey from inception to release. "And that's what really kept me going throughout."

Hairless horrors

After The End is Nigh shipped in 2017, McMillen and Glaiel were finally ready to start turning this idea into a reality. The game's themes were already in place, as was a visual style and a cast of characters: Dr Beanies, Butch and the rest made their debut in blogposts dating back to 2012. You can even find an early version of the theme tune, recorded by rock duo Ridiculon. The one remaining question: what kind of game was this going to be?

"There's a bunch of prototypes from that era," Glaiel says. One was "a Castle Crashers-esque beat-'em-up". That proved difficult given the developers wanted multiple characters in play at once, "because you can tell more interesting stories when it's a group, instead of just one cat". So how were they to make that work in real time, without taking the multiplayer route? Glaiel remembers some possible solutions: "What if you have one main cat and a bunch of smaller follower cats that repeat what you do? What if it's just three AI-controlled cats, and one main cat you're controlling?"

They also experimented with making a StarCraft-style RTS. That proved to be "a nightmare to control," Glaiel says. "There was no strategy. You couldn't dodge attacks because you didn't have direct control. You could only tell things what to do, so if an enemy was going to hit you, it had to have a five-second windup so you had time to click your cats and move them away."

"It's funny," McMillen says to his friend. "When you describe them now, they don't sound bad." Glaiel agrees: "Both of those prototypes, I think there's a world where we executed on them and made a decent game. Probably not as interesting as the one we ended up making…"

The game they ended up making, of course, came back to Glaiel's old suggestion of turn-based tactics. Years earlier, McMillen had brushed off the idea because it would mean an awful lot of work. "And that's true," says Glaiel, having worked on this incarnation of the game from 2020 to 2026. "Certainly can't disagree with that!"

Part of what made things so complicated was that the game had two layers. The pet sim McMillen had started out with, and the tactical RPG Glaiel had introduced to the mix were dependent on each other to function. The specifics of the cat-breeding system couldn't be nailed down until they'd "made sure the combat was working fine," Glaiel explains. "Because the breeding doesn't really matter if you don't have anything to use the cats you're breeding for."

Their solution to this sticky situation? "We just kind of worked on the systems seemingly at random, until they were mostly complete, and then we connected them all together," McMillen says. "And we never spoke about it, really." This was only possible because of the pair's dynamic and shared sensibilities – and even so, it didn't always work out. "We were just kind of hoping our assumptions were correct," McMillen says. "And some of them were wrong."

One of those dead ends involved the game's cast of weirdo NPCs, who'd been around since 2012. What role they'd actually serve in-game didn't become clear until late in development, McMillen says. "Initially, the idea was that you'd upgrade the NPCs with money." They didn't like the player grind that encouraged, and so he searched for an alternative before eventually realising: "Wait, we have a resource right here. We have cats."

In the final game, any kittens with undesirable traits or elderly fighters past their prime can be dumped on these characters in exchange for rewards – something else that wasn't obvious at first. "Dr Beanies giving you side quests, we figured that out less than a year before the game came out," Glaiel says. "Before that, he'd give you an ability needle, with a random ability from one of the cats you'd sent him. And they'd just clog up your inventory, because most of the time it would just be some colourless ability."

Rather than ditching this idea entirely, however, the developers found another home for it – you can obtain ability needles by beating an optional hard route with one of the late-game areas. "There's a lot of that," McMillen says, "where we'll do a system, it'll be really in-depth and interesting, but maybe doesn't work how we intended. We don't forget it's there. We make a mental note, and in the future, when there's a hole we need to fill, we can just pull that shit back out."

This resulted in one of Mewgenics' greatest strengths: its wealth of ideas, where something originally designed as a headline feature might be tucked away where relatively few players will ever find it. "The people who have been playing it hardcore since release are starting to go, ‘I've got 300 hours in this game, and I've never seen this before'," McMillen says. "There's a tremendous amount of this very rare, difficult-to-find shit that we just kept adding. And those details, even though they're somewhat needless at times, create the illusion this is a living world. That's where the magic is with games like this."

That's something McMillen learned with Isaac, over the many post-launch updates developed alongside Mewgenics' very long journey to release. He admits to feeling competitive with his own game: "The bar got raised so high, especially with where Isaac ended. Going into this [project], we had this not-so-indirect comparison of: ‘This is what we're going up against – this game that has ten years of development content in it already'."

Although it's less than a year old, Mewgenics already feels like a game that's undergone a similar decade-long period of iteration and expansion. And with many millions of cats having already been fed through its meat grinder, McMillen and Glaiel have been able to see that old magic at work over and over again.

"There are things we forgot were in the game," Glaiel says. He describes an online discussion where a player was trying to figure out why a particular unit had been blinded in battle. "And it's like, ‘Oh, he was standing on a dirt tile, and he used a wind ability – and that apparently blinds them'. I don't remember putting that interaction in the game."

This is apparently news to McMillen, too: "I remember we briefly joked about it very early on, when we made those tiles. I didn't know it was ever implemented." The pair begin trading possible interactions, wondering if they're in the game or not, or whether they should be. Do holy-element powers cause grass to grow, the same way water does? Gravity powers crush grass, and immobilise flying units – but what about water? And how does it interact with rocks?

"I don't think it does a lot," Glaiel replies. "It's mostly just there as a tag for Psychics to interact with." And that gets them onto the ways the elements' effects could be expanded in future. Glaiel, on the spot, starts musing: "One of our DLC classes could probably do stuff with gravity…" When it comes to "going infinite", McMillen has clearly met his match.

This Mewgenics article was first published in issue 424 of Edge Magazine. To get more like this delivered straight to your doorstep (or digital device) consider subscribing to Edge.

Nintendo remains the biggest physical media holdout among the big three console manufacturers, as Xbox has spent years centering its business on cloud and Game Pass and PlayStation is making plans to exit physical media entirely. The company's latest financial report confirms that well over a third of the company's software sales are still physical, but the split is slowly starting to favor digital more and more.

60.7% of Nintendo game sales were digital from April through September 2026, the company reports. That's down 6.2% from the same period last year. These numbers are measuring money generated rather than individual unit sales, so Nintendo warns that "the continued weakness of the yen" is a factor, but it also saw "an increase in sales of the downloadable versions of packaged software."

In a smaller, three-month period running from January through March 2026, the proportion of digital sales rose as high as 67.2%, but that's when the Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen re-releases landed, a notable digital-only outlier. The digital proportion has hovered closer to the 50% mark in recent years, but that's clearly starting to change in a more permanent way.

Notably, none of this data includes digital copies of Mario Kart World that are included in Switch 2 bundles, which means that the true proportion of digital game ownership on the platform is even higher.

A recent survey of "premium gamers" suggests that around 30% of console games owned are physical, so Nintendo fans remain a bit of an outlier in their dedication to hard copy media. Still, Nintendo has insisted it has "no plans to ditch physical games" and its dedication to the format has proven an easy marketing win amid the backlash that Sony now faces.

Yes, Nintendo's main Switch cartridge manufacturer is leaving the business – but that's unlikely to affect Switch 2 games

Final Fantasy series producer Yoshinori Kitase says that Final Fantasy 10's iconic Blitzball minigame was inspired in-part by Pod Racing in Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace – so he's pleased that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 took inspiration from Square Enix's series, too.

Kitase – who served as game director of Final Fantasy 10 – spoke to IGN about being "very happy" that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was so inspired by Final Fantasy because he himself was inspired by movies he enjoyed when he was young – particularly Star Wars.

"I think I like Star Wars so much that I was afraid of using anything related to [it]," Kitase says, recalling the fear that his work would become something identical to the films. He explains, "I don't think there's something from the movie that I used directly as an inspiration for my games."

However, he does admit to a couple of major inspirations, namely Biggs and Wedge – recurring names used in the series starting with Final Fantasy 6 – who are named after Luke Skywalker's wingmen during the attack on the Death Star in the original Star Wars (Biggs Darklighter and Wedge Antilles). He recalls, "I wasn't sure about the name I was going to use for those characters. And I ended up using the names of characters from Star Wars."

Another major inspiration came when Kitase was creating the fictional sport Blitzball for inclusion in the game. He recalls, "I used an idea from Star Wars Episode 1 where there's this [pod] race and the fact of using sport inside a fantasy context, I took this idea directly from Star Wars."

Frankly, I'm more impressed that he was able to be inspired by a film that released two years earlier, which is a massive reminder of how much quicker sequels to games released, and how on fire Square Enix was at that point. Kitase directed Final Fantasy 8 which released three months before The Phantom Menace, and two years later Final Fantasy 10 – inspired by The Phantom Menace – arrived on shelves.

Final Fantasy 10 leaned into the fantasy genre after devs "learned that The Lord of the Rings was in production" and thought it would be "the next big global trend."

Macronix, the manufacturer Nintendo relies on to make Switch 1 cartridges, is phasing out production of the chips that power those games. That certainly sounds like another blow to physical media, and it may well be, but as it stands this news is unlikely to affect cartridges for Switch 2.

Macronix reports record profits in its latest quarterly financial period, and according to chairman Miin Wu, it does not expect to be able to expand its manufacturing capacity in order to fuel further growth. "Instead, near-term growth will be driven primarily by price increases," Wu says, as reported by Taipei Times.

Switch cartridges are powered by flash memory, which is the same type of tech that AI data centers are now eagerly gobbling at massively inflated prices. Chip manufacturers have found that they can make a lot more money selling their goods to data centers rather than makers of consumer electronics, leading to the global memory shortages that have presented us with the threat of next-gen consoles costing $1,000 or more.

Wu notes that demand for the chips "used in data centers is very robust," which is why it's emphasizing those while phasing out production of ROM chips, which are the ones that power Switch game cartridges.

However, Macronix does not manufacture Switch 2 cartridges – at least as far as we know. Details on Nintendo's manufacturing partners are poorly reported, but teardowns suggest that Switch 2 cartridges are primarily made by a separate company called Rohm, as well as another, unidentified manufacturer.

As noted by Nintendo Patents Watch, Macronix had apparently been trying to enter the Switch 2 cartridge business, but has seemingly never completed the R&D work necessary to get the ball rolling. If Macronix had entered the space, it might've opened the door to cheaper or higher-capacity physical Switch 2 games, which may have swayed some publishers away from game-key cards.

But that's pure speculation. As it stands, Macronix's exit from the ROM business won't affect the Switch 2 cartridge market. The effect on Switch 1 games is more difficult to measure, since that market is shrinking anyway – Nintendo itself has no more Switch 1 games on the horizon, though boutique publishers continue to put out physical games for the system.

Nintendo has recently reiterated that it has "no plans to ditch physical games," and it doesn't seem there's any reason to expect that to change with Macronix's pivot.

Nintendo "clearly revised" its messaging on physical media following PlayStation debacle, says ex-marketing lead

We're now four days into Fortnite's latest season, Treasure Hunters, and thousands of players have been taking that title very seriously with their attempts to unlock access to an enormous amount of cosmetics for free, thanks to a prize so desirable that they've been mapping out all the best ways to attempt to beat the extremely slim odds.

Fortnite's Pirate Shop Access tokens are undoubtedly the most exciting rewards that Epic has ever added to the game. Right now in the battle royale, there's a very small chance that when you open up a chest during your regular looting, you'll unlock two of these tokens, each giving you the ability to clear out the game's item shop (full of cosmetics like skins and emotes) for free for 14 consecutive days. One token can be used this year, and the other in 2027, for a total of 28 days of freebies for anyone lucky enough to find them. It's a prize that could, without exaggeration, save players thousands of dollars' worth of V-Bucks.

Needless to say, you can understand why seemingly everyone is currently going feral at the prospect of being one of the lucky few, and when some players have opened thousands of chests without finding what they're looking for, you can also understand why folks are trying to streamline the process. Beyond the general tip of searching in squads – a full team can search chests faster and all will be granted the reward if they're together when a lucky chest is opened, players have found – some have now mapped out the optimal routes to open as many chests as quickly as possible.

Content creator MacFNyt has suggested a few routes. The area just north of Plunder Port, for example, apparently contains between 11 and 23 chests for you to search in a neat loop, while the northwest of the map, containing Buried Treasure Island, reportedly boasts 30 chests in a fairly small area, meaning you can check loads very quickly.

Others have gone even further – Gatocarls15 has shared four routes you can use with your squad, so you're each able to split up and hit one each every match. It's all about optimization, folks.

Another popular chest-searching hotspot is, well, The Chest. That is, the enormous pirate chest POI on the map. The island it's sat on is covered in buried chests, which – as players have pointed out – you can dig up even faster if you equip the new Plundarrgh Sprite.

None of this will guarantee you actually finding any Pirate Shop tokens, of course. In fact, truth be told, I'm not seeing anyone in the replies to these tweets who've actually had real success with the methods. But, it tracks that the more chests you're able to open, then the more chances you have to roll the die, so they're still valid tactics.

There's been no official word from Epic on the actual chance of finding the Pirate Shop Access tokens, so it's really just a case of opening as many chests as possible and hoping for the best. As this is only a month-long season, though, time is ticking, but the dedication so many are showing to the grind even a few days in suggests that this may well be the incentive players need to keep pouring the hours in during a month that's otherwise set to be dominated by the Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake and, of course, GTA 6.

Fortnite is giving out more V-Bucks through its monthly subscription – but also ditching one of its main perks.

Fortnite is making big changes to its Crew subscription from next month, and while it's good news for longtime, loyal subscribers, it also means losing one of the main perks going forward.

As announced in a blog post today, starting on December 5, the base amount of V-Bucks granted by the monthly Crew subscription is going back up to 1,000. This was the case for most of Crew's existence, but earlier this year it fell to 800 per month following Epic's V-Buck price increases.

It doesn't stop there, though – from then on, Epic will also reward longtime subscribers with more V-Bucks based on how long they've been paying for Crew. If you've been subscribed for at least 3 consecutive months, you'll receive 1,200 V-Bucks per month. After six months, that number increases to 1,400, and from 12 months onward, it'll cap out at 1,600 monthly V-Bucks. More to spend on skins, emotes, and the like is nothing to be sniffed at.

Current subscribers will be designated a 'tier' (bronze, silver, or gold) based on how many consecutive months they've been subscribed for in the last year come December 5, and lapsed subscribers who resubscribe between December 5 and 31 will see their starting tier "reflect your most recent continuous subscription period over the past 12 months," Epic says.

With the price of Fortnite Crew remaining the same, this is good news for everyone – especially for those who are already subscribed. Another extra perk is on the way, too – faster XP gain. Crew subscribers will now earn 20% more XP than non-subscribing players, but those not paying for the service will still earn a 10% bonus if they're on the same team as someone who is.

There's really only one downside to the changes, but it's a pretty big one. After December, Crew subscribers will no longer be getting a monthly skin as part of their perks. There were some genuinely great skins offered this way in the past, and they could be an enormous incentive to subscribe, since, up to now, they've never been offered any other way (such as in the regular item shop).

At the very least, all remaining Legacy Styles – alternate, selectable color styles for certain Crew skins, their back blings, and pickaxes that you'd unlock over the course of several months of subscription – will be unlocked for everyone who owns those cosmetics in December, regardless of whether they're subscribed or not. So even lapsed subscribers will see some benefit when these changes are rolled out.

Otherwise, things are remaining the same – Crew subscribers will continue to have access to the Battle Pass, Music Pass, and Lego Pass without having to purchase them separately, in addition to Rocket Pass Premium.

As GTA 6 looms, Fortnite breaks the emergency glass – almost unlimited free skins, emotes, and more for 14 days, but you'll basically have to win the lottery to get them.

Almost exactly 15 years on from Skyrim, the Bethesda dev responsible for the "infamous" Seven Thousand Steps at the Throat of the World says, "I did my darndest to find a way to fit all 7,000 steps into the storied path," but alas, it turns out that that's just rather a lot of steps.

In new dev insights shared by Bethesda in the wake of The Elder Scrolls 6's reemergence yesterday, associate art director Dan Lee discusses his impact on the 2011 RPG, noting that, "While not responsible for the rough layout of Skyrim's terrain, I was responsible for refining the shapes of High Hrothgar.

"I would look at the mountain from various viewpoints and tried to keep the shape interesting. My work on the 'Throat of the World' was not limited to sculpting the mountain, but also included cluttering and dressing the mountain with visual effects, plants, and objects," he continues. "This of course, included the infamous 7,000 steps."

Obviously, when you call a location "The Seven Thousand Steps," people are going to check your work, and fans have long since figured out that Bethesda didn't come close to making the name accurate. It's thought that there are between 700 and 800, instead. One intrepid adventurer did the math a month after the game's launch in 2011, and I feel compelled to share the workings they shared on Reddit nearly 15 years ago, which puts the count at 748 steps.

With that said, this wasn't due to a lack of trying from Lee. "I love trying to be as faithful to lore or real-life as possible and I did my darndest to find a way to fit all 7,000 steps into the storied path," the dev says. "However, my best attempt to do so included extending far past Ivarstead, wrapping around the mountain and ending near Whiterun in the frozen tundra. It turns out, 7,000 is quite a lot!"

So, at least there was an attempt. Lee also has an important clarification before anyone starts blaming him for a certain other notorious part of the path to High Hrothgar. "By the way, my work did NOT include enemy encounters, so I take no responsibility for the Frost Troll that was the woe of many players," he adds.

If Bethesda wants to add any similarly named locations to The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel, I imagine it might be more likely to make sure they can actually live up to their titles. Despite getting a game title, we still know very little about it – but we do have our first crumb of lore, which will hopefully keep ravenous fans fed for a while longer.

Bethesda immediately brings our Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel hopes back down to earth – "It'll be some time before we're ready."

