Genshin Impact version 5.0 - the next major update set to bring a new region to the game - will release worldwide on August 29. In addition, new characters as well as an archon quest, events, and slick new traversal abilities are coming too for players who jump into the new content.

Genshin Impact players will be able to meet and interact with various tribes that reside in the new nation of Natlan, and proceed the overarching narrative of HoYoverse's biggest game. Version 5.0, like all major version changes before it, will be the kick-off point for months of additional updates fleshing out the region and the stories of the new characters introduced with it.

This new update is also launching with three new characters, all available through in-game banners. These include the five star Mualani, four star Kachina, and five star Kinich. These characters will be spread across two phases, so hopefully you've been saving up your rolls for these three - they'll be thrown back into the character vault for a while after their banner phases out.

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There are two things taking the internet by storm as of late, and that’s Roblox’s dress-up game, Dress to Impress, and Charli XCX’s album of the summer, BRAT. And in a collaboration that nobody saw coming, but fans of both will no doubt welcome, Dress to Impress is receiving a BRAT-themed update on August 17, 2024.

That’s tomorrow, so cancel any BRAT summer-related plans you may have had this weekend and prepare for a new range of clothing items and accessories to show off on the catwalk in Dress to Impress instead.

The collaboration was announced via X (formerly Twitter) on 12 August with a suitably-green teaser trailer showing off the new clothing options — a cropped tee emblazoned with the BRAT logo being the staple of the collaboration — and an all-new catwalk. Whether or not we’ll see the BRAT-walk in-game tomorrow is uncertain, but one thing we can be sure of is that more models will be slaying harder than they usually are.

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Black Myth Wukong review's are out, which means you (yes you) can finally learn what all the critics in the gaming space think about this much-anticipated 3rd person action game. We've been waiting on it for quite a while - years in fact! But with that wait finally coming to an end, how good does the game actually feel to play? How rich is its world, and engaging its action?

As for our own review, it's a touch delayed as we're playing on the console version rather than PC (which the vast majority of these day-1 reviews are using), so our review needs a little more time in the oven. But you're still able to look through a list of review scores and outlets below for a general idea on how the game has been recieved.

(There are also numerous reviews who've yet to provide a score, including VGC, RockPaperShotgun, and Polygon.

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The development of DLC-sized Fallout New Vegas mod Fallout Nuevo Mexico is no longer on hold, with a member of the team telling VG247 that the project is currently “in a good state” as work on the mod has resumed.

Fallout: Nuevo Mexico has been in the works since 2021, and promises a Fallout adventure set in and around the state of New Mexico just five years after the events of Interplay’s original Fallout game, with plenty of classic Fallout mechanics and vibes weaved in. The mod was put on hiatus earlier this year, having ‘gone dark’ back in April, with its social media and YouTube presences being largely set to private. Its creators now say the project is back on the road, but aren’t promising when it’ll come out.

After Nuevo Mexico's head of public relations J.K-Serling posted a brief update to the mod’s Discord server on July 10, stating “project is no longer on hold”, and followed that up with an image of a box with a Vault-Tec logo washed up on a beach (captioned “a saucerful of secrets”) on August 8, we reached out them for more information.

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Get ready to spend a while staring at the cash you’d been planning to spent on a Halloween costume this year with mixed emotions, as Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s array of special and collectors’ editions have now been revealed. Yep, you can now start grappling with the decision as to which version you buy.

As Bioware confirmed yesterday with a reveal, Veilguard is set to release on October 31, meaning you do have a bit of time to consider whether you need a light-up dagger in your life. Yes, there’s a light-up dagger with one of the editions.

As detailed in a blog post that features more tat than your average home, the standard edition of the game - that’s the one with no frills - costs $69.99/£69.99 on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, and $59.99/£49.99 on PC. If you pre-order that or the more expensive deluxe edition, you’ll get a cosmetic Blood Dragon armour set.

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The experience of finding, updating, launching and playing Call of Duty is about to change yet again. Activision developers are gearing up for a massive overhaul to the Call of Duty HQ launcher on PC, alongside several other changes to the way files are acquired on PC and consoles.

The biggest change as a result of this is the separation of Warzone and the yearly premium Call of Duty games. In other words, players only interested in playing the game they bought can download those files, and free-to-play players will be able to download just Warzone.

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Helldivers 2 is and has always been one big parody of itself narrative wise, with Arrowhead playing into the absurdity that comes with all of its Starship Troopers-esque declarations of patriotic fervour. The game’s community has bought into this in pretty hilarious roleplaying style plenty of times, but its latest instance might be the most unexpected yet.

First of all, you’ve no doubt heard about the whole backlash that’s been going on to some of the the Escalation of Freedom update’s balancing changes, which Arrowhead’s now issued a whole plan in response to. Well, that snowballed into an in-game protest from frustrated players attempting to let the Automatons reach Super Earth in the game’s galactic war, and said protest’s now taken on a whole life of its own.

