A popular Mass Effect 3 mod that overhauled the trilogy's final mission to protect Earth is even bigger now. To mark this year's N7 Day, the modding team have buffed out the threequel's divisive conclusion further.

The Take Earth Back mod was first uploaded onto NexusMods for 2021's N7 Day, and originally planned to "address one of the weakest sections of Mass Effect 3 - Priority: Earth." In case you need reminding, that's the section where Shepard and all of the factions that they've won over throughout the entire trilogy come together to hold off the Reapers.

"Bioware's mission was adequate, but it didn't account for the war assets you collected across the trilogy," the mod's description reads. "Take Back Earth primarily focuses on these with an overhaul of the Earth hub to feature more than 28 war assets, as well as cut content restorations, new interactive conversations, new cutscenes and more. Additionally, the Hades gun sequence and beam rum have had minor overhauls, and the mod is built from the ground up to work for vanilla players."

Now, we have Take Earth Back 2. Top of the list of changes - Hackett's speech and the Hammer Landing sequence have been expanded. Before the true battle even begins, the modders have also created a new war asset selection system, so you can properly assign your allies onto a holographic chess board of sorts. Of course, the available assets all depend on your decisions across the trilogy.

If that's not enough, whichever assets you choose will actually show up on the battlefield. So, you might see Salarian's providing covering fire from above or geth soldiers jumping in to help. There's also at least one brand new cutscene and foot soldiers change appearance depending on your choices, too.

That'll do it - time for yet another replay, I think.

The trailer (above) also draws attention to the growing Save Mass Effect movement, which includes a petition that has well over 300,000 signatures and counting. Despite BioWare's demise and Mass Effect Universe's cancelation, this N7 Day inspired lots of former Mass Effect developers to speak about their love of the series.

BioWare fans place tombstones outside EA offices as Mass Effect 5 hopefuls leave graffiti demanding revival of the now-dead RPG

Every year, N7 Day (November 7th) sees fans celebrate and reminisce on the fantastic Mass Effect series, but this year's milestone is a little different - it's the first without developer BioWare, which was recently closed at the hands of parent company EA. And as expected, love from former developers was pouring in from all sides.

Original Mass Effect game director Casey Hudson (who also led development on Star Wars: KOTOR) is pretty hopeful for the sci-fi universe's future. "Doesn't feel right to say 'happy' N7Day this year, but I'm optimistic that Mass Effect will live on! When Mass Effect makes its triumphant return, it will be thanks to the outpouring of love from players around the world," he tweets. "Thank you for sharing what it means to you."

Mass Effect 5 - or Mass Effect Universe - project lead Michael Gamble gave a big thank you to fans over on social media: "You all are truly amazing. The love and passion for this…universe…is incredible. Even in worst days, we could always count on you. To all the stories left untold. Happy N7 Day."

The original trilogy's composer Sam Hulick reveals that he had actually been chatting to BioWare about returning to write music for Mass Effect 5, via a new blog, though nothing had been set in stone. To celebrate N7 Day, Hulick's blog post also includes a re-scored version of the leaked Mass Effect Universe trailer - those bouncing dark synths at the end are just chef's kiss.

"I knew BioWare wanted to do something new with the music, and I wanted to be conscious about not just repeating the same formula used in the original trilogy," the composer says. "Fans really loved the ME1 end-credits song by Faunts, and I thought it would've been incredible to bring more songs with lyrics into the game. This would’ve been a great way to highlight more emotional moments in the narrative."

Former BioWare narrative designer Michael Tucker tweets that working on his favorite series ever was the "chance of a lifetime" and the experience was "nothing less than a dream come true."

"I'm proud of the work we did. I'm proud that as a fellow fan, every decision I got to make was aimed directly at delivering an unforgettable experience for the Mass Effect fans. What a gift it was to have that be my job for five years," he writes.

Mass Effect: Annihilation novelist and one of the writers on the cancelled Mass Effect 5, Catherynne M. Valente, published a pretty substantial blog post for N7 Day. "I've lost count of how many times I've typed the word 'devastated' over the last two weeks," she writes. "Maybe that sounds silly. You can call it 'just a video game' all you want, but it will never, ever be just a video game to me."

Ex-BioWare animator Jonathan Cooper even released a rare, "very pre-alpha internal trailer intended to highlight the cinematics" of the original trilogy games. It's embedded above and worth a watch.

Canadian politician tears into EA and calls for federal support of BioWare: "These publishers buy developers, run them into the ground, and rip them apart for profit" | GamesRadar+

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.

Following Assassin's Creed Shadows' and Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced's success, Ubisoft is apparently struggling to strike while the iron's hot. Its next mainline game in the series - codenamed Assassin's Creed Hexe - has reportedly been delayed internally, while the publisher works on two other AC games.

AC Hexe was actually announced alongside Shadows more than four years ago, though we haven't had a concrete look at the supposedly witchy, spooky open-world game since. All we knew for sure is that Hexe would launch sometime after Shadows, and here we are now.

Insider Gaming now reports that Assassin's Creed Hexe ran into further development road bumps and has since been internally delayed by another year, citing anonymous sources in the know. According to the report, the likelier release date for Hexe could be sometime in 2028.

AC Hexe hasn't had the smoothest journey to launch so far, with or without another internal delay. The game's original creative director Clint Hocking left the company earlier this year, with Black Flag and Origins' lead developer Jean Guesdon taking over for him. Two months later, game director Benoit Richer also departed.

Still, Ubisoft's purportedly cooking up more than one dish in its historical and historically stealthy-stabby series. Well connected YouTuber j0nathan recently claimed there are two other codenamed AC games in development - Assassin's Creed Mars and Assassin's Creed Pocket.

AC Mars supposedly takes the series to Ancient Rome for the first time, perhaps tying into the upcoming Netflix show in some way. Assassin's Creed Brotherhood did take place in Rome during the Italian Renaissance era, so there's probably fun ways for the lore to connect if Ubisoft did ever parkour down this route. On the other hand, Pocket is apparently set in Jerusalem and is said to be a mobile game, hence the name. As always, take any rumors with a handful of salt until Ubisoft confirms plans for itself.

So, there's lots of Assassin's Creed flying about the place. To keep up with everything going on, check out every upcoming Assassin's Creed game currently in development.

Skyrim's lead designer has shared what he hopes to see in The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel - top of the list: better mounts and, erm, ladders!

Bruce Nesmith was one of the lead developers on arguably Bethesda Game Studios' most enduring hit, the high fantasy open world of Skyrim, but his hopes and dreams for Sentinel are a little more modest than you might expect. While some fans are running wild with lore theories and hopes for ambitious new mechanics like sailing, Nesmith just wants to be able to climb ladders.

Speaking to The Examined Game (below), Nesmith says the request is "a very strange one," but not being able to climb ladders "really limits the art team in terms of how you can do multi-layer [environments]." There's a very good reason why Skyrim didn't let you properly climb up and down ladders, however.

"All the ladders in Skyrim, you click on the ladder, poof, you're at the top or you have to climb a stair. But to do ladders, you have to deal with a whole host of questions which our programmers very legitimately put in front of us and said, 'You give me answers to these, I'll tell you how much programming time it's going to take to make them.' And you know, that caused problems right there," Nesmith explained.

He then points to what would happen if an NPC is halfway down a ladder as you decide to climb up, and all the development questions that pop up from that seemingly small scenario: "Does the player go through the NPC? Is he blocked by the NPC? Does the NPC stay on the ladder? Does the NPC go back up and know to wait and then come back down?[...] And I'm just scratching the surface of some of the problems they brought up. So, it seems simple. and other games have climbing ladders, but we chose to put our efforts into other things to make them better."

The Bethesda veteran says the small change could really "make the world feel a little more immersive" and affect how the team can design environments. His other small request is a "better implementation of mounts," which he acknowledges is a "common complaint" among Skyrim fans.

"I'm not alone in that. But it turns out mounts are tricky. They're really tricky. There's a lot of hard decisions to be made in those. You can ride a horse, but that's all you can do in Skyrim," he says. "I should be able to do some other things with the horse, too, like maybe fight on the horse or have it fight with me."

Bethesda wants you to "show off your excitement" for The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel by spending $35 on a T-shirt

Former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden doesn't think the inevitable PS6 needs to be more powerful to be a success. While new console generations offer less drastic technical improvements each time, Layden reckons "true innovation" would come from making the next-gen machine affordable.

Speaking to The Trophy Room podcast, Layden recalls how past generations offered "something mind-blowing" every time a new console came out. "The jump from PS1 to PS2 was incredible," he says, "and the jump from compact disc to DVD." Even the PS4 was "completely networked" and Sony still managed to offer the console for $399 at the time.

Meanwhile, rumors are that the PS6 will come with "even more ray tracing and more teraflops." That might sound impressive to tech wizards, but to Layden and the average player, "these are differences only dogs can hear."

"I think we have enough power in the machine. The innovation needs to come not from making PS6 for $1,200 - it's to make another PS5 for $300. Now, that would be true innovation," he explains. Layden's comments are particularly timely right now as the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S are much more expensive today than they were at launch, six years ago. "This is the first platform that I've seen that has gone up in price over time."

Those rising console costs come from the ongoing RAM shortage, as AI data centers gobble up components that are used in almost every other consumer device, from consoles to smart phones. For Layden, these price points block a large crowd of potential buyers from ever entering the door - a crowd that would've traditionally jumped in at the end of the generation for a cheaper asking price.

"What the company needs to do is do what it's never done, which is don't iterate the console," he says. "Make it smaller, make it cheaper, do all the things you can around that. It's more than enough power to build the kind of games all of us want to play."

Sony has "a good chance of winning" with a PS6 handheld, former PlayStation boss says, but only if there's no home console launch, too

Rumors have been swirling for almost a year now that the next generation of Sony hardware will include both a standard PS6 home console and some sort of handheld device, but according to someone with a whole lot of knowledge and insight into PlayStation hardware launches, that's a recipe for failure.

Shawn Layden, former chairman of SIE Worldwide Studios, recently appeared on the Trophy Room: A PlayStation Show podcast, and he cautioned his former employer against releasing both a handheld and home console at the same time. Having been with PlayStation through the launch of the PSP and PS Vita, Layden says "it was difficult to support both a console and a handheld at the same time," adding, "you almost have to create two companies."

"While they are complimentary, they can also be intention in where you're going, what you're trying to say. And the console, which is the bigger dollar, the bigger audience, has more weight in the marketing room. And you see PSP marketing dollars just like go away," Layden says.

He then goes into a lengthy anecdote (timestamp) about being admonished by Sony's CFO for failing to sell enough PS3s even though PSP sales were "off the chart," but Layden eventually returns to his central point: Sony can be successful in the next console generation, but only if it can focus on supporting just one platform at a time, rather than trying to juggle two distinct machines, i.e. PSP and PS3.

"If Sony only does a handheld next, then I think they have a good chance of winning," says Layden. "But if they're going to launch a handheld and a console at the same time, the company just doesn't have - I don't think any company has the ability to be successful with both."

This isn't the first time Layden has tried to sway PlayStation from launching a home console and handheld in the same generation, having previously attributed the problem to "development resources" as well as "marketing resources."

PS6 development is "progressing as scheduled," Sony assures – even if PlayStation is battling against the RAM shortage and balancing "memory procurement"

David Gaider is one of BioWare's most notable writers. After cutting his teeth on Baldur's Gate 2, he wrote some of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic's most memorable characters, and would go on to lead the narrative for Dragon Age: Origins, setting the tone for BioWare's original fantasy franchise. Gaider notably never worked on Mass Effect, but he's getting the chance to channel its spirit as part of the writing team for The Expanse: Osiris Reborn.