Stardew Valley creator Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone has been hard at work on the 1.7 update for some time now, teasing fans about what to expect – and it sounds like it'll bring much more than just two new marriage candidates to the table.

We already know we'll be able to romance Clint and Sandy come 1.7, and that we'll get a new farm type with the update. It sounds big enough as is, considering just those elements and the other social features ConcernedApe has teased – but it's not just big, y'all.

According to the mastermind developer, it might just be the biggest that Stardew Valley has ever seen… even bigger than 1.5 and 1.6, which boasted added regions, festivals, and more.

He reveals as much during a recent Stardew Valley Symphony of Seasons concert at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado, as posted over on Reddit by an attending fan.

After recalling how incredible his farming sim's growth has been, he mentions the patch that's on everyone's mind. "We're working on the 1.7 update, which is looking to be the largest Stardew Valley update ever," he says. "It's jam-packed."

ConcernedApe doesn't stop there, either. In his own words, "Clint and Sandy are just the tip of the iceberg – there's so much more in the update." He even drops a release hint: "You guys are in for a real treat, and it'll probably come out sometime next year."

Next year is just a couple of months away at this point, which means we could get the new Stardew Valley update a whole lot sooner than expected (should the stars align, of course).

There are a good few months in 2027, though – you know, a whole 12 of 'em – so there's no telling just yet whether or not we'll get 1.7 toward the start of the year or the tail end. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for the former, but ConcernedApe's a busy guy.

He's got Haunted Chocolatier to grapple with, too, which he previously admitted is "taking a long time" to get right – but getting things right is his priority.

Stardew Valley "3DVR" mod looks like a whole different game, is "fully playable" and compatible with all of your existing mods

Super Mario Bros. players have spent years trying to build the perfect speedrun. The race to be the first to achieve the perfect run has escalated dramatically over the past year, and the now-legendary Niftski has just set a new record that's just two frames away from the entire community's ultimate goal. The catch? He didn't actually want to do it – at least not when he did.

"My supporters donated $1,000 for me to do a Mario impression" for an entire Halloween stream, as Niftski explains in the description of his record run on YouTube. He dutifully completed the stream dressed in a Mario hat and fake mustache while doing what he recognizes as "the worst Mario impression of all time."

The entire video is an absolute delight as Niftski slowly recognizes that he's on world record pace while wearing a silly costume and doing a silly voice. "Finally, I just-a had to-a lock in," he says as he warps into level 4-1. The faux facial hair starts to bother him in 4-2, as he complains that "I want to shave-a this thing off because it's-a literally freaking uncomfortable as hell-a."

"I really hope this run dies, by the way," he says as he enters the game's final stages, still on pace for that record. By level 8-3, the penultimate stage, he's getting desperate. "Please have this-a run die," he begs, "I don't-a like it, I don't-a want to get this larping as Mario."

Yet he does indeed secure the world record while-a doing a Mario voice. "It made me not nervous at all," he recognizes, and that might've been the push he needed to set the new record. Still, there are two more frames to shave away before the perfect speedrun finally arrives, and I can only imagine what lengths Niftski might have to go to in order to calm his nerves again.

After 28 years, new Zelda: Ocarina of Time glitch completely changes 2 major boss fights, and speedrunners are scrambling to figure out the implications

Final Fantasy Resonance has been an undeniable hit for Square Enix, but it turns out that its producer's pitch initially faced some pushback from executives at the company who would have preferred the game to be a basic port.

Resonance is sort of like what Octopath Traveler 0 is to Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent, except for Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. Both titles have taken mobile games that came before them and adapted parts of their stories – in Octopath's case, also adding more narrative content – for a full console launch, removing mobile elements like microtransactions and gacha systems in the process.

Given that Final Fantasy Brave Exvius was previously shut down, Resonance is also helping keep its legacy alive, but beyond its ties to the mobile game, it's also a new HD-2D turn-based Final Fantasy experience that a lot of people have been craving for some time. Speaking to Bloomberg in an interview, producer Keisuke Nakashima reveals that his pitch in 2020, which suggested expanding the mobile game for a proper console adaptation, first faced resistance from Square Enix execs who were apparently more keen on the idea of pursuing a simple, cheaper port that'd be faster to make.

"I didn't want to go down that route," Nakashima says. "I wanted to create an original version for consoles that was a full-blown gameplay experience."

Nakashima recalls hearing some "really disappointing" feedback about Brave Evius during a press tour for the mobile game, where, despite plenty of people being interested in it, they expressed that they "didn't want to play it just because of the gacha elements." He explains: "That was another reason we wanted to make this a console game, to bring it to a wider audience."

It's certainly working for Square Enix, anyway – it reached the largest ever Steam player peak for the series' single-player games, and less than five days since launch, one analyst estimated that it'd sold 400k copies across PS5, Xbox Series X, and Steam, bringing in around $20 million in revenue. Hopefully those initially doubtful execs are happy now.

Final Fantasy 14 Evercold won't suffer from Dawntrail's pacing issues, Yoshi-P says, as the MMO commits to respecting your time.

F-Stop – the canceled Valve project that was the original Portal follow-up – has leaked online and is fully playable after being found in the massive Steam leak earlier this year.

Back in August 12TB of Steam data from 2003 and 2013 dropped online which featured a ton of builds of Valve titles like Portal 2, Left 4 Dead, and Counter Strike: Global Offensive. This data was apparently "hidden in plain sight, but with no protection whatsoever," and was easily accessible without hacking the whole time, proving to be a treasure trove for Valve fanatics, with early Portal 2 builds featuring bullet time being uncovered. And unless Half Life 2: Episode 3 is found anytime soon, the true holy grail of this leak may have been found.

As reported by Kotaku, users in the Valve Cut Content project’s Discord have managed to find the game's source code and map data, meaning that F-Stop is fully playable. YouTube user ToothpasteVixen uploaded the intro to the game – featuring earlier narration from a JK Simmons-less Cave Johnson – which will give you a good idea of the concept for those unaware, but to put it simply, it almost feels like an earlier take on the 2019 puzzle game Superliminal where taking photos allows you to manipulate the environment.

F-Stop was one of five projects coming from what Gabe Newell described as "Directed Design Experiments," where Valve's production was shut down for a few months which would have the company's teams participate in what is effectively a massive game jam. F-Stop was one of the standout projects from it, with Newell asking the team behind it to develop it into a prequel to Portal.

Ultimately, as per Portal 2 - the Final Hours, the project was canceled after playtesters didn't react entirely positively – namely, questioning why a Portal follow-up did not include the Portal Gun – but now, 15 years after the actual Portal 2 was released and with no sequel in sight, you can play a sort of new Portal experience.

Backrooms director posts from Valve's office again, and Portal movie speculation is intensifying.

Final Fantasy 14 producer and director Naoki "Yoshi-P" Yoshida knows one of Dawntrail's biggest issues at launch was the story's pacing, so the team is putting in the work to ensure that Evercold doesn't suffer the same fate.

Speaking to the media at Final Fantasy 14's Japanese leg of Fan Fest, Yoshida takes a question about what the team behind the MMO has learned from Dawntrail and how important it has been for Evercold's development.

"This time we are putting in serious consideration on the sense of tempo," Yoshida says, per a mod from the Final Fantasy 14 subreddit who was in attendance. "Back at Dawntrail we were being really careful in depicting new lands, new cultures, new encounters and this greatly slowed down the pacing on story progression. The fact that this did not align with players’ motivation of 'keep moving forward' shows shortcomings on my part as the director."

To remedy the pacing issues for Evercold, Yoshida says the team is moving some of the aforementioned focus to side quests, meaning you can enjoy that kind of thing if and when you want.

"This is actually connected to Final Fantasy 14's overall evolution, so we have to consider how precious players' time they have here," Yoshida adds. "After all, we will face the fact on how it's difficult for this to be relatable to players if the story doesn't progress at a brisk, fast-paced tempo, therefore we are placing a strong emphasis on this aspect this time."

I have been cautiously optimistic about Evercold since it was unveiled early this year, and this is another step in the right direction. While Dawntrail's story does eventually get good – doubly so in the post-expansion patches – it puts you in the position of having to defend it by telling your raid-brained pals to "stick with it, honestly," which is not an amazing place to be in games or other media like TV or film.

Dawntrail had other issues, sure, though Square Enix has shown enough consideration about that elsewhere. Of course, how this all works will remain to be seen. I've played Final Fantasy 14 for a long ol' time, and I've seen expansions launch with pacing issues – looking at you, Stormblood – that were remedied in later expansions. Hopefully Evercold sticks the landing in a way that hangs around for many expansions after.

Final Fantasy 14 theorists were right all along: Evercold's second job is the ranged Zephyr DPS that uses crossbows and a deadly pet bird.

As we enter GTA 6 territory, Fortnite's apparent answer to keeping players engaged is simple – break out the free stuff, stat. However, the shock is just how generous its latest offer is – but earning it is probably going to have a lot of players grinding for an entire month.

Fortnite's latest season, Treasure Hunters, kicked off yesterday, November 1, and as a shorter, month-long mini-season, it was always going to have its work out for it to compete for the spotlight when GTA 6 launches on November 19. Prior to its launch, I thought the plan here was its long-awaited One Piece collab, but as was highlighted shortly after the season went live, Epic Games had another trick up its sleeve.

Enter the Fortnite Pirate Shop Access tokens. Every time you open a chest this season to grab your regular loot – guns, healing items and the like – there's an extremely slim chance that you'll be greeted with a big, golden pop-up declaring, "You found Pirate Shop Access." This grants two special tokens – one for use during a window of time this year, and one in 2027 – which, when activated, allow you to claim almost everything in Fortnite's item shop for free for 14 consecutive days.

To be clear, that means you can log on for two weeks, and every single day, claim almost everything – that means skins, bundles, emotes… you name it – in the shop without spending a single V-Buck. And then, if that wasn't enough, you can return for a second two-week free period next year.

The way Fortnite's item shop works means that you won't be able to claim everything that's ever been added to the game with this, as cosmetics rotate in and out of the store each day. But, depending on how many items you already own and what's in the shop when you activate your tokens, players could genuinely net themselves hundreds, if not thousands of dollars' worth of cosmetics using this.

The only things users aren't allowed to claim for free are "real money offers" (items you can only buy with actual cash rather than V-Bucks) and Battle Pass levels; they can only grab "one free sidekick you do not already own." Owners also can't gift things to others for free, which, to be fair, makes sense since it could lead to a massive chunk of the player base clearing out the item shop for weeks on end if it was permitted.

And that part ties into the only major catch – the rarity. As you'd imagine, the Pirate Shop Access tokens are extremely hard to come by – Epic Games hasn't confirmed the actual odds, but a quick look on social media will show you players opening hundreds and thousands of chests without seeing that fateful pop-up. Given that we're only on day two of the season, we'll probably get a better idea of the stats as we go along, but it's safe to say that many are already fully committed to the grind – which, let's face it, is definitely what the devs were going for.

For anyone keen to try their luck, it seems like it might be easier to find Pirate Shop Access if you're playing with your friends. It's already been confirmed that if you're playing with others and someone else on your team opens one of the lucky chests, the reward will be granted to everyone in the squad (or duo or trio).

There are some other rare rewards this season which can be found in the same way – right now, you can also unlock a golden A$AP Rocky skin and pickaxe, a loading screen, vehicle, Jam Track, and more – but I think it's safe to say that the Pirate Shop Access is going to be the One Piece for most players this season.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney says new multiplayer games flop because everyone's "already formed solid human networks in Fortnite, Call of Duty, Counter-Strike, and Apex Legends."

The Fortnite pirate shop token is currently the talk of the town, as it represents an incredible piece of plundered loot to tie in with the piracy-themed mini-season. If you're lucky enough to find this extremely rare token during Fortnite Treasure Hunters, then you'll be able to plunder the item shop by claiming almost everything available there for free during a two week period, making this one of the most valuable rewards ever! To bring you up to speed, I'll explain how to get a pirate token in Fortnite and how rare it actually is.

How to get a Fortnite pirate shop token

Currently, the only way to get a Fortnite pirate shop token is to keep opening chests in the game, as it is a random loot drop. It comes from standard chests, so you don't need to track down rare ones, and you'll know if you've found an item shop token as the chest will glow and shake for several seconds before exploding with a "YOU FOUND PIRATE SHOP ACCESS" message appearing across the screen.

If you're lucky enough to discover this you'll actually receive two items – PIRATE SHOP ACCESS (2026) and PIRATE SHOP ACCESS (2027). The first needs to be activated by December 15, 2026, while the second will become available next year, and once redeemed they allow you to claim anything sold for V-Bucks in the Fortnite Item Shop for free for 14 days. This excludes passes levels, gifting, and real money bundles, and you can only claim one free sidekick you don't own already, but otherwise you can absolutely stuff your locker with a huge amount of free cosmetics!

How rare is the pirate shop token in Fortnite?

Naturally for such a valuable reward, the Fortnite pirate shop token is incredibly rare and at the time of writing only a small number of players have reportedly found it. You can increase your odds of discovering a token by playing with friends, as if one member of a duo, trio, or squad finds this elusive item then everyone else in the group will also receive it. Otherwise, all you can do is continue searching as many chests as possible and keeping everything crossed – good luck and happy hunting!

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Nearly 25 years on from its release, Mass Effect can feel like a forgotten relic. The game’s achievements as a character-driven space opera have been appropriated by its immediate successor, Mass Effect 2, leaving behind a reputation for clunky combat and awkward driving segments (see ‘Mako or break’). 2021's Legendary Edition remaster attempted to conceal its many blemishes while collecting the trilogy in one package – and in doing so, highlighted the gulf in quality between games one and two.

But the dented legacy of the 2007 original, first released as an Xbox 360 exclusive, doesn’t do it justice. Mass Effect remains a special game, with flaws that aren’t as obvious as you remember and a setting to match any that BioWare has created. Yes, the second game’s ensemble cast will always be the series standout, but Mass Effect built a believable galaxy for those characters to live in, home to trillions of inhabitants and dozens of races. Without that history, you wouldn’t understand the motivations of your Mass Effect 2 companions, or care about their collective fate. And in some ways Mass Effect betters the games that came after it – certainly, at least, with its hub world, the Citadel.

My favorite store on the Citadel!

Commander Shepard, your customised avatar, first arrives here to report the betrayal of Saren, a member of the elite force known as the Spectres, which operates above the law at the will of the intergalactic Council. The Citadel is a megaship positioned right at the heart of the galaxy, a five-armed monolith that is home to the Council and to 12 million people besides: the kind of location that would’ve been difficult to depict in any detail on screen in the mid2000s. BioWare didn’t try to build a giant city that looks believable, as Rockstar would with GTA 4’s open world a year later. Rather, it built a world that feels believable.

The twinkling urban sprawl you see when you look out of the curved windows lining the Citadel’s corridors is mere set dressing, not intended to truly fool you. None of the sections it is carved up into is especially large or bustling – but they are all distinct, in ways that leave room for you to imagine what might happen when you’re not around. The cavernous Presidium is a marvel of sterile grandeur, its simulated blue sky, trimmed trees and white fountains forming the kind of characterless utopia in which smiling ambassadors of each species would want to operate. In contrast, Flux, the nightclub down in the Wards, the “cultural heart of the galaxy”, flashes with neon lights and pulses with music while patrons mingle at tables or at the bar, and others try their luck on arcade machines upstairs.

BioWare deploys multiple tricks to make these spaces feel bigger than they actually are. Corridors have multiple nooks with no apparent purpose, or which are only used for a specific sidequest, while aliens tap away at banks of computers in side rooms, their purpose unknown. Walkways crisscross and overlap, and elevator rides – infamously – take an eternity, during which you listen to news reports about humanity’s efforts to colonise distant planets.

But the characters are what really sell the idea that both the Citadel and the galaxy beyond are bigger than what actually exists on your hard drive. The line of embassies and administrative offices you find in the Presidium are an excuse to meet a variety of alien races: the polite Elcor, who preface their words with a summary of what they’re about to say, and the diminutive Volus, who specialise in commerce and are bitter that they lack a seat at the Council. The way you learn about their cultures feels contrived (Shepard will say, straightfaced, “Tell me about Volus culture”), but the answers speak to a universe of varied environments, economies and political systems.

Your crewmate companions are in on it too. Enter Flux with Wrex, your Krogan companion, and he’ll comment how “places like this” always want to hire Krogan bouncers, “like we’re a status symbol for them”, which reveals something about both Citadel and Krogan life. When Garrus, a humanoid Turian, meets a gambler who has been kicked out of the club, his statement that if Doran, its Volus owner, “says you’re cheating, you’re cheating” suggests that he has visited countless times before. Walk past a Krogan statue, gleaming white in the Presidium, and Wrex will begin arguing with Garrus about the violent reputation of his species, and about the genophage, a biological weapon deployed by the Turians to wipe out the Krogan after a decades-long war – a topic that’s repeated in multiple quests and creates an underlying tension within your squad.

It’s a technique not dissimilar to the ‘iceberg theory’ of storytelling associated with the writer Ernest Hemingway, which holds that the sparse, surface elements of a story should hint at vast, deeper meaning below. Here, the technique is used for worldbuilding: the Citadel is the tip of the iceberg, a snapshot of the numerous alien races in the galaxy that speaks to a vast world beyond.

We have no beginning. We have no end. We are infinite.

