A veteran developer who used to work at Rockstar Games thinks the massive GTA 6 leaks are no biggie because the majority of people who will inevitably buy and play the game aren't going feral over the various two-minute clips that have been spilling onto the internet.

For the past week, a hacker known online as Cyberleek has been leaking footage from GTA 6 in an effort to promote their crypto scheme and pressure Rockstar Games to protect players' digital rights, apparently. Parent company Take-Two is certainly taking the leaks seriously, but Obbe Vermeij, the technical director on games like GTA 4, says it's a "nothing burger."

"Calm down everybody," he tweets. "The leaks are a nothing burger." He explains that Rockstar has been keeping its crown jewel under wraps for "longer than other publishers" as a marketing strategy - mystery creates hype, after all - and "all that has happened is that some footage has escaped." If GTA 6 had gone through a regular marketing campaign with gameplay trailers already out in the wild, then these leaks wouldn't be revealing much in the grand scheme of things.

"90% of future players don't spend their time on the internet looking for video snippets," Vermeij goes on. "They don’t have the time and don't want spoilers. I imagine the teams are a little annoyed about it but not more than that. I was there during Hot Coffee" - the scandal involving a sex mini-game accidentally left inside GTA San Andreas. "It was a nightmare for management [Rockstar's New York offices] but didn't affect us [Rockstar North] much. The current leaks are far less consequential than [Hot Coffee] was. It looks like GTA 6 will be phenomenal and sell for the next 15 years or so. The leaks are just a tiny blip."

In a slight twist, a couple of days ago Cyberleek posted footage that implied they have an actual playable build of the game, which could complicate matters if they ever decided to dump it build online. Still, Vermeij says "it probably only runs on a devkit" since development kits have far more memory than an Xbox or PlayStation or your regular PCs: "There probably isn't a build in existence that would run on a retail PS5 at the moment."

GTA 6 and Red Dead Redemption 2 are "the north stars of gaming," says Gamescom chief, but they won't last forever because "most gamers aren't only interested in a single game"

As it swaggered onto consoles in 2011, LA Noire did so on a red carpet laid down by Tinseltown itself. This was a game that wanted to be a movie star, with a glamorous cinematic ambition that held a mirror up to its Hollywood setting. Seven years in the making, Rockstar's detective drama was one of the most expensive games ever created, with investment enough to fund a modest movie, and with a cast of 400 actors, every nuance of whose performances were captured by 32 cameras via the same MotionScan technology used in Avatar and The Lord of the Rings. It was as close to a movie as any video game had ever come.

The pitch was LA Confidential meets Grand Theft Auto. 'Proper' actors were cast, many of them stars of Mad Men – most notably, Aaron Staton playing protagonist Cole Phelps. Actors' performances were integral to the game's interrogation mechanic: every one, no matter how small, designed to be relatable, believable, unbelievable, as only humans can be. This headline feature relies on the player being able to tell a liar from, to paraphrase Christopher Walken's chilling mafioso in True Romance, 'pantomimes' of unwitting facial movements and nervous ticks. In theory, so realistic are the faces in LA Noire that it should be possible to spot the difference between a fibbing toerag and an honest John just by observing the actor's performance. In reality, despite all the expensive MotionScan tech behind it, it was often impossible to tell a guilty smirk from a Mona Lisa smile.

Stick 'em up

The mo-scanned interrogations were its headline feature, but the crime scene investigations that form the basis of each case are the superior element. These moments of almost plodding police work are framed in an intelligently designed detective metagame that doesn't rely on supernatural senses or a Bat-cowl, but instead involves getting your hands dirty with tactile forensic examination. Phelps is directed around each crime scene by musical cues, woven into the soundtrack, to potential clues. Picking up an item and manipulating it wasn't entirely new, but was given greater significance than simply turning a box the right way up in order to open it and reveal its contents, as in the Resident Evil games. The camera zooms in on a significant detail as Phelps rotates an item, providing a real sense of discovery as you turn up a vital lead.

Conversely, each scene is filled with pointless incidental junk that has no bearing on the case, but the thoroughness of leaving no stone unturned adds a banal counterpoint to the revelatory police work. It's ironic that something so relatively rote works so much better than the experimental, expensive idea that was meant to be the wind beneath LA Noire's wings.

Clues found here form the basis of interrogations. Suspects' faces mug, squint, and sneer exaggeratedly. Stare at them for long enough, though, and it becomes harder to tell whether that look to the left is because they're guilty or they're just thinking about what's for tea. As over-the-top as some of them are – often hilariously so – the subtleties of those digitised performances are often lost, and further muddled by confusing options.

During development, the original Truth, Doubt and Lie options had been tested as Coax, Force and Accuse, and in the 2017 remaster these became the similar Good Cop, Bad Cop, and Accuse, supposedly making them more context-appropriate. Bad Cop is certainly more apt than Doubt, since it is intended to aggressively uncover further lines of questioning.

However, it often seems overly harsh – especially when you have no real reason to doubt a suspect's answer. An accusation will fall flat if you don't have evidence to back it up, yet Good Cop can also confusingly be the correct choice amid a litany of brazen lies. A suspect may appear to squint nervously or bite their lip, but while this is meant to indicate they are not telling the whole truth, it doesn't exactly frame them for anything unlawful either.

Get any of your choices wrong – which is unfortunately often – and a downbeat musical motif plays while the camera cuts to Phelps' perplexed face. It's an unforgiving system that leaves you short-stacked for solving the case, making save-scumming tempting.

Theoretically, if you've managed to gather every clue and chase down every lead, your notebook will be a cornucopia of evidence guaranteed to have your perp rolling his eyes. And, after a good hour or more of playing a particular case, that final interrogation at police HQ should form a powerful denouement to Phelps' solid, unwavering detective grind. And it does – when it makes sense.

In one case, Phelps is chasing a serial killer and under our grilling, a hobo admits to being a murderer. Yet when we Accuse, and present the bloodied rope we found in his possession (a sure match for our victim's strangulation marks), we've somehow called it wrong. In service of the narrative, we've solved the case because the hobo is found guilty, but our own police work now seems flawed, our time spent on the case made moot. It tells us something that even the game's star struggled to make the right choices. Staton revealed that when he finally got to play the game he'd read 5,000 pages of a script for, he was at no advantage when it came to sweating a confession out of a suspect. "I was actually really terrible at the game," he told GQ in 2017. "I sat down with my wife and played it, and she said, 'I can't believe you're not better at this.'"

Wise Guy

For all that, LA Noire still perfectly captures the tone of a gritty noir detective drama thanks to its on-point script and those excellent crime scene investigations. Even the interrogation mechanic, for all its flaws, is a clever conceit that if nothing else succeeds in putting you directly into Phelps' wingtips and making you think like a real detective might. As a result, LA Noire feels quite unlike any game before or since.

Yet there are so many superfluous elements borrowed from other games that it feels as though the developer wasn't particularly confident in the game's identity. A painstaking reproduction of 1940s LA covers eight square miles – bigger than GTA 5's Liberty City. It's just populated enough to keep the illusion intact while you're driving through it, but it's almost entirely devoid of things to do, and most crimes and locations in the main story are within a few blocks of each other.

To give the developers the benefit of the doubt, perhaps this was a deliberate way of keeping players immersed in the real grind of police work, designed to avoid drawing comparisons with the faster pace of GTA's vehicular mayhem. Aping GTA though, different models of car are available to drive (95 period-correct automobiles, in fact). A lovely detail, if a little pointless, since 'dispatch call' sidemissions can only be answered in police cars, while a luxurious licensed soundtrack of era-appropriate artists such as Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee is drowned out when your siren's blaring.

There are collectibles, but these exist purely to reinforce the idea of LA Noire as an open-world game. It isn't, or at least it doesn't need to be, and these extraneous moments break the pace of the story.

In truth, it's a game that's simply big for the hell of it. But aside from pandering to 2011's expectations of video games, LA Noire felt a few years ahead of its time – or perhaps it's more accurate to say it was slightly at odds with its medium. The facial performances were exaggerated to signpost the way, and where movies intentionally play on the subjectivity of emotions, LA Noire's interrogation mechanic was too subtle (not to mention inaccurate) for players more used to glowing objectives and directional arrows.

As increasing graphic fidelity begins to offer more photorealism, LA Noire's interrogations could present a different proposition. Imagine what it might look like on next-gen consoles, or if the idea of using MotionScan and hundreds of actors had caught on. What if every NPC you meet was given that expressiveness, motivation and level of performance capture, stunningly rendered with next-gen visuals? We'd probably never even think about pointing a weapon at anyone again. And that's exactly the point: games and movies are never meant to be sympatico. Games need that separation from reality because they are intended to present an interactive fantasy.

Still, for the briefest moment only, the MotionScan performance capture provided a glimpse of a future in which videogames could be afforded the same level of artistic credibility as movies. One in which the two industries would tap-dance down Hollywood Boulevard together as games provided credible and lucrative work for actors of any stature, whose performances would be believably and realistically rendered.

The game even premiered at New York's Tribeca Film Festival to sold-out audiences, where writer and director Brendan McNamara said he hoped the game would be a "watershed moment", not least in terms of attracting a bigger audience to gaming. Indeed, the game's success suggested audiences' tastes could be sophisticated enough for a thoughtful, period-set detective game that might usher in a new age of gaming chic. Yet it spawned neither imitators nor a craze for detective games; nor did it lead to Robert De Niro lending his shrugs to a Godfather game or John Leguizamo getting motion-scanned for the next Luigi's Mansion.

Instead LA Noire remains a one-off curiosity, a lavish experiential experiment, and its star seems destined to fade like Norma Desmond's in classic Hollywood noir movie Sunset Boulevard; fondly remembered but from a bygone, almost golden age.

This L.A. Noire retrospective was first published in issue 349 of Edge Magazine. To get more like this delivered straight to your doorstep (or digital device) consider subscribing to Edge.

GTA 6 currently feels like such a juggernaut that the entire industry is bracing for its impact, but the head of one of the world's biggest gaming events says he's not worried that Rockstar won't be at his show.

Speaking to GamesRadar+, Stefan Heikhaus, brand director at Gamescom, acknowledged that "games like GTA or other big releases over the last couple of years [...] are extremely important. For the game industry, they are the North Stars."

But GTA 6 won't be at Gamescom - in fact, Rockstar is directly competing with the event in Germany, with the GTA 6 Extended Look dropping on Netflix the evening before the show kicks off in earnest.

For Tim Endres, Gamescom director, it would be nice if those two things were happening in tandem - "of course we're always happy when everything happens at Gamescom," he says. But both he and Heikhaus are more focused on the hundreds of games that will be at the show.

At "events like Gamescom," Heikhaus says, "not only can you experience one game, but thousands of games, or at least hundreds. And this is the important difference. Of course, GTA will take some visibility and awareness from the digital Gamescom. But I believe that quickly, people will come back to Gamescom once they have seen the GTA content, because there are so many things, so many world premieres, so much new stuff to see, to experience. Hundreds of studios and companies."

Crucially, he points out, "there are not many gamers who have only focused on one single game. Most of them are interested in a lot of different games."

GTA 6 might be a tentpole release, but it can only hold players' attention for so long before something else comes along to challenge for it instead. Gamescom's continued growth - now at 1,600 exhibitors and counting - is evidence of that, and Heikhaus says "the indie scene has grown dramatically in the last 15 years."

It's not always easy to find an audience in that growing scene, especially not with massive releases like GTA 6 threatening to suck the air out of the room, but Heikhaus and Endres want Gamescom to be a platform for all kinds of games, whether or not they're made by Rockstar.

GTA 6 leaks go from bad to worse for Rockstar as new footage suggests leaker has access to a playable build.

Despite Take-Two and Rockstar Games' best efforts, the GTA 6 leaks aren't dying down. In fact, the hacker known online as Cyberleek is now teasing footage of the open-world game's strip clubs.

Parent company Take-Two isn't exactly having the best week - the plumbing that contains GTA 6 has been dripping for days, which is far from ideal considering the game's Extended Look special was supposed to give Netflix the world-first exclusive at the end of the month.

Cyberleek has already shown the world the full Leonidas map and what seems to be near-final gameplay of the game itself. The inclusion of Tate McRae's Sports Car, a pop song that came out in early 2025, is probably an indication that whatever build Cyberleek has access to isn't years and years old.

And, now, the hacker has spilled more footage onto the interweb. The fresh gameplay clips that are traveling faster than Take-Two can DMCA them reportedly show more of what you'd expect from a Grand Theft Auto game - fast cars, cop chases, shop robberies, etc - but it apparently ends with footage teasing GTA 6's new strip clubs, a carrot I'm sure Rockstar would prefer to dangle over players' noses instead. No doubt a move to have fans shower the anonymous group's crypto scheme with more cash.

This weekend's footage comes despite Take-Two's moves to put a lid on the leaks. The company recently filed subpoenas asking Discord and Microsoft to help it catch whoever's behind the massive leaks. Take-Two is essentially trying to "obtain the identity of an alleged infringer or infringers" using the backend data it can get its hands on. At the very least, Xbox is trying to help Rockstar.

Still, GTA 6: An Extended Look goes live next week on August 27 with the full game coming on November 19. How much of the game the internet will have seen before that date is anyone's guess.

GTA 6 leaker Cyberleek is now charging a $165,000 fee for a chance to buy ad space on additional leaks

I haven't played flash player horror games for 15 years, but I think about Hotel 626 often. The live-action horror walking sim was only accessible in your web browser between six PM and six AM – from six to six, if you will – and it was the coolest thing 13-year-old me had ever seen.

Hotel 626 "hacked" your webcam to snap pictures of your face during its most terrifying jumpscares. It sent cryptic texts to your mobile phone. If supplied with your landline number, it would call your house in the dead of night. The browser game was a school-wide phenomenon, dominating hallway chit-chat for weeks, which is strange considering Hotel 626 was actually a Doritos ad.

Commemorating nacho chip flavors being brought "back from the dead" for Halloween 2008, a sneaky logo on the endgame splash page was the only indication that the whole thing was a marketing campaign by US ad agency Wolfgang LA. Somehow, that knowledge only made Hotel 626 cooler. I remember eating a lot of Doritos that year.

Both Hotel 626 and its sister campaign Asylum 626 are officially no more, enshrined among gaming's most ephemeral lost pieces of media since 2011. Now, only memories and a handful of Let's Plays prove it ever existed. But it was just one of many terrifying flash games that gripped young teens by their blazer lapels and drew them into one of the quirkiest, most irreplicable moments in online gaming history.

After catching up with two indie game devs making some of the most exciting upcoming horror games around, it's clear this obsession reached far beyond my secondary school. Browser horror didn't die with Adobe Flash Player; it continues to inspire developers to this day.

Tall tales

Browser games edified my earliest online gaming experiences. I got my first laptop at the (arguably too-young) age of 12 as part of my school's Macbook program. Just like all of my peers, I abused that privilege to play browser games wherever I had an internet connection – and almost all of them were horror games.

Escape from Elm Street was my home turf. Slender: The Eight Pages was the sleepover tradition me and my friends held to for years, screaming with glee each time we got caught in the pixelated forest. And Hotel 626 isn't the only clever marketing ploy I was obsessed with. 2005's Hide and Seek is the first gamified movie website I remember visiting on my grandpa's clunky MacIntosh computer, while Keep Her Awake was a particularly alarming site launched in tandem with the 2010 Nightmare on Elm Street remake that offered razor blades among the items at your disposal to keep sleep (and Freddy Krueger) at bay.

I'm convinced that every thirty-or-forty-something who had internet access in the early 2000s has one browser game experience that stayed with them. My theory is reinforced, at least in part, by Chantal Ryan and Luke Dodds.

For Ryan, creator of narrative roguelike browser-framed horror game darkwebSTREAMER, her flash player love was visual point-and-click novel Arcane: Online Mystery Serial. "It was available, I think, on the Warner Bros website, and was an incredibly well made game – hand-animated in a bizarro Don Bluth style, great voice acting and music, and a truly oppressive Victorian Gothic atmosphere. I've rarely seen dread done so well in a game," she says.

The two-game narrative adventure was in the works between 1999 and 2001 before being discontinued, to the dismay of its passionate fanbase.

It was a simple yet effective experience in terms of mechanics. "Every time you clicked the mouse, the gaze of the Lovecraftian being focused closer in on you and brought you closer to your death," explains Ryan. "You played multiple characters racing to figure out how to stop this being."

Ryan can still remember the "skin crawling on the back of my neck" as she tried in vain to solve puzzles before an unseen force ensnared the player, echoing my own experiences playing other browser games. "I remember trying to program my own flash games as a kid because I was so inspired," she goes on. "Low key, they don't make 'em like they used to."

Flash player horror had a unique physical and emotional affect, capable of chilling and thrilling with no fancy tech required. It's one of the things Luke Dodds, solo developer of Norse myth-infused "hardcore detective" horror Nowhere, appreciates about the browser game era, too.