"Alongside my work at Summerfall, I've also been collaborating with the Owlcat Games team on The Expanse: Osiris Reborn, focusing on certain aspects of the game's narrative," Gaider says in a Bluesky post. "The Expanse has long been one of my favourite series, and so obviously I jumped at the opportunity to be involved."

It's tough not to think about Mass Effect when looking at Osiris Reborn – after all, it too is a sci-fi RPG that controls like a third-person shooter where you build relationships with a cast of companions. The connection became even more direct last month, when developer Owlcat threw its own support behind the Save Mass Effect movement.

Gaider's involvement certainly adds to the bona fides of Osiris Reborn, and Owlcat's increasingly successful history with old-school CRPG throwbacks like Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Wrath of the Righteous, and Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader suggests that the sci-fi RPG could be a breakout. A beta released earlier this year was janky but promising, and the developer has been proactive about responding to feedback ahead of the game's planned release next year.

For details on that other big Mass Effect-like, check out our guide to Exodus.

Arc Raiders developer Embark Studios has yet to come out and say that a permanent PvE mode is coming to the game, but we're certainly hearing more and more rumblings in that direction.

In a new interview with The Game Business, Embark CEO turned Nexon games chief Patrick Söderlund joined Arc Raiders executive producer Aleksander Grøndal to discuss, among other things, the reception to the game's recent PvE mode test.

For a limited time, players could opt into PvE-only rounds of Arc Raiders to enjoy the game's world without the risk of another raider gunning them down. Reception seemed mixed but overall positive, and it seems Embark is warming up to the idea of PvE as a whole. Importantly, the studio has also reaffirmed that it wouldn't be a hard thing to add.

"We could just frankly add PvE," says Söderlund. "It's not a difficult thing for us to do, but we didn't want to obstruct or fiddle too much with the core loop of the game. The PvP aspect of a PvP PvE game does add, we believe, adequate tension."

Maintaining the intrigue and threat baked into Arc Raiders is part of the hesitance to commit to PvE, especially given Arc Raiders' origins as a PvE-only game that pivoted to extraction PvP following troubled production.

While Embark previously felt this type of radical change to the "emotional loop" of Arc Raiders is "maybe not the right thing to do," Söderlund continues, "we've now since tried it and realized that it's fun. Why not have it? You know, maybe people can choose what they like."

"People may have been wondering, 'Why the hell aren't they just doing what some players were looking for?' We were looking at the holistic picture, which we have to do, and the whole of the game to also protect the creative integrity of what we have created, what we aspire to build, and what the game should be according to us."

Here, too, live service development complicates things. The Arc Raiders community is so big, Söderlund reasons, that "we can't ignore the PvE camp" completely. The goal now is to "do a good enough job to cater to all the player types without watering down the overall experience."

Grøndal agrees that PvE could potentially fit into the game. He cites the popularity of the PvE test: almost 50% of games played during the test were PvE. That is a huge number, and while some people did "change their mind" about PvE being fun, you do "have players who absolutely loved it."

Again, he comes back to PvE not hurting "the integrity of the experience itself." This is where, beyond the apparently simple technical implementation, the broader implications of PvE are likely more complicated – economy, population, servers, event design, and so on.

Arc Raiders devs know PvE has been "polarizing," promise to prioritize the game's "overall health and enjoyability" when deciding what to do next

Collecting Moji's House Key in Phantom Blade Zero is quite easy as it's right at the end of a path, in the middle of the Mandate Encampment, making it near enough impossible to miss. The problem is the beginning of that path can be easily missed and there's also a two-phase boss fight near the end that can be quite gnarly if you're not prepared. I'll admit that the rewards in Moji's house aren't great, but you may as well break in if you've gone through all this effort to get the key. With that, here's exactly how you find Moji's House Key.

Phantom Blade Zero Moji's House Key location

Moji's House Key is found upstream just after defeating the Chief Disciple of the Seven-Stars Formation boss. Since defeating this boss is also how you get the Phantom Blade Zero Training Grounds Key, the route to Moji's House Key is exactly the same, so here's where you go:

1. From inside the first main Mandate camp area, go over the fence on the right using the wooden ramp.
2. Head towards the wooden fortified gate, then run up the short uphill path directly opposite the wooden incline. You'll get to the Dovecote Bell.

3. Climb to the top of the dovecote. A boss will drop in on the roof, but you must flee by swinging across to the nearby cliff using a chain.
4. Climb up and go along the wooden scaffolding on the cliff. It hooks left onto a lower walkway that leads to the Three Towers Bell.
5. Go to the end of the wooden walkway and jump into the boss fight arena.
6. Beat the Chief Disciple of the Seven-Stars Formation boss.
7. Head to the stream of water to exit the boss arena then turn right and run upstream.
8. At the end of the stream, you'll find Moji's House Key and a door that you can only open from one side – if you've already found Moji's house, there's a good chance you've run into this door from the other side too.

So now that you've finally got Moji's House Key, you can return to Moji's house and loot what lies within… which is unfortunately not very much. I found some Universal Solvent and all six pages of the Moji's Final Letter book, which tells you a bit about this Mandate master. You at least get Remnant Dust for each page, and the final one is a map that highlights the mountain path on the northeastern side of Lake Meigu. If you're yet to explore the lake, take this as a hint on where to go.

Follow the directions of Moji's map and you can finally complete the Phantom Blade Zero Whence The Weeping quest, as well as several others.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Finding the Phantom Blade Zero Training Grounds Key took me ages, all because I missed a dirt path in the main Mandate camp that leads to the dovecote and, eventually, the boss that holds the key. It's also a very good idea to find it as you won’t be able to finish repairing the Illusory Pipa without it – and you'll miss out on some other rewards too. Anyway, I've explained exactly how you find the Training Grounds Key in Phantom Blade Zero below, so that you can wrap up the Mandate Encampment region and crack on with the main quest.

Phantom Blade Zero Training Grounds Key location

The Training Grounds Key is a reward for defeating the Chief Disciple of the Seven-Stars Formation boss fight in the middle of the Mandate Encampment. However, the critical path you need to take to reach this boss can be easily missed:

1. From inside the main Mandate camp where the dying Mandate disciple is, follow the path into the next area and head for the wooden ramp propped up against the fence on the right.
2. Go up the ramp, over the fence, and towards the wooden fortified gate.

3. Run up the short dirt path up the hill directly opposite the wooden incline that leads to the upper level of the gate. You'll quickly reach the dovecote tower and bell.
4. Ascend the dovecote. Once you're at the top, you'll face a boss but must flee by swinging across to the cliff using a chain.
5. Work your way along the wooden scaffolding on the cliff, following it when it turns left to find the Three Towers Bell – there's a raised ladder you can kick down nearby to create a shortcut!

6. Keep going along the wooden walkway and you'll eventually have to jump into a very obvious boss fight arena.
7. Defeat the Chief Disciple of the Seven-Stars Formation. This boss has two phases, with the second being a notable step up in difficulty as the boss you fled from earlier joins the fight, so be ready!

With the Chief Disciple boss defeated, the Mandate Encampment's Training Grounds Key will be yours – and the Phantom Blade Zero Moji's House Key is also just ahead! Now you just need to make your way to the Training Grounds door and interact with it to get it open. I won't spoil what's on the other side besides another boss fight, which rewards you with the flashy dual-wield Baishan Stormswords and the Broken Vessel Accessory (it doesn't quite make it onto my list of the best Phantom Blade Zero Accessories, unfortunately).

Crucially though, you'll also find the backplate of the Illusory Pipa, which puts you one step closer to being able to take this mystical musical instrument to Myst in Pangzhen for repairs. And there are plenty of other collectibles to hoover up in this area, including the Lament Draught Medicine.

Make sure you've also found the Phantom Blade Zero Village of Lu Cellar Key and Phantom Blade Zero Cell Key back in Weeping Creek Valley.

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The world of game localization has lost a legend. Neil Broadley, the localization director on the SaGa series, recently passed away, and tributes from the series' community have been pouring in for him.

His death was announced through his own Twitter account, where a post prepared by Broadley appeared on November 6, published by one of his colleagues. In it, he explains that he'd been suffering for some years with stage four colon cancer, and is now survived by his long-time partner and their dog.

He actually worked through the discomfort of the ongoing treatments he'd undertaken in that time, continuing to translate various releases for Square Enix. "My work had been very healing for through-out the entire ordeal," he writes.

"Continuing on made me feel like my life had purpose," he adds. "I unfortunately will not be around to see the release of my next project, but I am extremely confident that you will enjoy it."

He reveals he was able to bring in his successor, who'll take on the mantle of localizing the SaGa franchise and making sure the long-running fantasy games continue to grow and prosper among English-speaking players. Broadley leaves big shows in that endeavor, because SaGa's enjoyed rejuvenated attention the last while, and his efforts in localizing the games have been crucial to that.

Comments of rest in peace are being left on an interview he did with Square Enix last year, for the release of SaGa Emerald Beyond. His post and a repost from the franchise's official account have replies turned off, but going by the sentiment over there, you can imagine what people are thinking.

"We are deeply saddened by the passing of Neil Broadley, who served as localization director for the SaGa franchise," reads a post on the series account. "On behalf of everyone involved with the franchise, we extend our heartfelt condolences to his family and loved ones."

Ragdoll Robot Boxing codes will give you a head start in this mechanized fighting championship, while you command your robot to jab, cross, and hook punches to knock down their opponent. Whether you're going up against real players or bots, you'll need to duck and weave until you can unleash your special move in the ring.

The promos available will give you access to lots of Lucky Spins for free, where you can unlock better fighters including the Epic Janus and Wraith, the Legendary Dozer and Crusader, or maybe an even more powerful bot, along with Gears to spend in this combative Roblox experience. If you're all set to square off, then these are the codes for Ragdoll Robot Boxing and how to redeem them.

If you're after some more general promos to get avatar rewards for all of your experiences, then we have the latest Roblox promo codes covered.

All Ragdoll Robot Boxing codes

The following Ragdoll Robot Boxing codes can be redeemed for rewards:

• 3000LIKES – 15x Lucky Spins new!
• MINIUPD – 20x Lucky Spins
• 2500LIKES – 20x Lucky Spins
• 2000LIKES – 20x Lucky Spins
• 1800LIKES – 20x Lucky Spins
• ROBOTBOXING – 500x Gears
• RELEASE – 300x Gears, 3x Spins
• HEAVYMETAL – 2x Spins
• SCRAPJAW – 1x Lucky Spin

At the moment there are a decent number of active codes for Ragdoll Robot Boxing available, providing lots of Lucky Spins alongside a few regular Spins and some Gears currency. The free spins stack up and can be used at any time, so there's no reason not to claim all of the promos immediately and stock up.

How to redeem Ragdoll Robot Boxing codes

There are no prerequisites needed to redeem Ragdoll Robot Boxing codes, so all you have to do is tap the CODES option to the left of the main screen, then use the ENTER CODE text box that appears to type in a promo before hitting the REDEEM button to collect your rewards. Despite what it might say on the official Discord, codes for Ragdoll Robot Boxing are not case-sensitive so they don't have to be written all in caps as long as the spelling is correct.

Expired Ragdoll Robot Boxing codes

• 1500LIKES – 50x Spins
• 800 LIKES – 10x Spins, 10x Lucky Spins
• 400LIKES – 20x Spins
• SORRYPLS – 30x Spins
• UPDATETIME – 25x Lucky Spins
• SORRY4RESETSERVERS – 10x Spins
• 1KPLAYERS – 15x Lucky Spins
• 200LIKES – 10x Lucky Spins
• 100LIKES – 10x Lucky Spins

We already have plenty of expired Ragdoll Robot Boxing codes as they don't seem to stick around for long, which means it's important to grab any active promos as soon as possible so you don't miss their rewards.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Now that Bethesda has finally given us more word on The Elder Scrolls 6 with the reveal of its official title, Sentinel, the RPG is back in the limelight and fans' minds – including former developers' own, too.