It’s a philosophy that continues when you leave the Citadel and head for your next destination, using a vast map. The overarching plot – chasing Saren across the galaxy, with the fate of civilisation in your hands – feels like standard science-fiction fare, but it’s split into missions that provide self-contained stories about people and places, each one sketching in more detail about the universe you’re moving through. When trying to track down Saren on Feros, a colony world run by the ExoGeni Corporation, you learn about the exploitative relationship between people and business while helping settlers with shortages of food, water, and power. On Noveria, you discover – and decide the entire fate of – the Rachni, an insectoid species believed extinct.

This achievement dwarfs the actual roleplaying, which doesn’t stand up too well to modern examination. Mass Effect’s dialogue wheel promised to steer away from binary good and bad, but instead created a morality-by-menu that lets you swing wildly between space racist and compassionate empath. Some of the ‘renegade’ dialogue options are ridiculous, such as being able to punch a reporter on camera, out of nowhere, after she asks perfectly reasonable questions. The writing that underpins it is occasionally stiff, too. We don’t need to be told that “shooting people isn’t always the answer” after defusing a tense situation in the gentleman’s club Chora’s Den, for example, and some jokes, including an early one about how “size isn’t everything”, fall flat.

Perhaps the part of Mass Effect that has been most maligned over the years, though, is its combat. In truth, it’s perfectly passable, even 15 years on. Put side-by-side with Mass Effect 2, it’s admittedly clunky: weapons overheat quickly and sometimes don’t shoot straight; Shepard rarely sticks to cover; your abilities and ‘first aid’ heal recharge slowly, slowing the pace of fights. But once you accept these limitations, firefights turn into challenging puzzles where solutions can be invented in the moment, pausing combat to conduct your squad’s arsenal of explosive powers.

The best of these are biotics – explained away as a result of the titular energy fields, but in essence Mass Effect’s equivalent of the magic systems found in BioWare’s fantasy games, or the Force abilities offered by Knights Of The Old Republic. The two classes that can use biotics – Adept, a purist, or Vanguard, which sacrifices some biotic power for shotgun skills – are effectively space wizards, able to suck enemies into a swirling blue vortex or tug them out of cover and into the air, where they hang suspended as target practice for the rest of the squad.

The makeup of that squad is essential to making the most of Mass Effect’s combat. It’s telling that only one of the characters on offer, Ashley Williams, is a pure soldier, as if the game is trying to push you away from relying on guns, knowing how quickly it will get repetitive. Better to choose the pairing of Garrus and Wrex, who can combine biotics with tech explosions triggered by Garrus’s omni-tool, and dive into another of Mass Effect’s strengths: character customisation. This stretches beyond picking guns and powers, into weapon attachments and ammo types that can completely change the way you play. Level up Wrex’s biotic barrier skill, and he can be directed to rush in solo, tanking damage while tearing through shields with phasic ammo, before pausing to line up Garrus’ sniper Assassination skill.

This customisation is lost somewhat in Mass Effect 2’s streamlining of the design. It’s missed, but not as much as the Citadel, to which we can’t help but return after every main mission, just to see what’s different. The sequel’s version is a shrunken, more static hub, but here, on every visit, enough has changed to give the illusion that this is a dynamic, evolving place in which NPCs come and go. Side missions zigzag between the financial district and Chora’s Den, each unlocking new dialogue options with existing characters, or revealing a new secret about Citadel life.

Returning to the med clinic, where an early story mission takes place, you’ll find a doctor who’s being blackmailed by a Krogan in the Citadel’s markets. Scaring the Krogan off reveals a mystery about a “classified project” in a far-off system – a plotline which doesn’t resolve until Mass Effect 3. This should be how Mass Effect is remembered: not as a rough draft, but as a remarkable act of scene-setting, making promises for future games to fulfil and building a believable stage on which one of gaming’s greatest science-fiction series could play out.

This Mass Effect article was first published in issue 373 of Edge Magazine. To get more like this delivered straight to your doorstep (or digital device) consider subscribing to Edge.

FromSoftware isn't having a great week. Right on the heels of delaying The Duskbloods out of 2026, it's now announced that the servers for Dark Souls 2 and 3 are temporarily going down on all platforms due to an "issue," and it's not going to tell you when they'll be back.

"Due to a server issue, the game servers for the following titles will be temporarily unavailable on all platforms," FromSoftware writes in a post on Twitter, listing Dark Souls 2 and 3.

"We will provide updates once we have information regarding the server restoration time," it adds. "We apologize for the inconvenience."

This was around eight hours ago – no update has been given since, and the lack of indication of how long it'd take in the place is concerning, to say the least. After all, Dark Souls fans have lived through months-long server outages before. Back in 2022, the PC servers for Dark Souls Remastered, Dark Souls 2, and Dark Souls 3 all went, well, dark for most part of the year following security concerns. They all came back online eventually, but it was pretty rough for anyone wanting to play them thanks to the co-op and invasion features being totally dead.

Hopefully this latest outage doesn't last as long, as there's also the added concern of it being across all platforms this time rather than just PC.

While FromSoftware offers no explanation as to what the server issue is, it notably comes around a week after numerous sites and online services were temporarily taken down in the wake of new PHP vulnerabilities being discovered. Whether that's played a role here isn't known – separate server maintenance for Dark Souls 2 only just came and went a couple of days ago.

Dark Souls director Hidetaka Miyazaki was always "fascinated" by the "weird" executives of other companies: "I use some of them as enemy characters in our games."

I'm always looking out for cozy Halloween games that channel the spooky vibes or autumnal aesthetic of the season. Crucially, though, I'm after those that don't fill me with any fear or sense of dread.

Yes, even though I'm a self-professed scaredy cat who can't handle the best horror games out there on account of the fright factor, I still love Halloween for its witchy, vampy feel, and its pumpkin-laden, bat-winged decorations (the candy helps, too). So, if you're anything like me and you're after some recommendations, I've decided to bring together these cozy Halloween games to help you get in the spirit of the spooky season without being at risk of raising your heart rate — or having to shy away from your PC or console because some gnarly monster is attacking you.

From some of my favorite indies that nail the creepy-but-cute style, to some games like Stardew Valley that are perfect for the season, and sims that capture the atmosphere and look without the scares, I've also included some story-driven adventures that are great for this time of year. So, read on as I help you get into the spooky mood with my pick of the best cozy Halloween games.

6. Night in the Woods

Every time Halloween comes a-knocking, I always want to return to Night in the Woods. Not only does the adventure game have the perfect autumnal aesthetic for this time of year, but it also has a slightly darker, spooky edge to it as you progress through the story (but don't worry, it never veers into scary territory). Playing as protagonist Mae, who returns to her hometown of Possum Springs after dropping out of College, you follow her coming-of-age journey as she tries to reconnect with family and friends, fit back into a home that's changed, and ultimately figure out her place in the world.

Driven by exploration in the rundown mining town, there's some mysteries for you to unravel, but at its heart is an experience centered around relatable characters who are all dealing with troubles of their own. I always appreciate how Night In the Woods explores Mae's struggles as a young adult, as well as mental health problems. It normalizes what is often stigmatized, and brings to life a memorable, atmospheric experience that will forever mean so much to me. If you've yet to try out Night in the Woods, Halloween is the perfect time to do just that.

5. Wylde Flowers

If there was ever a great way to get into the spirit of the spooky season, then assuming the role of witch running a farm is a sure fire way to do it. Wylde Flowers takes the delights of the best farming games and infuses them with magic, supernatural residents, intrigue, and cozy cottagecore vibes. As Tara, who moves to the delightful Fairhaven Island to be with her ailing grandmother, Hazel, you eventually take over the family farm.

But as you'll soon come to learn, there's more to Tara's family lineage and the Island than first meets the eye. You'll find your way to discovering a local coven who teach you the witchy ways of Grandma Hazel. From brewing potions in a cauldron that can help crops grow faster, to drawing up spells to do things like change the weather, or help out the locals who get caught up in a spot of bother, there's even a magical location to explore that's host to the likes of a book-loving werewolf and a tinkering goblin. With lots of charming characters and a great story, updates have brought more unlockable features to this cozy gem.

4. Cult of the Lamb

If you're looking for something for Halloween that channels the creepy-but-cute look and feel, I'll always recommend Cult of the Lamb. Playing as an adorable young sheep, you decide to break away from the stereotypical norms so often associated with the fluffy animals and become a leader with followers of your own. Yes, as the lead lamb, you grow and front your very own cult of cutesy critters.

As you set out to earn more powers by venturing through dungeons, you'll develop your cult with some base-building goodness, and maybe sacrifice a follower or two in the name of the lamb. Its darker edge is undercut by its humor, and it still manages to somehow be adorable and charming. Plus, if you're after a recommendation you can play with a pal or loved one, then you'll be happy to know it also supports local co-op, with one player taking on the role of the lamb, while the other controls a goat. Quite the dynamic duo.

3. Beacon Pines

Another adventure that taps into the creepy-cute vibe, Beacon Pines is a cozy game with a horror-leaning story that's very fitting for the Halloween season. With an autumnal feel overall, the adventure takes place within the pages of a mysterious storybook, and follows the journey of a little deer called Luka and his friends. Playing as both the reader of the story and Luka, you set out into the night to investigate some strange goings on in Beacon Pines, namely at an old abandoned warehouse in the woods.

Stumbling upon a weird cover-up at the warehouse that Luka and his friends get caught up in, you help to shape the narrative by filling the gaps of the pages as the reader. With charms that have engraved words, you can find new story paths to unlock more charms and events. With a creepy atmosphere and an emotional story, it spins a mystery you'll want to unravel.

2. Strange Antiquities

If you love detective games and have yet to give Strange Antiquities a go, then Halloween is a great time for this one. With a dark, cozy feel to it, you find yourself working in a shop full of oddities in the setting of Undermere – the candle-lit interior of the store really makes for the perfect the kind of atmosphere for this time of year. As you settle in to examine and identify strange artifacts, you'll try to meet the curious needs of your customers.

After receiving requests for a specific effect or particular occult object, it's then left up to you to puzzle out what would be right for the townsfolk who stop by. It really does feel like you're a detective, not only because you have to figure out what artifacts are and who they're best suited for, but because you'll also piece together clues to uncover more objects in the store – which holds plenty of secrets of its own. Building on the developer's previous game, Strange Horticulture (which you may also enjoy if you like this one), Strange Antiquities' has plenty of mystery and intrigue for the spooky season.

1. Wytchwood

Wytchwood is always at the top of mind when it comes to cozy games that have the perfect look, atmosphere, and setting for the Halloween season – complete with a great sense of humor. The crafting adventure takes place in a fairytale world filled with gothic fables. Brought to life in a wonderful storybook art style, you take on the role of the old witch of the woods who has her own cottage in a swamp... and wears a pot on her head like a helmet.

Tasked with venturing out into the strange land to claim souls on behalf of a goat (as you do), you collect and grow witchy ingredients like eye of the newt, meaty morsels, and even things like bottled despair. You'll work to craft spells in your grimoire and brew up enchantments to cast judgement on those you encounter. With a setting that's filled with fantastical characters, you can expect to solve puzzles, meet some monsters, and soak up its witchy, gothic vibes.

If you're after more spooky recommendations and do want some scares, consider checking out our pick of the best Halloween games.

A constant barrage of great game releases often means some great games fly under my radar. There's a world where Romancing Saga 3: Destinies United – a 3D remake of the 1995 JRPG – completely flies past me and I'm worse for it. After a brief hands-on with a game I had little interest in playing, I walked away eagerly anticipating meeting back up with my weird little party of freaks.

I'm not someone familiar with the Saga franchise, I've always happily observed it from the outside, forever content to enjoy this one from the sidelines. That was until a recent preview event at New York Comic Con where I played a very combat focused section of the game. I was swiftly thrown into the deep end with my ragtag party of our fearless leader Khalid, a fairy with a giant spear named Peony, a masked super-hero like figure, and my favorite, a bushy browed snowman named Flurry.

Glimmer of an idea

This turn-based RPG mostly plays out how you expect modern games to feel. You walk up to an enemy in the overworld, whack them before they can whack you to get the advantage, and shift into a turn-based system. While it seems like a straightforward system I've seen time and time again, it turns out Romancing Saga 3 hides one neat little trick up its sleeve.

The Glimmer system provides a way for me to improvise my way through combat encounters. A lightbulb symbol next to an attack denotes the chance to turn it into something greater. For instance, glimmering Peony's Spear Attack sees my fairy ally improvising on the jab, turning it into a Giant Swing, a brand new attack that now sits alongside all of her other abilities.

Certain spells and attacks can only be glimmered based on the weapon the character is holding, and while I don't have time to swap weapons out in my demo, it's clear there's plenty of room for experimentation with its battle system.

The Glimmer System promotes pulling the lever on the slot machine. Do I go for the tried and true way to success by exploiting enemies weaknesses, or do I let it all ride on black? Of course, you have a limited number of ability slots, so it won't last forever. But, the chase of finding something new and exciting with every roll of the dice fires every dopamine receptor in my brain. What if I kept pushing my luck?

Suddenly, my combat encounters become just as much about fleshing out everyone's ability slots with new and interesting moves as they do felling foes. Multi-hit attacks, area of effect explosions, and thunder kicks galore as my party becomes more powerful. Lightbulb after lightbulb pops up as I keep exploring every option at my disposal without being forced to hold back.

It instills a sense of discovery in mundane combat encounters. I don't know how long that sensation will last over the course of the full game, but in the moment it turns ordinary battles into something thrilling. Of course, a catchy battle theme with a horn section giving it their all certainly helps.

Sifting through the menus allows me to change out my party's formation. This changes various attributes. For instance, Speculation puts the group in a v-shaped formation giving the front three units increased melee capabilities. Whirlwind formation, on the other hand, increases the speed of all units, giving them the ability to act faster in the turn order. These predetermined formations feel easy to understand at a glance and make experimentation feel more approachable.

After progressing through the dungeon I eventually find the boss, Gwayne, a larger than life dragon who's not going to simply give up once the party arrives. I start raining down attacks left and right, searching for Gwayne's weaknesses as I put all of my newfound abilities, collected and honed throughout the dungeon, to the test.

As the slugfest carries on, the overdrive meter at the bottom of the screen tantalizingly fills up. Once full to the brim, I use it to unleash a United Attack, a unique ability that chains multiple party member's attacks together for massive damage. Everytime I think I have Romancing Saga 3 figured out, it tosses a tiny new wrinkle into the mix.

Using all of the tools at my disposal, I have Gwayne on the ropes. Just as I gear up for the final few blows… My demo ends. While I don't get to vanquish the dragon this time around, I'm excited to regroup with my newfound party of weirdos and hopefully find a few more along the way when Romancing Saga: Destinies United launches February 16, 2027.

Romance isn't dead, and neither are role-playing games. Check out our best RPGs, best JRPGs, and best ARPGs rankings for what to play next, and keep an eye on our upcoming RPGs calendar for more!

The clipped-wing Dodo aeroplane, sporadically stealable from the rear runway of Francis International Airport, neatly embodies the Rockstar Games of 2001. Although Grand Theft Auto 3 will always be able to stand on its own merits as an uncommonly bleak videogame nasty that also shaped the whole sandbox crime genre, even in its day it felt somehow incomplete, as if its creator was reaching for something just beyond its grasp. Similarly, the Dodo can soar dozens of feet off the ground, but it quickly and inevitably reaches the limit of its engine power and slumps back down to earth. There is a sense of a living, reactive city in GTA 3, but at the same time it feels limited, locked off, as though you're never given full access to the dynamic urban reality it implies. On the scant few occasions that you can enter one of Liberty City's buildings, for example, there isn't anyone or anything in there, and you reach the end of the game with a sense that there is much more in Rockstar's crime series that remains to be explored.

In GTA: Vice City, released a mere 13 months after GTA 3, you are not constrained to the Dodo. From the seat of a helicopter, a seaplane or a fully outfitted Apache attack chopper, you can fly high and free. In just over a year, Rockstar's ability to build sprawling and explorable 3D cities appears to have come on leaps and bounds.

There are other telling mechanical additions. Expanding on the comparatively austere GTA 3, in Vice City you can ride motorbikes, buy property, change your clothes, and discover unmarked ambient side missions such as robbing a pharmacy or beating up gang members to earn the 'good citizen' cash bonus.

Rockstar's sunkissed, heat-vapour-saturated pastel caricature of Miami is a sight to behold, but, more importantly, you can explore its interiors too. Between the Malibu Club, the Pole Position, the shopping malls and the Pizza Stack restaurants – not to mention the various hotels, apartments and places of business that you acquire as you progress through the main story – this aptly named metropolis of iniquity is packed with places to go, NPCs to meet, and small but immersion-enhancing interactions. Today, we take all of this for granted. Customisable characters, optional sidequests and small, tertiary mechanics that help to boost verisimilitude have come to be regarded as the mere rudiments of the open-world genre. But way back in 2002 – especially on a console, and outside of the fantasy-RPG realm – a game where this amount of effort was put into pure worldbuilding, and where you could have a perfectly rewarding time simply basking in the atmosphere, still felt exceptional.

Nevertheless, two and a half decades on, some of the changes and enhancements made between GTA 3 and Vice City might sound superficial, or even faintly ridiculous. In the same way that you might chuckle at the size of the earliest mobile phones or recall with a certain irony the 'magic' of wireless Internet, it's funny to imagine a world where the ability to crouch in a Grand Theft Auto game, or to jump out of a moving car if it was on fire, felt like a novelty. Vice City emerged in an era when the conventions of the 3D open-world game – especially the 3D open-world crime game – were still far from codified, when the mechanical language of the subgenre was unfinished. Seen from that perspective, Rockstar's vision for the game starts to feel cavalier, like it's trying to tap X repeatedly to sprint before it can walk. There's no swimming, climbing walls or moving while crouching in Vice City, but there are celebrity voiceovers, a fully licensed soundtrack, and a recognisable representation of the mansion (and climactic shootout) from Scarface.