"What I still admire about those early horror games is how much they could achieve with so little," says Dodds. "They did not need huge budgets or complex systems to be memorable. A creepy room, a sudden scare, or an unsettling visual was enough to stick with you."

But what was his personal flash player game of choice? "Exmortis is probably the big one for me. It is one of those series I can look back on and see a clear line between playing strange Flash horror games as a kid and eventually wanting to make horror games myself. I was around 10 when I played the first one, arguably too young too, so they may have definitely left an impression!"

Exmortis, and sequel Exmortis 2, are point-and-click horror games you can still play today on Newgrounds. The first strands you in the woods with no recollection of how you got there – think gritty, low-rez photorealistic graphics and an oppressively eerie atmosphere that was both a consequence and advantage of its low-budget development. "I think that early browser horror era was really formative for me. It eventually fed into my love for games like Penumbra, Slender, and Amnesia, and it just grew exponentially from there."

Lessons learned

Comparing the look and feel of Exmortis and Nowhere – which also sees the player character exploring a creepy woodland to uncover the mysteries therein – the throughline makes a lot of sense. But Ryan's inspirations for darkwebSTREAMER spiral out even further, into a realm beyond horror games – though still very much of the flash player era

"Funnily, hentai dating sim games were also a huge inspiration for me," she says of unsavory Newgrounds discoveries of a different kind. "I didn't much care for the porn – the women were generally wildly objectified and silly – but I did love the RPG-sim mechanics! Ganguro Girl is one that sticks out, a sort of ridiculous satire on Japanese ganguro culture, as being particularly well done." I really wish I could Google this one for you on my office WiFi, dear reader, but I'd best not chance it.

She riffs off some of these mechanics in darkwebSTREAMER, where you step into the pixelated desktop of an occult webstreamer in the 90s. "I think it's kind of poetic, given it's a game based around the internet," Ryan muses.

The heyday of Newgrounds, Addictinggames, and other flash player game sites was fascinating, predicating the likes of itch.io and Roblox as free-to-play, community-made PC gaming platforms. True, some can still be played in 2026, but they're such products of a specific time period that it doesn't quite feel the same.

And yet, their ghosts live on. "Flash games left an indelible imprint on me as a person and a designer," Ryan tells me of their enduring magic. "There's something to the ephemeral, often-scrappy nature of them that haunts. Games that live on the internet. Little portals to strange worlds you had to literally dial into. I'm constantly striving to capture that sort of eerily ethereal nature in my own work – something strange, surprising, sometimes rough around the edges, and feeling wholly belonging to another world."

We've hailed the AAA horror renaissance, but it owes itself to the indie horror boom

Duskfade is a new indie love letter to some classic PS2 action platformers, Kingdom Hearts included. And, now, a Kingdom Hearts modder had made the Kingdom Hearts-like even more like Kingdom Hearts.

The developers of Duskfade have been pretty open about their inspirations in the past. It's a fast-paced action game where you swing a big sort-of Keyblade and fight shadowy, sort-of Heartless enemies across bright levels, with some light RPG progression and platforming sections in between.

Heck, there's even a handful of overt Kingdom Heart references littered in the game itself - one achievement is literally called Heartless, for example. b despite all the references and influences and similarities, Duskfade is still distinct enough to be its own thing... until one modder got involved, that is.

Modder Dallin1016 recently dressed up the game's main character Zirian in the iconic red outfit that Sora wore in the first Kingdom Hearts game. The mod (here on NexusMods) also comes with the option to replace Zirian's spiky hairdo with Sora's, and another mod completes the package by replacing Zirian's legally distinct Keyblade with an actual Keyblade.

Together, the mods turn Duskfade into an even cozier throwback for fans of the Kingdom Hearts series. Squint hard enough and you might not even be able to tell the difference - the distinct lack of Donald quacking every five seconds might be a giveaway, to be fair.

Modder Dallin1016's put in a bunch of good work elsewhere, too. One work-in-progress mod adds in Wuhu Island from Wii Sports Resort, of all things, as an explorable map in Duskfade. Another of their Kingdom Hearts 3 mods calls itself the most cursed one in series' history, and I really can't argue with that. Please, just look at Jigglypuff's head transplanted onto Davy Jones' body.

Duskfade itself is pretty great with or without the mods - on Steam, the game has an 89% 'Very Positive' rating. A great appetizer before Kingdom Hearts 4 comes out next year, I reckon.

Kingdom Hearts 4 lead Tetsuya Nomura plays 4D chess, potentially drops hints his canceled Final Fantasy game could somehow connect to the next RPG

Mortal Shell 2 is playing the Soulslike hits in its first major balance patch: buffs for players, nerfs for enemies, and a shipment of quality-of-life changes.

Days after a solid launch, developer Cold Symmetry released patch notes for an update coming to PC ahead of consoles. One member of the studio posted the details to the Mortal Shell subreddit, and the patch notes are also available in the game's official Discord server.

"While we have a bigger patch in the works, which has to be thoroughly tested, we'd like to make a rapid balance & crash fix patch to bring the experience more in line with the game's open beta and our own vision for MS2," the post reads.

"Planned future updates will see extensions to popular game features such as Night Mode, Tarstones, PP Items, and more."

Mortal Shell 2's resource economy is getting some major adjustments. Glimpses, a hugely in-demand currency, are being replaced by more available Gloom as the cost to acquire the map locations of Shells. Anyone who's already spent Glimpses on Shell maps will have them refunded. I guess they have a mail carrier out there in the wastes.

"Finding your favorite Shell shouldn’t cost you the ability to bond with them," the devs say.

Gold, another staple currency, has also been tuned. "Gold drops from enemies have been significantly increased," with enemies in Mammon now dropping twice as much, Cold Symmetry says.

Additionally, smelting a weapon at the Tarforge will cost 75% less Gloom, with the devs agreeing "the Gloom costs were set exorbitantly high."

Many of the enemies and bosses that you'll use these Shells and weapons against have been nerfed, including The Lost Child and Monolith. "Some Monolith Attacks were retimed to be more fair, as well," the devs add.

Nerfed enemies include mace cultists, Caerinid spiders, halberd-wielding rusted knaves, and infested stalkers (with a whopping 52% max health reduction).

Finally, a suite of weapons and Tarstones have been buffed, with the likes of Troubador's Lute receiving 100% attack damage and Bulwark Stone's damage reduction being "increased significantly."

Players are coming out of this significantly stronger. If you found Mortal Shell 2 too hard or too limiting, this patch ought to be nothing but good news.

Mortal Shell 2 review: "The best Soulslike I've played since Elden Ring."

Arc Raiders Expeditions will be on pause until early 2027 after the upcoming fifth wipe while developer Embark Studios plans "major improvements" to the divisive system.

In a new blog post, Embark outlines changes made with the fifth Expedition. The footnote is the most important part: "The fifth Expedition will be the last one until early 2027, when Expeditions will return with major improvements, tackling some of the biggest player pain points."

Oddly enough, this means the big October 8 update, Frozen Trail, will come and go without an Expedition.

Historically, Arc Raiders has made a bad habit of putting out new content right before an Expedition window, meaning players planning to wipe and prestige their raiders can't really engage with the new rewards until after the Expedition concludes.

Skipping Expeditions altogether solves that problem quite tidily for Frozen Trail, but it does also remove a cog from the endgame loop. Of course, if you never bother with Expeditions, this doesn't annoy you one bit. Here's hoping the promised long-term pursuits of Frozen Trail provide more appealing goals to work toward in this downtime and beyond.

Embark says "we have been carefully reviewing your feedback on Expeditions, and while we've made ongoing improvements along the way, we've come to realize that some of the issues you've raised, like the tight departure windows, the reward structure, and accessibility for new players, need more than incremental fixes. They call for bigger changes."

One big change was just made in the fifth Expedition. Players no longer automatically reset their quests when they embark on an Expedition and wipe their character. Instead, you can opt into a quest reset if you, for some unknowable reason, wish to repeat some of the most unrewarding quests to ever blight a game.

And if you're wondering, Embark says "since the Hullcracker Blueprint can only be obtained through the quest line, we will give you other ways to get it."

Any expedition bonuses players have obtained will persist through this quiet period. "Also, since Caravans will be reset," Embark explains, "any partially completed Caravans will be replaced with Ermal Vouchers of equal value which can be used to purchase Ermal offers together with ARC Parts and firearms trade, or sold for Coin."

Between Frozen Trail and this Expedition hiatus, it feels like Embark has decided that the usual live service appetizers aren't making a difference anymore. The game's declined considerably since launch, and increasingly it feels like the coming winter season may be its last real shot at rekindling that day-one fire.

Arc Raiders' Frozen Trail update is out October 8, Embark admits "it's time to expand" as recent Steam reviews hit 50% negative.

Baldur's Gate 3 is finally seeing Divinity: Original Sin 2-style custom campaigns coming to fruition, as one new mod adds just that: a solid six-hour custom campaign.

Yes, you read that right. A Dream of Silence: ReVamped, as it is oh-so aptly dubbed over on Nexus Mods, adds an alternate campaign to Larian Studios' beloved Dungeons & Dragons RPG.
The mod is an adaptation of a browser-based text adventure by Abigail Corfman (which you can still access over on her official website), starring none other than my favorite of all the Baldur's Gate 3 companions: the ever-beautiful vampire elf Astarion, of course.

The mod's campaign is around six hours long in total, featuring four different endings, six new companions complete with unique dialogue lines and rewards, "more dynamic combat and boss fights," and, perhaps most excitingly, "a kitty that potentially accepts scritches."

Plus, you get to rescue Astarion from a nightmarish take on Cazador's already vile mansion (or choose not to and opt for a different path, I suppose). Sign me up, stat.

Sadly, it's only available for PC players right now, but that doesn't take away how impressive the custom campaign's emergence is.

Early last year, modders said custom Baldur's Gate 3 campaigns with "levels and lands comparable to the Skyrim modding community" could come in 2025 thanks to Patch 7 and its capacity for "level editing, save editing, and more" – but not too much has actually happened in that regard.

Sure, we've got projects like Return to Candlekeep underway, but it's been a long road, and limitations like multiplayer restrictions haven't exactly helped.

A Dream of Silence: ReVamped sparks hope for other custom campaigns later down the line, and I know I'm personally keeping my fingers crossed for even bigger projects in the same vein. Could you just imagine all of the possibilities…?

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's Clea actor finds it "fascinating" that RPG fans give her character "more grace" than Baldur's Gate 3's Lae'zel.

Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is an absolute highlight in the tag-team fighting game genre, but good reviews haven't translated into strong sales in Japan. In fact, it's reportedly one of developer Arc System Works' worst performing games on its home turf.

Famitsu recently published its estimated sales data for the first two weeks of the month, charting the best-selling physical games in Japan during that time, but Marvel Tokon only managed to claw onto the chart with 2,814 PS5 discs sold for its first week on sale. In the following week, Marvel Tokon was nowhere to be found in Famitsu's top 30, meaning it failed to match the 1,444 copies that Super Mario Wonder's Switch 2 Edition managed. Ouch. (Thanks, Gematsu.)

According to Game Data Library – a website that tracks how many copies physical games have sold in Japan – Marvel Tokon's first week was "the worst launch for an Arc System fighter" in the country, "excluding super niche stuff like DNF Duel" and well under the majority of games in the Guilty Gear and BlazBlue series. Even the oft-forgotten Under Night In-Birth outsold Marvel Tokon in its launch period.

"I was thinking 10k was pessimistic, but now even with 70% digital sales it's a very lackluster result," the outlet tweets. "Needless to say it's also well under all the Marvel vs. Capcom games, hell, it did less than half of the Marvel Fighting Collection, and the retail version was late!"

Another report from Alinea Analytics estimated that Marvel Tokon actually sold 485,000 copies globally across Steam and PS5 over the course of its first week, so there's seemingly a gaping chasm between how warmly the game was received in Japan and the rest of the world.

Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls itself is a great time. GamesRadar's review called it the "prettiest fighting game in years and a rousing comeback for the Marvel tag fighter," so what went wrong? Perhaps Marvel's waning superpowers in Japan have something to do with it. Or perhaps it's PlayStation's allure that's fading – during the week of August 10, only three PS5 games crawled onto the chart dominated by Nintendo releases.

"This win was purely out of spite" – Fighting game icon SonicFox says winning Marvel Tokon's first major tournament was fuelled by catching flak for criticizing it.

GTA 6 Online is still very much a mystery. The multiplayer sandbox is an incredibly popular part of Rockstar's ecosystem – which is impressive, considering GTAO is now over a decade old – so its presence in GTA 6 feels inevitable to me. But the fun doesn't end with GTA Online itself. That's where GTA RP comes in.

GTA RP is the game's highly-modded roleplaying experience. Made by and for players, it takes what fans love most about the official (or vanilla) GTA Online and turns it into a brand new game mode. Being able to act out real-life scenarios in a more fluid way allows a lot more freedom than the core experience – and I think it's a sizzling hotbed for GTA 6 inspiration.

Jobs for all

I'll admit I haven't played GTA Online in a while. It used to be my weekend ritual with friends, but 12 years down the line, we've gotten busy. Also, we got fed up with griefers. But despite GTA 6 Online being unlikely to arrive at launch, and to try and gain some insight into what the future of GTA 6 could be, I thought it would be a good idea to jump into GTA RP. Little did I know that it was going to open my eyes to something pretty special.

Joining a GTA RP server isn't the easiest. Some servers require getting whitelisted, filling out forms and carrying out interviews to gain access. I quickly realize that GTA RP takes itself very seriously, but that's not a bad thing. In fact, it means the players treat it with a lot more respect.

Fortunately, I found a server on the mega-mod FiveM that was happy to welcome me in with a quick Discord check and a stipulation that I must talk over my mic. I should caveat here that Rockstar acquired FiveM ahead of GTA 6, and that's something I'll get into shortly.

Upon entry to the GTA RP server, I immediately feel like I'm on a GTA 6 recon mission. The server wants me to join a profession. I optimistically choose to become a paramedic and spawn outside the hospital, where players dressed in medical scrubs are keen to recruit me. They take me through training, quiz me on whether I'm listening, and then tell me the strict rules for gameplay.

This ability to embark on actual careers in GTA RP is genius and my first hint at GTA 6's potential. And while I opted to become a paramedic, I also learned that in this server, you can join a gang, become a lawyer, or even become a member of the LSPD.

When gang fights go down, real players rock up as the LSPD rather than NPCs spawning en masse like they do in GTA 5. It all feels much more organic, which could (and seems likely to) become a big part of GTA 6. After all, there's been talk of overhauled police AI and a new dispatch system in GTA 6 – but all that is already going down in GTA RP. Yes, there's real people becoming police, but there's also an ingrained hierarchy that people take pretty seriously.

As a paramedic, I'm told I can't carry a firearm, enter active gang zones, and must tend to the victor of a fight before the loser. I'm also instructed to wear a bodycam that I can use to record players if they try to do anything bad to me.

While out on patrol, I come across players that show hints of disrespect – though still within reason. They know they need me, even if they think I've picked a nerdy profession, so stop short of griefing me off the game like they might have in GTAO. This is just one example of how GTA RP's cities feel more alive than the vanilla version's. There's more freedom here, but importantly, more respect.

Inspiration nation

The acquisition of FiveM and RedM is a big deal, and is very telling. Rockstar clearly wants to adapt aspects of GTA RP for GTA 6. The question is, in what capacity?

As reported by Rockstar Intel, there's been a callout for console-experienced staff to make content creation tools for GTA 6. Considering GTA 6 isn't coming to PC at launch and how these modded servers only work on PC, I wonder if the inspiration might be applied to the core game itself and not just GTA 6 Online.

These servers run on their own custom roles. They're policed by mods. They even have their own economies, controversial as that can be. On some servers, you can even fish. It's heavily speculated that fishing is coming to GTA 6 (there's hints of it in the trailers), similar to the mechanic seen in 2018's Red Dead Redemption 2. There's also leaks that GTA 6 may adopt a weapon wheel, limiting and refining player inventories to make it so you can't carry everything with you.

While both fishing and inventory management could be much more in-depth and realistic in GTA 6, it's something we already have in GTA RP. A step ahead, once again.

There's talk of a lot more enterable buildings being available in GTA 6, but you can already enter many random buildings in GTA RP that are otherwise reserved for specific missions in GTA 5. There's hints of deeper interior customization in GTA 6, but that's already happening in GTA RP – players can buy entire buildings and make them their own, if they want to.

GTA RP has opened up a new world to me, one I did not expect, but ultimately love. It's certainly not without its own difficulties. There are a lot more players in GTA RP than you can get Online, and that requires a lot of moderation. It's not built by a team of Rockstar developers, so technical issues are impossible to avoid. And there will always be people that won't follow the rules.

But ultimately, RP servers have had a lot more fun with taking the best of GTAO and turning it into something I've absolutely fallen for. I just hope GTA 6 has taken notes.

GTA 6's leaks prove AI disinformation is worse than you think

Some classic jokes from Metal Gear Solid 4 are not only present in the latest re-release, but have been updated for modern systems. The game's part of Master Collection Vol. 2, which also includes Peace Walker and the Game Boy Color title Ghost Babel, and Konami has included a few nice flourishes.