If you head to the Helldivers 2 subreddit today, you’ll likely see a bunch of posts mentioning a group known as the “Chaosdivers”, with this seemingly being the name players have come up with for the movement among them which wants to see Super Earth fall, having lost faith in the original Helldivers’ cause.

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It's been a great year for fighting game events. Not only did Evo 2024 — the biggest fighting game tournament in the world — wrap up after breaking records, but we've seen growth across the genre, and across the globe. It feels like more attention than ever is on a historically niche style of game, as well as the culture of high level play surrounding it.

However, while much of this growth and success has been reaped and sown by grassroots tournaments and community initiatives, a constant presence year-round has been the Esports World Cup. This event — entirely funded by the Saudi Arabian government — is seemingly throwing heaps of cash at any competitive gaming scene with a pulse. This includes Tekken 8 and Street Fighter 6, the tournaments for which have drawn in many of the world's best players thanks to prize pools exceeding many other established events.

This initiative has been identified as sportswashing by many critics and concerned groups, the practice of using sports (and yes, esports) to better a countries reputation. This is not the first time Saudi Arabia — a country with a poor human rights record and reprehensible treatment towards LGBTQIA+ groups — has invested in such a venture. It has previously gone on big spending sprees across F1, football, golf, and even wrestling.

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The Plucky Squire - one of the coolest looking indie games set to release this year - has finally got itself a release date. It's going to launch on September 17, but PlayStation Plus subscribers will be happy to learn that they'll be able to download it day-one.

This was announced via the official PlayStation Twitter account, and was paired with a lovely little gameplay video showcasing the game. The game will be added to the PlayStation Plus games catalogue, so even if you decide to sign up a little later in the year The Plucky Squire should be there waiting for you.

The Plucky Squire, for those who don't know, is looking especially rad in an already-stacked year of slick releases. It blends 2D and 3D gameplay together in an uber colourful drawing book style aesthetic that's damn pleasing to the eye. The developer, All Possible Futures, is releasing it as its first game with Devolver Digital as a publisher, and if Devolver's name isn't a stamp of approval at this point for ambitious, amazing indies then I don't know what to tell you.

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Alien: Romulus is now opening across the globe, and the first reviews are in. Surprise, surprise, it seems that it's pretty good. That said, does the critical approval rating actually represent a solid average score?

When put against all the other entries in the long-running Alien franchise, including the Alien vs. Predator crossovers, it's definitely true that Fede Álvarez's (Evil Dead '13, Don't Breathe) take on the iconic sci-fi horror IP has convinced more critics (83% at the moment of writing) than any sequel or prequel since 1986's Aliens, directed by James Cameron. That's no small feat.

But of course, most entertainment fanatics prefer to look at Metacritic for an actual look into the scores that are being shared, as the Metascore is a single score built from a weighted average that comes from top critic scores. Therefore, Metascores are typically much lower than Tomatometers. In the case of the latest Alien movie, it's sitting right now at 64/100, which is considered 'generally favorable' when it comes to movies.

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You! Do you find having to have nine million different launchers installed on your PC all at once to be something that keeps you up at night? Well, if so, good news, because Firaxis has confirmed that Civilization 7 is ditching the 2K launcher as a requirement on PC, with Civ 6 having also just dropped it too, assuming you bought your copy on Steam.

While I’d argue that 2K’s launcher isn’t the worst, even if that's a very low bar, having to log into extra things in order to play a game that you’re not even trying to play via the service or storefront in question is always an annoyance, so it’s no surprise that this move has gone down to a chorus of cheers and relieved sighs.

“Alongside Challenge 10 going live on August 14, the new update also removes the 2K Launcher from Sid Meier's Civilization VI on Steam,” Firaxis confirmed in its Steam announcement of Civ 6’s latest event, “In addition, Sid Meier's Civilization VII will not use the 2K Launcher on PC.”

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Were you brave enough to ignore our review of the Borderlands movie and miss out on learning exactly the kind of thing you were in for when watching it? Well, at least it wasn't an Uwe Boll-directed video game adaptation. The disgraced director is making fun of the movie on Twitter though.

Borderlands' global box office haul during its first weekend in theaters was an embarrassing $16.5 million on a production budget estimated around $115 million (plus marketing costs). Needless to say, that's a massive flop, the kind that instantly kills any hope of ever sequelising a movie. There just wasn't any tangible hype surrounding the movie, and the brutal critic reviews certainly didn't help its case.

Now, even Boll, the mind behind F-tier video store bangers like Alone in the Dark (2005), BloodRayne (2005), or Far Cry (2008), is openly mocking Lionsgate's Eli Roth-directed misfire. 'Join in on the fun,' I'd say, but he messed it all up when he stated anyone wishes he directed Borderlands.

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The team behind Skyblivion, the massive modding project that’s remaking The Elder Scrolls IV - yep, the one where everyone’s faces look a bit hilarious - in Skyrim’s engine, has just shared some fresh quest gameplay. There’s a bit of Mages Guild, a bit of a scuffle on a farm, and all of it looks pretty great, aside from the odd bug.