You might get the sense that presentation was more important to 2002 Rockstar than pragmatism, as though the studio was channelling its creative energy towards superficial goals (aping big-budget movies; showing off a pseudo-cinematic production quality) in lieu of honing or pushing the playing experience. Certainly, the driving, the shooting and the level designs that are supposed to form the game's centre remain largely unchanged from GTA 3. Or you could even go back to Grand Theft Auto, from 1997; the tasks that you receive in the top-down original version of Liberty City almost always involve driving somewhere, killing a bunch of people, picking something up and driving back, and that's also what you do for most of your time in Vice City. It looks gorgeous, and there's plenty to see and explore, but the game can be seen more as an incremental advance than a full-bodied sequel – understandable when you consider that it started life as a GTA 3 add-on.

However, the magic of Vice City – and of videogames in general – lies in more than mechanics, mission design or any other tangibles of the form. Even though Vice City may have fundamentally the same structure and systems as GTA 3, True Crime, Mafia and many comparable crime capers that emerged during the '00s, it nevertheless feels like the standout because of its aesthetic approach. The stinking, smoky, weather-beaten concrete brutalism of Liberty City – and the moral squalor that it symbolises – is replaced wholesale with sunshine, vibrancy and an airier, freer, much more feel-good tone.

Prior to Vice City, the sensory thrills of GTA had been rooted largely in depravity, the transgressive excitement that comes from simulating actions and behaviours that are too dark, immoral and illegal for you ever to consider in reality. They're by no means fully grown up, but in Vice City, Rockstar's virtual fantasies appear more mature. In addition to killing cops with rocket launchers, flinging cars off of ramps and driving a tank through traffic, you're encouraged, surreptitiously or otherwise, towards more plausible and contemplative pleasures. When you reminisce about Vice City today, alongside all the ultraviolence and automotive pyrotechnics, you're also likely to fondly recall the first time you went inside the Malibu Club, or the party mission aboard Colonel Cortez's yacht, or cruising down Ocean Beach in a convertible Stinger while listening to Broken Wings. With GTA 3, Rockstar succeeded in creating a 3D open playground; with Vice City, it started to develop and more finely shape what would eventually become its trademark – a rounded, reactive, and much more enveloping open world.

Vice City's landscape is more than a racing track, and you're invited to regard its citizenry as more than digital toys for you to smash up in variously creative ways. But while it is a broader and deeper game than GTA 3 – and also represents a crucial development in the history of open-world maps, and how they've become progressively larger – it is still very carefully contained. There are exceptions, but in the latter half of the game in particular, when you're set loose to purchase assets and front companies, the majority of the side missions feel as if they are still connected to the central spine of the narrative. It's up to you which businesses you want to buy and which of their accompanying mission chains you want to follow, but all of them are ultimately connected to Tommy Vercetti's core goal of constructing his criminal empire. Even today, this kind of design feels like a rarity. If there is a consistent problem with sandbox and open-world games, it's that they offer too much in the way of meaningless 'content', expecting you to be enthralled by completing banal sidequests in the name of sheer running time. But in Vice City – for the most part, at least – you have a reasonable understanding of why your character is doing the things he's doing. The effect is incomplete, and naturally primitive compared to much later games such as Cyberpunk 2077, but in Vice City you can see that Rockstar is trying to unify the free-flowing, player-driven open world with cogent, coherent storytelling.

This effort – to make the game feel simultaneously large and comprehensible, reactive to you as a player but nonetheless directed and choreographed by the designers, so that there is dramatic thrust behind everything you do – is ultimately reflected in the map itself, every part of which has its own identifying characteristic: the Ammu-Nation and helipad in Downtown, the multi-storey car park and hotels in Ocean Beach, the airport and the rocket-launcher pickup near Little Havana.

Rather than simply being big, Rockstar's interpretation of Miami is dense. Whether interactive or purely visual, each street contains a point of interest, and the missions are designed so that you're bound to visit every district. Again, it makes the game feel remarkably modern. If the open worlds of today struggle with one particular problem – that there's a lot more map than there are engaging or worthwhile things to do on it – Rockstar, as early as 2002, seems to have appreciated the value of details and meaningful minutiae over size.

Twenty-four years ago, Vice City's appeal might have laid in its new vehicles, its encompassing '80s soundtrack and its enormous cast of celebrity voices. One of the reasons we fell in love with it was because it felt 'bigger' than GTA 3, and perhaps any other game of the era. In hindsight, though, and in the context of more than two decades of sandbox and open-world giants, it's a pleasure to play because of how focused and contained it feels, and how for each inch of the experience there is the detectable authorial hand of its creator steering us along.

Our GTA 6 guide details everything you need to know about the story, gameplay, and world so far! Or, check out our best GTA games list for what to play while you wait!

Here we are, a decade removed from the controversial launch of No Man's Sky, and developer Hello Games is still finding ways to improve its increasingly beloved space sandbox. No Man's Sky update 7.10, Forsaken, has just landed, marking the game's fifth major update in 2026 alone, and it makes good on a teaser that's haunted fans since well before launch.

Yes, you can now "fly directly to neighboring stars for the first time," as the trailer for Forsaken explains. Nearby stars will appear as brighter spots in the sky, and you can simply point your ship toward one to see the system's name and get a button prompt to warp to it. Previously, you had to open the galaxy map in order to chart your course to a new star system.

The ability to just warp directly to new star systems was seemingly teased at the end of the infamous E3 2014 trailer for No Man's Sky – the one that appeared at PlayStation's press conference and set impossibly high expectations for the game. That trailer also teased co-op, a feature that would be added to the game years after launch, and it seems the studio's commitment to making good on the game's pre-release promise is still going strong.

Of course, seamless warping is just one small part of the Forsaken update. You can check out the full patch notes for all the details, but other major additions include new Forsaken traders offering corvette modules in exchange for rare goods, an immersive HUD mode, and some Halloween-appropriate new spooky biological samples to seek out.

Arguably the biggest news, however, is that No Man's Sky is now available on mobile, which the devs once considered a "seemingly impossible technical challenge." The mobile version is well under 5GB, which is all the more impressive given just how big the game has gotten in the decade since its launch.

These are the best space games you can play today.

When does the Fortnite Treasure Hunters mini-season start is a question we now know the answer to, as it will get underway on November 1, 2026. The tagline for the fresh season is "The greatest adventure of all time" and you can expect things to get switched up, with a new map to explore, fresh faces to meet, and no doubt some updated mechanics to get to grips with.

Epic aren't known for resting on their laurels and are always planning the next stage of development in Fortnite, so there will certainly be more changes brought in during the course of the upcoming season and beyond. If you're looking ahead to the Fortnite Treasure Hunters mini-season and are wondering what changes it may bring us, then here's everything we know about it so far.

What will be the biggest changes made for the Fortnite Treasure Hunters mini-season?

Although Epic haven't officially confirmed much more than the name and tagline for the Fortnite Treasure Hunters mini-season, they have also released a number of teasers which give us a good idea of what's to come. The season is going to be themed around anime pirates, with One Piece being confirmed as a significant part of that.

As rounded up by HYPEX, we've so far seen that One Piece characters Luffy, Zoro, Nami, Usopp, Sanji, Ace, and Buggy will all feature, alongside A$AP Rocky, Charlotte, Cuddle Team Leader, Hatsune Miku, Hope, Jonesy, Kasane Teto, Lil Uzi Vert, and Oscar as part of a stacked line up!

There are also going to be six distinct pirate crews in Treasure Hunters, featuring Jones & Hope, Straw Hat Crew (One Piece), A$AP Rocky, Lil Uzi Vert, Kasane Teto & Hatsune Miku, plus a 6th unknown crew – perhaps that one will be ours? It's likely you'll be battling against these crews to secure the loot, as was revealed during the teaser – "You won't be the only one drawn to these shores. Hope you're ready for reality's greatest treasure hunt."

We've also got an early look at the Fortnite Treasure Hunters mini-season map in the post above, showing a more compact island with plenty of POIs within close proximity to each other. There are also lots of bays for ships to dock in, which ties to the overall piracy and treasure hunting theme.

How much will the Fortnite Treasure Hunters Battle Pass cost?

Fortnite is free to play, but buying the Battle Pass will get you lots of additional rewards. The Fortnite Treasure Hunters Battle Pass will be available for 800 V-Bucks, which means it will still be enough to purchase the smallest V-Bucks bundle in the Fortnite store, priced at $8.99 / £6.99 to get 800 V-Bucks. By completing the Battle Pass you can earn 800 V-Bucks back through unlocks, but you can no longer collect additional V-Bucks above that.

Usually it's possible to get a head start by buying the Battle Bundle upgrade, which would get you to Tier 25 on the Battle Pass instantly – however with this being a short mini-season, the pass may be smaller so this could work differently. Doing so previously would cost you 2,600 V-Bucks, which you can get for $22.99 / £17.49. You can also sign up to the Fortnite Crew subscription service, which costs $11.99 / £9.99 per month but gives you access to all of the Fortnite Passes including the Battle Pass, as well as awarding a bonus 800 V-Bucks every month and other exclusive rewards.

If you don't want to spend any money, you can always try to get free Fortnite V-Bucks for the Fortnite Treasure Hunters Battle Pass, but don't fall for online scams! If you choose to save up some V-Bucks, remember that you only need 800 of them to unlock the next Fortnite Battle Pass starting in November 2026.

And that's everything we know about the Fortnite Treasure Hunters mini-season for now, but keep checking back and we'll have more details as soon as they're revealed!

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There's some good news and some bad news for Witchbrook fans today. Chucklefish's long-awaited magical school RPG finally has a release date set for next January… but that's also a delay from what was previously announced.

Witchbrook – a cozy life sim with Stardew Valley-esque visuals set in a seaside town with a magical college – was first teased over 10 years ago, if you can believe it, but it's felt tantalizingly close for the last couple of years thanks to some unfortunate delays. It was originally planned to arrive sometime during winter 2025, but got pushed back to 2026, and, well… it's now missed out on that window, too.

As announced during today's Nintendo Indie World Showcase, Witchbrook is now set to arrive on January 28, 2027. In addition to launching on PC, Xbox, Switch, and Switch 2 as previously revealed in a blog post shared on Steam, Chucklefish now confirms that Witchbrook will also arrive on PS5 at the same time as the other platforms, so no one is missing out at launch.

This blog post also confirms the US pricing for Witchbrook. It'll be $24.99 at launch, and Chucklefish also notes that physical copies – both standard and collector's editions – will be coming, too, but not until after the digital release. This is "to avoid impacting the release schedule, and to ensure they’re truly special for physical media collectors," the devs say.

"We have poured detail and care into every pixel, to create a truly handcrafted experience," the blog post says. "We can't wait to open Witchbrook College's grand doors to new students in January, and introduce you to the town and people of Mossport.

"Thank you for all of your support and patience, especially within the last year, while we took the additional time to make a game we're truly proud of. We hope you'll enjoy immersing yourself in our magical pixel art world as much as we've enjoyed making it."

That pair of aforementioned delays may have some feeling wary about getting too excited about the new date, but with an actual date listed this time rather than a more vague release window, it feels a lot more likely that this will be Witchbrook's final delay. Hopefully, anyway.

Witchbrook's taken 10 years because "Harry Potter meets Stardew Valley" got old and the devs wanted time to make "something more unique."

As Final Fantasy Resonance has a strong start, and, like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, proves what an appetite JRPG fans have for turn-based games, one analyst suggests that Square Enix "knows what it's missed out on" after its "move towards more action-oriented Final Fantasy titles."

Square Enix's new turn-based, HD-2D release launched last week and quickly dethroned Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth as the series' single-player games' highest concurrent player peak on Steam. And, as you might expect, that's translated to a lot of money for Square Enix, too.

According to Alinea Analytics analyst Rhys Elliott, Resonance has now sold 400k copies across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S, bringing in $20 million in revenue. That's obviously rather a lot, and Elliott suggests it reflects what JRPG fans actually want and that Square Enix is catering to it. It's also worth keeping in mind that this doesn't include what the game made on the Nintendo Switch 2.

"Given the strong positive reaction to – and early sales of – Resonance and last year's Expedition 33 (which is tracking way better than recent Final Fantasy games), it's clear that Square Enix has left a significant chunk of JRPG players behind during their move towards more action-oriented Final Fantasy titles," he suggests.

"While Square chased more Western trends, a Western company swept in and released Expedition 33, a game JRPG fans wanted for decades and even won game of the year at The Game Awards," he continues. "Square knows this, knows what it's missed out on, and it's seen Capcom succeed on Steam with its legacy franchises where Square Enix has arguably floundered."

Obviously, that isn't to say that Final Fantasy Resonance was made in response to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, as it was in the works well before Sandfall's reveal, let alone its wildly successful launch last year. However, the timing of another turn-based RPG gaining so much traction can't be ignored, and Elliott suggests that Square Enix may consider altering its strategy going forward.

"I can see Square Enix going down a new route, with many diverging paths, for Final Fantasy," he explains. "They've already outlined their plans to go fully multiplatform, smartly moving away from timed PlayStation exclusivity.

"I can also see the company balancing its MMO, high-fidelity remakes, and big-budget mainline Final Fantasy titles with more of these smaller 2D-HD original pixel games alongside the 2D-HD remakes," he continues. "There's still a gap for a turn-based JRPG big-budget Final Fantasy, though, and all the signals are pointing Square Enix in that direction. Just a matter of time, I reckon."

It's not just Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 developer Sandfall that the analyst suggests Square Enix takes notes from, though. After a particularly stellar year with the likes of Resident Evil Requiem, Pragmata, and Onimusha: Way of the Sword – showcasing success with new IP and old favorites alike – Elliott adds: "I'd take even more cues from Capcom, if I were them."

Final Fantasy 14 devs say Evercold's new Evolved mode isn't massive power creep: "If you don't want to change, you don't have to."

The end is nigh for Pokemon's free-to-play MOBA title Pokemon Unite, which is set to shut down for good almost six years after its launch in March 2027.

In a blog post shared today, the Pokemon Unite devs confirm that service for both the Switch and mobile versions of the game come to an end on March 23, 2027, at midnight UTC. "We offer our sincerest gratitude to the many Trainers who have played since service started for the Nintendo Switch version on July 21, 2021," a statement reads.

From now on, new purchases of Aeos gems (premium microtransactions) have been stopped, though anyone with a remaining stash will still be able to use what they'd already got until the game is shut down. Similarly, the paid monthly membership service, Unite Club, can no longer be purchased by new subscribers – existing members will continue to receive their paid benefits until their current membership period ends, with automatic renewals also now switched off.

As a last hurrah for the game, on November 12, Pokemon Unite will be getting an update that adds a couple of key things – a special event that'll run to the end of service, which will let you earn Unite coins from logging in and completing missions. These can be exchanged for things like Unite licenses for different playable Pokemon, Holowear to dress them up in, and trainer fashion items.

The other new feature to be added is a big one for longtime players who want something to remember the game by even after its shutdown – if you complete a required download before the end of service, you'll be able to access a library feature "to view certain records and in-game content."

The devs explain: "This will allow Trainers to visit the Practice Area as well as view items and achievements they obtained in-game – such as Holowear, Unite licenses, Trainer fashion items, emblems, tournament results, and more – even after service ends. We are also working on a way to look back at special memories you created with your Pokemon."

It's sad news – Unite may not have been the most popular Pokemon spin-off, but it's great fun and has also been a major part of tournaments like the Pokemon Europe International Championships and Worlds, where it's drawn extremely enthusiastic crowds. Being sat in the crowd for the EUIC finals a few years ago was genuinely one of my highlights of the event, even though I didn't play Unite at the time, just because the excitement was so contagious.

"Again, we would like to express our deepest gratitude to everyone involved with Pokemon UNITE up to this point," the devs conclude. "We hope you continue to enjoy Pokemon UNITE until service ends."

Pokemon Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald Switch ports feel all but confirmed, fans believe as new Pokemon Home update suggests more GBA games could be on the way.

Stop us if you've heard this before, but No Man's Sky and Hello Games lead Sean Murrary is yet again posting cryptic emojis online with zero context or explanation – cryptic emojis that have notably always led to updates in the past.

Remember the cocktail emojis that had folks buzzing about the Cosmos update a few months back? Or, how about how Murray teased the Remnant patch, which launched with a Garry's Mod-style gravity gun in February, with hi-vis vest emojis?

And you can't forget the stadium emojis, which were teasing the big Xeno Arena additions, or the The Swarm update, which was hinted at via bee emojis and nothing else. It's a pattern, to say the least. Now, Murray is back with more, having just left a post with naught more than a decaying rose emoji – you know the one – over on Twitter.

The Hello Games boss has put the same emoji up on Facebook and other social media platforms, meaning that this probably isn't a drill and is, much like past vague emoji-posting, some sort of mysterious teaser about… well, something. There's no telling just what it could be pointing toward, however.

Comments see folks speculating about seasons on planets, spooky expeditions, and, perhaps most amusingly, the death of No Man's Sky to finally make way for Light No Fire (probably not happening, y'all, sorry).

As one fan jests, "Hey Sean… So when can I get some Light No Fire news?" Others are simply mindblown at the prospect of yet another No Man's Sky update, considering how many we've witnessed this year alone.

There's also the fact that we just got the mobile launch of the space game, which was a bit mind-blowing in itself, seeing as Hello Games had to somehow manage to compress No Man's Sky into less than 5GB.

It's clear to me that these developers are always hard at work on one thing or another (even if the one thing we want most, ahem, Light No Fire, is being kept tightly under wraps for the time being, sadly).