The amount of meta-humor always made porting Metal Gear Solid 4 a difficult prospect. You've got references to the iPod and fourth wall breaks that really place the release at a certain time. Well, for the purposes of this version, Konami actually went back and amended a couple of spoken lines to make sure one joke lands accordingly.

In Sons of the Patriots, when you get to Shadow Moses Island, the original version made reference to changing the discs of the first Metal Gear Solid when you reach this same location. "Hold it, Snake. Time to change the disc," Otacon starts. "I know, I know, it's a pain. But you need to swap Disc 1 for Disc 2. You see the disc labelled '2'?"

Snake would then point out there isn't a second disc, and Otacon would realize we're in the future. "Oh, wait! We're on PlayStation 3," he exclaims, much to the chagrin of our man Solid.

Now, as has been highlighted by reviewers (thanks, TechRadar Gaming), whether you're playing on Switch 2, PS5, Xbox Series X, or any other platform, the Master Collection Vol. 2 now references that system. Voice actor Christopher Randolph even came back to do the line for each instance.

Sure, you can apparently hear the contrast in his voice, since he's aged almost two decades and the recording environment would've been completely different. But, the joke still works, and now has an added layer to it. Even Solid Snake would see the fun in that.

Metal Gear Solid is getting co-op after 28 years thanks to "world first" mod, turning "the original PlayStation classic into a true online multiplayer experience."

A three-year-old clip of Valve boss Gabe Newell dissecting the place of realism in games has resurfaced online amidst discussions of GTA 6 gameplay leaks suggesting cars in Rockstar's universe now use a realistic gasoline system which requires players to refuel them.

The response to this fuel system, even as part of a game build that may be outdated and which we've only seen a brief slice of, has been mixed. Some players embrace this added friction and detail, but others seem to worry that this gasoline system, assuming it's born out by the shipped game, will quickly become annoying upkeep.

In multiple debates on this feature, gamers and GTA fans have pointed to Newell's examination of realism in 2023's Half-Life 25th anniversary documentary. Around 15:40, at the start of one of the clips mentioned in GTA 6 leak debates, Newell dismisses the idea that games should pursue realism as a default.

"You'd have these conversations where you'd be sitting in a design review and somebody'd say, 'That's not realistic,'" Newell begins. "And you're like, 'OK. What does that have to – explain to me why that's interesting.' Because in the real world, I have to write up lists of stuff I have to go to the grocery store to buy. And I have never thought to myself that realism is fun. I go play games to have fun."

This has to be one of the most-cited Newell quotes around, and it holds up today. We frequently talk about how much more realistic some video games have become, often in discussions of lighting or NPC behavior, but games are still deliberately removed from reality for many reasons. Reality can be tedious and limiting, for one, and it turns out it's also very difficult to recreate.

The more realistic a game becomes, the more questions it has to answer. And the more questions a game has to answer, the more exceptions it has to make, sometimes to the detriment of gameplay or, ironically, immersion. We're getting to the core of why games generally aim to construct, and get players to believe, a reality that services their gameplay goals instead of trying to make absolutely everything true-to-life.

But for my money, the most interesting part is what Newell says next: how realism can be fun in games, and what it actually means.

"So we had to come up with some notion of what fun was," Newell continues. "We knew it was an ad hoc definition, and it was: the degrees to which the game recognizes and responded to the player's choices and actions. In behavioral science, you would say we're explicitly talking about what were reinforcers and what the reinforcement schedules were. At that point in time, that was a useful way of making design decisions."

Positive reinforcers encourage or reward behavior in a way that makes that behavior more likely to be repeated. The Skinner box, an experiment that saw animals trained to receive a reward like food by pressing a button, is one example that often comes up in game design discussions.

Here, a reinforcer would mean that a game acknowledging something you did and giving it observable consequences, big or small, makes it feel meaningful and makes you more likely to do something again. If you shoot a demon in Doom: The Dark Ages, it gets ripped apart in chunks. If you shoot a barrel in Borderlands 4, it explodes. If you shoot a random character in Fallout 4, the whole story may change. But you wouldn't shoot a random character to change the story of Doom, nor do Borderlands 4's barrels realistically buckle and leak fuel before exploding. Because now we've got realism working for games, rather than games working for realism.

This reward space is where you'll find immersive sims with seemingly impossible interaction chains that enable alternative solutions. This is where The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom lets you drop 50 metal weapons on the ground to connect an electric circuit instead of engaging with intended puzzle pieces. It's where crunchy, reactive RPGs like Baldur's Gate 3 blow players away by accounting for the fringe corner cases they got themselves into. And it's partly why Half-Life's convincing and systemic physics were so popular and, even outside the walls of FPS, formative.

The intent behind these and other design decisions isn't limited to reinforcement, but behavioral psychology is part of a lot of things in games – spaces that provide the agency we crave with the safety of play.

But where does pumping gas in GTA 6 fall – in Newell's grocery store rant, or in the magic of games carefully deploying realism? Personally, I don't think some shoddy leak videos are going to tell us.

"The point I would make is: if I go up to a wall and shoot it, to me it feels like the wall is ignoring me," Newell concludes. "I'm getting a narcissistic injury when the world is ignoring me. So to me, I was trying to convey to the user a sense of, yes, you were making choices, yes, you were progressing. Which meant the game had to acknowledge that back to you. If you shoot at a wall, there have to be [damage] decals. If you kill a bunch of marines, the marines have to run away from you. You have to have this sense of the game acknowledging and responding to the choices and actions and progressions that you've made. Otherwise, it loses any sort of impact."

To "obtain the identity" of GTA 6 leaker, Rockstar parent Take-Two subpoenas Microsoft and Discord as yet more gameplay footage is posted.

With FromSoftware's ever-growing legendary library of Souls games, it's not surprising that other developers are taking a crack at the action-packed genre – but this new Soulslike about a stray dog journeying to save his rescuer might just take the cake as the most precious.

If you've played Dark Souls, then you likely know (and love, because how could you not?) Great Grey Wolf Sif, the boss who faithfully guards the grave of Artorias the Abysswalker – and wields his huge greatsword, too. It's an encounter that sticks with you… but have you ever considered playing as Sif yourself?

Well, Stray Dog: Nobody Cares, a new game from Indie dev Parry Frames Studio, basically lets you do just that.

Although it's not officially Sif or Dark Souls-affiliated, the vibes are impossible to ignore. As per the game's page over on Steam, it places you in the paws of a stray dog that was rescued by a "disgraced knight" (already giving FromSoft vibes, eh?) who is on a journey to rescue said knight following his capture.

In the canine's mouth is a greatsword, of course, which you wield throughout the fantastical medieval-era game.

As per Parry Frames Studio, you can expect all of the Soulslike essentials: "stealth kills, custom levels, precise parries, brutal boss fights," and you name it. I'm sold, personally, and I'm not alone – reactions online show that folks can't get enough.

On Twitter, fans are pulling out all of the best puns to boot. My favorite? "Bark Souls." Bark Souls, indeed. The general excitement is nice to see, too, especially with all of the Sif comparisons.

"Bruh, a Sif origins story (it's not really)," as one reads. "I'm sold." Another chimes in, "We can play as Sif?!" And, similarly, a fan exclaims, "Sooo… basically playing the story of Sif?" I can't even argue that, honestly – Stray Dog looks, well, like it's just that. A spin-off Sif-themed game or something.

Here's hoping that Parry Frames Studio gives us a more solid release date or window soon.

Searching for some other new games to experience? Check our roundup of the best Soulslike games to date – you might just find one you've not played.

Even amongst the turmoil of the RAM Storage Crisis, new SSDs haven't stopped dropping. But the Lexar Play X PCIe 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSD sets itself apart from other new releases by providing storage for PC and handheld fans in one.

The best SSDs for gaming traditionally come in a 2230 or 2280 form factor, and you need to decide which is best for you before you check out your online shopping basket. Lexar has instead packaged a 2230 drive alongside a 2280 bracket, so you have the best of both worlds and can decide what's right for you right until the very moment you need to install. Without a gaming laptop or a handheld that's suited for a compact Gen 4 drive, I wasn't able to take full advantage of Lexar's ingenuity. That being said, Lexar's hybrid SSD was still a solid and speedy addition to my desktop PC.

Design

If you've ever upgraded the storage of your PC, you're probably more familiar with 2280-sized drives, however, the Play X consists of both a 2230 and 2280 in one. Smaller 2230 drives aren't anything new, but they're usually marketed specifically towards those with gaming laptops or handhelds, rather than being offered as a storage solution that's "compatible with M.2 2230/2280 slots."

Lexar achieves this wider range of compatibility by including a 2280 adapter with the smaller drive right in the box. This was a relief for me, as my current testing rig doesn't facilitate drives with a 2230 form factor. Once the adapter is hooked up, the Play X looked and acted more like a traditional 2280 SSD, so if you're in the market for a traditional 2280 option, don't let the 'hybrid' nature of this option put you off.

Features

The Lexar Play X is a PCIe 4.0 M/2 NVMe SSD drive that's available in 512 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB capacities. For this review, I was provided with the 1 TB model, which offered me 952 GB to play around with once formatted as part of my testing rig, which is pretty much what I'd expect.

The drive is powered by TLC NAND flash and according to Lexar, is designed to deliver "instant game loading and rapid level transitions" with its on-the-box 7,400 MB/s and 6,500 MB/s sequential read and write speeds. The brand's older Play 2230 PCIe 4.0 SSD was able to achieve read and write speeds up to to 5500 MB/s and 4,700 MB/s, respectively, so this is a big step up from its predecessor.

Additionally, Lexar packs in a 5-year warranty with the drive, though with an endurance rating of 1,200 TBW for the 2TB model, you shouldn't need to rely on it. The SSD is also packaged with a set of two stickers, so you can label them at your discretion. They have a slight holographic sheen to them, which I really appreciated, even if I never saw them once the storage was inserted into my motherboard.

Performance

Slotting the compact Lexar Play X SSD into the adapter was pretty straightforward, but I can't pretend there wasn't a lot of hesitancy before I put the two together. Gaming storage is worth its weight in gold right now, and my anxiety led me to believe I was going to break both along the way.

I thankfully didn't, as otherwise you wouldn't be reading this very review. Once it was all set up I was able to format it like any other traditional 2280 Gen 4 SSD. Afterwards, I ran it through CrystalDiskMark, where I was able to achieve average 7,074.43 and 6,551.29 MB/s read and write speeds. Compared to 7,400 MB/s and 6,500 MB/s as advertised on the box, the drive came pretty close and even managed to do slightly better than expected when it came to write speeds. Write speeds measure how fast a drive can save data, so this is good news if you need storage for not just gaming, but saving hefty amounts of information, which can be pretty common if you're an artist or a content creator on the side.

It missed the mark slightly where read speeds were concerned, but anything above 7,000 MB/s is still what I hoped to see. Regardless, all of those numbers don't mean much when they're not put to the test by running actual games, which is exactly what I did next. Loading up Counter-Strike 2 took an average of 25.61 seconds (over a period of three tests) to get to the menu screen where my booted-up character was waiting. While it wasn't faster than the built-in PNY CS1030 drive of my testing rig, there was only a 2.62-second difference. This set a precedent for the rest of my tests, as Lexar's drive wasn't faster than my onboard storage, but it wasn't that far behind, with just a few-second differences each time.

That's not exactly the "instant game loading" the marketing spiel stated it would be, but the lightning-fast loading times were still felt. No matter if I was loading up CS2, Dispatch, Marvel Rivals, or a plethora of my other current gaming obsessions like Mina the Hollower and Peak, there was no moment where I grew impatient waiting for anything to load, nor did I experience any noticeable differences running games straight off the SSD as compared to the onboard drive.

During testing, the compact storage managed to keep its cool too. While I still don't have a DC meter at my disposal, checking the Windows 11 settings informed me that the Play X managed to sit around 40% for the majority of the time I had it equipped in my rig, only bouncing up to 48% at the most when I was putting it through its paces running Marvel Rivals. That's pretty much what you'd expect, with the Samsung 990 SSD reaching similar temps while part of the same setup.

Much to my chagrin, I didn't have a compatible setup to test the Play X in its 2230 form factor alone. With that in mind, I can't justly say that it'd be the best addition to your laptop or PC handheld over alternatives, but if it's able to putter along at the same (or similar) speeds as I managed to achieve on the PC, you'd likely be in good hands with this small but mighty drive.

Should you buy the 1TB Lexar Play X SSD?

The Lexar Play X has yet to be released in the US, so the question of whether any of you across the pond should buy it can be answered pretty quickly.

For those of you in the UK, the answer is a little more layered. The 1TB model I reviewed today is sitting at £241.99 at Amazon, and even amongst the RAM-pocalypse, there are plenty of 1 TB options out there which are far cheaper. In the end, I'd still recommend this as an option should you want a 2230/2280 hybrid drive with fast speeds and if your budget can allow for it.

Plenty of older 2230 drives can't muster the same prowess as that of the Lexar Play X, including the brand's own past releases. The 1TB 2230 Lexar Play SSD launched with box quoted 5200MB/s and 4700MB/s read and write speeds, so you'd be getting more bang for your buck. Well, if the 2230 form can muster the same performance it managed when attached to its 2280 adapter, anyway.

If budget is at the forefront of your mind, I'm still going to recommend doing your best to pick up the 1 TB Samsung 990 Pro instead, which tops our general and best SSD for PS5 guides. It's reached as high as £229.99 at Amazon in May earlier this year, according to my CamelCamelCamel price checker, but can drop below the £200 mark without a heatsink. If that option is available to you (and you're looking for a 2280 design and not a 2230 one), that should always be your priority. However, Lexar's Play X is a valid choice if you must have have hybrid form factor at your disposal.

By the way, there's a chance I put the stickers on the wrong way round during testing, so feel free to excuse that in the photos.

How I tested the 1TB Lexar Play X SSD

I put the Lexar Play X SSD through its paces by attaching the 2230 drive to its 2280 adapter, hooking that up to the M.2 drive of my testing PC. Afterwards, I formatted the drive and used the CrystalDiskMark benchmarking tool, where I ran the drive through a series of four tests and calculated an average from those speeds. That average was then compared to its advertised on-the-box speeds. Additionally, I downloaded titles like Marvel Rivals, Counter-Strike 2, and Dispatch via Steam and timed how long it took to load to their respective start screens and compared this to past SSDs that I've tested so far. To read more about the ways we test SSDs and the rest of our gaming tech, have a look at how we test SSDs and our hardware policy.

Check out our guides to the best SSDs for PS5, the best PS5 external hard drive, and the best Xbox Series X hard drive if your gaming platform of choice could use a little boost.

Welcome back to the GamesRadar+ RPG Club! This third meeting takes place in the earliest reaches of Act 3, with my Baldur's Gate 3 no weapons run getting deadly serious now that I'm in the biggest section of the game. As a result, I've been forced to confront more than just Ketheric Thorm and the Avatar of Myrkul – who was easily dispatched after I freed Aylin on my first turn by Misty Stepping over to her cage. My biggest question now is how my current party will survive one of Act 3's most punishing coded events.

Looking between Lae'zel, Halsin, and Gale, I feel a stone in my gut. My party has grown strong, even with my no weapons run barring us from using anything handheld. I was loath to part ways with any of them, but I know that the Murder God's favorite is about to infiltrate my camp and kidnap someone.

As soon as I claim victory over Myrkul's Chosen – here's how Act 2 went for me – I start planning. That means guessing s who might be on Orin's chopping block and preparing my party accordingly. It's time for a strategic break, so consider this my once-per-act respec being used in one go.

Quest Log

Sneak attacked

The start of Act 3 was a nasty shock during my first playthrough, where I'd finished up at Moonrise Towers at a paltry level six. I'm feeling much better about my chances as a level eight sorcerer now. Which is why I'm almost relishing taking my first Long Rest in Rivington and being interrupted by a Githyanki ambush.

I prepare by going around the camp and reshuffling my active party members. I opt for an even split between spellcasters and unarmed melee specialists: Lae'zel, my open-hand monk, pairs nicely with Karlach the barbarian, and I'll need Shadowheart on hand to dole out the heals. It's a particularly mean fight, albeit one that puts my challenge to the test by reflecting it back at me. All of the Gith are monks, just like Lae'zel, and it's nowhere near as much fun being on the receiving end of a resonating Ki blast.

My first attempt is a write off; my party accidentally jumps into the battle ground one by one instead of all together, leaving Karlach and Lae'zel out of the initiative roll entirely while Shadowheart and I get absolutely bodied. The Emperor is little help, and before long, I'm reloading my save to coordinate entry to the battle properly.

I put a focus on Karlach and Lae'zel reaching higher ground as soon as possible, throwing the Gith across the astral prism while Shadowheart casts Sanctuary on herself and buffs the party from a safe distance. Meanwhile, I'm all about the massive AOE spells. Say hello to my little Fireball, everyone!