Former Skyrim lead designer and studio veteran Bruce Nesmith is one such dev, speaking in a new interview with The Examined Game over on YouTube about how he thinks his experience with the sixth Elder Scrolls entry will be – seeing as, you know, this'll be the first in years he's not worked on himself.

It's safe to say that he's excited, too… this time as a fan, much like us, rather than as a dev sitting through his own game.

"I think the day that Elder Scrolls 6 comes out, I will be right at the front of the queue downloading a copy and wanting to play it because I haven't gotten to play an Elder Scrolls game that I didn't work on," as he says.

After all, the series features "some of the greatest games ever made" – but "by the time they came out, I was already sick to death of them," Nesmith admits. "I already put in 3-400 hours into them."

That's also "not counting their early years when they were just broken, because every game starts broken." Boy, does that ring true, eh? I remember my horse flipping upside down into the ground in Skyrim outside of Whiterun – fun times.

There's no hard feelings over on Nesmith's end, either: "If I had only ever done one Bethesda game, it would probably chafe at me a little bit, but I've done a lot of Bethesda games, so I'm just excited."

He feels fulfilled already, put simply.

"I'm just happy. I worked on Oblivion. I worked on Skyrim. I worked on Fallout 3. I worked on Fallout 4. I worked on Starfield. I worked on all of these. Now I get to do one where everything feels fresh and new, and I get to see how someone else does things in a new way. No matter how much you try to keep things fresh as a human being, you're limited that way."

So, as Nesmith concludes, it's "a good time for someone else to take those reins and do things and show me the better way. I'd love to see that. I'm excited to see that." I'm no dev myself, but I get it – I'm certainly looking forward to The Elder Scrolls 6, too.

The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel may spotlight a major Skyrim MacGuffin or even feature sailing, theorists speculate after Bethesda's minute-long teaser.

Former Rockstar Games technical director Obbe Vermeij reckons the studio could release the PC version of GTA 6 sooner than everyone expects.

With GTA 6, it's no surprise that Rockstar is doing what Rockstar usually does. Console release first, followed by a PC release a year or so later – or a decade and change later in Red Dead Redemption's case. A GTA 6 PC port is obviously going to happen, even if Rockstar hasn't said so yet, but most had accepted that we'd be waiting until November 2027 at the earliest. However, rumors emerged earlier this year that Rockstar could be breaking the trend and releasing GTA 6 on PC way earlier than expected, with a release before the end of March 2027.

Speaking to Rock Paper Shotgun, Vermeij recalls that in the early days of the series, GTA was very much a PC first series – so much so that when the PlayStation port was shown to Rockstar, one artist reportedly said "what the fuck did they do to our textures, I can't believe it, we can't release this shite" – but obviously it changed for GTA 3.

And while PC gaming is probably the biggest it's ever been today, Vermeij says "there's still that same mindset" at Rockstar in regards to releasing ports later. He notes, "I guess it's less of an argument for them because the game is just so big, so they just kind of always left it that way." He adds, "For developers, it's way easier to just do one version at a time."

With the prevalence of AI-developed PC ports and recompilations appearing online, Vermeij notes, "It really has changed the world," saying, "I think I would be concerned, if I was Rockstar, that somebody would just take the PS5 version and get AI to change it to PC." While he acknowledges a gen-AI approximation "won't be as good as their effort," even the small playerbase of such a port "could still also hurt their sales."

With that in mind, Vermeij says, "I wouldn't be surprised if there was an effort to get [the releases] a little bit closer together," although he notes that obviously he doesn't know for sure, having left Rockstar back in 2009. Regardless, don't expect any news on a PC version before the console releases drop, as Take-Two likely wouldn't want to stop potential double dip sales.

With GTA 6 delays, Take-Two CEO suggests Rockstar didn't want a Cyberpunk 2077 situation: "They had to pull the title after shipping."

My kingdom for Sony and FromSoftware to do anything with Bloodborne. There's been no remaster, no PC port, and also no sequel. We do have an excuse for that last one, because apparently bureaucracy is constantly getting in the way.

At least, that's what Shawn Layden, ex-president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment America, suggests on The Trophy Room podcast when asked about why it's been all quiet on the Yharnam front. "Bringing back old games has a certain challenge to it," he starts.

"Can you do something that is not only respectful of the original, but can you recreate the phenomenon?" he ponders, responding to the notion of a Bloodborne remake. After the successful Demon's Souls redux from Japan Studio and Bluepoint Games, people have been hoping for other FromSoftware releases to get the same treatment.

Bloodborne doesn't appear to be a likely candidate from what Layden has to say, nor would a sequel be straightforward. "There's a lot of involved rights associated with it," he explains. "And it's something like that where Sony is in there, and [FromSoftware] is in there, and From's parent company is in there, I think just getting everyone to sign off on everything is probably the biggest challenge there."

Such things are major roadblocks in many creative endeavours. I'm going to guess the fact it was co-developed with Japan Studio is what's causing some of the complications here. The company was unfortunately closed in 2020, leaving its IP or stakes therein wherever.

But that's just speculation. The fact is, Sony likes making money, and Bloodborne would be an easy win, and I suspect if these hurdles didn't exist, we'd have seen activity there by now. Alas, the hunter's dream remains just that for now. Good thing the game is still just as satisfying to replay as it ever was.

Sony adds new PlayStation Plus "perks" like free trials for YouTube Premium and a sleep app, players respond "the only perk I want is discs."

Sometimes giving Malibu Stacy a new hat works, sometimes it doesn't. Sony is learning that offering discounts and other initiatives for PlayStation users isn't enough to make people forget about the corporation stopping physical discs come 2028.

In a social media post, Sony highlights the various perks to being a subscriber to PlayStation Plus. These include a free trial for meditation app Calm, reductions on Audible, and discounts across various other products in Sony's expensive range.

Most lucrative is the three-month free trial for YouTube Premium. Given how that platform is now an enormous part of the world of streaming, that's a decent added incentive for signing up to PlayStation's service, on top of all the games you get immediate access to.

But none of this stacks up to what players are losing in the coming months. This year, Sony announced it would be ceasing production of discs for new games on PlayStation consoles come January 2028.

That includes PS5 and PS4. Their libraries are becoming all digital, and fans aren't happy, because such practice raises legitimate concerns over ownership. This has led to PlayStation's replies being lit up over demand for disced games.

"The only perk I want is discs," writes one fan. "Do the trials come on disc?" asks another, incredulously. "The only perk I need to enjoy is physical discs," adds a third.

Those are just the ones for this tweet. Similar replies follow every PlayStation tweet in recent weeks.

You get the point. This has become background radiation for Sony, and I don't see it dying down any time soon. The company will have accounted for pushback, but to what degree is another question. I'm not sure I see them rolling back the decision completely, but if enough people vote with their wallets in terms of cancelling PS Plus subscriptions and getting their games elsewhere, it may force some sort of change. Physical forever.

"No disc, no buy" protest and PlayStation boycott don't bother Sony, which reports increased playtime and record-high users for September.

Shibuya codes grant a bunch of free rerolls in a variety of categories, giving you the chance to reroll your Race, Clan, and Cursed Technique whenever you want. All three of the categories have some incredible rare and mythical options, and of course your chances of rolling them are super low, so the more rerolls you have, the better.

This Jujutsu Kaisen-inspired Roblox game is an RPG experience in which you put yourself into the shoes of a human or a cursed spirit - with rerolls, you also have a chance to become one of a few roll-exclusive clans, too. To live the virtual life you want, you'll need as many rerolls as possible to customize your character to your exact requirements, so here are the latest Shibuya codes to help you do just that.

If you're after some more general avatar rewards to use in all of your experiences, then we've got the current Roblox promo codes covered too.

All Shibuya codes

These are the Shibuya codes you can redeem right now:

• 2500LIKES - 25x Race Rerolls
• 3000LIKES - 15x Race Rerolls
• CLANCOMPENSATION - 65x Clan Rerolls
• PUBLICTESTING - 10x Race Rerolls, 10x Clan Rerolls
• SORRYFORLAG - 3x Cursed Technique Rerolls

Shibuya codes almost always offer rerolls, but they are specific to the character you're customizing at the time you redeem them, so if you have more than one character slot, be careful to redeem codes where you want them.

It's also worth noting that Shibuya codes aren't case-sensitive, so you only have to make sure the spelling is correct, but you can always just copy and paste from the list above if you want to be safe.

How to redeem Shibuya codes

To redeem Shibuya codes, you must be in the character customization screen for the character you want the rewards to apply to. To get here from in-game, double click the Menu button at the top of the screen. This is the same menu you'll see when you load into the game.

From here, select Slots, then choose the character you want to apply your codes to and click Customize. If you only have one character, it'll automatically select them for you. From the customization screen, you'll see the codes redemption box in the top right-hand corner. Type or copy your code into the enter code box and hit enter to claim your rewards.

Expired Shibuya codes

• !publictesting
• !sorryforlag
• !sorryforbugs
• !ctrerolls
• !mobilecontrols
• 5000members
• 500likes
• emergencysd
• optimizationattempt
• emergencysd
• halloween
• boo
• sorryforsds2
• 1000likes
• themererollpack
• 10kmembers
• debuishere
• 2000likes
• sorryforsd
• starseed

Shibuya codes expire fairly quickly, so it's always worth redeeming them as soon as you see them. Since your Rerolls stack and don't expire, there's no harm in doing so. Whenever promos do expire, I'll move them down here so you don't experience any disappointment.

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The best Phantom Blade Zero Accessories are usually the ones that grant you a noticeable damage reduction effect. From my time playing, and talking to other GamesRadar+ writers, we agree that some of these Defensive Accessories are the most useful, generally making combat feel a lot easier – mostly because it makes Soul about as spongey as some of the foes he faces. But there are also Offensive and Support Accessories to consider and a lot of them at that, so here are the Phantom Blade Zero Accessories I recommend equipping.

Best Phantom Blade Zero Accessories

While you can wear up to six Accessories in Phantom Blade Zero once you have all the Boundless Capacity abilities, you're still capped at wearing up to three of the same type, so use the list below to help you put together a varied selection:

I've also got some honorable mentions for Accessories that are worth bearing in mind for specific scenarios, especially boss fights. The Cavalrybane is well worth using against any mounted bosses, and the Shieldbreaker Talisman is pretty much essential against any bosses that have a pale-blue shield health bar.

You might also want to consider one of the damage reduction accessories for a specific damage type if it's a damage type a particular boss uses a lot. For example, the Lion Dance Grandmaster that you fight for the Phantom Blade Zero Flaming Mane weapon uses a lot of fire damage, so the Flameward can come in handy.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Now that the $55 billion deal seeing EA go private under Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake, and Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners is done and dusted, the former two are reportedly looking to purchase another big name in gaming: Unity.

The EA buyout hasn't been a simple process, to say the least, with the studio facing backlash following the closure of BioWare and cancellation of Mass Effect 5, but it's settled – legally, anyway – nonetheless.

As for Unity, news of its own potential move under the PIF and Silver Lake's wing comes directly from Reuters, which claims to learn as much from anonymous "people familiar with the matter." So, what exactly is happening?

Well, according to the report, Unity – also operating as Unity Software Inc. and Unity Technologies or simply Unity – is in talks regarding its acquisition, with Silver Lake and Saudi Arabia's PIF at the forefront.

If you're out of the loop on what Unity itself is, it's most well-known for its cross-platform game engine, which powers quite a few notable titles, both AAA and indie. Think everything from Genshin Impact to Among Us.

As for the possible deal, it's important to note that Silver Lake already owns about 8% of Unity. And, as per Reuters, it recently approached the company alongside the PIF in, discussing a valuation of some $25 billion.