I'd wager we'll see a few – or more – decaying rose emojis from Murray and Hello Games later today before we finally learn what they're supposed to be teasing, so I'd advise keeping a close eye on their official social media channels.

"If people weren't playing No Man's Sky, I don't think we would want to do updates," says Sean Murray, but he'd probably try to sneak in more content years later anyway.

Final Fantasy Resonance has gotten off to an excellent start on Steam, with Square Enix's first HD-2D game in the series now also the franchise's most popular single-player game based on its concurrent player peak on the platform.

Shortly after its launch, Final Fantasy Resonance reached a Steam peak just short of 28,000 concurrent players – a number that made it Square Enix's second-largest launch for a turn-based RPG on the platform behind Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake. However, that peak has now grown even more – yesterday, according to SteamDB, Final Fantasy Resonance hit 42,885 concurrent Steam players, which is a huge deal for a Final Fantasy game.

That's because it just barely beat Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth for the largest concurrent Steam player peak among the series' single-player games. The second installment in the FF7 remake trilogy hit a peak of 40,564 back when it launched.

Of course, the big difference there is that Rebirth arrived on PC almost a year after its PS5 launch, so many of the most hyped players would likely have already played it by the time it broke free of its console exclusivity. Resonance, on the other hand, launched simultaneously across PC and consoles, so it could take full advantage of that initial wave of hype on Steam.

You probably won't be surprised to hear that it's not the single most-played Final Fantasy game on Steam either, thanks to a certain critically acclaimed MMORPG. Final Fantasy 14 more than doubled Resonance's Steam peak almost five years ago when it hit 95,150 concurrent players around the Endwalker expansion's release, but obviously, it'd never be fair to compare an MMO and single-player game's player counts in the first place, so this is still a notable achievement for Resonance.

Despite its success, though, I suspect this won't be a record Resonance is going to hang onto forever. Next April will see the release of the third and final part of the FF7 remake trilogy in Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, which will also be releasing simultaneously across PC and consoles. Considering the hype that's built up for that, I'd be surprised if it wasn't able to snatch Resonance's crown.

"Too good to become unplayable": Final Fantasy Resonance exists because a JRPG veteran was "frustrated" players ignored their game the first time.

Vorp! With a simple sci-fi sound effect, BioWare tore apart the gleaming hull of the Normandy SR-1, scattered a great deal of what came before to the void, and split its burgeoning action-RPG series clean in two. Save files from 2007's Mass Effect might have brought with them an XP bonus or credit dump as well as the player's established continuity, but rarely before or since has the reset button been pressed so swiftly, or so heart-wrenchingly.

It was exactly what the series needed. One-time Xbox 360 exclusive Mass Effect had been a bright spot of promise for the console, buffed to a lens-flare-spilling sheen by being billed as a franchise that would move beyond binary morality and deliver a meaningful, ongoing space opera – one that wasn't Star Wars for a change. (Many studios now promise episodic gaming, but BioWare was crafting series-spanning narrative arcs long before that buzz-phrase was coined.) The opening part of the trilogy was certainly grandiose and epic in scope, yet somehow austere, a feeling compounded by a glut of anodyne shootouts and awkward driving filling the time away from its much-admired conversation wheel. It wasn't Star Wars, but nor had it found an identity among all its copious lore. As a concept piece, a pilot, it was tantalising enough, but more of the same would not do, especially when the world was then drowning in third-person cover shooters thanks to 2006's punchy, hyperviolent Gears of War.

Oh the horrors

And so millions watched the SR-1's malady in horror, took brief control of malleable returning protagonist Commander Shepard for a spot of eye-searingly beautiful Dead Space homage heroism, and then shaped a 4-billion-credit rebirth. This wasn't just a sequel, it was a reinvention, and BioWare made sure everyone knew it.

Even if the point hadn't been hammered home, returning players would have noticed from Shepard's first woozy steps across a Cerberus lab. The Commander, once stately and tank-like under the sticks, now moved with a fluidity uncommon in the recently deceased, sliding into cover across Teflon floors on Vaseline-smothered boots. Even your starting pistol could dominate early combat spaces with a snap, crackle, and mechhead pop that flash-vaporised expectations of another 20-plus hours of drab, feedbacklight gunplay.

But the real revelation would come when you fired up the power wheel for the first time and unleashed one of the new biotic or tech abilities. Mass Effect's array of buffs, debuffs, and crowd-control powers had hewed close to BioWare's RPG roots, though yoinking enemies out of cover and into the path of a sniper rifle was quite the trick in 2007. The sight of Shepard dashing across no man's land in a haze of roiling blue fire to explode into the enemy and shove a shotgun up their nostrils, however, promised a very different kind of combat interstitial between conversations. If Mass Effect games were Luc Besson movies, the original had been Lucy, all big ideas but little convincing peril, and 2 was The Fifth Element: an intergalactic excuse for daft, glorious carnage.

Daft, not stupid. Players didn't even have to wait for the introduction of creepy new Reaper lackeys, the Collectors, before they started having to manage enemy damage, with a separate bar each for tracking shields, barriers, armour and health. Of all the combat system's renovations, this was perhaps the most crucial, a gentle subversion of the RPG's long-in-the-tooth type-based attacks that meant the series could jettison the notion of a tough fight as one where health bars are hidden behind multiple blocks of blue shield and bullet-sponge powers. Mass Effect 2 wouldn't ask you to face ice monsters that were weak to fire, but shields did melt away under the sustained pressure of an SMG, while biotic power Reave stopped health regenerating so you could put down tough organics such as the Krogan or nightmare-imp newcomers, the Vorcha. And you'd have to control space as well as damage output, since enemies were as aggressive as you, flanking, setting up kill boxes, invading your personal space or flushing you out with flamethrowers.

BioWare could afford to bury the needle north of hectic, because any Shepard, regardless of gender or class, had a secret superpower: the ability to freeze time. While others have made entire games out of frozen moments, here they elegantly and invisibly support tactical play, as you let the stale air in your lungs seep from your lips, read the situation, and adapt. Yes, Shepard may have been able to make enemies hilariously pinwheel in slow motion through the air, then biotically dash them to oblivion – kudos to whoever worked out how to really get some use out of Unreal Engine 3's physics simulations – but on the higher difficulties, Mass Effect 2 became as much the thinking man's cover shooter as a heady power fantasy.

Whizz bang pop

The shooting brought the game in line with the best of its peers, but the series' newfound sense of personal drama is what makes it unforgettable today. BioWare's genius was to add a generous extra glug of soap opera to its po-faced space opera mix, producing something all its own as a result. Where else in games can you assemble a team that consists of a dying part-monk, part-hitman seeking absolution in your noble suicide mission, a none-too-stable tatted-up psychopath who looks like Natalie Portman circa V for Vendetta, and an unflappable sentient machine construct housing 1,183 digital minds, much less bicker with or seduce half that crew? You may have to put the old band back together, but damn if you haven't pulled in an orchestra's worth of exotic new instruments along the way.

Indeed, the reason Mass Effect 2 still stands as the high point of the series is that it is fundamentally a game about people, not concepts. Every Shepard is different, and so will their interactions be, but those are simply the filling between layers of rich character drama. Every principal cast member has something to say. Miranda has to deal with the pressures of being engineered for perfection, putting up an all-too-human wall of ice after years of dealing with a pushy father. Garrus and damp squib Jacob are takes on feeling ineffective in their work, though the former gets a chewy revenge subplot, too. The list is too long to recount here, and loyalty missions double down on the character development – success in the final act, where the entire galaxy is threatened, is dependent on solving personal crises, changing inner universes.

Forget fetch quests, strip mining and moon caches – helping Jack get some closure after her time as Subject Zero at the hands of Cerberus felt like it mattered. It is these stories, these little moments of pathos and reconciliation, where BioWare finally grounds its big questions about life. Gradually, you begin to feel as if it might be a tragedy to lose this universe, this diversity of damaged characters trying to find their way in the uncaring vacuum, to the Reapers. In providing robust inner lives for its alien-packed cast, BioWare finally found the window on humanity it had been seeking.

Shepard's uneasy alliance with Cerberus is the smouldering fuse that regularly threatens to detonate all of these volatile personalities, but it is also an excuse to let the player deviate from the virtuous Paragon path if they so wish. Anecdotal evidence suggests that when given the choice, many will opt for video game good over video game evil. But so often in games, the evil path is simply the stupid one where you act like a dick to others for no good reason. Human civilisation is founded on social imperatives, so it's little surprise many struggle to shrug off their conditioning without incentive. By casting Shepard not as the white knight of humanity trying to earn our place in the stars but as an agent of a pro-human terrorist group that cares more about results than ramifications, the Renegade options finally made a little more narrative sense.

Which isn't to say Mass Effect 2 delivered nuanced morality – that takes more tallying up good and bad actions on separate scales – but it did at least make roleplaying meatier. Would you taser an engineer to sabotage the gunship of a telegraphed later boss to make the fight easier? Or are you the sort of person who leaps in to defend a Quarian from racial harassment at the hands of a pompous Volus and a bent cop? You might feasibly be both, assuming you're not gaming the system to max out one type of conversation-wheel option. Getting the player involved in everyday strife as well as world-ending crises lent the series an intimacy it had lacked. Anyone can be a hero when the only criterion is that all the bad men are dead at the end, but how you played Mass Effect 2 had the power to say something about you as a person.

It's easy to forget, in the wake of Mass Effect 3's reductionistic endings, how much Mass Effect 2 felt like a realisation of the series' promise to respect your choices. Entire missions winked into existence or out of it based on your Mass Effect playthrough, old faces appeared in unexpected places, and you could alter the texture of the galaxy, even if the artifice involved meant the core structure had to be much the same. To replay Mass Effect 2 now is not just a chance to pursue new combat options and morality; it is a reminder of what the most ambitious ongoing saga in video games set out to achieve, and how choice-centred the universe it provided was, even when it fell short.

Perhaps most importantly, it is proof that just because something's a sequel, that doesn't mean it can't be a total reinvention, at least given a studio at the height of its powers and a silly sound effect.

This Mass Effect 2 article was first published in issue 273 of Edge Magazine. To get more like this delivered straight to your doorstep (or digital device) consider subscribing to Edge.

Cult classic indie game Katana Zero has pulled a Hollow Knight Silksong, sort of - the long, long awaited Katana Zero DLC is now sequel-sized, according to the game's lead developer Justin Stander.

Katana Zero first became a huge success more than seven years ago, thanks to its gorgeous pixel art and lightning speed action that felt like a mix between Hotline Miami's heart-thumping brutality and Sekiro's sword slashing parries. A cryptic story and banger soundtrack didn't hurt, either.

After several years, the promised Katana Zero DLC is still nowhere to be seen, but fret not. Justin Stander recently took to social media to tell folks he's "still working hard" on the project. It's just taking longer than expected because the DLC keeps ballooning in size… I wonder where I've heard that one before?

"We made it bigger. It's the size of a full sequel, plus a soundtrack of over 30+ new songs," Stander tweets. "More updates to come. Thanks for your continued support!"

One small but notable difference between this and Hollow Knight Silksong (which also started out as a modest expansion before expanding wildly) is that, for now, the Katana Zero DLC is still DLC, not a standalone sequel. This is far from the first time the project's multiplied in scope, however.

In 2020, the indie dev said the Katana Zero DLC had grown to three times its original size. As of last year, it was "nearly" as big as the base game. Now? It sounds like it could be even bigger.

Still no release date yet for Katana Zero's continuation, but we did receive a short and gorgeous trailer last year.

Be sure to check out the upcoming indie games for 2026 and beyond

Factorio effectively created a genre with its lovable blend of base building, management, and survival, and it's been a Steam icon ever since it first hit early access way back in 2016. Even after a 1.0 release, a 2.0 update, and a major DLC expansion the devs have made good on their promise to never put the game on sale, and now we're here at yet another milestone with Factorio 2.1.

After months in testing, the 2.1 update has now been officially released, offering "a big collection of quality of life, small features, polish, and the things we wanted to do for 2.0 but didn't have time for," according to the announcement on Steam.

The full patch notes are stuffed with catnip for hardcore fans – "rockets can now carry multiple different items in one launch," "elevated rails can now be built over cargo bays," and "land mines can be used as tripwires and enemy detectors," for example – but arguably the most notable part is that this is likely to be the game's final milestone. The devs at Wube Software previously described it as the "last major update" they plan to create.

It's possible a few more minor patches for Factorio may land to clean up bugs and the like, but this update marks the end of an era. Factorio has been a staple on Steam, one that's earned over 234,000 positive Steam reviews, resulting in a 98% overwhelmingly positive rating. According to Steam250, that makes it the 35th best game on Valve's platform, just one step behind Elden Ring.

The game's sterling reputation and masses of players come despite the fact that, unlike pretty much every other game on Valve's platform, the devs resolutely refuse to put Factorio on sale. In fact, they actually raised the game's price in 2023 "to account for inflation."

"It isn't about visibility or sales," the devs said of their zero sale stance back in 2016, "it's about respecting the players who have already purchased the game. We don't want to reward the people who hold off on buying the game, the game is a price we find reasonable, and this is the deal. If you think it is priced too high, then it is your choice to not purchase, and we hope that with enough time, and extra development, we will be able to convince you of its value."

Clearly, a whole lot of people have been convinced of that value over the years, including a new console audience thanks to the game's releases on Switch and Switch 2. Back in 2025, the devs said they were already "laying some groundwork for what our next project could look like," and if it's anything like Factorio, it could be the stuff of indie gaming legends.

These are the best PC games you can play today.

Shigeru Miyamoto, mastermind of Nintendo and the creator of Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Donkey Kong, will receive one of Japan's most highly regarded cultural honors – and he's the first video game developer to do so, too.

The Order of Culture, established in 1937, is an award presented to men and women who have made substantial contributions to Japan's art, literature, science, and technology.

Notable recipients include everything from fashion designers to manga artists and biologists… and, yes, it's now going to Miyamoto. A new report from GameWatch (as translated by Automaton) confirms as much.

Miyamoto, who reportedly appeared "modest" during the announcement regarding the award, is "honored" to be receiving it, paying tribute to other devs he's worked alongside throughout his career at Nintendo – his 49-year career: "I am truly honored to receive such a prestigious award. As I have often said, these achievements were not the work of one person, but the result of collaboration with many others. I accept this honor on their behalf."

The Nintendo representative director and executive fellow will officially receive the award on Japan's Culture Day, November 3. He is one of eight recipients chosen by the Japanese government and, again, the first-ever game dev to be nominated for the Order of Culture.

It serves as a testament to the mark he and his franchises have made, from arcade machines in the 1980s to portable home consoles like the Switch 2 today.

Heck, it's ongoing. We've got The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake set to release on November 5 – a remake of the beloved 1998 gem that Miyamoto acted as both producer and supervisor on. There are countless projects he's influenced in one way or another that are still managing to pull millions of players worldwide.

This is one award I'd argue is very much deserved, and it's exciting to see it finally reach the games industry.

Shigeru Miyamoto dreams of Nintendo consoles becoming a rite of passage for everyone coming of age: "Which Nintendo would make you the happiest?"

"Shrek 2 Remastered." The words keep echoing in my head like a half-forgotten memory of a sick dream, but somehow they're real. The 2004 movie tie-in game is getting a full remaster courtesy of Aspyr later this year, and folks, now that the rumors have proven true, I think it's time for us all to admit that gaming nostalgia has finally gone too far.

Shrek 2 Remastered will launch for $30 on November 10 across PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, Switch, and PC. This new version promises improved graphics, a photo mode, cheats, and 4-player co-op both online and locally, all of which sound like reasonable upgrades over the original.

But come on, man. It's Shrek 2. We all have our nostalgia for various middling licensed games – I still like the Super NES Jurassic Park game, personally – but Aspyr's use of the word "classic" in the remaster's Steam page makes me feel like I'm losing touch with reality in a way that I haven't since Destroy All Humans got remade a few years ago.

Look, I love digging into the lower tiers of the PS2 library, but this is the kind of thing bargain hunting at your local retro shop or deep dives into emulators were made for. Do we really need remaster studios putting their resources into run-of-the-mill licensed games with Metacritic scores in the low 70s?

I say all this, but moments ago our senior entertainment writer Lauren saw me use the words "Shrek PS2 game" and simply started repeating "OMG" over and over again, so maybe I'm just not the target audience here. Maybe I'll head over to eBay and grab the original game on Xbox in a bit…

At the very least, Aspyr has generally done good work in its previous remasters, which have included the likes of Tomb Raider and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – both genuine pillars of video game history. The studio was, at one point, set to lead the KOTOR remake, though those plans have long since changed. I guess the studio is at least getting work, even if that work's occasionally unglamorous.

These are the best PS2 games of all time.

Final Fantasy Resonance is at once a nostalgia-laced antidote for the longtime fans who have felt alienated by the recent 3D iterations turning their backs on the series' turn-based traditions as well as Square Enix giving its trademarked HD-2D style a much needed shot in the arm. While I've been enamored by this retro-modern style since its introduction in 2018's Octopath Traveler, over time it's been losing its charm, as the same presentation had been wheeled out in successive nostalgic outings, though at least Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined had the good grace to try something different.

Nonetheless, its legacy of pixel-based classics like Final Fantasy 6 meant it was only a matter of time before a Final Fantasy title would receive the HD-2D treatment while also finding ways for the aesthetic to feel fresh again. Ironically, it's done that not through a brand new game but with an adaptation of mobile spin-off Final Fantasy Brave Exvius.