But the ambush is only the start of my troubles. As soon as we arrive in Rivington, I do my usual rounds of the lively crossing town – and run into Bhaal's Chosen, Orin, twice. First, masquerading as a snooping journalist, and secondly, as the shopkeeper of an armory. She laughs in my face, waves off my victory against Ketheric by saying something mean and cryptic, before vanishing into a puddle of viscera.

Orin is one of my favorite villains in video game history. She's also the most annoying. As Enver Gortash – the Chosen of Bane, God of Tyranny – later informs me after I bear witness to his grand coronation, Orin has already kidnapped one of my companions and is masquerading as them back at my camp.

Truthfully, I am miffed. I'd forgotten that this happens so early on in Act 3's proceedings, and it sends my nerves into overdrive. Immediately, I pray Orin hasn't taken Lae'zel.

My Gith monk just started getting good after our party leveled up following the astral prism attack. Perhaps Orin, in her infinite magnanimity, might've gone for Halsin instead? Or maybe even Yenna, the orphan child who invited herself to our camp during our second Long Rest in Rivington and now cannot stop going on about having brought her own paring knife (who gave the child a knife? Why are we okay with this?).

Tanked it

I managed to avoid dealing with my little Orin problem until two or three long rests later. Pursuing a maligned quest involving a necromancer mummy, whose goodies I had designs on for Gale, I headed into Baldur's Gate's sewers without thinking twice. Big mistake. "Lae'zel" came hobbling out of a fetid underground tunnel and soon shapeshifted back into Orin the Red.

Well, damn. I don't think I've ever triggered the imposter reveal this early on in any of my Baldur's Gate 3 playthroughs, and now I'm down the most powerful tank in my party. It's especially miserable, since I don't tend to rescue Orin's captive until I'm starting to wrap up my time in the game. If I'm to make it through all that Act 3 has to offer without Lae'zel at my side, it's time to respec my party accordingly.

Instead of fashioning myself another monk – that just feels like cheating, okay? – I leverage some newfound assets. Jaheira is a druid, much like Halsin, and I want to keep her as such for narrative reasons. That said, I respec her subclass into Circle of Spores to complement Gale's own necromantic flair.

Between them, they now can spawn near endless zombies and ghouls anytime I choose. It's also time to make Shadowheart a Light Domain cleric now that she's turned her back on Shar's trickery, while Astarion gets a few warlock levels to beef the bard up a bit with some eldritch blasts for good measure.

With Karlach now my one and only melee tank, it's time to bid farewell to the ways of the Berserker and respec her back to the Giant subclass. I need to prioritize high DPS to compensate for the loss of Lae'zel's fists of fury, so I make sure to stack her strength score up to 20 at a base level and make use of her collection of Cloud Giant Strength potions, which take her up to 27. Then, I turn to my own character – sweet little Zeraphina, the draconic sorcerer who could. And still can. For her, no changes – only vengeance for the loss of Lae'zel.

I really did squander Lae'zel when I had her, and I can't lie and say that she was a staple in my party throughout the journey so far – that honor goes to Karlach, Gale, and Shadowheart for the most part.

But much as her absence is felt, leaning into magical combat has been eye-opening. It's certainly helpful when my whole party can misty step anywhere they like whenever I please, not to mention how keeping my party far from foes means I have no real need for a melee tank anyway. Paired with some fancy new Spore Druid armor for Jaheira and the Robes of the Weave for Gale, I'm cleaning up Act 3 like the most dedicated barmaid at the Elfsong Tavern. A dedicated barmaid with a penchant for summoning zombies, of course.

And yet, there's more to come. Slowly but surely, I'm rebuilding my party for the final battle brick by brick. Hopefully next time I check in with you, I'll have bested that brain for good – with or without Lae'zel.

Just as I get out of my car in Cyberpunk 2077, I receive a text message from Panam. Given that I've clocked a little over 1,000 hours in CD Projekt Red's RPG at this point, it's one I'm no stranger to, but it still hits me like it's the first time. "You were right, V. It's good being back with your people," the message begins. "In NC I felt like the loneliest person in the world."

A photo of Panam and the Nomadic Aldecaldos accompanies the text, and while they're all sitting around a fire, the warmth of the snapshot comes from the found family portrait it captures. As I take in the image again, I'm reminded of why I'm so consistently drawn to the Nomads as a group above all.

In a dystopian setting like Night City – where ruthless gangs such as the scavs kidnap and harvest people, and cold corporations care only for raking in more eddies – the Nomads exist on the fringes of the neon-tinted metropolis. There, they can give you something more valuable than any souped-up cyberware: a sense of belonging. No matter how many times I play, the Aldecaldos and their found family dynamic are the highlight of my experience as V, and the group are partly why I've come to the conclusion that the best Cyberpunk 2077 lifepath is Nomad.

Outsider No More

Every lifepath in Cyberpunk 2077 offers something I enjoy from a role-playing standpoint. I love the way playing as a Street Kid often gives me the upper hand when I'm dealing with the many rival gangs that populate Night City. Being a Corpo, on the other hand, can give V an entirely different vibe and viewpoint, and it's fun to try and channel the ruthless edge so many corporations have .

But the Nomad lifepath is the most satisfying from a role-playing and story perspective overall – particularly when it comes to the Aldecaldo questlines. After leaving the Bakkers who were once your Nomad clan before they decided to join Snake Nation, V is now adrift with no backing or support system to speak of. As the codex shards you can find in the world will tell you, to be a Nomad is to adopt a lifestyle built upon family and freedom, and you protect your family and clan first and foremost. So, being a Nomad like V who's without one is a very lonely and vulnerable position to be in.

This background makes it all the more meaningful when you meet the Aldecaldos. Fiercely supportive and loyal to one another, they represent something V's lost: family. To want to belong is universal, and it's easy to get attached to the Aldecaldos because of the way they can give you that. Once you help them out, they have your back no matter what, and isn't that what family should be all about? Night City is a lonely place, after all, regardless of which V you're playing, and the Nomadic group really do feel like they bring some light and love to an otherwise harsh world.

Since I'm something of a virtual gearhead who loves driving in games, I also have a natural affinity for the Nomads as a group and lifepath. Aside from being your ride or dies in a familial sense, they also deeply care about the actual rides they drive. As Mitch, one of my favorite clan members, puts it, "those wheels are our life". Not only do they rely on their vehicles out in the Badlands, but they also customize them as though they're an extension of themselves. I immediately connected to this idea, and I love that in the lifepath, you get a set of wheels that feels personal to you, too, which you can even reclaim later on – it's such a welcome role-playing touch.

The Star

The characters who make up the Aldecaldo family are really what hooks me in time and again. The way Cyberpunk 2077 introduces you to the Nomads through Panam brilliantly establishes the hardships of going it alone, what the group are all about, and how much the Aldecaldo's care when it comes to a member of their clan. Having stepped away from the family, Panam is on a similar road to you when you first meet her. But as you help her out and get to know her, you can play a part in re-establishing her connection with the Aldecaldos.

Sometimes hotheaded, obviously lonely, but with so much strength and heart, Panam is a beautifully flawed, relatable character I quickly got very attached to, but I can honestly say I felt a kinship and fondness for all of the Aldecaldos in their own right. Throughout their questlines, they banter with one another, have disagreements, and share intimate, fond moments like any real family, and I always just want to spend more time with them.

While the Nomads' found family bond and the lifepath resonate, the role they play in Night City is also quite fascinating. I was reminded of this fact last year, when I had the chance to sit down and talk with lead writer, Tomasz Marchewka, for Cyberpunk 2077's five-year anniversary. Diving into the antagonistic setting, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to talk about the Nomads and express my love for the group. While I said that in some respects, they feel like they rebel against the city by going their own way, Marchewka explained that they're such a vital part of it – even if they're on the outside of things.

"When you think about it for a second, Nomads are crucial to make this ecosystem [in Night City] work," Marcheweka said. "Yeah, they seem to be outside of the city, but the city wouldn't be itself without Nomads running around bringing stuff from the other places with them, being the link between different cities. They need to be there. They are part of the ecosystem. They are kind of the blood flow, like they make the system run from under the hood. Using that metaphor, they are the engine of things. So the city wouldn't be itself without them, even though they seem detached, it's not that easy, they are connected to it."

I really love this idea that they're the "blood flow", or "engine" of the city who keep things running, even if it's from "under the hood" or out of sight. As an in-game shard details, it's said that it's actually "thanks to the Nomads that the cities were rebuilt after the wars and catastrophes that marked the first half of the 21st century", meaning that many cities wouldn't remain without them, even if they often seemingly exist outside of them. The opening of the Nomad lifepath even sees you smuggle something into Night City, which speaks to Marchewka's note about "being the link between different cities".

As you can probably tell I've thought about all of this too much, and dissected my attachment to the group a lot, but if nothing else, that speaks to how deeply invested I've become in the Nomads across my many playthroughs. Ultimately, the main reason for that will always come back to that photo from Panam. The Aldecaldos are a family – V's family – and I'll forever want to sit beside the fire with them.

Phantom Liberty didn't change my mind about the best Cyberpunk 2077 ending.

With Gamescom 2026 looming over us, it comes as no surprise that Alien: Isolation 2 fans are hopeful they'll see a release date at the big event – but they shouldn't hold their breath.

Developer Creative Assembly and publisher Sega are apparently not planning to unveil the long-awaited sequel's release date next week during the annual gaming event, as per their response to a fan's excitement over on Twitter.

The original post shows somebody exclaim that they "hope we get a release date next week," to which the official Alien: Isolation 2 account replies, "Hello, you won't get a release date next week."

It's short (not sweet, sadly), but it does provide all folks need to know, I suppose: there'll be no launch date reveal during Gamescom. Thankfully, the fan who initially posted in the first place is taking the news well, though.

They simply write, "Thank you for letting us know!" The Alien: Isolation 2 team says "you're welcome" in turn – so, all in all, it's not a bad interaction or anything… it's just disappointing.

As one fan jokes in the comments, it was "worth a try" regardless. That checks out, seeing as Alien: Isolation 2 has been in the works for at least a little while now, with its first footage having aired as part of the Summer Game Fest 2026 schedule earlier this summer.

It wouldn't be too surprising, then, to see people expecting a release date (or, at the least, a release window) to drop soon… but, alas, it won't be in August, anyway.

Here's hoping Creative Assembly and Sega give us another teaser of sorts, however – it's still possible, seeing as they only confirm they won't be showcasing a release date during this year's Gamescom.

Anything more than a quick sneak-peek at a xenomorph's mouth would be great at this point, as the original Alien: Isolation landed way back in 2014. I know I'll be keeping my own fingers crossed over the next few days.

Alien Isolation 2 uses Unreal Engine 5 instead of Creative Assembly's custom engine, and fans are starting to worry: "This completely ruins any enthusiasm I have for the game."

• The Sinking City 2 is perfect if you want a freshly themed modern survival horror like Resident Evil 2 or Silent Hill 2 remake

Here's the 60-second pitch for why you should play The Sinking City 2 this weekend: With the love of his life trapped in a Lovecraftian dream space, Calvin Rafferty must brave the flooded streets of Arkham as he tries to track down the occult tools to wake her, all as creatures from the deep surface and the city is plunged into chaos. Shambling enemies puppeted by the Slither are unpredictable, with shifting weak points, and maze-like, nightmarish maps are packed with arcane puzzles and tempting upgrades that'll have you constantly considering your dwindling resources.

Why play it today?

• The Sinking City 2 is a fresh twist on modern survival horror that feels just as good to play as recent Silent Hill and Resident Evil games, rather than a retro revival

A lot of recent survival horror games outside of the big names position themselves as throwbacks to retro sensibilities. While I still love that angle, it's interesting to see The Sinking City 2 take most of its cues from the likes of Resident Evil 2 remake rather than just the original Resident Evil 2.

Even so, The Sinking City 2 has a lot of its own ideas. Developer Frogwares is well-known for its detective games, including the first The Sinking City, and a whole catalog of Sherlock Holmes adventures. This means the bevy of survival horror puzzles required to progress or unlock upgrades are all smartly designed, and a detective mindmap allows you to sort and organize uncovered clues to arrive on solutions. It'll only tell you if evidence is related, never reveal a final solution. It's a light touch compared to their detective games, but adds a neat flavor to Calvin's adventure.

Lovecraftian eldritch horror is well utilized to make The Sinking City 2's stand out. Flooded streets and buildings allow for effective jump scares as monsters emerge. Twitchy movements, and shifting Slither on bodies mean you're never quite sure where to best aim. Down a foe, and escaping Slither can animate other corpses. It creates an uneasy atmosphere where you're never quite sure what the rules are, and are always weighing up when to stand and fight, and when to make a break for it.

Time commitment:

The Sinking City is about the same length as Resident Evil 2 remake, taking me about 10 hours to beat on my first playthrough. Post-game unlocks, as is often the case in the genre, makes for rewarding replays. With each area taking just a few hours, this is an adventure you can chip away at.

Play The Sinking City 2 if you love:

Skip The Sinking City 2 if you want:

One thing to know:

The Sinking City 2 has some great, forgiving difficulty options, but this is still a survival horror game. There are a lot of situations that can be quite stressful to get through with relentless swarm of enemies that'll turn you into fish food if you don't know when to cut and run. Even when backtracking, Frogwares takes the opportunity to add more pressure and challenge to catch you out. That's part of the fun. But, for those used to their more sedate detective games, this can be intense if you're not ready for it.

A moment you'll remember:

First feeling overwhelmed as you struggle to understand how the Slither work. Survival horror games are often at their best when they're unpredictable and you're learning a game for the first time, and The Sinking City 2 has enough strange foes that you'll find yourself unsure of the threat before you, and how to best deal with them. It doesn't get more horrifying or Lovecraftian than that. Even now, I don't fully understand how some systems work.

The final verdict:

In my The Sinking City 2 review, I said it's a "Lovecraftian fusion of Resident Evil and Silent Hill that boasts its own delightfully gruesome pleasures", and I meant it. Given the shift into the survival horror genre was such a departure for Frogwares, I was skeptical when this was announced, but the end result has blown me away. I like a lot of games in the genre, so it's great to see this in conversation with the modern big-hitters, and with plenty of fresh angles of its own.

So, where can you play it?

The Sinking City 2 is currently available on most major platforms: PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. It is not currently available on Xbox Game Pass or PS Plus. Launching at $49.99 for the base edition, the price is appealing, too.

How to get started with The Sinking City 2:

The Sinking City 2's horror works best when you don't know too much going in. But, if you get stuck, or just need some pointers, we've got plenty of guides already for where to start with The Sinking City 2 this weekend.

Have your say:

Check out our best survival horror games list for more!

Tetsuya Nomura's been sliding Final Fantasy Versus 13 references through the backdoor of Kingdom Hearts for years. And in the most on-brand move for the puzzling developer, even his clothes are now potentially dropping hints about how the canceled Final Fantasy game could connect to Kingdom Hearts 4.

Last week put an end to the Kingdom Hearts 4 news drought with Square Enix announcing that Pixar's Coco will feature in the game, alongside playable King Mickey sections that are more focused on papercraft puzzles than the series' signature floaty combat.

But perhaps the most notable and brain-scratching tidbit actually came from a shirt that series co-creator Tetsuya Nomura wore to a D23 panel discussing the game. Stick with me now. His plain black shirt had one simple logo printed on top: 'Black Honey Chili Cookie.'

Real sickos might recognize Black Honey Chili Cookie as a fashion brand that appears in NEO: The World Ends With You, a beloved but overlooked JRPG that Nomura was heavily involved in as well. Of course, characters from the original The World Ends With You game have appeared in the Kingdom Hearts series before. Since The World Ends With You is set in Tokyo and Kingdom Hearts 4 sends us to an alternate version of the city, there's a very real chance those characters could return in next year's sequel.

How does any of this relate to Final Fantasy Versus 13, the game Nomura was supposed to direct before it was repurposed into Final Fantasy 15? Well, here's where we enter a potentially fruitless rabbit hole.

The in-game shopkeeper of the Black Honey Chilli Cookie store is called Hiromu Takahara. Not so coincidentally, Hiromu Takahara also happens to be the name of the in-real-life fashion designer behind Final Fantasy Versus 13's (and Final Fantasy 15's) cast of characters. Hiromu Takahara's inclusion in The World Ends With You was a heart warming tribute to Tetsuya Nomura's once creative collaborator at the time – the Black Honey t-shirt is potentially something more.

Wouldn't you have guessed it? Things get even more loopy from here. In the days since Kingdom Hearts 4's Coco trailer, series fans have been combing over every frame for clues and found striking similarities between the city guards in Kingdom Hearts 4 and Final Fantasy 15. The design of the military airships in both games are almost an exact mirror of each other, too.

YouTuber The Night Sky Prince theorizes there's a method behind the madness and there might even be some parallels between Kingdom Hearts 4's narrative and the story Final Fantasy Versus 13 was supposed to tell. A foreign invasion of Kingdom Hearts' Tokyo could be what spurs the series' shadowy Heartless to begin wreaking havoc in the city, in the same way that the Empire of Niflheim spreads their own daemons across Final Fantasy 15 world, on top of whatever meta clues Nomura may sneak into the game.