The parties involved haven't struck any sort of solid deal yet, however, with Unity supposedly working with an investment bank to see all of its options before anything concrete occurs.

It's difficult to tell just what will happen at this point, but I'm certain this will spur a good bit of discussion among developers and users alike. For instance, what could this buyout mean for Unity, should it happen?

That remains to be seen – and, sadly, neither Unity, Silver Lake, nor the PIF responded to Reuters' requests for comment, so this is all we're working with in terms of public knowledge about the deal… should it be underway, that is.

"Asking the AI to reproduce a game that has already been made does not make you Kojima," says Unity CEO launching an AI you can use to reproduce games.

God of War Ragnarok attracted accolades like magnets in 2022 even though it lost the main Game of the Year title to Elden Ring, and now here we are four years later handing the game yet another achievement. According to a prominent industry market analyst, God of War Ragnarok is the top-grossing first-party PlayStation game of this console generation.

Rhys Elliott, head of market analysis at Alinea Analytics, took to Twitter to share some new data about God of War Ragnarok's lifetime sales. According to that data, the game has sold 21.6 million copies across PlayStation and Steam, with Steam sales accounting for just 1.6 million of those copies sold. That amounts to $1.4 billion in gross revenue, catapulting it to the top of PlayStation's slate of first-party games for this generation.

As if reading your thoughts, Elliott knows you're wondering how God of War Ragnarok beats out a juggernaut like Marvel's Spider-Man 2, which obviously has massive crossover potential with one of the biggest fandoms in film, TV, and comics. Elliott notes that Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is a PS5 console exclusive, meaning it's not available on PS4 like God of War Ragnarok. That lowers its install base hugely. Also, God of War Ragnarok came out about a year before Marvel's Spider-Man 2, giving it more time to accumulate those sales. Still, God of War Ragnarok wears the PlayStation crown this generation.

"It's another PlayStation evergreen seller, too," Elliott says. "This year, Ragnarok has already sold 1.1M copies, generating nearly $60M (68% on PlayStation), outperforming new 2026 titles like Gears of War E-Day and Saros."

"Overall, Ragnarok has been accessed by 6.7M PlayStation Plus players (it was added to the Extra tier about two years ago). So it's performed that well this year DESPITE subscription cannibalisation. That's the pull of God of War IP."

Speaking of the God of War IP, there's a TV adaptation in the works at Prime Video starring Dave Bautista, and although there's no release date just yet, Elliott predicts the series "is going to be massive - bigger than Fallout, I reckon."

Naturally, achieving that sales milestone puts a lot of pressure on Sony Santa Monica to really deliver with God of War Laufey, the next game in its Norse series of God of War games. Notably, God of War Laufey marks a major departure for the series by switching playable characters from Kratos and Atreus to Laufey, Kratos's late wife and Atreus's mother. Having died just before the events of 2018's God of War, Laufey is forced to navigate a world inhabited by fallen gods, which is about as chaotic and violent as you'd expect.

God of War Laufey is releasing May 20, 2027 after a recent delay.

God of War Laufey is exactly how I want the series' combat to evolve, from the return of aerial combos to hitting dudes so hard their souls fly out.

This November has been a terrific month for the number six, with GTA 6 approaching and The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel finally out in the open. Once GTA 6 is in our hands at last, we'll have to reckon with a strange new world where we're no longer constantly waiting for the next Grand Theft Auto – the kind of alien sensation that Hollow Knight: Silksong players, who practically grieved yearning after so much buildup, are intimately familiar with.

Will The Elder Scrolls 6 step up to the plate as the next [clears throat] Massive Sequel Over a Decade in the Making That Also Has the Number Six in It? Is it going to fill Rockstar's enormous shoes as gaming's white whale?

"No, I don't think it is," says Circana games analyst Mat Piscatella when I mention this idea in passing. "It's a huge game, obviously, but things like Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty, NBA 2K, these are games that are huge, mass-market appeal titles."

This reflects part of what makes GTA 6 so interesting, not as a game to be played but as an outlier to be observed. Similar to Nintendo, Rockstar can basically do whatever it wants because its loyal audience is big enough. More uniquely, Grand Theft Auto is the type of game that appeals to a huge range of players, from the enthusiasts playing dozens of the best games of 2026 to casual fans who mostly stick to the sports and shooter series that Piscatella mentions.

"They're their own thing," he says. "It's a different set of rules, a different set of expectations. They're gonna do their thing, and they've earned every bit of that, just based on what they've done. Nintendo is its own thing, too. They are unique, and I know people hate that and go, 'They're competing just like everyone else.' They are, but with the IP and their history and how they've developed how they go to market, it is a unique proposition. That's why they can do things other companies can't, and they have a relationship with their players that other platforms don't. These are companies or developers that are doing their own thing, blazing their own trail, and a lot of other people try to follow."

As AAA game development faces cost crises, Rockstar is making the biggest bet of all, and with the most favorable odds imaginable. Nobody else could make a game like GTA 6. For anyone but Rockstar, it would be too big to succeed. "If you want to talk about a big bet, they don't come any bigger than this, and the appetite for big bets like this doesn't exist in many places," says Piscatella.

Even The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel, follow-up to one of the most-played RPGs of all time, and handily the most-modded, is in a different weight class. (The Witcher 3 and Skyrim have both sold 65 million copies.)

"Whether you're talking about an Elder Scrolls, a Witcher, a God of War, those are big games but they're nowhere near the scale of an NBA 2K, Call of Duty, or Grand Theft Auto," adds Piscatella. "No shade to them. They're all great games and perform very well. But we're talking about a secondary tier to those real mass-market hit drivers."

It certainly doesn't help that The Elder Scrolls 6 was announced eight years ago, and re-announced this week with a subtitle, yet we still don't even have a screenshot. The game is reportedly looking at a 2029 launch, which would put it 18 years post-Skyrim, so I'm going to need Bethesda to wake me up for the third time when, and only when, it's got some heat.

Bethesda wants you to "show off your excitement" for The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel by spending $35 on a T-shirt

A new Assassin's Creed Valhalla patch fittingly named "The Most Requested Update" just dropped, adding a range of features and systems that players have been asking for, including the fabled New Game Plus mode.

Ubisoft shared the news on the PlayStation Blog, which notes that the PS5 Pro version of Assassin's Creed Valhalla now sports PSSR optimizations "to enhance 4K image quality and deliver our Quality mode at 60FPS on PS5 Pro." More detailed patch notes are available on Steam.

New Game Plus is, as is often the case among modern Assassin's Creed fans, a headliner.

"We know this has been a request for ages, and we appreciate your patience," writes Ubisoft, some four years after Valhalla's release. "You can now start your Viking quest all over again after completing the main story of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.

"To access NG+ you'll have to complete the Holy Day Quest, which is the last quest of the Hamtunscire region. (This is before the true ending of the game but since it is a very big game, we’ve decided to allow you to start NG+ a little bit earlier) Each iteration of NG+ will get progressively harder, offering new challenges to players who want to revisit the Viking Age again and again."

Note that you will have to save the game post-update to unlock the NG+ option.

With NG+ in mind, the cap on gear upgrades has been increased from 13 to 27, and upgrading is now tied to the new mithril resource. "You will need a lot of it," Ubisoft says.

There's more progression to be had, too. "Extended Progression Mode" adds "a more granular sense of progression," by which Ubisoft means gear upgrades and Runes "increase Power by 1 point" while Masteries "increase Power every 5 skill points."

"This mode is intended to increase the impact of your gear. The challenge is greater, but the reward is great for the mighty," the studio explains.

Runes can also, themselves, be upgraded after today's update, and may reach the new "superior" tier. This, too, requires mithril.

"The second addition to the rune forge is in the engrave page; we’ve added more than 300 available engravable runes, allowing players to engrave all of the perks that have been added since the release of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, including DLCs and those purchased in the Helix Store," the patch notes add.

For all that gear you're hoarding, Valhalla has also added a Stash inventory. "As we all know, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is a big game, and it keeps getting bigger each year," Ubisoft reflects. So, the kind folks of Ravensthorpe have installed "a newly installed Stash which, when interacted with, will allow players to store any piece of gear and any rune from their inventory."

The long-awaited update is rounded out by two new achievements for completionists (fully upgrade divine gear, and complete NG+), PSSR 2 support for PS5 Pro, and a long list of balance changes "trying to make dual wielding feel better, improve stat runes as well as balancing skill masteries and their bonuses."

Ubisoft says it's done with Assassin's Creed remakes for now after Black Flag Resynced, and Assassin's Creed Hexe is "making steady progress" toward 2027 update

With GTA 6 right around the corner, Rockstar Games and its owner Take-Two Interactive will be getting ready to enjoy the fruits of their labor with a massive launch, especially if current pre-order estimates are anything to go by. But GTA isn't Take-Two's only breadwinner – CEO Strauss Zelnick reckons that "we have the best collection" of IP in the games business.

Speaking in a new interview with the Wall Street Journal (below), Zelnick defends the strength of Take-Two's full library, which may be boosted by GTA, but by no means relies on it entirely.

"We have 15 franchises that have each sold at least 5 million units in an individual release," he begins. "I think we have the best collection of owned intellectual property in the video game business, and I think that's reflected in our top line, our bottom line, and our market cap."

He continues: "In addition to Grand Theft Auto, we have Red Dead Redemption, a massive title. It sold over 65 million units in the most recent release. Red Dead Online, Grand Theft Auto Online, we have NBA 2K, which is the second-biggest sports title worldwide – the biggest in North America."

In a quickfire round, Zelnick also lists the likes of Borderlands, BioShock, WWE 2K, and Civilization, as well as mobile hits such as Words with Friends and Empires & Puzzles.

Depending on your personal preferences and biases, you may or may not agree with Zelnick that Take-Two truly has the best bank of IP – others like Nintendo could certainly give the company a run for its money with the likes of Mario, Zelda, and Smash Bros., not to mention its partial ownership of Pokemon. But there's definitely no denying its strength – even with the current highest-rated game of the year, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake, out today, it's hard to think of November as anything other than Rockstar's month.

With GTA 6 delays, Take-Two CEO suggests Rockstar didn't want a Cyberpunk 2077 situation: "They had to pull the title after shipping."

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."

Cloverlines codes can help you get off to a strong start in this action RPG adventure, as you search for rare Grimoires and discover powerful spells to master while travelling across mysterious lands on your flying broom. You'll need to develop your magic abilities and increase your power if you want to defeat the tough bosses that stand in your way.

The promos listed here will grant you plenty of Crystal Mana to use, along with handy buffs such as EXP boosts to level up faster in this magical Roblox experience. If you're ready to start building your legend, then here are the codes for Cloverlines and how to redeem them.

If you're searching for general promos that unlock avatar rewards for all of your experiences, then we have the latest Roblox promo codes covered.

All Cloverlines codes

The following Cloverlines codes are currently active:

• RESETSTATS – 3x Reset Stats (expires November 6, 2026)
• NANIMOSUPREME – +30% EXP for 1 Hour
• CREATORLIKE – 15x Crystal Mana
• DEMONCONTRACT – 10x Crystal Mana
• SORRYFORDELAY – 10x Crystal Mana

There are a reasonable number of Cloverlines codes available at the moment, and they mainly provide Crystal Mana to increase your balance, while others can give you a temporary boost or let you reset your stats. Pay attention to any promos with expiry dates, as they often stop working after a short amount of time.

How to redeem Cloverlines codes

To redeem Cloverlines codes, you just need to tap the MENU button to the left-hand side of the screen, then choose the Settings icon from the Menu Selection bar that pops up. You'll see a Codes section in the top-left corner here, so use the Input your code here text box to enter a promo and then hit Enter to receive your rewards. Codes for Cloverlines aren't case-sensitive, so you only have to ensure you use the correct spelling.