Right off the bat in this latest showcase, the Skyblivion devs provided an update on how development is progressing, with the video’s narrator revealing that things are still on track for the 2025 release date the group has previously set.

So, what’ve we gotten a look at this time around? Well, two classic Oblivion quests, in the form of Fingers of the Mountain and The Killing Field, with the latter looking to have been renamed to Killing Fields.

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Far too often, blockbusters fall flat because they've been over-tweaked or straight-up reassembled in post-production. While reshoots had always been a common part of the filmmaking process, they've now sort of become this 'crutch' for productions that hadn't figured out a concrete plan before heading into principal photography. More specifically, many comic book movies have been affected by this approach, yet James Gunn's efforts, both for Marvel and DC, haven't been hurt by it.

According to the writer-director, on Threads (via Variety), behind three Guardians of the Galaxy movies, one miniseries (I Am Groot), one holiday special, a Suicide Squad 'requel' of sorts, and a spinoff series (Peacemaker), the secret is to simply... make sure that as much as possible is up to snuff before shooting. Sounds simple, right? Well, it seems like not everyone can or wants to figure that out.

The filmmaker, who's now busy with post-production on both Peacemaker season two and his Superman reboot for the new on-screen DC continuity he's shepherding, simply stated he'd "done a total of one day of reshoots on my past two films combined." Considering Superman is still in the early post-production part of the process, we think he's just referring to the Guardians of the Galaxy threequel and The Suicide Squad, the movie that earned him (alongside Peacemaker) the role of head of DC Studios.

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Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 has been delayed to February 11, 2025. This information first came out through an Embracer Group financial report, but later was addressed directly by Warhorse Studios in a video posted to social media.

The original release date was a general 2024 window, but has been pushed back to the week of Valentine's Day, which is nice for medieval couples out there. Funnily enough, this is very close to the day when original game came out: February 13, 2018. The financial report features a statement from Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors, which states: "Our teams are committed to making and delivering better games. Our highly anticipated game Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, is now confirmed for global release on February 11, 2025, which we believe enables some final polish and a better release window. We look very much forward to Gamescom next week to share more details about this game and other titles."

As for that video from Warhorse Studios, the messaging is slightly different. In it, Toby from Warhorse Studios states that the development team aimed for a 2024 release date but didn't quite make it. "We almost made it, almost. But almost isn't good enough though, so unfortunately we slipped to 2025. However, at least we have we have real precise release date now, which is February 11, 2025."

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Universal's Dark Universe, to be based on all if its classic monster properties, was a massive misfire after 2017's dreadful reboot of The Mummy (which even Tom Cruise's antics couldn't save) fell short of franchise-building expectations and got panned by critics and audiences alike. That didn't stop Universal from trying again with a simpler, director-driven approach to reviving old horror properties, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon is next in line to be modernised.

We're still waiting to see how the upcoming Wolf Man reboot pans out, but 2020's pre-Covid Invisible Man reboot was a compelling and meaningful update of the original horror concept, so there's some juice to this renewed strategy of standalone horror flicks which simply let each filmmaker reimagine monsters we've known for decades.

1954's Creature from the Black Lagoon continues to be one of those traditional monster movies that pop up every now and then in remake conversations, and now Deadline is reporting that horror veteran James Wan, who's also tackled huge blockbusters like Furious 7 and the two Aquaman movies, might be the filmmaker diving head first into those dark waters.

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Deadpool & Wolverine might have been a huge hit for Marvel Studios, but it's fair to say the Marvel Cinematic Universe needs to wow us consistently a few more times before we can claim we're in the 'Good Zone' again. All eyes are now set on 2025's releases, and those include Daredevil: Born Again, which is coming to Disney Plus and seemingly has been in the works for longer than we thought.

During the last D23 event, Daredevil: Born Again stars Charlie Cox (Matt Murdock aka Daredevil) Vincent D'Onofrio (Wilson Fisk aka Kingpin) chatted with People and unveiled some of what happened behind the scenes as the original Netflix series was cancelled and nothing happened for a few years despite an unexpected call from Marvel honcho Kevin Feige in 2020.

"It wasn't until midway through 2020 that we got a phone call from [President of Marvel Studios] Kevin [Feige] saying that they were interested in bringing the characters back...not even in the show at that point, just bringing the characters into MCU," Cox explained. Remember that Marvel Studios was still figuring out how the post-Endgame MCU would look like past phase four at that point, so it makes sense that maybe the initial plan was to bring their characters into an entirely different project, such as a Spider-Man movie.

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Team FOLON, Fallout: London’s creators, have long been open about their desire for people to create mods that put fresh twists on or add stuff to their massive mod, and they’ve now done a bit of leading by example in that regard, with a mod that injects some chaos into your playthrough via Baldur's Gate 3-esque dice rolls.

After all, it’s not like British culture and the established dangers of the post-apocalypse are already enough to keep you on your toes as you explore the mod’s massive wasteland.