While the theory is convoluted and requires a lot of background knowledge to understand, I'm convinced because it's also perfectly in line with Kingdom Hearts' already twisty-turvy, sometimes non-sensical lore. It wouldn't be the first time Nomura's referenced FF Versus 13 with all the subtlety of a bulldozer, either – the man seemingly can't let go of his baby. But I also wouldn't rule out the possibility this is all just a red herring that Kingdom Hearts fans, me included, are reading way too much into, as usual.

Whether the references are just references or something more remains to be seen. We'll find out when Kingdom Hearts 4 "100%" comes out next year.

Kingdom Hearts 4 references a bit of OG lore so obscure I wouldn't have blamed Tetsuya Nomura for forgetting it.

Red Dead Redemption lead multiplayer designer Kris Roberts once tried enjoying his much-needed compensated time off. The 2010 open-world game's demanding pre-launch period put him in "an amnesiac state" of sleep deprivation, and he was starting to get irritable with his bosses at Rockstar. But then he got assigned jury duty, and then Red Dead's multiplayer bugs started to show themselves, and any hopes for going to bed on time were replaced with cold panic.

"Sort of like the punchline," Roberts tells Kiwi Talkz in a new interview, which you can watch below. "I was on jury in a criminal case, where somebody was potentially going to go to prison when we shipped. And, I don't know if you were aware or whatever, but when Red Dead shipped, multiplayer was broken. Just absolutely broken." Members of the Rockstar New England team – he credits someone named Jeremy, likely programmer Jeremy Tudisco – helped him patch it up, but not before he was made to have a few 3AM sessions spent staring at the American frontier gone wild.

"There were people riding chickens, and old ladies flying around, and all these wacky things that we had never, ever seen," Roberts says, "and it's like, 'Are we being hacked? Is somebody trolling us? What's going on?"

He'd work on finding a solution after his jury duty sessions, and while presumably unpleasant, the hard work during what was meant to be his free time eventually paid off. "What we discovered was, there were these special assets for the competitive games, these bags of gold that were really resource heavy, because everybody needed to agree, exactly, on who owned them, where they were, all that kind of stuff," says Roberts.

"And I remember riding around in a public session, and near Escalera, or some place like that where there was a competitive game, and I saw this array of bags, like, just there on the ground. Which shouldn't be there. They should never be in free roam. And that was, like, the first clue."

"We never actually, to the best of my understanding, figured out how it was happening," Roberts admits. But Rockstar devs were able to make a good guess: there was likely "some edge case" where a player leaving a competitive game could grab a money bag and take it with them while they free roamed like an outlaw.

"Basically, the theory was those [bags] were soaking up all the resources so none of the actual game logic or scripting could function as designed," says Roberts. Eventually, Jeremy came along and "came up with a script that would purge those bags with extreme prejudice. So, it's like, if you're in free roam, and you're an asset with this ID range, you are a bag, and you are gone."

"It was amazing, we were able to fix that," Roberts says, sounding relieved even 16 years later. Jeremy linked his bag removal script with the sound of a slot machine payout, too, for extra, flashy satisfaction.

Even better, the irreproachable technology of 2010 allowed Rockstar's multiplayer team to release emergency fixes with the easy slickness of shoe polish on cowboy boots.

Roberts observes about the money bag fix, "That kind of thing would normally have to go through a whole patch and approval process and testing, and, you know, it could have taken weeks or longer to deploy that." But developers' Xbox 360 and PS3 kits gave them access to title storage. "The intention was you would get, like, notifications about tournaments, or things that were happening, that could show up on the client," Roberts says, "and it turned out we could deploy Jeremy [Tudisco]'s script through the title storage update."

"So, with no oversight, and no testing, or no delay, we were able to get that script into the public sessions within 24 hours," he says. "I thought we had won the lottery as far as, like, 'It's actually getting fixed. It's not a catastrophe.'

In fact, it was finally over. "And it was three in the morning, or so, and I remember going to talk to – we had a new studio head then, Gordon [Hall] had left – and I remember talking to him," says Roberts. He told his boss, "'This is what we're doing, this is how it's being deployed, blah, blah, blah. But I got to go, because I'm expected in court in a few hours.'"

Sorry, Rockstar – duty calls.

After 16 years, Red Dead Redemption's John Marston actor completes Rockstar's epic Western, breaks down crying during the end credits: "Oh my goodness."

The creator of open-world game Future? No Thanks! says Valve has repeatedly flagged his game as deserving an adult-only rating on par with outright porn games, yet refused to explain its reasoning, reflecting what he calls a "monopoly" on PC gaming that forces devs to comply with opaque rules.

Aftermath spoke to several game developers about the difficult and awkward process of getting games with sexual content rated and approved on Steam. Pedercini's Future? No Thanks! is a comparatively tame open-world game about exploring an "ecosocialist eutopia" as an old man "scheduled for euthanasia."

It's definitely a mature game, but from what I've seen and what Pedercini is saying, it's very far from pornographic. It feels closer to comedy of a Futurama variety. Yet the disclaimer for its Steam demo insists the game contains "implied off-screen sexual activity. Conversations about mature themes such as sex, gender, and death. Depiction of legalized prostitution. Depiction of euthanasia. Drug and tobacco reference sexual innuendos mild swearing [sic]."

Pedercini maintains that the game "has some brief nudity and mature content… but there's no intercourse on screen," and while he's open to adjusting content to meet Steam's standards for a rating which won't kill the game's visibility, he's unsure what needs changing.

"Steam is a monopoly with very few precedents," he says. "As a developer, I’m completely at their whim."

This is something I've heard from many game developers publishing on Steam: the store can be great when it's in your corner, but working against it in any way can feel impossible.

Even after "all the nudity" was removed, by which Pedercini means "putting clothes on the sex worker and the sexbot," the game was rejected again on the grounds that it "contains sexual content that is explicit or graphic and is intended for adults only." However, Pedercini says Valve claims it "can't specify the reasons or point at the content" in question.

Valve is notorious for arbitrarily blocking games with sexual or mature content despite allowing a torrent of actual pornographic games on Steam. There was also a huge stink last year after Valve cracked under pressure from payment processor-pushed censorship and took a sledgehammer to swathes of adult games. Itch.io faced similar issues, which collectively forced countless NSFW games off stores.

The other half of this equation is its alleged monopoly, which is widely argued given its dominance on PC, but is still more contentious.

Games analyst Mat Piscatella commented on this last year, arguing that Steam is not a monopoly simply because of its market share.

"A monopoly is where there's a single seller for a particular service or good with no substitutes and the ability to charge excessively high rates because of this," he said at the time.

One question is whether Steam's dominance is due to Valve actively boxing out competitors, or due to Steam simply being that much better than other PC storefronts and thus eating their lunch passively. Ask Amazon and Epic Games how difficult it is to make a Steam competitor. '

"It's almost as if it isn't providing a shit service," as Baldur's Gate 3 publishing lead Michael Doluse put it.

Valve has repeatedly been accused of, and taken to court over, monopolistic practices on Steam. Earlier this year, deposition from Gabe Newell, attached to a US class action lawsuit mirroring a UK case likewise accusing Valve of abusing its position, emerged. Newell argued that gamers "have enormous choice" and claimed "Valve does not have a policy or practice of dictating prices to third-party software developers on other platforms."

I actually met and spoke to Pedercini earlier this year to discuss another heated topic: why indie devs don't want to use generative AI.

Pedercini showed mercy to GTA 6 by shifting his own open-world game's release date away from Rockstar's.

Gearbox is sticking to its word and continuing to support Borderlands 4 with big new content drops despite what it's admitted was a "softer" launch than expected. The developer has released the full details for the $20 Borderlands 4 Story Pack 2, titled FL4K and the Last Resort, and, as you might've gleaned from that title, the Borderlands 3 playable Beastmaster class FL4K is making a triumphant comeback.

At the heart of FL4K and the Last Resort's story is a rescue mission for the vault hunter's dog, who is kidnapped by Tediore soldiers while accompanying FL4K on a hunting mission on the new tropical jungle map, Providence, which makes up much of the new DLC's visual identity. Art director Chris Neely tells Polygon the update has "a little bit of a Mad Max edge" and "a little John Wick action."

"Tediore has captured one of my best friends. He's a skag, and he's helpless without me. If he is alive, I require assistance rescuing him. If he is dead, go Vault Hunter, put things in their place," says FL4K in the below trailer. Frankly, if there's one guaranteed trick to get me to buy a DLC, it's telling me there's an animal that needs rescuing. Diabolical work, Gearbox.

Story Pack 2 also adds a bunch of new goons called Deadframes to blast through and a new Vault Hunter to embody while doing so, the previously unveiled Cyberpunk hacker, Loveless. Gearbox says Loveless makes use of "advanced cybernetics and a sentient digital virus pet for a unique combat approach," and again, just take my money already.

Ultimately, we're here for the loot, and Story Pack 2 delivers on that front. Gearbox says you'll be able to find two new Pearlescent weapons; the Astonisher Ripper shotgun and the Quadratus, a Vladof Heavy Weapon Ordnance; as well as 18 new pieces of Legendary gear.

Borderlands 4's second big expansion releases alongside a smaller new Bounty Pack, titled Amara and the Vile Shadows, which is a separate $6 purchase and comes with a new replayable mission and new loot including a new Pearlescent weapon and six new pieces of Legendaries.

All of that is releasing alongside a new system update that'll bring the game up to version 1.10 and increase the max level cap by 10 for everyone.

Here are the best FPS games to play in 2026.

Development of 2XKO is shutting down this year.

Riot Games has announced that its League of Legends fighting game did not attract enough players to sustain future support, and the final content update will land in October. The game itself will remain playable both online and offline for the foreseeable future.

"Over the last few months, we’ve been monitoring 2XKO’s trajectory closely, and what we’ve seen is painting a clear, consistent picture: while a lot of you jumped in to try the game and there's an incredible community that plays every day, we haven’t seen enough players stick with the game to get to a path toward sustainability," Riot says in its announcement.

2XKO's struggles have been clear since launch, when 80 employees were laid off immediately following the game's release. Riot says that its goal with 2XKO was to satisfy frustrated members of the fighting game community, while simultaneously making a notoriously daunting genre more accessible for new players. While the studio says it saw "small scale" evidence of success with this approach, it wasn't enough.

"In recent months, the team has continued to take bold swings while fully aware of 2XKO's challenges – but to attempt another year hoping for a way forward would have been an irresponsible choice for players and the dev team," Riot says. "To be super clear: we would have continued active development if we saw any viable future, but 2XKO costs us substantially more to operate than it brings in, and engagement has stayed relatively flat despite our larger updates."

2XKO launched in January 2026 as a free-to-play game supported by microtransactions. All purchases made up until today, August 20, will be refunded to players in the weeks to come. On September 8, an update will be released which unlocks all champions for all players. At the same time, a final $40 bundle will be released that contains all previously released cosmetic content.

Lux, a new character who was announced at Evo 2026, will also be released as part of the September update. The final champion, Samira, will be released in an October update that will serve as 2XKO's "final major content patch."

"Looking to the future, you can count on Riot to keep exploring new genres and ways to bring players together," the studio concludes. "For now, we’re focused on leaving 2X in a great spot. Then, we’ll head back into the R&D lab, where we’ll take time to learn and work on how we come back stronger for the next swing at the next genre."

League Classic might sound fun, but as a 15-year League of Legends veteran, I'm here to tell you: You want this less than you think.

Halo universe co-creator and former Bungie creative director Marcus Lehto is having all kinds of strange ideas about the future of the franchise. But before you get too excited and start shooting your Needler pistol into the air, you should know the former Bungie creative director is certain you'll hate what he's thinking, and IP owner Xbox won't care.

"While talk of Halo's future is certainly very exciting, I'm aware that it's fanciful and that I doubt Asha [Sharma, Xbox CEO] really gives a shit," Lehto writes in an August 19 Twitter post. "Also, Halo MUST be built by a local team together," he adds, jabbing at Microsoft's reputation for internal layoffs followed by external contracting, "not outsourced around the globe to a group that has ZERO investment in making something great."

That could be that. But whatever Lehto's been mulling over sounds compelling, and Xbox has lately been experiencing more drastic changes than a little Halo revival, so...

Lehto teases in another Twitter post, "If I were to make another Halo these days, I bet many of you would not like it. It would be a lot darker with a more grounded military feel."

Then, while Halo games have always offered multiplayer PvP – Lehto despises the fact that the new Halo remake left this feature out – they aren't as reliable when it comes to PvE. But it sounds like Lehto wants to rectify this with a truly PvPvE Halo à la Arc Raiders, saying, "PvP would be the brains, PvE the heart and soul."

Ultimately, "It would not be 'everyone's' Halo," Lehto says confidently. In case he hasn't yet sharpened that point enough to tear through your gauzy memories of 2001, he adds that, "I would probably bench much of the current lore – respect it, but build a new future narrative for both the old and new audiences which makes much more sense."

Halo fans finally bared their teeth at this. A spooky, more militaristic Halo? Sure. PvPvE? Interesting. Xbox is currently an unsightly lump of job cuts and drooping revenue – fine, maybe it doesn't even deserve a new Halo game, that's not Lehto's fault. But threats to the lore are simply offensive, fans say, even if they come from the man who helped establish 26th century alien colonization.

"The lore is the only good thing about halo," one person argues on Twitter.

"I know this is just your aspirations, but Halo really can't afford another soft reboot," frets another.

Lehto gets it. If lightning strikes at the right time and his unconventional Halo sequel eventually gets approved, he says, first, "We'd need to sit together, break bread, and enjoy some deep conversation – along with some fine beverages of course." Can we get that in a Halo game?

Give Master Chief a break – I want more Halo games like ODST and Reach.

Coming up with new cards when you're making a deckbuilder must be tough. You have to keep finding inventive ways to push players and the game without breaking it. But for the Slay the Spire 2 devs, the best strategy has become obvious: let fans do it for you.

I say that only half-joking, because developer Mega Crit might be half-joking, too. On Reddit, a fan posted a selection of three hypothetical Slay the Spire 2 cards, each with creative effects, like, "Deal damage equal to another player's Block." Other Slay the Spire 2 fans enjoyed them, in the way we all lovingly engage with fanart, but there's one comment that's something special – a response from Casey Yano, a Mega Crit co-founder and co-creator of the roguelike's first installment.

"Wait, these are great, what the heck," the developer says, in what is somehow not the top comment of the thread. I mean, what else could even come close? It's truly a blessing from on high.

"[Anthony Giovannetti] steal these," Yano adds. Giovannetti is another of the central designers behind both Slay the Spire games – he co-created the original and the Mega Crit studio with Yano.

I can see the attraction to the concepts in the Slay the Spire 2 fan's cards. The first idea is called Buddy Slam, and it deals, as I mentioned, damage equal to another player's block. Very nice. The second is Gonna Finish That?, and it makes another player put all of their status cards into your discard pile. Lots of strategic value there. The third card idea is called Done Right, and it has you and your opponent swap hands next turn.

It's all fun and a little chaotic in nature, but the card Buddy Slam is the clear stand-out among commenters. "Damn, I really want Buddy Slam," says one Redditor.

Considering Yano's enthusiasm, who knows, we might see it added to Slay the Spire 2 soon. I just hope Yano understands the floodgates he may be opening in the process.

After dropping a nerf bomb, Slay the Spire 2 devs say updates are slowing down so they can focus on "bigger, more impactful content" like a new character.

Fallout co-creator Timothy Cain, whose most recent portfolio entries include the likes of The Outer Worlds 2 and its predecessor over at Obsidian Entertainment, thinks developers have a lot to learn from bad games – not just successful titles.

It's a tale as old as time, as Cain describes in his latest YouTube video (below). A game becomes a smash hit – think anything from indie to AAA, Meccha Chameleon to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – and the industry goes wild with copies or clones, attempting to recapture that same success.

This might even lead to other folks copying the bad aspects of "good" games. As Cain puts it, they may "blindly copy" them. These bad aspects could be obvious, and so they're not often overlooked – but "bad" games are, on the other hand, and that takes valuable lessons away from aspiring devs, according to Cain.

"In general," as he says, "bad games are ignored, especially if they weren't part of a popular franchise and or never sold very well." This checks out. When they're sequels of "good" titles, they're not as oft forgotten.

But, "there are so many games out there that one game came out, it wasn't very good, and it was forgotten," Cain explains, concluding, "and I'm saying you could learn a lot from games like that."

Honestly, I get what he means. I'm immediately reminded of that quote about those who don't learn from history being doomed to repeat it, and of the concept of survivorship bias – the overarching theme of the Fallout mastermind's video, actually.

In his own words, "the whole point of this video was [to] please remember about survivorship bias. The qualities of successful games… may not be those qualities which made them successful. And conversely, look at failed ones because some of the things that they share in common may be the reason that they failed."