Expired Cloverlines codes

• SORRYFORSHUTDOWN – 3x Special Spins

We are already starting to get expired Cloverlines codes, as some of the initial promos have short deadlines attached to them. As always, you should make it a priority to grab any active codes listed to collect all available rewards.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

The Phantom Blade Zero Gu Wanyue boss is quite a challenge, easily being one of the trickiest bosses up to this point. That's hardly a surprise given that she's entirely immune to damage most of the time, with perfect parries and dodges being the only ways of even temporarily removing her invincibility. That unfortunately means you mostly have to just lock in and learn those attack patterns, but my tips for defeating Gu Wanyue should help too.

Phantom Blade Zero Gu Wanyue tips

Gu Wanyue attacks hard and fast, with rapid combos and lightning-fast strikes that can shred through your health. It also doesn't help that she can partially blind you and that her damage immunity can be only temporarily removed in certain ways, so here are some pointers for dealing with her:

• Watch for the shimmering smokey effect on her body: If you see smoke-like wisps emanating from Gu Wanyue, that means she's immune to damage, so don't waste any time attacking her. The only ways you can temporarily remove this invincibility effect is by parrying or dodging enough of her attacks to break her guard and by deflecting the blue-flash attack where she throws a purple fireball at you. For the latter, the vulnerability period is very short, but you can still get a few hits in.
• Perfect parries and dodges are absolutely essential: In case this wasn't clear already, this fight entirely hinges on your ability to perfectly deal with her attacks. It's especially important for her red and blue-flash attacks as these often cause Soul to automatically execute a counterattack that does a little damage, helping you wear down both her health and Sha-Chi bar at the same time, even when she's normally immune.
• Watch out for her two awful red-flash grab attacks: These are similarly brutal to the Phantom Blade Zero Gold-Masked One's grab attack and Gu Wanyue uses them frequently, so you really need to be on your guard and ready to dodge at any moment. One sees her lunge a great distance at high speed and the other sees her grappling Soul's head from a handstand, and she often uses one right as her smoke cloud dissipates.
• Block when her smoke clouds obscure your vision: Since Gu Wanyue can attack from pretty much any angle and that you can barely see, parrying is very difficult. I found it was best to just hold L1 to block her attacks and occasionally dodge out the way if I could see her coming.
• Keep your distance to avoid her scream attack: If you spend what seems like any more than a few seconds right next to Gu Wanyue, she'll let out a stunning scream that forces you into a quick time event to recover, leaving you highly vulnerable to attack.
• Wear the right Accessories: The Ancient Armor Fragment is fantastic because its damage resistance will make those grab attacks far less brutal. The Medicine Case pairs very well with this to improve your healing. You may also want to consider the Token of Pursuit to boost damage to Guard-Broken enemies or the Reflex Device if you're struggling to nail the perfect timing on her flash attacks - I've explained what some of the best Phantom Blade Zero Accessories are too.

Gu Wanyue thankfully doesn't have a second phase, so once you've emptied her health bar and one last cutscene, your ears will be saved from more singing. For your victory, you'll get a Fanatic's Fragment: Fixation, which is part of an item that is needed to Soul Temper the Fanatic's Sword. Unfortunately, you need to find the other fragments to complete the item first.

But now you can proceed through the rest of Pangzhen by jumping down the well. Very shortly after this is where you'll find the Phantom Blade Zero Mandate Encampment Key, followed by learning how to upgrade medicine in Phantom Blade Zero. Later in Pangzhen, you can get the Phantom Blade Zero Flaming Mane and complete the Phantom Blade Zero Flesh Lily quest too.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Heavy is the crown when you're releasing a blockbuster game like GTA 6. The sales will be huge, but it's going to be the target number one for illegal redistribution. Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of Rockstar's owner Take-Two, isn't overtly concerned, mostly because he accepts this is just a facet of the industry.

He responded to a query about such things during a sit-down at WSJ Tech. "Piracy is a fact of life," he starts.

"I've been in every entertainment business there is, and when I was in the movie business we figured 10-20% at any given time," he explains. "In the record business, because I was in the record business from 1994 to 2000 by the mid 2000s I would argue that 80% of the market was pirated, now that's way back down again."

He admits he's definitely concerned, just as he worries about every aspect of video games and entertainment. But the difficulties surrounding contemporary hardware, like how big the file sizes are and getting releases to run, mitigate the problem organically. They don't deter everyone, though.

"It's not been a non-issue," Zelnick adds. "And in the event that it turns into an issue we address it the same way every other business does, which is with legal work, and then with technical work, and we'll have to do both."

We've seen Take-Two be cutthroat when it wants to be, since an unofficial GTA 5 multiplayer platform was shut down earlier this year. Zelnick's comments suggest he's not naïve to the rash of activity we'll likely get on the back of the sixth mainline Grand Theft Auto. I suspect Rockstar is one studio whose bottom line won't be affected much by how many fans try to get the game for free.

With GTA 6 delays, Take-Two CEO suggests Rockstar didn't want a Cyberpunk 2077 situation: "They had to pull the title after shipping"

Folks might not be happy with Sony right now, following its decision to scrap physical PlayStation game production starting in 2028, but you sure wouldn't think so, looking at the company's data from the last quarter.

There's no denying that Sony's killing off PlayStation discs has sparked a lot of backlash. Chants of "no disc, no buy" flooding social media comment sections and streams have been a regular since the move was announced back in August, and a fan-organized boycott known as the PlayStation Blackout (or PSBlackout) also kicked off that month in retaliation to the news.

You'd have expected that to impact Sony's player engagement stats – after all, the whole point of a boycott like that is for the company to see such a worrying decline that it's forced to backtrack on its decision. However, as shown in the company's latest financial earnings results, that's apparently not the case. In fact, its playtime for the last quarter (the three-month period ending on September 30) was up compared to the same period last year, and, more than that, September set a record for monthly active users.

"The number of monthly active users (MAUs) across the PlayStation (PS) platform in September increased 7% compared to the same month of the previous fiscal year to 127 million accounts," chief financial officer Lin Tao explains in comments transcribed by Sony. "That was a record high for September. Total playtime for the quarter increased 4% year-on-year."

This is such a significant improvement, in fact, that Sony reckons it signals an ongoing growth trend. "The year-on-year trend for both metrics improved significantly compared to the first quarter of this fiscal year, which we believe demonstrates that the baseline of engagement is steadily improving," Tao adds.

Looking at the data on monthly active users at the end of each quarter, the latest number is up 2 million from the previous quarter and 8 million from the same quarter last year.

For the "no disc, no buy" crowd, you could argue that they wouldn't necessarily have to buy any games – let alone any digital ones – to keep playing, but an increase in playtime for the quarter certainly doesn't suggest that the PlayStation Blackout had any noticeable impact, and the number of monthly users shows that folks haven't been put off from using the platform, either.

Despite the backlash, though, it's really not too surprising to see this. Circana analyst Mat Piscatella previously said that, in the US, "there was no significant change at all in player count or engagement in our tracking" due to the boycott. I suppose it's data like this that explains why Tao previously said that Sony doesn't "see that there will be any negative impact on our business" as a result of the decision to kill off physical games.

PS6 development is "progressing as scheduled," Sony assures – even if PlayStation is battling against the RAM shortage and balancing "memory procurement."

PATCH NOTES 5.11.2026 – Following developer BioWare's closure under EA, a fan-made petition to "#SaveMassEffect" is gaining momentum. Its ultimate goal – encouraging EA to either resume development on now-canceled Mass Effect 5 or sell the IP to another studio – is a tough sell, especially given the publisher's track record. But the petition's popularity has opened an exciting new door for the RPG franchise: the opportunity for rebirth.

What's going on in gaming this week?

• After Mass Effect 5's cancelation, a Bioware co-founder is so touched by the #SaveMassEffect movement that he wants to reconnect with OG members of the dev team.
• CD Projekt Red keeps adding to its host of RPG experts, with ex-Kingdom Come: Deliverance devs added to its star-studded roster.

Why is this happening now?

• One of the petition's goals is to get EA to sell Mass Effect to a studio like CDPR, which continues to prove itself a home for RPG specialists.
• Hope has been rekindled for original BioWare and Mass Effect writers to band together once more, keeping a candle lit for the series' resurgence someday.
• Industry trends mean an eventual reboot cannot be discounted – even if #SaveMassEffect's demands aren't immediately met.

Meta Shift

• #SaveMassEffect's power is in what the petition represents, as long as fans can play the waiting game.

The news of BioWare's shuttering and the subsequent cancelation of Mass Effect 5 Universe was a bitter pill to swallow. So much so, many RPG fans refused.

#SaveMassEffect, a petition to rescue the canned franchise from EA's video game graveyard, has over 300,000 signatures on Change.org at the time of writing. These are promising numbers, but what hope does the petition have of actually meeting its goals?

The chances of EA selling or licensing Mass Effect to another developer or publisher are extremely slim. EA's habit of sitting on its sunsetted franchises has been widely reported over the years, so I wouldn't hold my breath. Fans are eyeballing studios like Larian and CD Projekt Red for the task all the same, though each studio is hard at work on their own RPGs.

But this might not be the end of Mass Effect, because games get rebooted all the time. Look at how Xbox is reviving Fable under Playground Games after original developer Lionheart shut down in 2016. Or how Larian Studios was chosen to develop Baldur's Gate 3, the first two games having been developed by BioWare in partnership with lapsed license-holders Interplay. EA even brought Dead Space out of a 10-year dormancy to remake the first game in the trilogy. #SaveMassEffect shows that there is still overwhelming passion and desire for a continuation of the RPG series – we just might need to be patient.

Patch Notes summary

Two weeks later, the buzz around #SaveMassEffect is still resounding. There's no telling if EA will reconsider its actions or acknowledge the petition at all, but whether or not it succeeds is beside the point. Its popularity speaks to the unified strength of players' voices in showing discontentment with corporate moves in an industry that continues to be rife with layoffs, studio shutdowns, and cancelations, as well as how important this franchise is to so many.

If it inspires even one handful of BioWare devs not to give up hope, which seems to be the case for its co-founder, it might be enough to keep Mass Effect's spirit alive long enough to see it resurrected sometime in the future. Even if, like Baldur's Gate, it might take a decade or two.

Related

Sony says that work on its "next-generation platform" – AKA the PS6 – is "progressing as scheduled," while sales of the PS5 keep on trucking, but at a pace that's lagging behind the PS4 at the same point in its own lifecycle amid the ongoing RAM crisis.

During the company's FY2026 Q2 earnings call today, chief financial officer Lin Tao makes multiple references to the company's next console and its plans going forward.

"Looking ahead to next fiscal year, we aim to continue to enhance user engagement and further strengthen monetization through the release of strong titles and the expansion of our service. We also intend to make solid progress in preparing for the next generation platform," she says in comments transcribed by Sony.

But that's not to say that progress isn't already being made. During the Q&A section of the earnings call – transcribed by Seeking Alpha – Tao says "we are progressing as scheduled" on research and development of the next-generation platform, reiterating: "The development itself is on schedule."

She elaborates on future plans in a later question, noting that there will be "investment for the new platform" starting in the next fiscal year and continuing beyond. "For future growth, we have to attach great importance to our new platform," she continues. "We have to make the necessary investments for that. But we have to support this soundness of our platform and try to think how rationally we can invest in our platform."

This is something that Sony will announce at an "appropriate" time in the future.

But how about those PS5 sales? Tao acknowledges that they're "gradually declining as expected in this stage of the console life cycle," but "the PS platform continues to expand and grow in a stable manner."

To get into the numbers, 2.6 million additional PS5 units were sold in the last quarter, bringing the total to 97.9 million. However, that also means it's not selling as well as the PS4 did at the same point in its lifecycle – the previous-gen console had already surpassed 100 million sales by then.