The mod in question is the brainchild of Jordan ‘SunnyDelight’ Albon, Team FOLON’s lead 3D artist. They’re clearly a bit of a TTRPG fan, since their creation - dubbed ‘NAT20’ adds a massive twenty-sided dice to your character’s inventory that they can take out and activate to roll for random outcomes.

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Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh joined the Avatar sequels a long time ago, back in 2019, but she won't be appearing in them until 2029's Avatar 4.

James Cameron himself denied the veteran actress would show up in next year's Avatar: Fire and Ash while talking to Entertainment Weekly, shooting down previous reports of her role coming into play in the threequel.

"Michelle Yeoh won't be in three. She's in four and five...so that got a little bit misreported. She will be coming in soon to do her part, which is an interesting, fun character. I mean, we're getting ahead of ourselves now. This whole thing has been planned for years and years," he told EW. Even though we've yet to meet and learn more about Yeoh's character, we've known her name for a while - Dr. Karina Morgue. Whether she's one of the good or bad RDA people remains to be seen (though she appeared in this 2021 IG photo alongside Giovanni Ribisi's villainous RDA boss), but this all but confirms she won't be yet another new Na'vi character.

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The release date of Dragon Age: The Veilguard appears to have leaked online ahead of the official reveal scheduled for later today. If the date that’s appeared online is accurate, you may well want to cancel any plans you had to go out trick or treating.

Veilguard has, up until this point, only been pencilled in for Fall 2024. Naturally, this has prompted plenty of speculation as to the actual date, with EA financials having recently suggested that the game wouldn’t be arriving prior to October 1.

Now, a short video, which appears to be an advertisement of some kind based on its very snappy runtime, has popped up online, citing the game’s release date as being October 31.

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Remember Netflix's Love, Death & Robots? No? Well, get on that show if you haven't, because it's one of the coolest animated anthology series around, and a fourth season is coming sooner rather than later. In fact, it's quietly become such a major win for Netflix that Amazon's Prime Video service now wants a piece of that cake... but tying it into big video games.

Via Deadline, we've learned that Love, Death & Robots' Tim Miller and Blur Studio, the renowned CGI company whose work includes countless video games and even some Hollywood productions, are working with Amazon MGM Studios on an animated anthology series based on the worlds of video games from a number of different publishers. Oh, and it's got a fitting title: Secret Level.

Deadline's sources also tease the series has been in the works for quite some time, and a reveal could arrive as soon as next week's Gamescom Opening Night Live event, so watch out. As for the games potentially included in the anthology, word is that Spelunky and Amazon's own New World will be part of it. Moreover, PlayStation titles also appear to be part of the package. Does that mean there's a slight chance of getting anything Killzone after all these years? Let me get my copium bottle...

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Earlier this year, we saw the biggest open bracket video game tournament conclude - Evo 2024. With over 16,000 tournament entrants and many spectators alongside them, Evo made clear to the Las Vegas crowd that it's not going away any time soon. Or, well, you could argue it said the opposite! Not in terms of a permanent goodbye, but more of a holiday abroad, as Evo international events in France and Signapore were announced live during the Sunday finals.

I wanted to learn more about this planned escapade beyond the shores of the USA and Japan, about how the countries were picked and how this'll change the event for better or worse. To do so, I sat down with Rick "The Hadou" Thiher to chat about the announcement, and what this means for the Evo brand.

VG247: How long has Evo International been in the works?

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Good news for PlayStation Plus subscribers with a taste for the wild side, as the August line-up of games have been revealed. These include The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Wild Hearts, and Cult of the Lamb. These games will be free to download for those out there with a PlayStation Plus Extra subscription starting August 20.

There are also some more classics being added to the cataglogue for those who've spent a bit more and own a Premium subscription. These include TimeSplitters 1 and 2, a pair of truly brilliant FPS games that are well worth returning to if you've not touched them in a while. There's also TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, which is firmlyokay.

As for those main titles headed to the service, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is obviously a stellar package, filled to bursting with outstanding narrative content and awesome combat. Gwent is there too, which y'know, is fine I suppose. However you slice it, you're getting over 100 hours of premium brilliant RPG goodness.

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We're here again. A big, beloved former developer on the Fallout series has been asked whether they'd be willing to return to the series and do some new stuff. Last time, Tim Cain was in the hot seat, this time it's Fallout New Vegas director Josh Sawyer, and their answers are pretty similar.

Sawyer was asked whether he'd be open to the idea of leading another Fallout project, were Bethesda and Microsoft to approach him about such a thing, during a recent YouTube QnA video which saw him take questions from fans about everything from Pillars of Eternity to bicycle accessories (he says fenders and lights are good, especially if it rains where you live).

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Witchfire Is nearly one year old, and though a lot has changed since it first hit Early Access on the Epic Games Store, it remains one of the most interesting genre mash-ups you can play today. The game’s latest update - which is live now - further cements its status as one of the most unique shooters in the space.