Crystal clear

Square Enix reworking its mobile catalog to console may not be new, as it has done successfully with Octopath Traveler 0, and less so with Various Daylife, but Final Fantasy Resonance is more significant as it excavates a since discontinued mobile game. The work from Square Enix Creative Studio 5 and Lancarse is even more extensive than just an act of preservation or removing the gacha elements that had been why Brave Exvius passed me by when it was available. While its story and characters remain intact, the whole presentation and experience has been overhauled to feel like a very classic yet fresh Final Fantasy adventure that stands on its own two feet.

Just about everything in Final Fantasy Resonance harks back to the series' classic hallmarks, from turn-based battles with a party size of four characters to the explorable overworld of Lapis peppered with towns, dungeons, random encounters, and – of course – a story that revolves around crystals. As a knight of the kingdom of Grandshelt, your protagonist Rain finds himself setting out on a journey to find the legendary crystals before each can be destroyed by a mysterious group of elite armored warriors calling themselves the Sworn Six.

There's plenty that follows a largely conventional structure – visit a new region, discover a problem the locals are having where one of the characters end up joining your party, and a dungeon that culminates in a fight with one of the Sworn Six – but it's not really a criticism when the execution of this formula is done so well. Sure, there are some familiar characterizations, from a leading man obliviously caught in a love triangle, to a feisty mechanic who's often butting heads with the sleazeball of the group, but these are fun characters to spend time with. Even the game's villains are written with pathos, while the series' recurring Espers have their own personality as you fight for the right to summon them in battle.

It's all bolstered by the presentation that's a substantial level-up from past HD-2D games. While Final Fantasy Resonance does make use of voice-acting as well as having dialogue text accompanied by expressive character illustrations – the latter introduced in this year's The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales – its biggest improvement comes from the spritework, which are bigger and feature more animations than what would have been feasible for a 16-bit Final Fantasy.

Another subtle yet meaningful shift seen early on is how it's not presented with the same top-down medium-wide camera but actually leverages the fact that the game is made up of 3D environments. It's not that Final Fantasy Resonance strives to be cinematic, but a simple change of the camera to a close-up, more dynamic angles during a boss encounter, or one of your party member's show-stopping Limit Bursts, does a lot to make HD-2D feel fresh again.

It's only undermined by the occasional use of CG sequences when you're summoning Espers or Visions, the latter including manifestations of characters from the numbered Final Fantasy titles. Given how their CG sequences are taken straight from Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, I imagine they looked far more spectacular blowing up on your smartphone back in the day. I personally found these transitions at odds with the HD-2D style, and it's perhaps weirder if playing the game with English audio since the CG Visions are only voiced in Japanese.

Vision quest

Visions are nonetheless a core component in Final Fantasy Resonance and are significantly overhauled from Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, where they were unlocked through a gacha system. This remake has just 26 from the hundreds of the mobile title but nixes any monetization or rarity randomization. Each is unlocked either by visiting their respective shrine or completing a side quest, while awakening more of their abilities is done by using magicite found as you go through the campaign.

Obviously, it's wish fulfillment having the likes of Final Fantasy 7's Cloud fighting alongside Final Fantasy 13's Lightning or Final Fantasy 14's Y'shtola, though they are more comparable to the skill-wielding summons from the likes of Persona 5 than true party members. They also have the added function of being like jobs, giving more abilities and attack options for the party member who's equipped them, while keeping them paired up for longer also levels up mastery, unlocking more benefits. There's also incentive to master multiple visions, since some of these perks become equippable, and you can mix and match different abilities, like a more flexible form of Octopath Traveler's secondary jobs.

Indeed, while there are many familiar Final Fantasy elements – such as Phoenix Downs for reviving fallen party members, or using tents as save points for fully recovering – I can't help but think how much of Octopath Traveler's design sensibilities permeate throughout. Mostly, it makes for a smoother experience, like the ability to run making dungeon traversal snappier, and the mini-map acting as a red-flashing radar helping you anticipate random battles.

It's also evident in the presentation of the battles themselves, with a timeline on the top displaying the order of turns while icons next to enemies also indicate which elemental properties they are weak, resistant, or immune to after a respective attack or spell is used on them. That said, the battles flow differently to the break and boost systems of Octopath Traveler.

While staggering has become a core mechanic since Final Fantasy 13, in Final Fantasy Resonance, your abilities also show their effectiveness in dealing damage to an enemy's HP and stagger gauge, handily color-coded in the same respective red and yellow. Instead of raw damage, it's often more important to focus on attacks that bring down the stagger gauge faster, especially when those abilities tend to cost less MP, before saving the strongest attacks for when their guard is down.

The more satisfying strategy comes from coordinating an attack where you stagger all the enemies during the same turn. Not only do you have the next turn free for everyone to pile on, but it's also how you get to finish the turn with a powerful Resonance attack from one of your equipped visions, in other words, the CG special ability mentioned previously.

Admittedly, the power of these bonus attacks in earlier field battles almost feels too much, prompting that The Simpsons 'Stop, he's already dead' meme to spring to mind after my party has wiped all but one enemy out whose HP is also already at zero, before unleashing a Resonance attack. But then it's also encouraged since you can gain an Overkill bonus at the end of a battle. Bosses are spongier and don't go down as easily, but there's a great sense of relief when you manage to stagger them just before the timeline indicates they're about to dish out a devastating attack on the whole party.

Finite Fantasy

The cozy familiarity of Final Fantasy Resonance does mean that at times it has almost too predictable a rhythm. It's not that the boss battles, or optional monster dungeon challenges, won't occasionally put you in a tight spot, but there is less friction in mind. For example, if the boss' weakness isn't already obvious from appearance, once you spend the first couple turns figuring this out, it's easy to hit pause, load your last save, quickly reassemble your party and visions, and skip any cutscenes to get back to that same fight at an advantage with minimal fuss.

With access to an airship by the game's midpoint, you might say it opens the world up a bit too soon, such as being able to reach one region several chapters before its relevance to the story even kicks in, or access monster dungeons that indicate you're far below its recommended level but you might as well go in so that you can fast-travel to it once you are ready. In that sense, there's almost little in the way of surprise.

Yet, while it might feel a little too breezy at times, it also feels a comforting counterpoint to the unfathomable bloat of the modern JRPG – looking at you, Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy.

There's a generous amount of side quests on offer that unlock at a manageable cadence where the rewards are usually upfront, while dungeons never outstay their welcome, although side quests do have a knack for backtracking to earlier locations that's at least mitigated by fast travel. Even the endgame convention of ascending a huge towering dungeon is smartly broken up so that you can always go and explore the rest of Lapis and mop up other side quests without worrying about how far the next save point is.

Final Fantasy Resonance may only cover the first story arc of Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, which might make it seem less complete than the multi-arc epic of Octopath Traveler 0, yet that may also be the point. If this beautifully enhanced remake does as well as it deserves to, then I'm hopeful its subsequent arcs will also get the same restoration treatment, with even bolder design choices.

Final Fantasy Resonance was reviewed on Nintendo Switch 2, with a code provided by the publisher.

Don't make this adventure final. Check out our best Final Fantasy games, best RPGs, and best JRPGs rankings for loads more to keep you busy. Our new releases calendar has plenty on the horizon too!

The CEO of Silent Hill 2 Remake developer Bloober Team has spoken out on his commitment to physical games media as PlayStation pledges to cease disc production by 2028.

"If we are able to produce a [physical] retail version of our games, we would like to make them for as long as possible," Piotr Babieno tells GamesRadar+ in an interview. Joined by Tymon Smektala, Broken Mirror Games' new executive director and former Dying Light franchise director, the duo take a moment to appreciate the roots of their passion for games as the Bloober publishing subsidiary embarks on a journey to discover "the next Kojima" of horror.

"Both me and Piotr, we are from the era where being a gamer meant you are a collector of stuff," Smektala says, gesturing to the room behind him during the video call. "Like, if I could unblur my screen, you would see lots of stuff behind me and I have lots of stuff that's not even in the camera, so this is what gaming is to us. This is the gaming I know, and this is the gaming I expect. And as long as it will be possible, and as long as the big decision makers will allow us to have that, then of course I'll be into that."

The topic came up when asked about Onyx: The Dark Grip, an upcoming horror game developed by Bloober Team and published by its in-house horror subsidiary Broken Mirror Games. It'll be one of the first Switch 2-exclusive third-party horror games ever, and the very first to be built entirely for the console's handheld mode. In the age of DLSS-5 and the worrying encroachment of generative AI in game development, Babieno considers where consoles have left to go.

"We have reached a moment where you can't really do much more in that direction [of visual and auditory fidelity]. Like, okay, the game can have a slightly higher resolution and maybe better lighting and whatever, but will it make it a more engaging game? I don't think so."

Whether players even know or care about these minute changes to the lifelikeness of a game is a question unto itself. "If you even look at the stats, a majority of players are playing on hardware which is five, seven years old, if not older, so they don't even get to experience those high-level settings at all," Babieno muses. "But are they less interested in games because of that? I don't think so.

"I think, especially in the age of AI, it's actually quite interesting to start thinking about other senses." This is one of Onyx's core motivations in being a Switch 2 handheld-only game – it's "putting horror back in your hands" in a physical sense, says Babieno, using the device as a conduit for the game itself as part of the experience. "As humans, we have four other senses, and AI can deliver something for what you see, for what you hear, but why not touch? I think the physical element of gaming will always, always be there."

And what of physical games themselves – discs, cartridges, not just consoles? From a business standpoint, Babieno understands why publishers like Sony are going digital – "we do know how P&L works and that digital distribution is much easier, much cheaper, and will be more profitable for everyone," he says. But, echoing Smektala, there's another side to that coin.

"Collecting games also [made] an emotional connection between the game and me, between the studio which produced the game and me," Babieno says. "This little emotional touch is so important that, I think in some way, we would lose the opportunity of being closer with our fans [without it]. So, if we are able to produce a [physical] retail version of our games, we would like to make them for as long as possible."

Check out the other upcoming Switch 2 game while you wait for Broken Mirror's Onyx: The Dark Grip.

Red Dead Redemption and Bully are some of Rockstar Games' most defining hits - outside of the juggernaut Grand Theft Auto series, of course - but those classics almost didn't happen, according to studio co-founder and former lead writer Dan Houser.

Speaking to IGN, the former Rockstar lead explains that all-new and original games have a much tougher time reaching the finish line than sequels.

"I think there were lots of moments where Red Dead nearly didn't happen. I think there were lots of moments when Bully nearly didn't happen, and lots of other moments when games that didn't happen could have," Houser says. "There are lots of happenstance moments, or one good build, or the game suddenly comes together, that save projects that are struggling."

Building any AAA game is a challenge in itself, but new franchises in particular "tend to struggle a lot, so it's almost more impressive when they get made than it is heartbreaking when they don't," Houser adds. 2010's Red Dead Redemption even faced a "lot of difficult periods" - though the cowboy classic made it through thanks to the "core people on the team [who] were really strong, held focus on what they were trying to do, and solved the problems."

Houser recalls that development on Red Dead Redemption was interesting because the team were discovering "what the problems were and figuring out solutions to slowly unpick what was interesting about an open-world cowboy game." In hindsight, what makes Red Dead interesting is "obvious," he says, "but in real-time you were left with nothing but holes you're slowly filling."

Rockstar's Bully never spawned a sequel, sadly. Though the same can't be said of the studio's western epic - Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of the best-selling games of all time. For now, the developer seems to be entirely focused on GTA 6.

Rockstar's figured out the perfect GTA 6 advertisement – a bunch of supercars from Vice City speeding along the streets of Miami

Cleverly, Invisible Inc is a balance of contrasts, a yin-yang structure of opposing forces that combine in harmony. As a turn-based strategy game, it wants you to take as long as you need to make your decisions, yet also demands precision timing. It wants to retain an element of risk in every act, but removes the genre's characteristic percentages and dice rolls. It wants you to have all the info you need to make your next move, while ensuring every mission is an unknowable challenge. It wants Roguelike replayability, without the brevity or abruptness of most Roguelike campaigns.

The foundation for all this is a focus on stealth. Invisible, a hi-tech private espionage outfit in the late 21st century, finds itself hunted by a group of powerful companies. You control its remaining agents as they infiltrate a series of corporate facilities to acquire info, money, and equipment. Keep surviving and gathering resources long enough, and you get a chance to enter the enemy's HQ and take their systems offline. Until then, you spend your time sneaking around offices, labs, and bank vaults, avoiding guard patrols and hacking security systems to meet various objectives.

The first contrast is between the familiar and the new. You start with two characters (you can rescue further operatives along the way) whose movements around grid-based locations are governed by AP, or action points. Following basic stealth protocols, you stay in cover, look ahead before you advance, and only engage guards as a last resort. But there's already another crucial resource to consider: power. You won't get far unless you remotely disable security cameras, drones, and laser grids, or access locked workstations and safes. And you can't do that if you don't maintain your power supply by activating replenishment programs or leeching from on-site terminals.

When it comes to the rules and flow of play, Invisible Inc revolves around simultaneous extremes of transparency and opacity, or information that is either remarkably abundant or completely absent. First there's what you don't know. When you start one of the procedurally generated missions, the facility's layout is a mystery. You teleport into an empty square room with one or more doors; beyond that, somewhere there's your main objective, and somewhere there's the exit. Guards could be anywhere, either about to walk in on you or patrolling deeper into the complex. You'll have to figure it all out as you move.

As for what you do know, the rule is that once you can see something, intel on it is instant and comprehensive. This is a carryover from Klei Entertainment's previous game, Mark of the Ninja, where line of sight immediately clarifies the status of objects and enemies. Here, in a turn-based world, the concept goes a step further. If a guard is visible, you can read about any armor or special abilities he has, and perceive his exact cone of vision. Use an action point, and you can even check the path of his next move. With this knowledge, your fragile but resourceful characters can assume control. Walk through a guard's peripheral vision on your way to cover, for example, and his attention will turn to that spot, giving you a window to sneak up and rifle through his pockets or escape unseen.

The simple and predictable nature of the AI is part of the game's drive to eliminate ambiguity. Even combat, when it does occur, is strictly binary. Either you have a weapon that can knock out or kill a particular guard, or you don't, and if you attack, the result is guaranteed. You never have to second-guess what the enemy will do and you never have to think about probabilities. You merely have to choose from the many possibilities laid out in front of you. Surprises only occur when you blunder forward blindly, or fail to consider what you've been told.

The bells are ringing

This absolute transparency, coupled with the contemplative nature of turn-based play, suggests cool, methodical advancement. But again that's only the half of it. The other half is urgency, pressure and panic, and it mostly comes from a single cause: the alarm level. The big twist in Invisible Inc is that while you arrive in each facility undetected, the enemy security network becomes more alert to your presence after every turn, and introduces new threats at certain thresholds – extra cameras, increased firewalls, more guards. Also, any time you get spotted, hack a booby-trapped system or use lethal force, the level jumps up even more. The longer you hang around and the more mistakes you make, the harder it is to get anything done.

The most precious commodity thus isn't AP or power, but turns themselves. While you don't have to worry whether or not an action will succeed, you must consider its efficiency. Any decision can have a vital fallout in terms of time that will alter how the mission unfolds. Do you split your team up to cover more ground, or keep them together to gang up on threats? Do you spend valuable turns sneaking around a guard, or knock him out? If you knock him out, do you drag him with you and keep him pinned down, or rush on knowing he'll soon recover and start searching for you? Do you use a large chunk of power to neutralise a camera instantly, or conserve some and do it more gradually? Do you hack a safe or facility map protected by a daemon program that could disrupt your own systems? In each case, your worst enemy might be indecisiveness, but you can't afford to be inflexible either, as conditions are in constant flux.

Choosing when to do something often becomes as important as choosing what to do, especially towards the end of a mission. The only essential requirement to keep the game alive is to reach the exit with at least one character, but if you're going to survive long-term and prepare sufficiently for the challenging endgame, it's best to get everyone out, complete your objective, and steal plenty of loot. The temptation, then, is always to look in every room and empty every safe, risking staying longer than necessary to extract maximum gains from each mission. But as firewalls increase and the guards close in, there's a point where it's smarter to cut and run.

Perhaps you have an agent crouched in a dead end, far from the exit, waiting to loot a well-protected safe. You need your power to recharge a little more to hack the lock, yet every turn you stay put the facility bolsters its defences, and your escape route becomes increasingly deadly. Maybe the rest of your squad is already at the exit, caught between hanging around to help the straggler or getting out now. Having come this far, is it worth another couple of turns to open that safe, or will it ruin everything? Few games make doing nothing feel so daring.

Crucially, the balance in Invisible Inc between stasis and timing, knowledge and ignorance, predictability and risk, is so fine that almost every mission escalates with the suspense of a good heist movie. They all play out differently, due to the random layouts. A large room with a concentration of intersecting patrols is a different proposition to a series of small rooms with stationary guards, for example. Or simple factors such as the position of the exit in relation to the main objective can dramatically change the route you have to navigate. But since you'll try to extract maximum resources regardless, you consistently push to the limit, and invariably end up running for the exit with half-a-dozen enemies homing in on your position.

These hair's-breadth victories reflect the game's final congruent dualism: the combination of Roguelike structure with the feel of a conventional one-and-done adventure. By default it teaches you how to play through its Beginner difficulty, and you could easily finish the six-hour campaign on your first attempt. Klei's gamble is that you'll want to repeat the process again and again, each time ratcheting up the challenge and going deeper into the tactical intricacies. As you do, you'll unlock different starting characters and hacking programs, each of which brings its own unique opportunities and challenges. You won't see anything drastically different in the missions themselves (although a substantial DLC package does change things up), but experimenting with different parameters keeps the experience endlessly fresh.