Perhaps that's unsurprising amid ongoing challenges for the PS5, though. Beyond the uproar Sony itself caused by announcing the end of physical PlayStation game production, the ongoing RAM shortage has been having a major impact on hardware prices. During the call, Tao notes that in regard to the PS5 specifically, "we have been able to offset the rise in memory prices through adjustments to promotions and pricing, as well as additional cost-reduction, and we expect hardware profitability for the current fiscal year to remain on par with the previous fiscal year."

Furthermore, she reveals: "Regarding memory procurement for next fiscal year, based on discussions held so far with various suppliers, we have aligned on the quantity of memory needed for our projected hardware unit sales."

Here's hoping, then, that we won't see any more nasty price increases for the PS5 in the months to come – let's face it, they've shot up enough as is.

Fans might not "pull out $1,000" for PS6 and Project Helix if all they can offer is marginal improvements, says ex-PlayStation boss.

Phantom Blade Zero medicine upgrades aren't unlocked until about halfway through the game while you’re exploring Pangzhen. They're obviously incredibly useful, so you'll want to get access to this system as soon as you can to start enhancing the healing power and increases the number of uses of your many healing items. To help you do just that, I've explained everything you need to know about upgrading medicine in Phantom Blade Zero below.

Phantom Blade Zero medicine upgrades

To unlock medicine upgrades in Phantom Blade Zero, you just need to go inside the Green Serpent House in the Backstreets area of Pangzhen and speak to Xie Xiaorong at the counter. Conveniently, the medicine upgrade system is folded into the general 'Upgrade Equipment' menu that you can use at any Bell, so you don't have to keep visiting the Green Serpent House to boost your medicines.

Depending on how far through the game you are, reaching the Green Serpent House might take you a while, even if you're already in Pangzhen. But follow the main quests through the desolate town and you'll eventually reach the house.

Upgrading medicine costs a few thousand Remnant Dust and one Healer's Memory per level. Higher upgrade levels require more Remnant Dust and rarer Healer's Memories – for example, levels 1 and 2 require a single Apprentice Healer's Memory but levels 3 and 4 require a Skilled Healer's Memory, and so on. Healer's Memories of all qualities are found throughout the game and can be bought in limited quantities from the Bell shop.

Importantly, medicine upgrades are permanent and cannot be reverted in the same way weapon upgrades can be. My advice is therefore to focus your upgrades on only the medicine items you're currently using. That way you should have some spare Healer's Memories to perform some instant upgrades if you change your Medicine to something better.

Furthermore, while you're in Pangzhen, you'll eventually get the Phantom Blade Zero Flaming Mane weapon which will finally allow you get inside the other Serpent Houses around the world, which are critical to the main quest.

Before you head off to the Pangzhen Backstreets, you may want to wrap up the Phantom Blade Zero Four Fierce Axes quest first. Then you can go there and hunt down the Phantom Blade Zero Mandate Encampment Key and complete the Phantom Blade Zero Flesh Lily quest.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

The latest Cameraman Tower Defense codes will give you free coins so you can unlock new units for your next game even faster. Sure, you'll earn plenty of coins while your cameramen and friends defend your land against hordes of invading toilets, but it can't hurt to get some bonus coins for free - especially given how long some rounds can take.

Speaking of which, you can speed up each round by joining the Aligators Games group on Roblox and by liking the game, neither of which you have to do in order to redeem Cameraman TD codes, but there's another prerequisite instead, as you'll learn below. So read on for the current promos and how to redeem them.

Plus, if you're after some more general avatar rewards to use in all of your experiences, then we've got the current Roblox promo codes covered too.

All Cameraman TD codes

These are the Cameraman Tower Defense codes available right now:

• UTTVM - 50 Coins
• PathOfHonor - 50 Coins

So far, all Cameraman Tower Defense codes have been for coins, but this is a valuable resource required to unlock new Units, so it couldn't get much better than that. Generally speaking, these promos award 50 Coins, so you only need to redeem two codes to unlock a new Unit Crate for free.

Camerman TD codes are case sensitive, so you have to make sure you enter the codes exactly as they appear above in order for them to work. If you can, it's worth copying and pasting from our list to be safe.

How to redeem Cameraman TD codes

To redeem Cameraman Tower Defense codes, you must first win three games. This won't be easy with your starting unit, but it is possible on the easiest difficulty. Once you've won three matches though, you'll be able to proceed quickly with the rewards from these promos.

Once you've won three matches, simply hit the Shop button on the left-hand side of the screen, then scroll right to the bottom where you'll find the Code redemption box. Enter a code, click Redeem, and watch your coin balance go up.

Expired Cameraman Tower Defense codes

• Battlepass - 50 Coins
• LStriderSpeaker - 50 Coins
• UTCM - 50 Coins

Cameraman TD codes seem to expire fairly quickly, so it's worth redeeming them as soon as you see them to avoid missing out. I'll move any invalid codes down here as soon as they expire, so at least you shouldn't try to redeem rewards unsuccessfully.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Now that Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is coming up, the question is what Square Enix focuses on next. Will we see more remakes, or a return to newer ideas and games? A producer on the franchise believes the latter, unless there's an opportunity to do something special.

In an interview with IGN, Yoshinori Kitase, a higher-up at Square Enix, director of Final Fantasy 7 and producer on the remake trilogy, speaks about the philosophy currently guiding the developer and publisher. "I think that mainly, we are more likely to invest in new titles and new games," he says.

"But at the same time, for example, this time with the [Final Fantasy 7] remake, there were me and other creators who worked on the original game, which we had really strong feelings towards," he adds.

Indeed, one of the strengths of this trilogy is that you have devs who were there the first time and newer creatives involved, all helping to rejuvenate the 1997 classic.

In terms of remaking any installment, 7 always seemed worthwhile. It's extremely well-regarded, but the original could be off-putting to newer players because of its slower pacing. Kitase mentions that specifically, and says Square Enix remains open to such opportunities on a case-by-case basis.

"We really wanted to create something new related to the old game to allow new users to play and to know the appeal of this game as much as the old users who play the old game," he states. "So there might be different cases like this one where the company is willing to invest in remaking old projects and other kinds of games like it happened this time."

A remake of Final Fantasy 9 was apparently happening until this past summer, when reports emerged that the project was now languishing for whatever reason. I could see 8 and 9 getting revisited some day, in a similar fashion to 7, but I suspect management wants to resist turning Final Fantasy, and the company in general, into pure nostalgia bait. In light of these comments, I imagine Final Fantasy 17 is more likely to be revealed before, say, a remake of Final Fantasy 6. Would I be too greedy to ask for both?

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation might be the biggest in the trilogy, but Remake was the hardest to make, lead says

GTA 6 is officially two weeks away – to the day, at the time of writing – and after its multiple delays, it's felt like an extremely long time coming. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick clearly stands by those decisions, though, as he seemingly implies that Cyberpunk 2077's disastrous launch is an example of why knowing when to run is a strength, not a weakness.

In a new interview with the Wall Street Journal (below), the boss of the Rockstar Games owner is asked about the game's delays and how they unfolded. While Zelnick freely admits that "these are very difficult decisions to make," he argues that when "your mission is to make the best entertainment on earth, and part of your three-part strategy is to be the most creative, sometimes you have to make these expensive and inconvenient decisions in service of that mission and goals."

Zelnick elaborates: "There are a lot of companies who have a great mission statement, a stated strategy, and a culture, but then when push comes to shove, you know, they do something that's at odds with that."

He clarifies that doesn't mean he'll "just say yes" any time someone asks him for something – in fact, he refers to another situation at Take-Two where he conversely said, "actually, we're shipping." Zelnick quickly adds: "Oh, by the way, thankfully I was right. Imagine if I'd been wrong."

However, he continues, folks often forget, "what happens when people take the other approach? The other approach being, 'we're slavishly devoted to a schedule, and we're just going to ship despite what is going on.'

"I'm not going to throw any competitors under the bus, but if you know anything about the video game business, in the past few years, there was a very high-profile release that fell into this category, and they shipped, and they had to pull the title after shipping."

While he doesn't name it, it sounds like Zelnick is referring to Cyberpunk 2077. Barely a week after its notoriously buggy launch, which was especially disappointing after years of hype, CD Projekt Red opted to temporarily pull it from the PlayStation Store and offered refunds to folks who'd already spent their money on it.

Obviously, The Witcher studio eventually managed to turn things around for Cyberpunk, and many updates later, it's been very successful and is widely celebrated as a fantastic RPG, but the shadow of its extremely rocky release is ultimately always going to loom over it to some extent.

13 full years since the launch of GTA 5, neither Rockstar Games nor its owner, Take-Two, would have wanted a similar outcome for GTA 6 – a game that's got expectations so high I'm personally wondering if it'll actually be able to meet them for fans, even if it ends up being a 10/10 release. But holding back the release until everyone is confident that it's actually ready is a good start and will hopefully leave Rockstar in the best position it can be come November 19.

GTA 6's weather will rock your boat, damage your plane, and send Vice City denizens seeking shelter.

Marvel's Wolverine has had a shaky debut, to say the least, having already stood as Insomniac's worst-reviewed game in years on Metacritic in September – so it's not all that surprising that it isn't selling too well, either.

Or, at least, not as well as other Marvel superhero games. New financial results from Sony prove as much, showing that the Wolverine-inspired title has sold just 2.4 million copies in the few months since its release.

That might sound like a solid number right off the bat, but it's not all that great when you compare it to, for example, Marvel's Spider-Man, which mustered up more sales in far fewer days.

A quick look at our trusty ol' PlayStation 2018 Year in Review highlights how the older game saw a whopping 3.3 million sales in just three days. And, as a post over on X points out, this number rose quickly to nine million copies within the first 90 days – so, the same time that we've now seen between Marvel's Wolverine launching and its newly reported 2.4 million figure.

In other words, from a sales point of view, it's alright but not great.

Our own Marvel's Wolverine review outlines why the game "lacks the depth, nuance, and variety you'd expect" of an Insomniac title, with an overly messy story, boring combat, and "inconsistent features."

Others have evidently felt the same, actually prompting the developers to respond to all of the negative feedback shortly after release. Folks complained about everything from how the game "plays itself" to its janky physics.

Interestingly, however, it hasn't all been doom and gloom. Marvel's Wolverine actually beat NBA 2K27 as a PlayStation 5 top-seller in the US and Europe despite the mixed reviews – but it's clear that's not enough to boost it too high re: overall sales.

Marvel's Wolverine star Debra Wilson isn't sure why Insomniac used her likeness for Callisto: "I honestly love games where they don't look like me at all"

A new survey from research firm Newzoo, "supported" by G2A, found that physical games represent upwards of 11% of games played by dedicated gamers, or even 30% of console games owned.

"Physical formats remain part of this landscape, despite predictions of their demise," writes Newzoo research director Alexis Pamboris.

The report collected responses from just over 6,000 "premium gamers" spread evenly across six markets: the US, UK, Germany, Poland, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia. The fieldwork period defined is August 2026, which would notably be some time after Sony announced that it will end support for new physical games in January 2028.

The "premium gamer" group is defined as people "aged 18-55 who play on PC or a Gen 9 console at least monthly," and have played AA or AAA titles in the last year that were purchased or played through a paid subscription like PlayStation Plus or Xbox Game Pass. The average premium gamer, it turns out, plays about 13.3 games a year.

Among many other things, the report looks at how these games were accessed. 43% were owned, 19% were accessed via subscription, and 38% were free-to-play games.

In total, 11% of the games played by these 6,000 gamers were physical. However, if you only look at the 43% of owned games – that is, games people paid for individually – the physical component is just over 25.5%.

Console-only gamers reported 14% physical for total ownership against 32% digital ownership. Again looking purely at the ownership split and ignoring subscription and free-to-play, physical copies represent 30.4% of the paid-for console games played in this survey period.