Ahead of today’s launch, I played a few hours of a build of the game running this latest update. Dubbed The Wailing Tower, it’s Witchfire’s biggest ever since its release last year. The main addition here is the game’s first new area, which has quite a different vibe to the existing map.

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If you only pay attention to PC releases when they drop on Steam, you may have missed the release of Witchfire, the new game from The Astronauts. It arrived nearly a year ago on the Epic Games Store, and though it didn’t launch with a lot of content, it received nearly-universal praise.

We also happen to be big fans of Witchfire here, and the developer has some really good news for those who have been eagerly anticipating the game's arrival on Steam.

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Nobody likes war, but unfortunately for everyone in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, there's not much anyone can stop it from coming.

It's been a couple of years since the first season of The Rings of Power aired, but here we are just a couple of weeks away from season 2. Ahead of the newest season, Amazon has released the final trailer for it, showing how war is brewing all across Middle-earth. It looks like this season is going to have some quite big setpieces, with armies of orcs and the like fighting one another on massive battlefields - you know, the usual kind of Lord of the Rings stuff! This particular season covers a big battle in the series, the Siege of Eregion, and let's just say it won't be an easy one.

As well as all the big war stuff, you've also got Celebrimbor trying to come to terms with what he's done, notably helping Sauron with his plans. Of course Sauron can be seen sauntering around setting up his plans, and he's looking like just as much a regular guy as he has in every trailer. Fan favourite Tom Bombail wasn't anywhere to be seen, but he is meant to be showing up somewhere along the line, so you have that to look forward to too. All in all, it looks like you're in for a pretty good time!

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Some fun news in the world of League of Legends has popped up, as a selection of new emotes are coming to the game courtesy of an esports collaboration between Riot Games and the tier 1 teams across the globe. However, one specific emote has caught the eye of the cheekier sorts among the League player base, as it features the infamous bait ping, removed from the game due to its unintended use by the community.

The emote in question is Team BDS's Bait Da Sardines emote, which features a cute little penguin holding a fishing rod with the beloved and now very much dead bait ping attached to the end. You'll be able to buy this emote, as well as emotes for the rest of the teams in the professional League of Legends ecosystem, right now.

But why was this emote removed? Well, it was first introduced when Riot Games attempted to expand the in-game ping system for League, in hopes that it would improve communication without you having to actually talk to the freaks and monsters playing on your team. One of these new pings was a yellow fish hook, which was intended to communicate 'baiting', the act of luring enemy players into a trap for your team's gain.

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Apparently the bits of litter you can find blowing down streets and being pulled along by cars in GTA 3 were a bit of a controversial topic back in the day. Like, to the point where the developer that added these rogue newspapers and leaves to Liberty City ended up having to take them out of GTA San Andreas after losing a detritus debate within the Rockstar team.

This is according to ex-Rockstar Technical Director Obbe Vermeij, who served in that role on both of those entries in the series before eventually leaving the studio in 2009 following GTA 4’s release, and says he was the very developer responsible for the litter’s code coming to be.

“The streets of GTA 3 looked too clean, so I added litter,” Vermeij explained in a tweet revealing the truth about the trash, “It is a single rectangle that occasionally moves with the wind. It can also be dragged along by passing cars. The artists created four textures for it. Two newspapers and two leaves.”

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If you've been dying to check out the Until Dawn remake, there's good news: it finally has a release date, along with a trailer showing you its changes.

Back in May, during a PlayStation State of Play, a remake of the 2015 horror title from Supermassive Games was announced, despite not even being a decade old yet, but hey ho, that's how the industry is these days. It wasn't announced with a release date, but earlier today PlayStation confirmed over on the official PlayStation Blog that you'll be able finally play it this coming October 4, on both PS5 and PC. This announcement came paired with a new trailer, which you can check out below, comparing and contrasting various scenes between the original and the remake.

The first obvious difference is that the visuals are looking a bit better, with the game having been relit and rebuilt using Unreal Engine 5. "One of our key visual improvements for Until Dawn has been around revisiting the character models and bringing them in line with modern advances in character modeling and rendering," explains the blog post.

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Dredge, as both me and at least two of my coworkers have written before, is good fun. Its latest bit of DLC, The Iron Rig, is buy and large more of that same kind of fun, but I can’t help but feel that, at least from a narrative perspective, it had the potential to offer a bit more than it does.

As you’ve probably gleaned from the name, the central premise of the Iron Rig is that an oil rig has popped up to the north of the game’s established islands. So, as you did with the ice-filled Pale Reach, it’s your job to head to this new landmark and see if it has a need for the finest aquatic life and abominations in the land.

When you arrive, you’ll learn from the rig’s foreman that, as is the tradition, something mysterious is afoot. The ships dispatched by the Ironhaven corporation which owns the rig to bring the supplies its workers need to get it properly set up and drilling have sunk, and no one has the foggiest why. Thus begins one of the two central gameplay loops of the DLC - you head out, dredge up some crates belonging to the corporation, and bring them back to the rig to, on this occasion, unlock it as a home base.