The game's use of permadeath is also carefully tempered, even when you get to the highly taxing Expert and Expert Plus difficulty levels. Being spotted is a problem, but there's usually a way out. And because you have multiple agents at your disposal, losing one isn't the end of the world. If a character is taken down, you may be able to resuscitate them or drag them to the exit, once the coast clears. Or, if all else fails, there's a limited-use rewind feature that enables you to take whole turns again. Sometimes you lose everyone nonetheless, and it can be hard to take when you're close to the end of a run, but at least permadeath isn't sudden death. You always have time to weigh up your options, experiment with the game's systems, and fashion last-ditch plans.

When you do succeed, perhaps inevitably it's a matter of walking a tightrope between opposites – action and inaction, attack and defence, spending and saving, safety and risk. Every decision is potentially important, and victory is rarely so emphatic that it couldn't have turned to defeat. Somehow this feels like a reflection of the game's design. Invisible Inc never asks anything of you that it hasn't already done itself.

This Invisible Inc article was first published in issue 354 of Edge Magazine. To get more like this delivered straight to your doorstep (or digital device) consider subscribing to Edge.

After 13 years on Dying Light, Tymon Smektala is keen to spot the freshest talent in horror as Broken Mirror Games' new executive director – perhaps even "the next Kojima", he says.

"I will feel satisfied and I will feel fulfilled when we will actually find a creator like that," Smektala tells GamesRadar+ in an interview joined by Piotr Babieno, CEO of Silent Hill 2 Remake developer Bloober Team. "I can easily imagine that we will find a creator that – a game creator working on a smaller project, but we would see the strength of the vision there, and with our help, this developer would get bigger, would get better, would get access to our DNA as well, because we have lots of expertise in making horror games. This creator could become the next Kojima, even. Like, why not?"

Those might sound like big words, but Smektala's done it before. He served as franchise director for three of his 13 years working on Dying Light at developer Techland, where the series rose to the ranks of the best zombie games of all time due to its pioneering of day/night time cycles that posed new challenges to open-world survival horror. Plus, the Bloober Team publishing subsidiary is already hard at work on a number of upcoming horror games.

From Saw: Genesis' more involved approach to the asymmetrical multiplayer to Switch 2-exclusive Onyx's focus on "putting fear back into your hands" (in a literal sense), Smektala is excited to continue the search for novel approaches to the big, bad world of horror.

"What we are trying to do is get the next Obsession, the next Backrooms, the next Weapons," he says, citing some of the biggest horror movies of the year – including one dreamed up by a content creator – that offer "A new take on horror, something that adds to the genre and is unique. That's kind of the top-level ambition: to find the next creators of horror gaming that can complete and add to what we are bringing to the table as Broken Mirror."

"It's not just pure entertainment, and it's not just about uniqueness. It's about something behind it all," says Babieno. "The best horrors are, in some way, answering the questions which are arising in society because we are afraid about something. That's why I believe that there are a lot of content creators who are able to touch [upon] horror from different perspectives, and we would like to be there."

Broken Mirror's Onyx: The Dark Grip is an upcoming Switch 2 game that was made for the handheld experience, and there's many more Nintendo-exclusives besides...

The developers behind Castlevania: Belmont's Curse know their characters are hot, they've seen your thirsty fan art, and they agree - there should be some kind of award honoring the sexiest dad in games.

When asked if he's seen the "horny" fan art that's already been inspired by their newest game - in an interview with Fall Damage - lead designer Sandro Bordier acknowledges that "it has started, it has started already - like, man, have we seen some things."

Developer Evil Empire isn't totally surprised by the lewd drawings people have already made because, well, the developers aren't blind to how their characters look.

"Yes, like we know some characters are hot. It's a choice, actually. Like it's a vibe. We're pretty proud of it. Honestly, like, we were super happy with all the fan reactions regarding the characters that were revealed. Like we really put a lot of love from the team to design them in a way that would please fans," Bordier adds.

The devs are supposedly "super happy" with the waves of horny fan art of and the general non-horny response to many of the game's characters. Reactions to returning face Trevor Belmont have been particularly heated, however.

"Like Trevor especially, we didn't realise that it would be so well received," marketing director Bérenger Dupre adds. "There should be a Game Awards for hot dads." It might be too late for Hades (from Hades) or Kranky Kong (from Donkey Kong) or Marcus Fenix (from Gears of War), but it's never too late to right a wrong.

"It's always fun to see the fan art because we know how important and dear these characters are to the fans. And we are trying to make some new, fresh stories with them, so it's always quite stressful, and for now the reception is very, very emotional," Dupre adds.

GamesRadar's Castlevania: Belmont's Curse review was almost as excited as some of those fan artists: "With enigmatic puzzles, gothic atmosphere, a dramatic anime-esque storyline, and well-paced action, this is a hugely compelling Metroidvania and a triumphant return for the iconic franchise."

Castlevania: Belmont's Curse Metacritic score is only behind the beloved GBA trilogy, Dawn of Sorrow, and Symphony of the Night as the series' best

The CRKD Nitro Deck 2 has been a long time coming.

Quite literally, in fact. CRKD originally announced the accessory in December 2025, almost a year ago. Since then, the follow-up to the original Nitro Deck has experienced delay after delay, but the wait has been worth it. Just like the OG, the Switch 2 controller transforms the handheld into a more comfortable and adaptable device, equipping it with ergonomic grips, adjustable capacitor thumbsticks, and more, and the upgrades are so palpable that it makes me wish they were there by default.

That would mean putting up with the loud and intrusive rumble and having to source a new case, though, as the Deck 2's bulky size makes it incompatible with everything I've thrown its way. Yet it's a small price to pay to make Nintendo's current-gen console feel truly premium.

Design

It's difficult to look at the Nitro Deck 2 and not think "Steam Deck" but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I'm pretty privy to the look and feel of Valve's pixel-pusher, and anything that emulates its appeal is a win in my book.

They aren't twins, and I believe the familiarities are accidental as the extra length of the Nitro Deck 2 is likely to accommodate the new handheld's larger 7.9-inch screen more than anything else. Yet, I'm definitely more of a fan of the Deck 2's elongated shape, and the fact that its "Black Edition" has a retro-inspired translucent chassis by default.

There's no plain Jane where this new and improved model is concerned. The controller's transparent 'Smoke Black Edition' exists instead of a simple black alternative, and there's also a PAL Grey and White model available too. That retro-fueled GameCube-inspired look of the original doesn't exist, but I suspect that'll change in the future. The Switch 2 actually allows you to play GameCube games via the Nintendo Switch Online library, unlike the original handheld, so it would be a missed opportunity to not see a purple-blue Nitro Deck this time around.

Features

Speaking of which, the Nitro Deck 2 possesses a lot of similarities to its previous generation. It's a controller that's designed to transform your handheld into something more adept and ergonomic, but there's a bit more freedom this time around. Instead of having to deal with the finicky process of carefully sliding your Switch into the device, you simply need to pull each grip to the side. This allows the Deck 2 to extend, allowing you to place the Switch 2 inside. A locking mechanism on the back can then be turned and tightened to keep it in place and prevent it from slipping out.

The new mechanism sits on top of a kickstand, which remains a single column as it did on the original version. The two sets of mappable back peddles also remain unchanged, as does the CRKD logo that's equipped with RFID technology for easy connectivity to the accompanying app - a neat feature which I appreciated as someone who hates dealing with long-winded serial numbers.

The Nitro Deck 2 is naturally also flush with new buttons to match the Switch 2. On the left side of the pad, you have the thumbstick and the circular D-pad underneath. Rather than keeping the capture button as is, CRKD has combined it with the minus button at the top right-hand side. Pressing the upper half will activate the minus options, while the bottom will allow you to take screenshots and game clips as normal.

A Syncing button now takes the place of where you'd traditionally find the capture button on a left Switch 2 Joy-Con. Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the device, the layout is vastly similar. The plus button has also been split into two - with the upper half triggering the plus functionality as normal and the bottom being a program button. The latter is assigned to GameChat by default, but that's likely to make up for the lack of a dedicated 'C' GameChat button. Something I'm entirely okay with, as I never use it.

Below this you'll find the right thumbstick and a CRKD light-up Home button. The CRKD CaptiStick-branded Capacitor Sticks are powered by capacitor sensors, which the brand insists can provide "drift-free precision," but that's not all they bring to the Deck 2. Both are surrounded by dials, which can be turned at any moment to adjust resistance. Being able to tighten or loosen stick tension at a whim is extremely handy if you're wanting pinpoint accuracy for platformers or kart racers, and it's a nice inclusion for the upgraded gamepad.

Additionally, you've also got a set of three trigger buttons on either side of the controller. The D-pad is interchangeable with additional pads sold separately by CRKD, but most interestingly enough, the accessory can be used as a Pro-style controller. CRKD ships a plastic rectangular slab, which can be placed in the center instead of a Switch 2 display. While that means having to adjust your comfort to using a handheld-sized pad for docked gaming, it does give the new Deck 2 more appeal, though I'm still not 100% confirmed that it provides enough to warrant its $99.99 / £89.99 price point. But more on that later.

Performance

When I first attached the Nitro Deck 2 to my handheld and sent my Joy-Cons to the side table storage of my living room, where gaming accessories go to collect dust and rot, I immediately knew I had to lower the rumble. By default, it is set to max, and is so loud that it made for some very awkward gaming-in-bed moments. Having to constantly explain that you are, in fact, playing Fire Emblem and not doing anything notorious to your partner does not make for a good time. It's so loud, in fact, that it even managed to continually wake up my cat on a night-to-night basis.

You see, with Fortune's Weave, the game sets off the handheld's HD rumble whenever you are within the radius of enemies during battles. This happens a lot as you are constantly dealing with swarms of soldiers or evil possessed skeletons on any given map, but the motors of the controller don't quite have the nuance of the console's rumbling ways. They get loud and a bit grating on the ears, but you can at least adjust them through a combination of buttons (holding L + the plus button for three seconds), and toggle both the left and right rumbles separately. Thanks for that, CRKD.

Toggling the motors down to their lowest setting made my time with the Deck 2 far less awkward, and fortunately, it is one of the very few grievances I have with the accessory overall. My entire journey with the device is only really inhibited by some minor nitpicks, like the fact that it's too big to fit into my favorite Switch 2 cases, which means I'll likely have to pick up the brand's $39.99 / £34.99 (via CRKD) hardshell carrying case, or the tightening mechanism sometimes sounds like it's breaking each time you turn it. Otherwise, this made using the Switch 2 feel truly next-gen.

Using the Nitro Deck 2 feels very similar to using my OLED Steam Deck, but that's a positive for me. I absolutely despise the awkward flat backs of the Joy-Con controllers, so having two ergonomic grips to wrap my hands around feels more comfortable and natural. However, one of my personal favorite features was not the comfort but the inclusion of a U-shaped adapter.

I'm not a fan of Bluetooth, especially when it comes to controllers. While using the GameSir G8+ I feel like I'm constantly having to spend more hours dealing with connection issues than actual gaming. The wired link between the Nitro Deck 2 and the Switch 2 meant that tedium was a non-issue.

It's also handy for knowing how to align the 7.9-inch display into the device. As the Deck 2 wraps around the console, it was confusing at first to know whether or not I had it hooked up properly. There's no satisfying click or feeling involved whatsoever. The adapter requires the Type-C ports of both the handheld and the device to be stacked on top of one another, and connecting the two made the entire device feel more secure.

What I didn't like the feeling of all that much was using it in docked mode. Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that CRKD chose to give the option of using the Nitro Deck 2 as a typical controller, especially as it makes the price feel more justifiable. Yet, it feels like you're basically using a Steam Deck-sized device as a gamepad, and that is not comfortable on your wrists for Mario Kart World, Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave, or any game out there. In a pinch, I can absolutely see it coming in handy, but it should not make someone's decision to purchase the Nitro Deck 2.

Should you buy the CRKD Nitro Deck 2 controller?

The CRKD Nitro Deck 2 is cool, but I'm not so sure it's $99.99 / £89.99 cool.

That feels like a lot to pay for a controller of its type when you factor in the $49.99 / £39.99 MSRP of the original, and the fact that many of you looking for new Switch 2 accessories may have just had to cope with the console's newly increased price.

If you have the funds where $100 doesn't feel like a lot, and you play your Switch 2 day in and day out, then it'll absolutely improve your handheld mode experience. Going back to the default Joy-Con controller layout after using the Nitro Deck 2 for weeks feels like a huge step down, and the comfy curvature of the pad's form factor makes diving into just about any game feel magnificent. When I dreamed up the Switch 2 in my head way before its first unveiling, this is more what I had in mind.

But no matter how next-gen it feels, its price and some minor grievances (that rumble really had an effect on me) prevent me from giving it a full five-star rating. Should it ever trickle down to an MSRP more in line with the original, then it should absolutely be part of your setup, and I hope that happens once the holiday sales kick off later this year. Though in the meantime, I'd only fully recommend this to those with the budget to spare. Or at least to those who truly hate the cramp-inducing flat backs of the Switch 2 Joy-Cons.

How I tested the CRKD Nitro Deck 2 controller

To put the new Nitro Deck 2 through it paces I swapped out my dusty old Joy-Cons and attached to my console for a little over two weeks. Whether I was connected over Bluetooth or via the accompanying adapter, I played everything on the new CRKD accessory, from Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave, Mario Kart World, Pokemon Pokopia, and even Nintendo Switch Online titles like Star Fox Adventures and Super Mario Sunshine via the GameCube library. I also used the Nitro Deck 2 as a Pro Controller in docked mode to see how it matched up to my wireless controllers of choice.

For more on how we test controllers, check out the GamesRadar+ hardware policy.

Creating the ultimate Switch 2 setup? Check out our guides to the best Nintendo Switch headsets, the best Nintendo Switch 2 cases, and the best Nintendo Switch 2 microSD Express Cards while you're here.

Castlevania: Belmont's Curse has released to critical acclaim, but there was a point in development where it was shaping up to be a very different game, and one I'd wager wouldn't have scored nearly as well with critics or fans of Konami's beloved series.

Talking to PCGamesN, Evil Empire head of business Ben Laulan reveals Castlevania: Belmont's Curse went through a lot of iteration before landing on the faster-paced evolution of the whippy action gameplay we all know and love.

"We had many different versions of the game," Laulan reveals. "We had much slower versions, more like a Dark Souls kind of vibe with even more heavy combat and slow rhythm. Then we realized it wasn't really Castlevania because it was too slow, too intense, and just too hard."

I could've told you that. I have a well-documented allergy to Dark Souls and Soulslikes, having tried repeatedly to get into the most beloved of them like Bloodborne and Elden Ring, but even removed from that obvious bias, FromSoftware's signature dodge-roll into big-swing mechanics have no place in a 2.5D action game like Belmont's Curse. I'm so, so glad Evil Empire reconsidered that direction. However, it seems they went so hard in the other direction that we almost got Dead Cells: Belmont's Curse.

"So we cranked up the speed, and then it was too much Dead Cells because it was too fast-paced, and the exploration wasn't there as much as it needs to be in Castlevania."

I can understand the Dead Cells influence given Evil Empire's experience supporting Motion Twin's roguelike darling post-launch, but I'm still encouraged to hear the developer was keen to avoid taking on any identity that isn't distinctly Castlevania. I have yet to play Belmont's Curse myself, but it sounds like it's a worthy return to the long-dormant series. Our own Castlevania: Belmont's Curse review awards it 4/5 stars.

"Beautiful and challenging, Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse offers a rich, gothic world of puzzles to solve and enemies to whip," writes social media editor Serena Cherry. "With a stunning blend of fast-paced traversal action and compelling storytelling, this game proudly honours the Belmont legacy in exciting new ways."

Castlevania: Belmont's Curse was born out of "a sense of urgency," producer says, and if we have to wait 10 years for the next game, "the whole thing is meaningless."

Razer just launched the Barracuda V2 Pro, a follow-up to headsets like the Barracuda X, which remained a fixture of some of our best gaming headset guides for months on end. The brand boasts that the new £199.99 / $199.99 pair is equipped with everything from 40mm Triforce Bio-Cellulose audio drivers, ANC, and THX Spatial Audio+, but personally, the fact that the 2.4Ghz wireless dongle can be stored in the earcup is all I care about.

If you pop off the left earcup cover you'll find the pair's HyperSpeed wireless dongle, and I'm a bit obsessed with this revelation. Often brands package these tiny accessories in a Russian-doll cardbox scenario, and they're easy to go missing, especially when you have multiple laying around. But as Razer has carved out a dedicated place, I've not managed to lose this dongle yet - and anyone with the privity to lose their tech should be just as elated as I am.

Razer isn't the first brand to explore unique storage options. Fractal Design's first-ever headset release, the Scape, included a section on the underside of its charging base specifically designed to store its dongle. Meanwhile, controller brands like 8BitDo also rely on special compartments on the charging stands of their peripherals, like the Ultimate 2 controller, to allow players to keep their 2.4GHz gadgets safe and secure. However, it's just nice to see this design decision utilized on a headset, especially when I lose dongles just about every day.

The Barracuda V2 Pro's storage works by having the earcup cover attach magnetically; that way it can easily slip on and off when you want to switch up between Bluetooth and its 2.4GHz HyperSpeed connectivity. Unfortunately, the space is only designed to store the dongle and not the USB-C to USB-A adapter that's also included with the headset, so I foresee myself losing that in the future. However, at least an adapter is much more straightforward to replace.