"While this seems high, many of them were older releases and some will have been bought on disc or as a code in a box. Cartridges also remain common on Nintendo Switch," the survey says of the 11% base physical figure.

The focus on games played and owned, not just new games purchased, also helps explain why PC-only gamers reported 6% physical ownership, which is likely explained by the enthusiast retro market. GOG may have something to say about that niche.

Physical ownership is also slightly higher than the base in specific markets. The US and UK clock in at 12% physical total – or 27.9% and 26.6%, respectively, looking only at physical and digital games owned.

Free-to-play games are the largest single market, to no one's surprise, averaging 38% across all markets and platforms.

"The older group is slightly likelier to have bought games than use a subscription, as well as play games from physical media," the report explains.

This leads nicely to why people said they buy physical games. Digital ownership is skewed toward convenience – instant access, a portable library, digital discounts, and digital-only games – but physical game buyers more equally specified a few reasons.

Reasons to buy physical games were "less nuanced" among people who owned less than 75% of their games digitally (again, that physical chunk brings us close to that 25 - 30% ownership figure). These reasons included (in descending order of weight):

• "Play without a stable internet connection"
• "I want to feel I own something physical"
• "Save storage space on my device"
• "For reselling, trading, or lending"
• "For special editions, box art, or other extras"
• "To display my collection of games"
• "In case games are removed, altered or restricted"
• "To buy pre-owned games at lower prices"
• "Avoid large downloads/installation times"
• "Play without a digital account/platform access"
• "Access to deals or retailer-specific pricing"
• "Earn store credit or loyalty points"
• "I can buy games in shops on shopping trips"

Sony's decision to walk away from physical games stoked fierce divide across the industry. Creators like Hideo Kojima are "really sad" to see discs phased out, and Kenzo Saruhashi, head honcho at JRPG house NIS, reckons Sony is "hearing the feedback from customers" amid still-burning backlash.

Like many executives, original PlayStation creator Ken Kutaragi backs the company's decision to end discs, calling the backlash a "mentality issue" and arguing discs aren't "economically reasonable."

However, while it may immediately cut costs or increase per-unit profit, some analysts worry the end of discs may also push younger or casual players further into mobile, free-to-play, and PC, which are already eating a larger share of what used to be a very console-flavored pie.

PlayStation is ditching a $402 million market and destroying consumer "freedoms" by abandoning physical games, says major UK retail association

Adding to discussion of Valve's handling of Steam's growing gen AI problem, Epic Games online services product director Alexander Rehm suggests the company's solutions to clone and slop games aren't enough for most people.

Rehm waded into the news on LinkedIn last week, just days before Valve announced a change to Steam's review process in response to a deluge of games evidently fueled, in part, by generative AI. However, this won't necessarily change the outpouring of slop on Steam, as Valve says it doesn't want to dictate what "tools" developers use even if Steam does call for AI disclosures in game store pages. In fact, the idea was to speed up the review process while also enacting new requirements.

At a recent event, Valve business team members affirmed that the company is still working to solve this problem and suggested developers focus on maintaining original, high-quality games that are difficult to clone.

Rehm says this "is a reasonable strategy if you've got the runway and team to do it, and not much use if you're one or two people who shipped a single clever mechanic." This camp, of course, is where a lot of the developers on Steam fall.

The same Valve staff also fielded reports of developers being extorted by AI users who'd threaten to clone a game unless paid off. "Valve also said it hasn't seen reports of developers being extorted over AI clones and that this is a job for law enforcement, not the storefront, which to me reads like a platform that still sees this as someone else's problem," Rehm says.

"If you're building anything indie sized right now, 'keep improving forever' isn't a moat, it's a tax only the well funded can pay," he concludes.

Rehm makes some of the counterarguments that Valve's response initially prompted. How long can Valve kick the can down the road? When will material solutions arrive? How can the creators of hotly anticipated games deal with copycats beating them to launch with identical or near-identical titles? Valve has, as evidenced by its review slowdown, not found the perfect answer, and this process deserves scrutiny.

The sticking point here is Epic Games' glass house, as some responses to Rehm's post argue. In the replies, you'll find former Valve dev Chet Faliszek, who reckons Epic Games, with its AI-first pivot, once AI-mandatory game jam, and "vibe coded" game launcher, doesn't really have a leg to stand on.

"What an absolutely dishonest read of mixing an off the cuff response in a Q&A with a written statement so you can say they see it as someone else's problem and that they aren't addressing it," Faliszek responds. "I love how you make sure to not to link to either... All the while Tim [Sweeney] screams it is a political act the same as revealing someone's voting record to have an AI disclosure... so explain - how does that work?"

Sweeney has repeatedly criticized Valve for Steam's AI disclosures, which aren't mirrored on the Epic Games Store even though Epic's Fab marketplace does mandate AI disclosures.

"This is a business to business marketplace," Sweeney says of Fab in an October tweet. "Many Fab customers are operating under contracts that require them to understand the providence of all content in their game (including Steam’s own contract that I’ve complained about) and they cannot buy assets without this info."

The CEO has also emphasized the gen AI features of Epic's Unreal Engine 6 – a game-making suite that, one video game lawyer told GamesRadar+, risks legal blowback by ignoring copycat potential.

Separately, Sweeney writes, "What does the law say on the copyright issues associated with training on content? The Anthropic court ruling found they were liable for copyright infringement when torrenting pirated content (as the article quotes me on), but they found that the training itself was fair use. Other courts have found that whether particular content produced by AI was infringing dependent on its similarity to the copyrighted work."

The rush to turn Fortnite into Roblox by way of Unreal Engine integration also calls into question how Epic Games would control a slop flood. Chalmers Robotics Society chairman Maximilian Ygdell tells Rehm, "Epic was fine with using AI trained on others' work, now the same technology is used to empower the people and suddenly it’s an issue? Am I missing something here?"

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney suggests AI could've saved Destiny 2 and will "enable games like Destiny to thrive!"

Union workers at Arkane Studios claim owner Microsoft has sabotaged the development of its Marvel's Blade game and used the resulting costs and delays as justification to close the studio.

A scathing new letter from the Syndicat des Travailleureuses du Jeu Vidéo (STJV) video game union worries "Arkane Studios might close without having ever seen failure." (Microsoft previously closed US dev Arkane Austin following the failure of Redfall, a live service game that the single-player-focused studio was evidently saddled with under Xbox leadership.)

"Our studio might get closed because, and only because, Microsoft decided to, even if that means sabotaging the game it funded," the union claims.

"Microsoft chose to close Arkane," the letter adds. "Microsoft chose to justify the closure on economic reasons. But Microsoft is actually why those economic reasons even exist. Because after freezing hiring for 19 months, which artificially caused delay and additional cost, Microsoft now use those same delay and additional cost as a reason to close down the studio."

The union claims Arkane is understaffed, underfunded, and unfairly assessed, and calls "the resources provided in the redundancy plan" proposed "outrageously low." The union is demanding employee representation and a say "in the discussion to choose a potential buyer," as well as "a protection fund for employees on the level of the PSE compensation in case workers get fired for economic reasons."

If Arkane does close, the union demands employee compensation "commensurate with Microsoft’s status as a corporation," which it tallies at "a redundancy payment of 200K€, two years’ redeployment support funded by Microsoft," and "shared resources for training and studio creation, with a residual bonus to enable all employees to look to the future with confidence."

The letter calls supporting Arkane staff the bare minimum that Microsoft can do "with a net profit of more than 133 [billion] dollars in the past years." In its latest quarterly report, Microsoft reported $36.6 billion in net income, an increase of 32% on a GAAP basis.

"Arkane cash pool is always low as any remaining cash is systematically funneled to the group through a cash pooling mechanic," the letter continues. Additionally, the union seems to say the books are stacked against them, arguing that Arkane's previous games, "which combined have sold [tens] of millions, aren't anywhere to be found in the company results."

"Arkane is profitable. Just not profitable enough for Microsoft," the union says. "So indeed, Microsoft is responsible for the situation Arkane is in today. Microsoft is responsible for the situation the workers are in today. So Microsoft has to take full responsibility here and act accordingly."

Importantly, the union also claims that "closing Arkane today would probably be more expensive than finishing the game." On top of closing costs, this is surely a nod to the added costs associated with France's strong labor laws. "Fortunately, French law gives Arkane Studios the opportunity to find a buyer," the letter notes.

The letter also indicates that Blade is close to completion, which aligns with some previous reports.

"Today, as work on Blade is going fine, and that the level of quality of the game to be expected is on par with what Arkane has accustomed its players [to], workers have to face the harsh reality," the union says.

"We want to finish Blade and release it to the players, as well as the many games the future holds for Arkane. This is our dearest wish. But let’s not deny what we know is [real]: we want a future for the studio that goes beyond Blade, not to continue no matter what the cost may be for the workers."

The letter reiterates that Arkane will have no choice but to close if no buyer can be found, cutting loose 217 employees. I've reached out to Microsoft for comment.

Just yesterday, it was reported that Ubisoft is among at least three companies that have bid on the studio. As the STJV notes here, the deadline to find a buyer was extended by one month by Microsoft – an extension which, the union says, came "after we warned the press about the situation."

Xbox says "two separate agreements" to save Hellblade developer Ninja Theory have fallen through

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.

Criminal Simulator codes can help you to start climbing the rungs of the underworld ladder, as you stalk the city at night with up to three friends in search of your next big score. Sneak your way past residents as you burgle their houses, then escape from the police and their dogs so you can fence your stolen loot in time.

The promos released so far provide some cold hard cash to get you up and running, along with access to God Mode – though many of the codes have expired rather quickly, so you'll need to act fast if you want to become invincible in this law-breaking Roblox experience. If you're ready to start thieving, then here are the codes for Criminal Simulator and how to redeem them.

If you're looking for some more general promos with avatar rewards that apply to all of your experiences, check out the latest Roblox promo codes.

All Criminal Simulator codes

The following Criminal Simulator codes can be claimed in-game:

• CITY – $1,000 new!
• POLICE – $1,500

There are currently a couple of active codes for Criminal Simulator, which provide you with a decent amount of cash to get started. Previous promos have had a limited number of uses before they expire, so grab any active codes as soon as you see them.

How to redeem Criminal Simulator codes

It couldn't be simpler to redeem Criminal Simulator codes, as you just have to hit the CODES button in the top right corner of the screen, then type a promo into the Enter code text box that appears and press the REDEEM button. Codes for Criminal Simulator are not case-sensitive, and you don't need to join the group to use them – though if you do join and verify through the menu you'll receive a $500 bonus.

Expired Criminal Simulator codes

• 10MVISITS – $3500 (150 uses only)
• 30KLIKES – 1x Free God Mode (100 uses only)
• PIGGY – 1x Free God Mode (150 uses only)
• GOD – 1x Free God Mode (50 uses only)

There are already a number of expired Criminal Simulator codes, due to some promos only having a limited amount of uses available before they run out. Keep an eye out for new codes as they're announced, and make sure you've claimed any that are currently active.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

After eight long years of silence, Bethesda finally lifted the veil on The Elder Scrolls 6 and its official title, Sentinel, yesterday – which, of course, means that fans are running wild online with theories about the studio's next RPG.

We know a few things about the game already (or, well, there are a few things we can assume after seeing Bethesda's new teaser). First, there's the setting: Sentinel. In other words, the oh-so long-theorized Hammerfell. Then, there's the potential time period.

The new teaser includes a quote from Yazar, Moth Priest of High Queen Iradne of Hammerfell, in 4E 206 – that's just five years after the events of Skyrim.

The quote itself? "The scroll offered only a shimmer, a veil thinly lifted to my eyes. A future lost. A victory undone. Sands of time scattered by fate."