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Steam has undergone some serious changes today, and one change in particular spells success for both the games that you pay for, and the free-to-play games that are soaring up the Steam charts. When combined together, both categories can step on each others' toes, but they're now separated, allowing for ease of browsing.

If you boot up Steam right now, you should see a new tab on the store page dubbed 'Trending Free'! This will be full of free-to-play games, demos, and benchmarking tools that are currently popular on the digital storefront. As for your 'New and Trending' tab, it should now be packed full of premium titles, including some that would otherwise have been hidden away under a wave of free stuff.

The reason why this is actually pretty good for Steam and its users is twofold. For one, let's look at The Black Myth: Wukong benchmark demo that's currently doing well. Before, that would have taken a spot on the main 'New and Trending' tab on Steam. But it's not a game, really. It's a test demo so people can make sure their rig can run the game, and so that they can learn how well they can run it. Now, this benchmark demo, in its own tab, is still getting its moment in the spotlight, but it's not taking the position of actual games.

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Channing Tatum still really wants a Gambit movie, and he's willing to do anything (seriously) to make that happen.

Spoilers ahead for Deadpool & Wolverine.

For many years now, Magic Mike and 21 Jump Street actor Channing Tatum has been desperately trying to make a Gambit movie happen. He's a fan favourite X-Men character after all, and Tatum has a lot of love for the gambler too, but it's never materialised. Until recently, kind of anyway, that is. While he's not quite managed a solo outing just yet, he did feature pretty prominently in the MCU's latest outing, Deadpool & Wolverine, as Gambit himself. He was there alongside some other familiar faces, like Jennifer Garner as Elektra, and Wesley Snipes as Blade, but where they were returning to their characters for the first time in many years, Tatum was taking up the role for the first time.

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The venn diagram of Magic the Gathering fans and Baldur's Gate 3 fans will probably want to check out the very good, and potentially titillating, Astarion cards.

Astarion is no stranger to Magic the Gathering, he has featured on some cards before, but Wizards of the Coast has just revealed (via Polygon) a new Secret Lair set that shows your favourite vampire on favourite different cards with some beautiful full arts. These five cards come as part of celebrations for the 50th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons, and there are more Secret Lair sets on the way too, though those haven't been revealed just yet. The five cards include Mortify, Anguished Unmaking, Sanguine Blood, Exquisite Blood, and of course, Astarion, the Decadent. Each one is more risque than the last, honestly, but it's clear that each artist that worked on them knew exactly what they were doing.

These cards, as well as four other Secret Lair drops, will all be available to buy at the end of the month, August 27. Each drop will set you back $29.99 (yes, that is a lot of money for just a handful of cards), and if you want to get the shiny foil versions of the same cards, you'll have to fork over $39.99 a set. Those unfamiliar with Secret Lair might be a touch shocked at how much Wizards of the Coast charge for one twelfth of a Magic deck, but what are you gonna do, not buy these limited-time only cards that if you miss out on you'll have to pay even more for on the second hand market?

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Video games are great, but sometimes you just have to admit that some of them are only available on consoles that, well, aren't great. Rubbish, even. You can guarantee an argument if you ask people to pick the worst games console, so that's what we did. But what is the best game on this worst console? Who showed their ineptitude and picked a game on a great console? Who picked something so perfect it could never be argued with? Did Jim say anything of interest or just stir things up?

Truth is, depending on your exposure to certain consoles you're likely to have different views on this to everyone else, but we had to make a definitive choice over the best game on the worst console. It absolutely won't annoy anyone!

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The latest trailer for Sony's newest Spider-Man film sans Spider-Man, Kraven the Hunter, is here, and there's plenty of blood and a little bit of, uh, The Rhino.

Of all the characters and their respective villains Sony could have bought, Spider-Man is probably the best of them, particularly at the time it got the rights. Since then, we've seen a whole bunch of different interpretations of the character, but seeing as the current incarnation is relegated to Disney's MCU, Sony has been left trying to figure out what to do with the other characters it has. So far on the live-action front it's found most success with its Venom films, which are silly and trashy through and through, but hey, I'm still excited for Venom 3. But Venom was already a popular character, so that's not much of a surprise. Somewhere along the line, though, someone decided that a film about another of Spider-Man's villains, Kraven, would be a great idea, and the latest trailer for it just dropped today.

As you can see above, Kraven looks to be a particularly violent outing - I doubt we'll be seeing the ole webslinger in this one, even as a cameo. Mostly the trailer is just lots of violent, dramatic shots of Aaron Taylor-Johnson brutally killing people set to a movie version of Johnny Cash's The Man Comes Around. Oh, and one guy gets his arms clean ripped off by some wolves, so, maybe stay clear of this one if that's not your kind of thing. Perhaps worse still, it seems like Kraven's antagonist for this flick will be another Spider-Man villain, The Rhino, who's looking particularly computer generated this time around.

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Following the backlash that’s erupted within the Helldivers 2 community in response to the game’s recent Escalation of Freedom update, developer Arrowhead has been busy gathering feedback in various different ways. Now, the studio’s unveiled its plans to act on this feedback, which include making a number of changes within the next 60 days.