It's a much-needed message for the industry (and any outside of it as well, for that matter).

Comments see viewers agreeing with Cain, too. "It's the slow path to eventually making the same video game over and over again," reads one. Another adds, "such a simple concept, but you're totally right, they don't ever analyze what makes a game bad."

Fallout co-creator says turn-based and real-time RPGs both have "loud vocal advocates" who won't play anything else, so devs can't please everyone.

Fortnite Cheat Codes have been introduced to replace the Sprite Chests this season, and this fresh mechanic fits in with the general gaming theme for Override. Once you discover a cheat code emblazoned on a surface, you need to match the arrow directions accurately to collect your rewards – it's not quite the Konami Code, but you know the general idea! To get up to speed, this is how Cheat Codes in Fortnite work.

Note that these cheat codes are separate to the Fortnite Lobby Hack codes you enter on the Battle Royale lobby screen, though both provide ways to add more Fortnite Sprites to your collection.

Fortnite Cheat Codes locations

Fortnite Cheat Codes appear on surfaces in many locations around the island, and make a distinctive chime sound when you are close to them in the same way that Chests do. If you've turned on the Visualize Sound Effects option under Audio settings (which I highly recommend you do if you haven't already) then you'll see a blue glow and four arrow icon appear that will lead you to the Cheat Code. The color of it represents the rarity of the Sprite you'll receive if entered correctly, as follows:

• Blue Cheat Code – Rare Sprite
• Purple Cheat Code – Epic Sprite
• Gold Cheat Code – Legendary Sprite

Note that although Fortnite Cheat Codes can appear in the same location for multiple matches, the rarity is randomized each time – so if you find a Gold Cheat Code then unfortunately you can't keep returning to that location and guarantee a Legendary Sprite every visit.

How to use Fortnite Cheat Codes

Once you've found a Fortnite Cheat Code, approach it and follow the ENTER CHEAT prompt to start typing it in using the d-pad or direction controls. Sometimes the camera angle and visual glitches can make it difficult to read the code, so have a quick look at it before interacting so you know what you need to enter. Make a mistake and you'll have to restart, but there's no actual timer so you can take as long as you need to enter the Cheat Code.

Note: If you have one of the Cheat Master Sprites equipped, you can just mash buttons and the correct code will be entered automatically!

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

EA, the publisher behind games like Battlefield 6 and The Sims 4 and parent of Mass Effect developer BioWare, is on many a player's mind right now following the $55 billion deal that saw its buyout – one that might spell disaster for Mass Effect 5, apparently.

Although we don't know too much about the next Mass Effect game as BioWare has been too "busy" to share its progress, it's been underway – or at least in some sort of pre-production state – since its reveal way back in 2020.

It's safe to say that all of this doesn't exactly inspire the greatest confidence in folks… and neither does the fact that a trio of private investors led by Saudi Arabia has just acquired EA, to put it lightly.

Former senior manager at EA Emmanuel Rosier, who now works as the director of market intelligence at industry analyst Newzoo, explains how he feels about BioWare following the recent buyout in a new interview with PC Gamer.

"They've been struggling as a studio, as a brand have been struggling in recent years, and I don't know if they [EA] will keep funding that one," he states. "I think that's the biggest question mark for me."

So, what about Mass Effect 5, then? "I will believe it when I see it, the next Mass Effect game, let's put it that way," Rosier says. "I've worked many years with BioWare, sometimes it can stretch for years and years until something comes." That checks out.

After all, Dragon Age: The Veilguard took nearly a decade to develop – and also suffered a rework of sorts as well. It's hard to tell what'll happen with the new Mass Effect, put simply.

"I think everything can happen at this moment," as Rosier concludes. "They [EA] can pull the plug very, very easily. And if the new investors, they don't have that many feelings about the history of the portfolio, they will take the most financially sound decision most probably."

I hate to say it, but I do fear the former EA lead is right here – anything could happen, and it's likely that profits are being taken into account above… well, everything else.

Only time will tell what the fate of Mass Effect 5 will truly be, but I'll be keeping my own fingers crossed that the new RPG from BioWare ends up coming to fruition someday – with a teaser (anything at all, please) sometime soon, to boot.

EA devs feel "the threat of layoffs at all times," especially after Saudi Arabia acquisition: "It's hard to see how teams or games that underperform wouldn't be dissolved"

The Sinking City 2 trident is part of a puzzle in the Church area that involves the nearby obelisk. It's not very clear though, and even if you find and read the various notes relating to it, it can be unclear what you're meant to do with any of it.

I've solved it all already and have explained the process fully in my in-depth Sinking City 2 walkthrough covering the flooded city section. However, if you just want the short version, here it is.

Unlike the Sinking City 2 printing press puzzle, which involves several locations, this can actually be solved the first time you find it, as long as you know how.

What to do with the Trident?

You'll find the Trident in the Church behind the Star locked door, once you have the Star key. But it's not clear what you need to do with it.

You'll actually want to take the Trident and place it on the Obelisk to start things off. Once you've done that, you'll want to rotate the Obelisk symbols using the information found on the "Call Upon Believers" note which lists four gods (found on the altar when you first enter the Church), and the First Vision note which lists their symbols (found in the Star locked crypt in the graveyard).

Matching up the gods and symbols gives you the the order you need to arrange Obelisk sections, while the mention of 'from the depth to the heights' in one note means this order is from top to bottom and looks like this:

1. Yig: Serpent Form
2. Tsog-Nar: Crooked Cross
3. Gyrh: Spearhead
4. Cthylla: Splayed Womb

Once you have the symbols in the right place, lightning will start hitting the Trident at regular intervals so get clear. Some enemies will also appear, so have fun kiting them into the electricity. A tip will light up each time the Trident is hit, and when all three are lit, nip in and grab it.

Now take the Trident and place it back where you found it. When you leave this small room, you'll be in another dimension and the Church will be full of statues. Go to the altar and take the dagger from the statue right in front of it. Place the dagger into the slot in the altar and you'll be lowered into a basement area for a small boss fight. When that's done, you'll find some Dream Essence upgrade points on the altar as you leave.

You'll be at best about halfway through the flooded city area if you're dealing with this as you find it. However, you might be closer to the end if you're backtracking. Either way, my Sinking City 2 Hospital walkthrough is likely to be useful real soon.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Kingdom Hearts lead Tetsuya Nomura says that Pixar's Coco was chosen as a Disney world in Kingdom Hearts 4 as it was the best fit for Sora's story.

Speaking at the Kingdom Hearts D23 panel (via Genki_JPN on Twitter), after the reveal that The Land of the Dead from Pixar's Coco is the first Disney world featured in the upcoming Square Enix RPG Nomura spoke about world selections.

"Whenever I do have a chance to decide that we absolutely need to include a certain world. I generally think about how well it synergizes with overall the main story progression with Sora" he explains. And that with Kingdom Hearts 4, Nomura adds, "when I thought about the themes, we felt that Coco would be the best world that would help achieve that goal."

Spoilers for Kingdom Hearts 3 (and potentially 4, I guess) to follow.

Okay, so from my understanding as someone who has not played Kingdom Hearts 3 yet (I'm trying to make my way through all of the non-numbered entries between 2 and 3 as intended) Sora sort of dies at the end of the game by being banished from his reality, before awakening in the realistic world seen in trailers for Kingdom Hearts 4, this is known as the Quadratum, which acts as an afterlife.

Not only that, but fans speculate Sora has lost his memories in Kingdom Hearts 4, due to him fainting when seeing visions of Goofy and Donald. This then ties into the Coco world. The latest trailer opens with Hector explaining that people disappear from the afterlife when forgotten (like in the film), which seems like a pretty intentional thing to open with, especially if this theory is true.

Part of the reason the first Kingdom Hearts is my favourite in the series is mostly down to how much the Disney side was integrated into the main plot – which is something I've seen as a major complaint with Kingdom Hearts 3 – so if that's the case again with 4, it's certainly an exciting prospect. But at the same time, I really want the most esoteric crossovers possible to happen with Disney's massive library. Give me an Arlen, Texas world where Sora teams up with Hank and Bobby Hill to stop the heartless from taking over Strickland Propane, I beg of you.

Kingdom Hearts 4's Goofy and Donald are playable for the first time ever, and Mickey's Paper Mario-style sections are "very different from Sora's adventure"

Gabe Newell's appearance at Dota 2's The International 2026 opening ceremony is both rare and expected – an infrequent video message from the soft-retired Valve chief, but a staple of the annual Dota 2 tournament.

"15 years ago, I had the pleasure of welcoming players and fans to the very first International," Newell says at the end of a video posted by Valve's Dota 2 YouTube channel. "A lot has changed since then. Dota itself has changed. It's always evolving, and the best players and teams evolve with it. The Aegis of Champions itself has changed. 58 players have etched their name on that epic trophy. Those players have left their mark on the Aegis, and on the game we all love.

"But there's one thing that never changes. Whether you're at the arena in Shanghai or watching from home, the skill, the passion, the talent of these players is always worth celebrating. And that's what we're here to do. So thank you to the fans for joining us. Thank you to the city of Shanghai for hosting us once again. And thank you to the players for giving us something to celebrate. Today, the finest Dota players in the world will strive to claim the Aegis of Champions. To all of those in the arena, to all of those who are joining us from around the world, I am honored to say: welcome to The International."

The International 2026 is well underway, with over 114,000 people watching the English YouTube version of the tournament stream at the time of writing (currently, Nigma Galaxy vs. Team Falcons). Online, Valve followers seem more enamored with Newell's video message, and his slimmed appearance.

"New Chad Gabe Look Just Dropped," reads a hot post on the Valve subreddit.

"I’m so happy he lost all that weight. Probably bought another 10 to 15 years of life with us," a top reply adds.

"I'm just happy he looks healthy! More time among us," says a third.

A similar post to the LivestreamFail subreddit has attracted similar comments. "I lowkey miss THICC Gabe, but he looks so much healthier now. Really happy for him," says one user.

Valve's video is likewise unable to escape Gaben chanting. "Lord Gaben is getting healthier, love to see it. He looks slimmer than last year's announcement video," reads one top YouTube comment.

For many years, Newell has sat in the center of a nearly unheard-of venn diagram: billionaire CEO and beloved public figure. Enthusiastically pushing AI and dropping hundreds of millions of dollars on yachting and oceanic exploration from a position orbiting, but no longer at the heart, of Valve's operations hasn't dimmed the appreciation or outright affection for the patron saint of Steam sales, praised by fans for pro-consumer policies and level-headed takes on piracy and pricing.

Valve's Gabe Newell still plays at least one game of Dota 2 "every day" in his 60s, so hopefully he's past the noob phase he was stuck in even "after 800 hours."

German brand Beyerdynamic is known amongst audiophiles for its high-quality headsets, and the MMX line in particular, and it's now expanding with the introduction of the MMX 100 and the MMX 130 wireless headsets.

Why release two separate models simultaneously? Well, it appears as though Beyerdynamic wants to please both closed-back and open-back gaming headset fans, as the MMX 100 is closed-back while the MMX 130 is open-back. The brand states that the MMX 100 is designed for those who "want to minimize distracting ambient noise," whereas the MMX 130 is for those who "prefer a more open and spacious sound" and you can have your choice of either when they drop later this year.

The Beyerdynamic MMX 100 is the first of the two headsets to drop, as it launches on September 1 next month in a Black and Arctic White colorway for £89, according to the official Beyerdynamic website. The pair is powered by 40 mm audio drivers, and that closed-back form factor that Beyerdynamic emphasises can reduce external noise and enhance your focus when playing everything from single-player to online games.

That's pretty much the case for all high-quality closed-back pairs with good isolation, and I definitely experienced that when I tested the MMX 150 Wireless earlier this year. Talking of which, much like its 150 brethren, the MMX 100 is equipped with a detachable META Voice microphone and is compatible with everything from gaming PCs, consoles like the PS5, smartphones, and other handhelds via Bluetooth 6.0 or via the pair's low-latency USB dongle and cable.

The MMX 130 Wireless changes things up a notch with its open-back form factor. For those unaware, open-back gaming headsets feature vents behind the audio drivers to allow air (and therefore sound) to move and vibrate more freely. That creates a more natural sound for your games, especially when it's found in the 130 Wireless, which also adds titanium-coated 40 mm drivers into the mix.

If you prefer a more natural soundscape for your games, you'll have to be a bit more patient with the MMX 130 Wireless. It doesn't launch until October 2026, and the brand has yet to give a specific date during the spooky season when you can make it yours.

Furthermore, as a European brand, there's no indication of pricing or availability in the US, if you were wondering. That doesn't mean it won't appear at US retailers, as there are plenty of Beyerdynamic headsets across online shopping spaces like Amazon. However, it might take a little longer for either the MMX 130 Wireless or the MMX 100 Wireless to be listed amongst the rest. When it does, alongside the MSRP for both pairs, I'll be sure to let you know. Though at £89 and £109 respectively in the UK, they shouldn't be pricey.

• View all Beyerdynamic gaming headsets at Amazon

I've also rounded up the best PC headsets for gaming, the best Xbox Series X headsets, and the best Nintendo Switch headsets that you should check out.

The Sinking City 2 printing press is an optional objective that will get you one of two upgrades, if you can find the three printing plates it needs scattered around the flooded opening area. Because it requires a lot of exploring and backtracking to find all the parts, and the lore is buried in notes you night not have read, it might just appear as a strange object you don't know what to do with.

The entire process is covered in depth in my first Sinking City 2 walkthrough, that covers the flooded city section of the game. That outlines everything though, so if you just need need help finding it, the bits you need, or solving the final puzzle, here's the fast track version.

Where to find the Printing Press

The Printing Press is found in the Printing House near the Church. You can only access this once you reach the Saloon during the Move the Whale objective, where you'll find the Graveyard Key. This opens the locked gate in the Church area, and lets you reach the Printing House.

You'll have to work your way through most of the Printing House, as you'll only find the Printing Press itself once you find the secret room in the Director's Office by taking the APH Key. Unlike the Sinking City 2 Trident puzzle that can be solved there and then when you find it, this needs three other items - Printing Plate A, B and C - found in different places around the flooded city.

Where to find all Printing Plates

There are three printing plates to find in the flooded city area, which can be found in the following places, in the order you're most likely to find them:

1. Printing Plate C - found at the Church in the Star Locked tomb.
2. Printing Plate A - found in the Printing House as you pass through an apartment.
3. Printing Plate B - found in the Academic's Apartment next to the Fire Dept. Accessible only once you've taken the claw to move the Whale.

Getting all three plates will involve clearing most of the flooded city area and, by the time you have plate B from moving the whale, you'll only have one area left.

How to solve the printing press puzzle

To solve the Printing Press puzzle you need to place all three plates in it and then rotate the faces to make them all one color, depending on what reward you want:

• All Silver - Two Dream essence upgrade points
• All Gold - Cutter's Study Stock for the shotgun, which increases damage to enemies shot in the back

It's up to you what you pick, but personally I think the extra shotgun damage is the most valuable. You can only have one as the press will break after use.

Whichever one you want, the solution to solving the printing press puzzle is the same. Whenever you rotate a piece the pieces around it on the top, bottom, left and right also turn. The easiest way I've found to solve it is to get the corners the color you want first:

Dealing with just the corners reduces the bits that interfere with each other so should make it easier to get them where you want. When you've done that you just have to flip the middle pieces to get it all the same color.

Once you have the color you want, use the printing press to get your reward. And, as you're likely nearing the end of the flooded city by the time you complete this, you might be wanting the Sinking City 2 Hospital walkthrough next.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

To get the Mortal Shell 2 Genessa Shell, you cannot simply find her around the map as you would the other eight habitable Shells. Instead, you must head to a very specific dungeon where you will obtain an item by defeating Sester Secundus, and then return that item to Sester Genessa in her arena in the Marrow Keep.

It's likely that you'll find this item simply by progressing the story, so if you want to back out now and unlock Genessa at your own pace, then this is your chance to do so. Otherwise, I'll walk you through exactly how to unlock Genessa, so you can equip and start upgrading her as soon as possible.

How to get Genessa in Mortal Shell 2

To get the Genessa Shell in Mortal Shell 2, you must locate the Sester's Censer in the Revenant Graves area, interact with it to enter the dungeon, and defeat the boss within. Then, you must take the Censer, your reward for winning the battle, the Genessa in the Marrow Keep.

You can see the exact location of the Sester's Censer in the image above, and it's easiest to access from the Outskirts of Mammon Beacon. From there, head southeast to the middle of the three bone gates, use it traverse across the gap, then climb the stairs to the large arena area, where you'll see the ghostly red apparitions of other Sesters.

Upon interacting with the Sester's Censer, you'll be warped inside the Censer itself where you must defeat Sester Secundus, a fairly easy boss. For winning, you'll receive the Censer itself, which you can then return to Genessa, thus unlocking one of the best Mortal Shell 2 Shells for use.

From here on in, if you want to equip the Genessa Shell then return to her arena, as you won't be able to switch to her in Zhirelle's chamber, like the other Shells, whose locations you unlock using Mortal Shell 2 Gloom.