Everything in between remains a mystery, however – a mystery that fans have taken to like flies. Over on Reddit, for example, folks have spotted Bethesda's official Spanish social media accounts alluding to "sailing," and are asking, "Did this Bethesda page just confirm sailing in the game?"

Others shoot this theory down, saying it can translate to a less literal meaning of "set sail" – as in, starting your adventure rather than literally sailing.

Over on X, fans are suggesting that we'll see NPCs from Skyrim in Sentinel since the possible times align so closely, like Erik the Slayer. After all, he mentions traveling to Hammerfell to "see what work I can get there."

Hammerfell is, evidently, where The Elder Scrolls 6 will take us.

There's more, too. While most of the teaser consists of sand and a glimpse of an Elder Scroll, the "rings" surrounding the Sentinel logo seem important – and, unsurprisingly, are reminding fans of Elden Ring in the process.

A separate post showcases as much, with its creator stating the rings have to "hold some significance," but "it's so vague it's hard to know where to start to connect the dots." One response suggests the Eye of Magnus.

Another simply leaves a screenshot of the Elden Ring logo, which, of course, features its own set of rings. The Eye of Magnus theory holds pretty well, though, if you ask me – it's even spurred a different thread comparing the artifact's pattern to the rings surrounding Sentinel… and, yeah, they look similar enough.

What could that mean? Some Psijic Order shenanigans? It's all up in the air until we get more word from Bethesda, sadly.

And, uh, that could be literally whenever. The Elder Scrolls 6 is reportedly targeting a 2029 release, apparently, which is a good 18 years after Skyrim and 11 years after Bethesda first unveiled its sixth Elder Scrolls RPG at E3 in 2018.

Sigh.

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

God of War Laufey, the next entry in Sony Santa Monica's Norse series, has been delayed.

In a tweet, developer Sony Santa Monica announces that God of War Laufey will no longer release on February 17 as originally planned. Instead, it'll come out about three months later on May 20, 2027. As usual with big-budget releases, the reasoning is vague, but it sounds like the game just needs a little more time in the oven.

"Since the reveal of God of War Laufey in June, we've been deeply grateful to see so much excitement for Faye's journey through the Everywhen," Sony Santa Monica says. "We don't take for granted the trust placed in the studio to make an extraordinary experience worthy of the passion and dedication of our fans ... "We will make the most of each moment until then by putting in the finishing touches and pushing the game to its fullest potential."

God of War Laufey, a PS5 exclusive, marks a major shift in the series that started with 2018's God of War and continued in 2022 with God of War Ragnarok. Up until now, we've been playing as the God of War himself, Kratos, and his son, Atreus, but in God of War Laufey you'll take control of Kratos's late wife and Atreus's mother, Faye, as she navigates the brutal world of fallen gods in the afterlife.

Gameplay-wise, the action looks much faster-paced, with jumpier, spinnier, more acrobatic animations. Laufey actor Deborah Ann Woll has described the character's combat as "spinning and whipping and flipping, and it's in the air, and we can show that there are so many ways to be a warrior."

God of War Laufey proves women are still gaining ground in gaming, and I'm thrilled Kratos is sitting this one out

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.

The Phantom Blade Zero Village of Lu Cellar Key isn’t anywhere near the cellar itself, and can be quite easily missed if you don't explore the smuggler's tunnel thoroughly enough. That's because getting this cellar key relies on you finding and using a different key in the tunnel first. So, to help you find the Village of Lu Cellar Key without issue, I've explained everything you need to know below.

Phantom Blade Zero Village of Lu Cellar Key location

The Village of Lu Cellar Key is found in the smuggler's tunnel that leads out of the village and into Pangzhen – unlike the Phantom Blade Zero Mandate Encampment Key, this key is at least found in the same region as the door it unlocks. You'll enter this tunnel towards the end of the Village of Lu's main quest, but there's a lot to do before you get the key itself.

Here's how you get the Village of Lu Cellar Key specifically after you have beaten Mu Xiaokui, the Iron Fiend, and the Jade Dancer, and have used the puppet eye to open the door ahead of the Puppet Testing Ground Bell:

1. Go down the newly revealed route and, when you get to the fork in the path, go straight ahead into the large room with lots of red candles and red ropes suspending puppet parts.
2. Kill the shield-bearing puppet in this room to remove the thread barrier that blocks the other path you'll be using later.
3. Look at the nook to the left of where you entered this room from and grab the Tunnel Cage Key off the table.

4. Go back the way you came to the fork in the path and go right, then keep going until you find the Trapped Thief in a prison cell.
5. Interact with the cell door to open it with the Tunnel Cage Key. You'll automatically start talking to the Trapped Thief who will then give you the Village of Lu Cellar Key.

Now that you've got the cellar key, you can fast travel to the Smuggler's Treasure Cellar Bell and open the cellar. Inside you'll find the Remnant Spark Cage Accessory, lots of Solvent, and two chests offering Remnant Dust, upgrade materials, and talismans. It's not the greatest hoard, but it's better than nothing – just watch out for the puppet warrior inside.

Now you can head to Pangzhen where you can wrap up several side quests and get some useful items. You can finish off the Phantom Blade Zero Flesh Lily and Phantom Blade Zero Four Fierce Axes quests, and get the Phantom Blade Zero Flaming Mane Phantom Edge.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

The first Crimson Desert DLC, Charting the Unknown, is here, and it's causing a stir. As reviews are published, a lead developer on Palworld is defending the fantasy sandbox, arguing that people continually underrate the game.

"Crimson Desert is one of the most technically ambitious games we’ve seen in the last decade, but because it isn’t another linear narrative RPG with the illusion of freedom, it just keeps getting underrated," John 'Bucky' Buckley, head of publishing and communications at Pocketpair, writes on Twitter.

"The technical wizardry that goes into making a game this mechanically massive is insane," he continues. "You don’t have to like every part of it, but surely the sheer ambition deserves some recognition?"

He calls this reflex "frustrating" and believes it's emblematic of a cultural trend in which people appear to want more creativity, but then "we turn around and reward the same safe, conventional AAA games over and over and over and over," in his mind.

"Crimson Desert isn’t perfect, but I’d much rather see developers attempt something genuinely ambitious and occasionally fall short than just keep making the same games we’ve been playing for the last 15 years," he adds.

He got into the subject by quote-tweeting a slightly middling review of the DLC, but in the comments he mentions he finds this to be a wider issue. "There’s endless tweets moaning about Crimson Desert all over the timeline this week," he says.

Steam reviews for Charting the Unknown aren't wholly positive. Right now, the DLC has a score of 72%, with criticisms that "none of it feels finished" and it all "needs a ton more work."

Crimson Desert is a strong piece of work, but given the sales and community, I'm not sure it's really getting undersold in any forum. That said, The Game Awards are coming up, and if it's not nominated for Game of the Year, I imagine this conversation will stir back up with even more vitriol.

Crimson Desert players are sharing their best money-making grinds after the new DLC added a ship that costs more than Kliff's soul

GamesRadar+ Replay is a show made by you, collecting together all the amazing clips you send in. From lethal Arc Raider selfies to a killer fire hydrant in GTA, I've gathered together the best bits from October to showcase the funniest, strangest and most amazing things that have happened to you in the last month.

Elsewhere in Round Up #8 there's Battlefield 6 looking the cutest it's ever been, a killer truck on the hunt for helicopters in Wardogs, a Stalker 2 clip that's quiet literally flying, a horrific monster in Gears of War E-Day you won't have seen before, as well as Control, Dune Awakening, Galactic Racers and more.

If you want to submit your own clips and get involved then there's a big orange button below that will let you do just that. There are £/$250 Amazon Vouchers to be won each month for the best videos and you can send in any clips for any game, doing anything as long as it's attention grabbing or memorable in some way.

By submitting your clip, you agree to the Terms and Conditions.

If you need a helping hand, here's how to record gameplay on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, and Switch/Switch 2 to save your highlights.

Now let's take a look at the latest Replay clips:

The Phantom Blade Zero Mandate Encampment Key can be found deep within Pangzhen, which means you've got to play for several more hours from the Village of Lu to find it. Thankfully, the key is very obvious, and you'll find it while working on a main quest in Pangzhen. So, with this being more of an exercise in patience, I've detailed what you need to do to find the Mandate Encampment Key below.

Phantom Blade Zero Mandate Encampment Key location

Here's how you get the Mandate Encampment Outer Gate Key in Phantom Blade Zero from the Village of Lu:

1. Progress through the entire main quest through the Village of Lu and you'll eventually reach Pangzhen.
2. Follow the main quests through Pangzhen until you reach the Backstreets area. Proceed until you reach the Pond of Fading Song Bell.
3. Kill Gu Wanyue, The Wailing Wraith – the boss just beyond this bell who guards a well.
4. Go down the well and follow the linear tunnel. You'll eventually enter a large storeroom cavern.
5. Collect the Mandate Encampment key near the dead body near a pile of discarded crates at the far end of the cavern.

With the Mandate Encampment Key in hand, you can fast travel back to the Village of Lu and open the outer gate to the Mandate Encampment, which is an entirely separate region to explore. Or you can of course just carry on going through Pangzhen as there's still lots more to find.

With Pangzhen being such a crucial location in Phantom Blade Zero, there are a ton of quests that converge there, such as Phantom Blade Zero Flesh Lily and Phantom Blade Zero Four Fierce Axes. It's also where you can get the Phantom Blade Zero Flaming Mane weapon to burn down certain obstructions.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

The best MW4 ISO Nightshade builds are largely about finding a versatile setup, which makes it a powerful option in DMZ and similarly broad encounters. At the same time, there are options to build it for smaller multiplayer maps, with a focus on ADS and mobility that allows you to quick-draw and tear through opponents. No matter which you want to know, here's how to make the best ISO Nightshade build in MW4, and what you need to know about the best attachments.

See if the ISO made it onto our list of the best MW4 guns, and what else is a strong contender for the meta.

ISO Nightshade versatile build

• Barrel: ZLR Carbon-900 Long Barrel
• Muzzle: XRK Herder 40 Tactical Silencer
• Laser: Schlager Visiv-5 Bright ADS Laser
• Underbarrel: FSS TAC90 Angled Short Grip
• Rear Grip: Demo STP-1 Tactical Grip

This is the best build for the Nightshade and one that really comes into its own in the DMZ, as it showcases a combination of control and damage. The Nightshade's great downside has always been its damage output, so for the best chance you need to turn it into a laser beam with a strong ADS, ensuring that you fire first and that you can draw a dot on the enemy's head with maximum efficiency. The only compromise here on that is the ZLR Carbon-900 Long Barrel, which boosts the damage output at the cost of that ADS power, but it's worth it.

Ultimately this is a weapon that sits in the middle of all your needs. The Demo STP-1 Tactical Grip and the FSS TAC90 are both there to improve the ADS and control of the gun, as is the Schlager laser, an attachment so good it remains a staple of the meta on pretty much any weapon you can find.

ISO Nightshade Mobility build

• Barrel: RT Outride-X 8" Light Barrel
• Muzzle: Demo Ironshade Light Silencer
• Laser: Schlager Visiv-5 Bright ADS Laser
• Stock: EXP G2-44 Tactical Stock
• Rear Grip: Demo STP-1 Tactical Grip

This multiplayer-focused build is all about ADS and firing first in every encounter, made for incredibly short-range conflict and lots of sprinting. The RT Outride-X 8" Light Barrel, the Schlager Laser and pretty much everything else are all designed to draw rapidly from a sprint and fire on the opponent, before quickly moving on. It's a very risky play, but for those who know how to maintain this pace of run-and-gun, it's an effective high-risk-high-reward strategy.

If you're interested in mastering SMGs, check out the best MW4 Vel 46 builds, or find out how to become an expert marksman with our list of the best MW4 Mosin Nagant builds.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

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."