Strangely enough, both earcup covers can be removed this way, despite the right one not storing anything but some relevant copyright information. While Razer hasn't announced it, there's a chance that they could be planning to release alternative earcup covers much like SteelSeries Booster Packs to allow you to switch up the color and style of the pair, but we'll have to wait to find out for sure. I have my fingers crossed that means some Pokemon Edition covers in the future, especially as Razer has been releasing Pokemon Collections left, right, and center in 2026.

While Razer hasn't mentioned anything regarding new earcup covers, they have provided a more in-depth look at what you can expect from the Barracuda V2 Pro. The pair is just 285g and has a foldable form factor, which makes it easier to store away in your bag for trips and travel. Razer doesn't provide a case with the $200 headset, but I can confirm from personal experience that its foldable nature makes it ideal for popping in your bag for day-to-day use. Much like the Barracuda X Chroma, it's already wound up as a pair I rely on for gaming and listening to music on the go.

Additionally, you can get up to 70 hours of battery life from the cups, and there's no garish RGB lighting to be found that can drain its juice. That's also why the cans have wound up in my backpack for weekend train trips, but you'll have to wait for my full review next week to see how they truly fare amongst the rest of the best Razer headsets I've tested for all my gaming and music travel needs.

• View all Razer gaming headsets at Amazon

Want more headset options? Check out our guides to the best PS5 headsets, best Nintendo Switch headsets, and the best PC headsets for gaming while you're here.

A new Xbox survey is asking players how they would feel about future titles being console-exclusive to Xbox, with Fallout, Hideo Kojima's Physint, and Minecraft name-dropped.

Since its massive spending spree on the likes of Activision Blizzard and Bethesda, Xbox has been a bit all over the place when it comes to exclusives. Aside from honoring exclusive deals with the likes of Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo, Microsoft went all-in on being a third-party publisher for a bit there, bringing almost every one of its games to PS5. Then, with the appointment of new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, the strategy changed again: Gears of War: E-Day was confirmed to be on Xbox and PC only, despite reports that its PS5 port was apparently close to completion.

And now – barring Fable, which was previously confirmed for a PS5 launch – it looks like Microsoft may be priming players for more exclusivity. As highlighted by Windows Central, some Xbox Insider members have received surveys asking about game exclusivity and where they would play the title – or if they would play it at all if it's not on PS5 or Switch 2.

These reportedly included questions about Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, and the upcoming Hideo Kojima game, Physint, which Xbox Game Studios recently became the publisher of, following Sony's decision to cancel the project. Kojima himself has said he doesn't know if Physint will release on PlayStation.

However, it's the final question that is likely to raise the most eyebrows. The question asks players to imagine every Xbox game – barring Call of Duty, which Microsoft is legally required to release on other platforms until at least 2033 – was an exclusive. However, it adds "For Minecraft only, existing titles would no longer be available for purchase on PlayStation or Nintendo consoles, and would not receive any new content updates."

I don't think people would be happy if Fallout 5 or Elder Scrolls 6 were exclusive to Xbox for sure, but the idea of removing Minecraft from PlayStation and Nintendo consoles, as well as no longer giving updates to those versions, is so brazenly a bad decision that even being floated is concerning.

Minecraft on Nintendo Switch has sold over 4 million physical copies in Japan alone, and the worldwide number is likely to be much higher, while the PS4 version of the game had over 17 million players as of 2019 – and given that a native PS5 version didn't release until 2024, again, that number is likely to have far surpassed it. Obviously, it's just a hypothetical for now, but I can only imagine that taking Minecraft away from millions would have a backlash that makes complaints about Sony's killing physical games look like nothing much.

As Minecraft sells over 425 million copies and attracts 300,000 new players a day, the evergreen sandbox game is getting its first dimension in 14 years

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Nintendo's upgraded take for Switch on its beloved 2014 Wii U game, just got another new update – sorry, Mario Kart World stans.

The update boosts Mario Kart 8 Deluxe up to version 4.0.1, bringing with it a good few fixes that fans of the 2017 banger have been eagerly awaiting.

As per Nintendo's official patch notes, these start with developers addressing the "issue where the number of obstacles or Item Boxes would increase during Online Play and Wireless Play" on the Switch 2 compared to the original Switch console. No more bombarding Switch 2 players, eh?

Next up are a couple of fixes for online play and visuals, like the Star Bits not displaying properly on the Wii Rainbow Road course on Switch 2.

Most importantly, perhaps, is how Nintendo targets crashes in version 4.0.1 of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, though, ridding it of "an issue where the game would close unexpectedly when certain conditions were fulfilled."

In other words, yep, crashes – a no-no, especially during competitive races.

Although small, the patch is pretty solid, all things considered. Folks over on Reddit seem to agree, too, with one dubbing the notes "W fixes" from Nintendo.

Others, however, question what this means for Mario Kart World, seeing as Mario Kart 8 just saw another update last month while the newer game seemingly sits in the dust. As one player jests, "Mario Kart World is dead again" – a sentiment I've seen make rounds online more than once now.

I wouldn't dub it "dead" myself, though… as nice as it'd be to see Nintendo give Mario Kart World some love. This new update is still a great sign for the series overall.

And, if you're as excited for the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe patch as I am, it's a simple download: select the game on your home menu, press + or - on your JoyCon, and go into "Software Update" – et voilà, version 4.0.1 is upon you, as are all of its shiny fixes.

Shigeru Miyamoto apparently has a love-hate relationship with Toad, who he would constantly pick in Mario Kart despite being his least favorite

The CRKD Atom+ has gone through some upgrades to merit its new 'plus' namesake, and its new size is exactly what I had hoped for when I first learned of the improved version of the retro-inspired gamepad.

Don't get me wrong, it's still teeny tiny and should never be used as a day-to-day Switch 2 Pro controller substitute, unless you want some Mario Kart World with a side order of wrist cramp. However, the £29.99 (via Amazon) growth spurt has made it big enough to stand out amongst my messy game room, while remaining the ideal compact shape to take up little to no space in my Switch 2 bag. Nights ruining my friendships with hours of Dokapon Kingdom have never been better.

Whenever I pop over to my friend's house to witness the full depravity of their evilness through hours of Dokapon Kingdom, I have a fear. Not the fear of them constantly starting battles with me in the game (though that does happen often), but the fear of damaging any controller I bring with me for the Switch gaming times ahead.

The Atom+ has circumnavigated that. Despite being larger than the OG Atom, it still demands far less case space than any other of my Switch 2 controllers, which makes it less prone to damage. My go-to Pro-style controllers, like that of the Turtle Beach Rematch, are fantastic, but piling one in alongside my dock, steering wheels, and anything else can be a bit of a struggle. Even if I do manage to use my Tetris know-how and maneuver it within my all-in-one case, I'm still constantly worried that its thumbsticks will end up breaking into pieces.

The Atom+ is about the length of the palm of my hand, and takes up little to no space at all, so any worries of its newly added sticks rubbing up against other accessories are slim to none. In fact, it's so perfectly compact that I'm already considering picking up a full set of the four colors available. I could easily pack each into my PlayTrek 2-in-1 case and still have some room left over, something that wouldn't have been possible had I stuck with one Pro controller alternative.

It's not a perfect alternative to my Turtle Beach Rematch, as it's still small enough that comfort can be an issue, and nothing will ever outmatch the joy of having backpedals. However, any controller that manages to quell my anxiety of broken and damaged tech gets a big thumbs-up in my book.

• View all CRKD gaming accessories at Amazon

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A recompilation PC port of the Nintendo Switch remake of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening has emerged online, made "with almost exclusive use of AI."

PC ports of classic games through the act of decompilation and recompilation have been one of the best things to happen to PC gaming in the 2020s while everything else falls apart around it. Thanks to AI slop causing ballooning prices, a sheer amount of shovelware flooding steam, and just generally being all over the place, some have taken to classic games to avoid it. But unfortunately, the tech has infested the recompilation scene, with a ton of vibe-coded projects appearing online, like Banjo Tooie, Mario Kart Wii, and Donkey Kong 64 (which has a good version in the works too, as the devs reject vibe coding).

Even the non-vibe-coded projects are using it, with Crash Team Racing: Turbocharged – something that should be the most exciting release of the year – unfortunately using LLMs to write code, pushing it into a gray area for those who are not supporting any AI use.

In a Reddit post announcing the port, the developer Peiikai explains they've made a static recompilation port of the Nintendo Switch version of Link’s Awakening "admittedly with almost exclusive use of AI." They acknowledge that "AI usage is controversial," but add "something like this is way beyond my skill set and wouldn’t have been possible without AI," and that they are "guiding it as responsibly" as they can.

They continue, "If you disagree with the use of AI, I understand your position and likely agree with many of the points you could bring up," but this project was made for them to have "the ultimate way of enjoying the game myself," and say they are sharing it as "a courtesy."

As we get closer to modern releases – with Link's Awakening being available to purchase on modern consoles – it also feels inevitable that some publisher is going to take notice sooner than later. Nintendo has been quite steadfast in targeting Nintendo Switch emulators, and while this port requires your own dump of the game, all it takes is a person (or AI) to make a mistake for the Nintendo lawyers to come calling.

Thankfully, for those of you who want to experience Link's Awakening on PC without the AI, Link's Awakening DX HD, released almost three years ago, is an excellent version of the game's expanded Game Boy Color port – Link's Awakening DX – and is still getting updates to make it better years later.

Nintendo wins legal battle against Mig Switch cards in the Netherlands, says the decision will benefit "many video game developers globally"

Not even Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone's partner Amber gets to play his new game Haunted Chocolatier yet. That's because the Stardew Valley creator doesn't feel like his sophomore effort is finished yet, and if you've ever eaten a Thanksgiving day turkey that needed more time in the oven, you'll vividly remember how terrible it is serving half-baked anything.

Talking to GQ, Barone says he's intent on making Haunted Chocolatier all by himself, with the exception of external marketing teams, just like he did with Stardew Valley. Barone has occasionally hired outside help to work on non-creative tasks over the years, but working largely in isolation means he's the only one actually playing these games while they're in development, and that's exactly how he wants it.

"No one's playing the game until I'm ready to show it," he says, adding a metaphor that makes me want to come to every Thanksgiving gathering with a digital meat thermometer. "If you have a turkey in the oven, you're not going to pull it out halfway and have the guests taste it, right? It needs to be done."

It does need to be done, yes. Butterball, the foremost authority on turkey as a food product, recommends cooking your turkeys to 170°F in the thigh and breast areas, and 165°F in turkey-based stuffings. I can't tell you what that looks like in Haunted Chocolatier, but I do know melted chocolate is the best chocolate.

In the same interview, Barone once again describes Haunted Chocolatier as "more of an action RPG" than Stardew Valley, this time adding that it's for players who like to "go into the mines" to grind and grow more powerful.

Stardew Valley creator is "struggling" with Haunted Chocolatier thanks to the precedent he accidentally set himself: "It might disappoint millions of people"

Following Fortnite developer and publisher Epic Games' public announcement that it would be undergoing a "huge pivot" for "maximum AI acceleration," one former producer shares his take on the controversial technology and its role in the development process.

Aakash Gupta, who worked at Epic as a producer on Fortnite, explains that Tim Sweeney's push for a new "AI first" approach to game dev and how quickly it's moved – just see the now-delayed Disney extraction shooter – isn't surprising.

"Fortnite Battle Royale was built in two months," he writes on X. "I was a producer at Epic, and that's the speed Tim Sweeney moves at when he decides the whole company is turning. He just decided again."

Indeed, he did, hence the whole "huge pivot" – a pivot that isn't new to Epic, and has likely long been in the making by the time it's publicly announced.

"Inside Epic, a pivot means the whole company turns that week," as Gupta states. "People get new teams, new bosses, new roadmaps, and nobody blinks because that's how the place has always run. By the time Tim posts a memo about it, the moves usually already happened."

And, when it comes to AI, Gupta doesn't think any amount of backlash will stop Epic – or other studios, for that matter– from utilizing the tech.

"Here's where it gets bigger than Epic though Epic makes Unreal Engine, the software a massive share of big-budget games are built on. Studio heads can ban AI art. Voice actors can strike over AI voices. Steam can put warning labels on AI games," he says.

But, "None of that touches the layer Epic controls, because Epic makes the tool everyone builds with." He recalls how Epic "wired" AI models like Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini into its Unreal Engine, with more underway.

"So for millions of game developers, AI shows up as a built-in feature of software they already pay for" – public pushback be damned. According to the ex-Fortnite producer, it's all "for show," anyway.

"Honestly, the industry's AI fight is mostly for show," he describes. "Google Cloud found nine in 10 game developers already use AI agents at work. The debate happens on stage while the usage happens at the desk."

I've located the survey he cites here, too, which alleges that some 87% of devs are employing the use of AI during production, for everything from optimization to "dynamic balancing" and much more.

So, Gupta concludes that the AI controversy begins and ends publicly, while use continues behind devs' doors – whether opened or closed: "While everyone argues about whether games should use AI, Epic quietly turned it into a checkbox inside the editor. Most developers will click it without ever having the debate."

While I'm not sure I agree with Gupta here, I can't say Epic Games' own move is surprising at all.

Studio CEO Tim Sweeney has made his stance on generative AI quite clear in the past, dubbing Steam's required AI disclosures "really irresponsible of Valve" as they supposedly make it "much, much, much harder for a game developer to have a chance of success."

He's always come across as openly pro-AI use in game dev, to say the least… even if it's not a great look considering his company's widespread layoffs earlier this year.

Gupta and Sweeney aren't alone in their thoughts on the questionable tech, either. Former Square Enix executive Jacob Novak has responded to Epic's AI news himself, writing, "Epic, by far one of the best technical leaders in games, is saying no hand written code. If you're not doing the same you will be left behind. It is over for non-AI workflows."

It's a heavy-handed message, but it does beg the question: how far will this whole AI thing truly go?

I suppose only time can tell, but the future feels a bit bleak right now. Between Epic and these other supposed devs using gen AI, I worry for folks in creative roles and those coding, too. It can't be easy for anyone in those positions, that's for certain.

Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii continues his love affair with AI slop as he releases a new game he generated in 30 minutes

The radiant quest system that made Skyrim's open-world so responsive to its protagonist only came about because of Bethesda's "brute force" approach to the idea in Fallout 3.

In an interview with OPM first published in 2011, Todd Howard explained the origins of Bethesda's novel approach to an open-world RPG. "In Fallout 3 there are these random encounters," he explains. "A guy being hunted by a Deathclaw, [or] this group of people fighting over a refrigerator. And we wrote this giant script for Fallout 3 with about 40 or 50 random events."

Those events would be triggered in certain areas under certain conditions, but it was a relatively simple system, one which Howard describes as "a really big, brute force script." It might not have been elegant, but it was popular – "it turned out to be a really cool system in the game that made the game dynamic, and we just kept building this script."

After the launch of its seminal RPG, Bethesda wanted to keep using that system, but was looking for a more streamlined solution. "We came out of Fallout 3 going 'well, what if we have a system that did that instead of writing?'" The team "really liked" the way it worked for random encounters, so it expanded the new system into quests. "So that's what it became," Howard says. "Every quest uses this. And now it's become this all-watching thing over the game."

The system would go on to affect almost every part of Skyrim's many, many quests. Devs could shape the parameters behind an event – deciding what kind of NPC activated it, or in what area of the game they should be found – but 'radiant stories' formed the core of how Skyrim's world was built, and have gone on to have a massive impact on RPG design in the 15 years since.

Bethesda's last Skyrim concept artist has been laid off after "almost 18 years of dedication to The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Starfield" amid Xbox cuts: "It has been my honor."

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe Dragon Pearl of Destruction is a Bitmap Bureau-developed (in collaboration with Mattel) game that brings the iconic 80s cartoon to life as a Streets of Rage-style brawler. With its collector's edition being handled by Limited Run Games, there was no denying that the game would be bundled with a feast of physical merch, but I wasn't expecting a throwback quite like a lunchbox.

The $99.99 (via Limited Run Games) Collector's Edition, no matter if it's the Switch, PS5, or Xbox version, includes the plastic lunchbox, which feels just as equivalently '80s as the original series. Growing up, I often received my cousin's lunchboxes as hand-me-downs, and a metal He-Man lunchbox was a staple of their childhood, and later mine. All it's missing is a matching Thermos flask and the faint smell of old fruit and salt and shake crisps to be one of the most truly nostalgic collector edition releases.

Saturday Mornings in my '90s childhood were often spent having to use my cousin's hand-me-downs, and He-Man (and She-Ra) were a big part of that. Often it was the toys and old videotapes that made their way into my possession, but lunchboxes were also commonplace, which is why I'm pretty privy to this Limited Run Games release.

Often the brand's fancy collector's editions include statues of varying quality, and this one is not exempt. There is a 4.9-inch Mini Power Sword and an acrylic standee showing He-Man riding Battle Cat included, but the lunchbox feels the most authentic. In fact, despite it not being included as a numbered release, this lunchbox puts this version up there as one of the better editions I've seen from the retailer. I'd much sooner have it in my collection than the falling-apart statuette included with my Limited Run Games ClockTower Rewind release.

It's nice to see that despite all the physical tat that's bundled within its $99.99 MSRP, which also includes a pin set and a mini comic book, there's a physical copy of the game too. If you pre-order this collector's edition, you also get a physical copy of the game on the platform of your choice, and an alternative steel case to keep it in. Rockstar should maybe be taking notes if they choose to give the GTA 6 Collector's Edition another shot.

If you are thinking of grabbing this collector's edition, I recommend pre-ordering sooner rather than later. While the pre-order window remains open until November 22, these Limited Run Games releases can be perfect fodder for eBay resellers.

• View all Collector's Editions at Amazon

Love securing games as soon as possible? Check out our GTA 6 pre-order and Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time pre-order pages.