Don't forget to head to the elevator room of the Marrow Keep to unlock one of Genessa's Mortal Shell 2 Shades - as long as you have a Blackmarrow key to hand. Plus, while you're at Genessa's arena, check out the secret room and Commune with Chaos.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Oh, what could've been. It's been a rough year for Bungie, what with updates stopping on Destiny 2. the muted response to Marathon, and now the whole outfit essentially reduced to a skeleton crew. Turns out, we could've been seeing a lot more of the developer, since the teams therein had around a half-dozen games in the works before, during, and after the Sony acquisition, according to a new report.

No, really - that many releases were purportedly in various stages on the slate for the original home of Halo prior to Sony buying the outfit for $3.6 billion. This comes from Jason Schreier of Bloomberg, who spoke about the studio in a new YouTube video.

"As part of that acquisition, Bungie also had a whole bunch of other live service games in the works that Sony wanted to see come out in the subsequent years in addition to, of course, Destiny 2, which is Bungie’s big ongoing project," he says. There were "five or six" in total, and this portfolio was integral to Sony's interest in the company.

But "for a variety of reasons," he explains, "most of those projects fell apart." He doesn't provide any further clues on what these games were, but we can piece together the likely candidates.

There's the aforementioned Marathon, for a start, then the mobile game Destiny: Rising, that came out in 2025. Another game, known as Project Gummy Bears, was taken in-house at Sony and is still in development, though to what degree is unknown.

From there, we know of Project Sunspot, another Destiny spin-off, that was canceled in 2023, and Project Payback, a game inspired by Warframe, which was shuttered in 2024. We could speculate all day on the circumstances behind these decisions - Sony paid a lot of money for Bungie and clearly wanted a return on investment.

Whatever state these games were in, they probably just didn't seem promising enough to do that kind of business. But if at least one was moved to another team, the potential must be there to some degree.

It's all a pity, because now Bungie's a shell of what it once was. Whatever the future holds, we can only imagine how these games would've looked had they come out.

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

Earlier this year, Terraria saw the release of its long-awaited 1.4.5 update (known also as by its official name, Bigger and Boulder) – but developer Re-Logic has still been working since to patch things up.

The proof is in the pudding, as they say, and the latest serving of pudding is 1.4.5.7 – a handy, seemingly little new "hotfix" that is actually anything but little.

As outlined in the patch notes on Steam, this version of Terraria sees a plethora of additions, adjustments, and reworks land, with some including changes I (and many other fans, judging by circulating discussions online) have spent the last 10 or so years waiting to see come to fruition.

First and foremost, we've got a bunch of new items to look forward to in 1.4.5.7, from staves to accessories, and even materials like the Kinship Peach. There are also "two new secret seeds," as per Re-Logic's patch notes… which I can't wait to explore.

The real excitement (for me, anyway), though, comes from the tweaks the so-called hotfix – which truly does feel like an update – brings. Let's start with the respawn timer.

You know how when you die, you annoyingly have to wait to respawn? Well, not anymore – as long as there's "no great danger around," anyway.

And yoyos, the weapons that have arguably been universally hated and seen as, well, useless since 2015? As one fan so eloquently puts it in a post over on Twitter, they're "not ass" anymore, with buffs and specific yoyo changes like one to the Eye of Cthulhu that spawns an, erm, Eye of Cthulhu upon hitting an enemy.

There are changes across the board to classes and weapons, however, so I'd advise taking a look at the full patch notes – especially if you like playing with magic, like me.

Bosses are different now, too, with nerfs to some (thankfully, the Empress of Light is one of these), and adjustments to many. The Moon Lord, for example, has better-telegraphed attacks in 1.4.5.7, making the fight a bit less painful. The Deerclops' attacks better line up visibly as well.

All in all, it's a downright loaded hotfix, and apparently the "last" to come for the Bigger and Boulder update.

There's genuinely too much to cover here, so again, I'd recommend reading through Re-Logic's roundup – but I personally can't wait to see what's next.

Terraria's biggest mod, Calamity, is shutting down after 10 years over what the makers call a "troubled past" and "irrecoverably tainted reputation."

Halo is renowned for two things. First and foremost is its revolutionary FPS formula – Halo: Combat Evolved is often cited as a turning point for the genre, with a lot of its core principles still prevalent today. The term 'Halo killer' was thrown about in the mid to late 2000s as many developers sought to dethrone the shooter as the pinnacle of console FPS gaming.

The second aspect, though sometimes overlooked, is Halo's narrative. It's all that common, even today, for FPS games to offer little context for all the nonsense other than 'that target is bad and deserves to be riddled with holes'. But Halo's original outings were surprisingly multi-faceted and gripping, with plot twists and intrigue that reached far beyond 'these aliens are bad and they should feel bad'.

The story so far...

This narrative was vastly expanded upon in Halo 2. By Halo 3, the universe's core pillars – Humanity, The Covenant and The Flood – were so fleshed out that seeing their motivations intersect in the trilogy created one of the greatest space operas in all of gaming history.

Halo 3: ODST, Reach, and Halo Wars further fleshed this conflict out, telling stories through other Spartans, regular marines, their commanders, and even a squad of elite Orbital Drop Shock Troopers. These perspectives showed the war not through the visor of a super-soldier, but through regular humans facing overwhelming alien doom. The approach helped these titles stand apart from the original trilogy – bolstering the story, rather than competing with it.

I don't think the 343 Industries era of Halo reached that level of narrative prowess. Halo 4 did have the personal drama with Cortana's rampancy and Chiefs reluctance to let her go, but even that at times felt shallow, as did the conflict with the Didact and his Prometheans. As for Halo 5, the only truly gripping sequences in that game were those on Sanghelios dealing with the remnants of the Human-Covie war; a shadow of the franchise's heights.

Halo Infinite was somewhat of a revelation, at least gameplay-wise. 343 made an obvious effort to reference what made Halo so much fun to play in days gone by, and to a certain degree, this was a success. But the story? Not since Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker has a sequel backpedaled on its predecessors so quickly. Somehow the Covenant has returned…. Again.

Keep an eye on the horizon

But 343 is no more, following a rebrand in 2024. Now we have Halo Studios, and a precedent has already been set. Learning from what worked from Halo Infinite, Halo Studios is now looking back at the successes of Halo, and using that to shape its future. Halo: Campaign Evolved is a clear example of this, taking the original stellar game, and more effectively modernizing it than Combat Evolved Anniversary's Reach-colored paintjob could ever even hope to. But the one thing that gives me even more hope for the future of Halo, is locked away in the bonus missions – Operation: Meteorite.

With three new campaign levels set a year before the events of Halo: Combat Evolved, this mini-campaign sees Chief and SGT. Johnson infiltrate a gigantic Covenant research vessel. The plot may be soft touch, but there's enough intrigue and environmental storytelling to keep you engaged, and even a couple of narrative easter eggs to make you go 'oooh'. It may just be the re-inclusion of the Battle Rifle, but the prologue genuinely feels like Halo 2 Anniversary in its level design and combat encounters, and the Seraph space combat closer reeks of Reach's Long Night of Solace. Bonus point if you picked up on the use of Reach's OST here.

It makes me think that Halo Studios is making the right call in looking backwards at what came before. But is it looking at the right games?

Full-circle

Narratively speaking, Halo could take cues from Star Wars. The sequel trilogy was undeniably divisive, but much less so are the standalone stories that have popped up filling the timeline. The Mandalorian, Maul - Shadow Lord and Andor to name a few, all succeed in fleshing out the Star Wars narrative, flourish in their independence and aren't crushed by the pressure of continuing the same story beat for beat.

There are examples of this in Halo's timeline too, with Reach being the most prominent. But ODST and both Halo Wars titles offer interesting and provocative windows into the long-running conflict. There's over 25 years of Human-Covenant war before the start of Bungie's trilogy, and we've barely scratched the surface.

This is where Halo Studios could thrive, finding or creating unique story-telling opportunities within this rich history. Halo Wars is the only time we've seen another conflict on humanity's colony worlds, for example. We've not seen a Covenant perspective of the great war, in the games at least, since Halo 2, nor have we seen a UNSC perspective outside of chief's since Reach, (not counting Halo 4: Spartan Ops or Halo Wars 2 as those are post-war).

There's also Pre-Humanity. The Flood-Forerunner war has been covered in extended material, and in-game flashbacks via secret terminals, but playing an FPS from the perspective of a Forerunner soldier, witnessing the fall of their civilization and the buildup to firing the Halo array would be absolutely haunting.

There are so many possibilities for Halo Studios to expand the Halo timeline, and while the main campaign of Campaign Evolved may be a strong, albeit somewhat safe, introduction to this 'new' studio's tenure of Halo Titles, it's Operation: Meteorite that excites me for Halo's future.

We've ranked the best Halo games - but if you want something a little different, our best FPS list has even more recommendations for your next playthrough

Fortnite Lobby Hack codes are a new system introduced with the Override season, which ties in to the general gaming theme that's now up and running. By opening the admin panel from the lobby screen, you can type in a selection of secret codes to receive instant rewards, including some powerful Sprites to kickstart your collection and handy gizmos to deploy for an advantage in matches. To find out more, here are all 16 Lobby Hack codes in Fortnite and how to redeem them.

Note that these codes are separate from the Fortnite Cheat Codes you can find and enter during matches, though both of them will unlock new Fortnite Sprites to add to your collection.

All Fortnite Lobby Hack codes

The following Fortnite Lobby Hack codes can be redeemed now:

• Sprites
  • 8BITBLAST – Cheat Master 8-Bit Sprite
  • BORN2PLAY – Cheat Master Adventure Sprite, Cuddle Team Leader Outfit Style for Wrixel
  • GOTTAGOFAST – Cheat Master Sonic Sprite
  • IWANNAFLYHIGH – Cheat Master Tails Sprite
  • PLAY4ALL – Cheat Master Jonesy Sprite new!
• Sprite Dust
  • ABGESTAUBT – 2,000 Sprite Dust
  • CHISPAMBO – 2,000 Sprite Dust
  • MAGILUME – 2,000 Sprite Dust
  • PERLIMPINPIN - 2,000 Sprite Dust
• Gizmos
  • FINDITCHAT – 2 Cheat Code Locators new!
  • O2OVERRIDE – Llama Supply, 5 Portable Extractors
  • PERFECTORDER – 4 Spicy Tacos
  • SURVIVETHENIGHT – 2 Cheat Code Locators
  • TAKEYOURHEART - 2 Extraction Accelerators
• Cosmetics
  • BEMOREALIEN – Override Ready Loading Screen
  • DONTBLOCKME – Briefly turn into a Tetris Piece (can be used more than once)
  • LETSBLOCKANDROLL – Briefly turn into a Tetris Piece (can be used more than once)
  • OVERRIDEXP – 40,000 XP new!
  • REACHYOURIMPOSSIBLE – Block Party Loading Screen

Note that if you redeem a Lobby Hack code for a Sprite that you already have in your collection, you'll receive 10,000 Sprite Dust as a reward instead.

How to redeem Fortnite Lobby Hack codes

To redeem Lobby Hack codes in Fortnite, go to the Battle Royale Lobby in the main menu and select the .../ admin panel in the top-right corner of the screen by following the button prompt or clicking on it. This will open the fortnite admin panel, where you can type in any of the promos before hitting the SUBMIT button to claim your rewards. Fortnite Lobby Hack codes are not case-sensitive, so you don't have to enter them in all caps as long as the correct spelling is used.

These are all of the Fortnite Lobby Hack codes that have been revealed so far, but as more are discovered I will add them to this guide.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

There is sadly no Mortal Shell 2 Glimpse farm available in the Soulslike game, as the currency is finite, and primarily available through cleansing Beacons. This isn't great news since Glimpses are required for bonding with and upgrading Shells, and there aren't quite enough of them to fully upgrade every Shell.

That means you need to take care when spending Glimpses, considering your options carefully. While Glimpses are no longer required to find Shells, you do need plenty of them to bond with Shells, thus improving their stats and allowing you to upgrade their abilities, and you can't refund them, so do so with your favorite Shells first. If you need more Mortal Shell 2 Glimpses and aren't sure where to get them, here's what you need to know.

How to get Mortal Shell 2 Glimpses

There are three main ways you can obtain Glimpses:

• Cleansing Beacons.
• Exploring behind Cleansed Gates.
• You can purchase one from Merrick in the Marrow Keep.

You can also occasionally find Glimpses by exploring the rest of the world, but they're fairly rare.

The good news is that you can get more in New Game Plus, and you carry your Shell progress through with you, so, as you'll read below, it'll take a few playthroughs to fully upgrade all your Shells. Perhaps one playthrough will give you a chance to try out another difficulty, like the Mortal Shell 2 Slayer Seal.

Check out my guide on the Mortal Shell 2 length to see how long this all might take you.

How to spend Mortal Shell 2 Glimpses

Considering how to spend your Glimpses is incredibly tough knowing that you can't unlock and upgrade all eight Shells. Each Shell requires upwards of 20 Glimpses to fully upgrade them, meaning you'd need well over 100 to fully bond with each Shell, and there are believed to be just over 90 from one playthrough, meaning you can only upgrade three or four Shells. Since there is currently no Glimpse refund system, it's essential that you choose carefully, perhaps using my best Mortal Shell 2 Shells guide for advice.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

If you're wondering whether you should feed Gorf in Mortal Shell 2, then read on, as this seemingly unimportant character has far more to offer than your first meeting might suggest. It's not all about Gorf, either, as another interesting NPC is crucial to this quest.

When you first meet Gorf near the Widow's Overlook Beacon, he'll ask you for a Weltcap in hope of healing his mystery malady. He's really not feeling well, and you'll find plenty of these red mushrooms as you explore, so you should hand one over. This isn't the last of it, though, and you'll need to get an interesting lady named Hilga involved if you're going to heal him once and for all.

How to complete the Mortal Shell 2 Gorf questline

Yes, you should feed Gorf, and you'll get a valuable Marsh Pearl in return. In fact, to complete the full Mortal Shell 2 Gorf questline, you need to feed him multiple times and speak to Hilda in the Mushroom Village. There are more Marsh Pearls in it for you.

If you don't want me to spoil it for you, that's all you need to know. Each time you interact with either one of the NPCS, you must leave the area to trigger their next action, so it makes sense to simply alternate visits between them until the questline is concluded. You can either do this naturally while you progress through the game, or use Mortal Shell 2 fast travel to complete heal Gorf quickly.

If you want a walkthrough of the whole mission instead, here's exactly how to complete the questline and heal Gorf:

1. First, feed Gorf a Weltcap Mushroom. Speak with him again to collect a Marsh Pearl, which you can sell to Merrick at the Marrow Keep for 2,000 Coins.
2. Then you'll need to return to Gorf twice more, each time gifting him Common Moonshine.
3. The next time you visit Gorf, he'll give you a Poisoned Dagger that has been used to injure him.
4. Take this to Hilga in the Mushroom Village, at the location below.

5. While you're doing all this, check in with Hilda multiple times as well.
6. As soon as you've reached the right place in both storylines, you'll be able to give Hilga the Poisoned Dagger.
7. Now, if you return to Hilga's home, she'll have left you a note vaguely informing you that you'll know where to find her. Of course, she'll be with Gorf.
8. Head back to Gorf to find the two characters together and give Gorf another bottle of Moonshine.
9. Next time you return, Hilga will be gone, but Gorf will have been healed. He'll gift you another Marsh Pearl.
10. Return to Gorf's lair twice more and see the fruits of your labor. I won't spoil the ending for you.

If you have any problems completing this questline, you must cleanse the corruption near Hilga's home, which you can only do once you have claimed enough Ova to unlock the Mether's Breath.

Essentially, all that's in the Mortal Shell 2 Gorf questline for you is a few Marsh Pearls, but they are worth a good few thousand Coins all in all, and a handful of Mortal Shell 2 Gloom. For me, it's more about the beautiful, if a little weird, love story - a nice interval to all the fighting and monsters.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

You can reset the timer, because once again, there's tension between Call of Duty devs and players over online multiplayer. In this instance, Modern Warfare 4 utilizing the matchmaking system from Black Ops 7 Season 5, at least during the upcoming beta, is causing a stir.

To put it succinctly, players simply don't want it, and the official Call of Duty Twitter account's responses aren't helping. "Players are sticking around longer and playing more matches," a tweet reads.

"Since Season 05, quit rates are down across every skill group. For more than half of players, they dropped 41%," the post continues. "Search times are also down vs. Season 04. Average ping has improved too."

The Call of Duty account then revealed more stats on what the devs saw in open matchmaking. There were over 32% higher quit rates, over 14% fewer kills, and over 50% left "Not Fun" ratings. Those are substantial numbers, and paired with the 141% hike in players quitting Nuketown, suggested another structure for doing things was favorable.

Members of the fanbase are contesting these figures. Community notes state search times are actually up, pointing to a video testing such from YouTuber XclusiveAce. Infinity Ward's later claim that 50% of players exit a game when there are disbanding lobbies, a figure that's been dubbed "misleading," citing a guide from the franchise's official site.