If you’re out of the loop, the inclusion of some nerfs to fire damage in the Escalation of Freedom update’s changes seemed to be the straw that broke the camel’s back for a lot of players, with many questioning whether Arrowhead was adopting the right approach to balancing. Some have even gone as far as attempting to let the Automatons reach Super Earth in the game’s galactic war as a protest of sorts against the tweaks.

Now, via a post to the Helldivers 2 subreddit, Arrowhead has shared details of its plan to act on the feedback it’s received in response to the update. “We didn’t hit our target with the latest update,” game director Mikael Eriksson wrote in the post, “Some things we just didn’t get right - and other more fundamental inconsistencies in our approach to game balance and game direction.

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Disney didn't have much to show of Frozen 3 at D23 this weekend, but it has now at least confirmed when you'll be able to watch it.

As reported by Deadline, Disney has slotted Frozen 3 into a Thanksgiving-week release date, opting for the day before the US holiday, November 24… 2027. Yep, if you couldn't guess from the fact that the only thing the house of mouse had to share of the threequel was a piece of concept art, the film is a while away. There's actually seemingly two more films, in fact, as at the time of its reveal producer Jennifer Lee said, "Coming out of Frozen 2, we still have some questions. A lot of questions actually. Now, you see why we need two films to tell this story." Disney CEO Bob Iger previously teased that a Frozen 4 might be in the works back in 2023, so this tease from Lee isn't all that surprising.

The 2027 release is actually a bit of a delay, as the film was originally expected to release sometime in 2026. A November release does make sense though, as that's inline with the previous two Frozen films as well. Plot details haven't been shared about the threequel, but the concept art that was released does somewhat hint as to what you can expect - it shows Elsa, Anna, and Olaf riding on horses heading towards some kind of magical, floating kingdom, with a shadow of a figure holding a spear seen behind them.

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Two new games based on the Halloween series were announced yesterday, and one of them, a pixel art platformer, has already been revealed.

Yesterday, Evil Dead: The Game developer Boss Team Games announced that it was working on two games based on the Halloween series, with one of them being developed in Unreal Engine 5, even netting the help of the original film's director John Carpenter. While still shrouded in mystery, of the two that was the one with more details, except today the second game was revealed over at IGN, and it turns out it's a 16-bit, '90s era arcade platformer. Titled RetroRealms: Halloween, the game sees you playing as the infamous Michael Myers, where you go around slashing anyone you come across with the character's trusty knife.

That isn't the only game Boss Team Games announced either, as the RetroRealms branding is covering a second game, the other also being a 16-bit pixel art platformer, once again adapting Evil Dead. Ash Williams once again downs his chainsaw hand, fighting off the undead and more - it essentially looks like the same game, albeit with different settings and Michael Myers and Ash playing slightly differently. Also worth noting is that Shantae series developer WayForward is helping to develop this one, so it seems to be in good hands.

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The Borderlands movie is so trash, so bereft of merit, that it's driven Borderlands refugees back to the old games. In the wake of the film's release earlier this month we've seen player counts spike for Borderlands, Borderlands 2, and Borderlands 3, as these poor souls search desperately for a reason to still care about the IP.

It's frankly a good move to make, as all three games are pretty good! Borderlands 2 is often held up as the best of the trilogy, though Borderlands 1 still has a home in my heart. Borderlands 3 is more... controversial among fans, but still features that wonderful gunplay that led thousands of players to fall in love with the sci-fi ppost-apocalyptic series in the first place.

Borderlands 1 went from roughly 644 players on Steam on August 7 to 2,949 on Auguest 11. Borderlands 2 went from 3,925 on August 7 to 7.938 on August 11, and Borderlands 3 shot up from 3,687 on the 7th to 12,379 on the 11th. These aren't like, world-shattering numbers, but for a trilogy that's been largely left in the past for years now it's not too shabby.

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Following much debate on the matter of erotica photos being removed from the Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster, Capcom has issued a statement on its removal. This statement, attributed to the Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster development team, offers some insight into Capcom's decision not to include the feature in the Deluxe Remaster, with the company arguing that it is not an appropriate reward for survival, and not a skill required from a journalist in Frank’s position. The statement reads as follows:

“When developing Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster, we tried our best to create a game that would please returning core fans and appeal to new players alike. As development progressed, we inevitably discovered that we couldn’t include everything from the original game. In the case of the Erotica points system, this was something we discussed at length and decided to remove; not so much as a response to a changing cultural climate, but because we felt there is no need to have a reward points system on this basis.

“Additionally, when considering Frank’s situation, it is not an appropriate reward for survival and not a skill required of a journalist trying to stay alive for the next 72 hours during a zombie apocalypse. However, players will still have the right to choose their picture subjects freely, and even though they won’t receive points, it is up to them to decide what photos they will take to represent their journey.”