Replies by now have gotten a little petty and barbed, and it's worth keeping in mind the beta hasn't actually kicked off yet. ModernWarzone, a dedicated outlet for this FPS series and Battlefield, has been involved in back-and-forths with various representations of Call of Duty on Twitter.

A final statement was made by the central, namesake account. "We asked for feedback and you definitely gave it to us. And that's what a Beta is for," the tweet reads. "We’ll be here online, and in your lobbies, improving as we go. Matchmaking isn't just data, it's a feeling. So jump in, feel it for yourself in Beta."

The Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 early beta runs from August 21 through to August 25.

"CoD got it. Halo didn't" – Black Ops 1 and 2 ports battered Halo Campaign Evolved on PlayStation last month, analyst says, because $60 for a "graphical touch-up" is a rough sell

Game Science has released 15 minutes of Black Myth: Zhong Kui gameplay with an extremely impressive showcase of the game's graphics.

While it may have been overshadowed somewhat by the likes of Metaphor: ReFantazio and Astro Bot when it came to awards season and critical acclaim, I can't think of a bigger game release in 2024 than Black Myth: Wukong. But the real shocker was when, almost exactly a year after its release, Game Science announced a follow-up, with Black Myth: Zhong Kui being confirmed at Gamescom last year.

And now, perhaps even more shockingly – given that it was described as "little more than an empty folder at this stage" upon its reveal – almost exactly a year later, a surprise drop from the developers has revealed 15 minutes of gameplay from the upcoming sequel.

Immediately, the footage is striking: it looks incredibly detailed, with the description stating "all footage was captured in-game from a work-in-progress build." And without a single word spoken, the footage shows a section of the game in which our yet-unnamed protagonist traverses a derelict mountainous region. The graphics are a big hit with YouTube commenters, too, with one user saying, "If they never released Wukong before this, people would think this is fake."

The gameplay also shows a few in-game battles, and right away it looks like there is now a dedicated parry button included in the moveset (you could parry in Wukong, but it was with a specific ability, and not baked into the protagonist's moveset). The rest will look somewhat familiar to anyone who played the first game. There's also a boss fight included in the footage, with the monster's flailing animations looking mighty impressive.

Unfortunately, there's no indication as to when the game will actually release, with the description claiming the game to be in "early development," so we could be waiting a few years yet. But It's undoubtedly an impressive first showing, and as someone who didn't particularly get on with Wukong, I'm keen to give this one a chance.

Black Myth: Wukong sequel isn't using AI because the devs were inspired by The Odyssey and Christopher Nolan's filmmaking techniques: "No rush"

After 11 years, The Witcher 3 might finally let us experience Belleteyn firsthand in new DLC, Songs of the Past – if a Gamescom booth from CD Projekt Red offers anything to go by.

Belleteyn has sadly only been mentioned by the developer in The Witcher 3 thus far, as a massive celebratory fertility festival with food, drink, love, and you name it (think Beltane, its real-world Gaelic counterpart).

Interestingly enough, however, it is the birthday of Yennefer, and in The Witcher books, Geralt believes it's also around the same time that Ciri herself was born… so, yeah, it's a pretty big deal.

Why do we think we might get to witness Belleteyn in all of its glory come Songs of the Past, though? Well, it just so happens that Gamescom 2026 is upon us and CD Projekt Red's booth artwork at the annual event appears to show a scene from Belleteyn – fire, festivities, and the like by the water.

It's already caught the eye of excited fans, too, with one post on X reading, "That looks like Belleteyn." Indeed, it does.

Over on Reddit, theories are running wild as well, as a picture of the Gamescom booth has folks convinced it is, in fact, referencing Belleteyn.

The top response literally just says "Belleteyn," so there you have it. Another chimes in, "Looks like there might be Belleteyn festivities artwork on the left side," further solidifying that the festival is what's on all of our minds – but this isn't the first time it's presence in Songs of the Past has been proposed.

A solid five months ago now, a separate thread on the website saw somebody note, "I noticed an X post, it talks about Geralt's sword (surprisingly his THIRD sword here since he already has two on his back) being the exact same one he had next to him during Belleteyn, which is a major spring and fertility festival that corresponds to the real-world Celtic Holiday of Beltane."

This older theorizing stems from older Songs of the Past artwork showing the sword.

So, could this all truly tease some sort of Belleteyn festivities in Songs of the Past? I certainly hope so, but I suppose only time will tell – and the DLC is set to launch in 2027.

The Witcher 3 devs tried to give NPCs "fear reactions" but it got cut after a few horrifying weeks when "women were just dropping their babies, left and right"

Genshin Impact 7.0 gave players a gun and made sure to carefully tell them that they should only use it in specially designated gun zones, so obviously players have done their very best to take the gun everywhere.

The Snezhnaya region at the heart of update 7.0 introduces Shadow Realm areas and challenge zones that turn Genshin into a third-person shooter. In the Shadow Realm, the Traveler is given a spiffy new outfit and a suite of firearms, including full-auto rifles, a grenade launcher, and throwable grenades.

Chinese players quickly found a way to bring these guns out of the Shadow Realm and into the world of Teyvar, including previous regions and combat challenges. Like the cast of Persona 5, they've brought their guns to a fight with god.

YouTube user Ikoan covers one method to smuggle the Traveler's guns out of the Shadow Realm, and I've seen different exploits work for users like Ayayaya. The rub is: find a way out of bounds near a specific waypoint in Snezhnaya, clip and glide your way over to a Shadow Realm-enabled area, and then load up on ammo so you can actually use the gun out in the world.

Joined by their two best friends, Smith and Wesson, Genshin Impact players have been using their new weapons to hunt local wildlife, harass demigods, and generally menace all of Teyvat. The only problem is that, in the open world, these stolen guns deal the same damage that they do normally. The Shadow Realm is balanced around the Traveler's new weapons. All of Genshin Impact, however, is not.

Dealing 60 damage a shot is fine when enemies have, say, 500 health, and the Traveler's health pool of 3,000 is plenty when taking 1,000 damage would be considered a big hit. But when normal Genshin bosses can have several million health and hit you for upwards of 10,000 damage, suddenly guns don't look all that strong. Maybe those wizards in the old woods were right and magic really is better than technology.

Genshin Impact 7.0 livestream reveals nine more free 5-star characters for the Constellation selector, and I've already got my next four picked out.

For five years, a developer named Thomas Brush has been working on a BioShock-inspired horror shooter called Twisted Tower. Now he and a small team of other devs have finally released that game – albeit with pretty low expectations for its success. But Twisted Tower is well on its way to getting a coveted "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating on Steam, and even Brush himself can hardly believe it.

"So Steam has this rule (it's actually a really good rule) that if you hit 500 reviews at 95% you get a big fat gold star called 'Overwhelmingly Positive,'" Brush says on Twitter. "And when you get that gold star, you get to tell your friends you did it. Ofcourse, to be honest, I would have been okay with Mostly Positive. That's how much I doubted this project. To see Twisted Tower approaching that Overwhelmingly Positive dream that I thought was completely out of reach is pretty wild."

As it stands, Twisted Tower has 421 Steam reviews, and 95% of them are positive. If that ratio holds for 79 more reviews, that "gold star" is in sight. And the trends have been promising. Just yesterday, the game had 166 reviews, with 95% of them being positive. "I truly expected my game to flop," Brush tweeted at the time. "Months ago my goal was just to not release something embarrassing… and now I’m thinking… maybe just maybe…. It’s maybe good!!!!"

In a video celebrating the launch, Brush describes Twisted Tower as "a love letter to Bioshock and Willy Wonka and mascot horror. It's basically like Willy Wonka in a creepy Disney World kind of game." The creepier bits of BioShock's atmosphere are clearly present, though it does appear that this game is a little heavier on the action than its inspiration.

But hey, 421 very positive reviews can't be wrong, right? If you're holding out for that Overwhelmingly Positive badge before trying Twisted Tower for yourself, it doesn't seem like you'll have to wait very long.

These are the upcoming indie games you need to have on your raddar.

The Steam Controller has dominated the spotlight of the gamepad market this year, but that might be about to change. Gaming accessory brand Genki is launching what it calls its "most ambitious project yet" on Kickstarter, a mammoth of a controller that combines some of the most standout features of some of the best PC controllers on the shelves today.

The Genki Manta is available to support on Kickstarter now, and to name but a few of its standout features, it's got six extra mappable buttons, a color display with its own MantaOS, TMR thumbsticks with adjustable tension, full gyro, trigger stops, pulse buttons that sense full travel, and a unique shape.

The reason I'm deeming this a big threat to the Steam Controller's appeal, however, is that it has "on-the-fly KBM" functionality that turns the Manta into a keyboard and mouse for you to navigate a PC with. That's undoubtedly the signature feature of Valve's TMR controller, since its trackpads allow you to navigate a PC from the comfort of a couch, bed, or wherever, really.

The Genki Manta also utilizes TMR technology, but it could end up outperforming Valve's gamepad thanks to easily adjustable stick tension, the likes of which we've only seen from the FlyDigi Vader 5S and its predecessors. This can make a massive difference in making a controller feel like your own, and tailoring it to different genres of games.

Like most controllers with a display, the Manta's main appeal for many may just be that 27-inch full-color screen, but it looks like the addition of a dedicated operating system, MantaOS, is going to take this particular gamepad to the next level of gamepad screen technology, perhaps even past the Manba One. MantaOS will allow you to customize profiles, connections, and fine-tune settings, but you can also run custom apps, with one clip in the Kickstarter trailer even showing it playing a Space Invaders-like game.

Alongside all of these features, Manta will also utilize Maglev Haptics, which the product designers say are aimed directly into your palms to communicate detailed feedback more clearly. Obviously, the PS5's DualSense is the gold standard for this, but it relies on its firmware and dedicated support from game devs for you to get the most out of it - I'll be interested to see how the Manta compares.

Of course, the elephant in the room is the Manta's very unique shape, which Genki admits is unlike any other pad on the market. Personally, I'd argue it takes a few design directions from Valve. I'm yet to try any of Genki's controller grips, but given the brand has a history of making these sorts of gaming accessories, I have faith its unique design will translate to ergonomic gamepad design.

Another unique feature is that the Manta's face buttons will be able to sense the full travel of their actuation; in other words, they'll have less latency (in theory) since they don't need electrical contact at the bottom of their press to register an input. They'll be more like Hall effect key switches or triggers that can register inputs on varying levels. Whether that points to double inputs for versatile types of presses like the DualSense's adaptive triggers further down the line remains to be seen.

The Genki Manta's Super Early Bird offer at Kickstarter will set you back $189, which is already pushing up to the sorts of prices we see for fully licensed Xbox Series X controllers and PS5 controllers, so I hope that doesn't translate to a final price tag, given how the Steam Controller's $100 price went down with consumers.

To make matters worse, that offer says it's 32% off, pointing to a price of $279 without any discount. Let's hope it's not that, because even with a display and a bespoke OS, that's going to make it prohibitively expensive.

The Manta has quoted support for PC, Steam, Switch 1 and 2, macOS, Android, iPhone, iPad, and Vision Pro.

Looking to get into sim racing? Take a look at the best PC racing wheels and the best Xbox steering wheels.

Steam analysts have found after measuring 98,555 priced games that sandbox titles are some of Steam's highest earners, with something like genre benchmark Palworld earning around $500 million on the platform since its early access launch in 2024. But sandbox games shouldn't get too comfortable – or maybe the genre should consider its stance on gun violence and action-RPG magic, as it's closely followed by first-person shooters and role-playing games.

These details come from a new report by We Love It, a Steam browsing platform that "leverages generative AI" to build "a feed of compelling, original content" that guides you to discovering new games. I think generative AI is the closest thing we have to proof that demonic entities exist, but We Love It is also a project of Totally Human Media's CEO Ichiro Lambe, who co-created Steam Labs, and, therefore, its study is the work of a Steam expert. Lambe, along with Totally Human's marketing lead Matt Martindale, and VaporLens engineer Dr. Tim Ermilov, compiled the report that shows 27.6% of all sandbox games will make at least $100,000.

In comparison, 21.8% of paid FPS make at least $100,000 in revenue, while 19.5% of RPGs hit that number, and just 19% of ARPGs reach the same milestone. These are impressive figures – but only for an exceedingly tiny scoop of games. Across the nearly 100,000 total games with at least one review that the We Love It team analyzed, the median lifetime earnings for a game was a meager $3,631 – "half of all paid games earned less," write the report's authors.

But the most popular sandbox games earned much, much more. Palworld, with its approximate $500 million revenue, sits at the "top 0.00% of all paid games on Steam," according to the report. Terraria and survival sandbox game Ark rank similarly, with lifetime earnings estimated at $540 million and $400 million, respectively.

Intriguingly, while the less flashy, more flesh-oriented visual novel genre failed to break the top five kinds of games that earn a minimum of $100,000, its median earnings came the closest to the average sandbox game; visual novels earn a median of $7,012 compared to sandbox games' $7,973 on Steam. So, if there's a lesson here, let it be that more sandbox games should include anime girls with knives.

Behold, "the whole story of Steam's economy in one picture": the top 1% of games earn 84.5% of estimated revenue, and most games barely make anything.

Kingdom Hearts lore is extensive, convoluted, and confusing. I don't mean that as a dig – I am a Metal Gear fan, after all – but even after playing every game in the series, I've still got to read a half-dozen wiki pages and watch a few lore videos before I start remembering the specifics of any given plot beat. That's why I'm so impressed that Tetsuya Nomura and the rest of the devs have managed to remember a small, but key detail about Heartless behavior in Kingdom Hearts 4.

The first Disney world announced for Kingdom Hearts 4 is Pixar's Coco, In the recent D23 trailer, we see a pair of Heartless emerge and start creeping toward the film's protagonist, Miguel, who is the only living person in the vicinity – they completely ignore the other denizens of the Land of the Dead.

A couple of days after that trailer debuted, a Kingdom Hearts fan called Noir LilBomber tweeted a theory: "One thing me and my friends noticed in the kingdom hearts 4 trailer is that the heartless only appear to react to Miguel and not the other characters. This is in line with the Ansem report from KH1 that stated the heartless only react to LIVING test subjects."

This theory started getting shared pretty widely among the fandom, and yes, that detail goes back to Ansem's Report 4, which appeared in the first Kingdom Hearts game. "The Heartless appear in groups, and are multiplying rapidly. I've provided them both living and nonliving samples," the report goes. "They've responded only to the living."

This detail actually manifests in a more meaningful way in the OG game, too. When Sora and the crew first arrive in Halloween Town, the Heartless are basically inert, and don't attack the largely undead Nightmare Before Christmas characters there. It's only after Skellington and Dr. Finkelstein build an artificial heart for the Heartless to pine after that they turn violent.

So it's entirely consistent with established lore that the Heatless appearing in the Land of the Dead are only interested in the one living being they see: Miguel. Honestly, bravo to Nomura and the rest of the crew. I doubt many would've noticed if that detail was swept under the rug, but the devs are clearly committed to making sure even the most obscure bits of Kingdom Hearts lore live on in the long-awaited sequel.

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At a time when making and supporting a live service game is rightly seen as an arduous, dangerous challenge, Hello Games boss Sean Murray feels "lucky that we've been allowed to" make No Man's Sky content for 10 years.

Speaking with GamesRadar+ and reflecting on 10 years of No Man's Sky, Murray examines how the small team at Hello Games has reached an equilibrium that allows for this kind of long-term support. No Man's Sky isn't a conventional live service game – everything is free, for one, and it's a single-player experience for many fans – but very few games get 10 years of updates.

"Honestly, if people weren't playing No Man's Sky, I don't think we would want to do updates," Murray says. "I don't think the motivation would be there. Obviously, if no one's playing your game, it's sort of pointless, right?"

Murray points to the "early days" of No Man's Sky, back when Hello Games was more concerned with addressing feedback than adding content. His advice to the team was to picture the person who would love the game and make it "better for them."

"So I think the team does have that attitude, but you need some people to be playing the game, and we've been very lucky in that lots of people play the game," Murray adds.

10 years after launch, No Man's Sky still hangs out in the top 100 to 150 games on Steam (the only platform with such readily available player stats), which is an enviable position for almost any game. Another 10 years from now, there's no guarantee that Hello Games will still be pumping out No Man's Sky updates on the same schedule, or of the same scope, but Murray reckons it would be hard to put the game down for good.

"I could imagine us stopping doing updates for No Man's Sky at some point, and then 10 years later, I'm like, 'Let's do an update for No Man's Sky,'" he says. "I think stuff like that is great. We are in a mindset right now, in the industry, of games just being very consumable. Onto the next one. But I personally really love going back to some of my favorite games and just replaying them when they come to a new platform or something. There's a real beauty in keeping those things alive."

Palworld and No Man's Sky leads pour more fuel on the potential collab fire and fans are convinced it's finally happening: "My 2 favorite games together? Yes please."