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If you’ve been wondering why Frank West has a new voice actor, we might have our answer: Dead Rising: Deluxe Remaster has a whole lot of new dialogue for you to hear - which means a lot of the game has been re-recorded.

The original Dead Rising was a real product of its time. In 2006 games were becoming more cinematic, but still had many of the tropes, hallmarks, and structural limitations of previous generations as developers got used to high definition content, more cinematic presentation, and more processing power and storage space. As a result, Dead Rising had some iconic fully-voiced cutscenes - but also a whole lot of in-game dialogue that simply passed by with text boxes.

Not so in the latest remaster of the game - which tries to live up to its ‘Deluxe’ moniker by adding quite a lot to the game. The whole experience ends up feeling like it straddles some no-man's land between traditional remasters and a proper remake. It’s clearly the same game in the end and is full of glorious 2006 energy, so it’s a remaster – but the additions are seismic enough to feel like a bit of a remake. The fact Dead Rising has already been remastered once, in 2016, doesn’t help matters.

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Been waiting to find out when Blue Exorcist season 4 is going to be released? Great news, Aniplex has finally announced it, alongside the season's ending theme.

More than a decade ago, when Blue Exorcist first aired, it was (unsurprisingly) a lot more popular than it is now. The series definitely lost a lot of momentum due to the fact that the second season released a whole six years after the first in 2017, and it was another seven years after that that season 3 was released, back in January of this year. It's been known for a little while that the wait for season 4 thankfully wouldn't be nearly as long, with an October release window, and earlier today Aniplex finally put a specific date to it: October 5. That date announcement came with a brief new trailer set to this season's ending theme, which you can check out below.

This upcoming fourth season will take place over two cours, the first being the Beyond the Snow Saga, which will then be followed up by the Blue Night Saga. That second one is set to air sometime in January 2025, and the constant home of most anime Crunchyroll will have it for streaming. The ending theme, which you can listen to partially in the trailer, is called "Tsurara" and is performed by Yobahi, and sounds suitably emotional at the very least.

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In what’s turning into a rather remarkable protest, Helldivers 2 players are continuing to let the game’s Automatons get closer and closer to Super Earth in the game’s galactic war. It seems part of the fun folks are having at this point is trying to imagine how Arrowhead and game master J.O.E.L might react if indeed the fighting does reach the divers’ home planet.

As we reported yesterday, the inclusion of some nerfs to fire damage in the Escalation of Freedom update’s changes well and the resulting discourse as to whether Arrowhead’s going in the right direction when it comes to its tweaks is what’s triggered this rebellion o sorts from players. I say rebellion of sorts, because it looks like the community’s still on course to complete the game’s latest Major Order.

As of writing, despite the fact the bot front isn’t too far from Super Earth, with the planet Curia currently being the closest world to Super Earth that’s seemingly been all but abandoned to the automatons’ metal mitts, the current Major Order is still looking on track to succeed.

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Alien: Romulus director Fede Alvarez shared the 13 words of advice series creator Ridley Scott gave him on his first day of shooting, and they're simple, but funny.

There's been a suite of directors that have helmed the Alien series over the years, but it all kicked off with Ridley Scott back in 1979 with the original film. After the original, it wasn't until 2012's Prometheus that he directed a new entry in the series, again returning to the director's chair with 2017's Alien: Covenant, which is also the most recent feature film in the franchise. That seven year streak of no Alien movies is about to wrap up later this week with Alien: Romulus though, and over the weekend ahead of the film's release, director Fede Alvarez shared a post on Instagram which showed the message Scott sent him with advice for making the film.

A post shared by Fede Alvarez (@iamfedealvarez)

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If you liked Longlegs, and you're a fan of Stephen King, then you'll probably be excited to hear about The Monkey.

You wouldn't think that something called "The Monkey" could instil any kind of fear in a person, but honestly, monkeys are pretty scary, and the monkey in question certainly raises a few alarms. Longlegs director Osgood Perkins has certainly found success with the horror film, leading its distributor to pick up another horror title that did very well on Kickstarter, as well as a new Steven Soderbergh horror flick too. And clearly Perkins has no intention of trying out any other genres for the time being, as his next film is the aforementioned The Monkey, which just got its first trailer yesterday - you can check that out below.

It's just a short teaser trailer, set to some slightly distorted circus music, all while a toy monkey that plays on a tiny snare drum performs a little solo, leading up to one of the film's stars Theo James being covered in a whole lot of blood. There isn't much there, but it definitely sets the tone for what we can expect from the film.

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Tim Cain might be best known as a co-creator of the original Fallout, but some of his most recent work has come with Obsidian on its The Outer Worlds series. While he’s currently consulting on The Outer Worlds 2, Cain’s just shared a demo of the first game from just a year into its development, and it’s well worth checking out.

In the video on his YouTube channel featuring this vertical slice - which he’s shown off with permission from Obsidian itself - Cain explains that it’s a vertical slice. What is that? Well, basically a limited section of the game which has to “look and play like the final game” and is shown to the publisher, which in this case was Private Division.

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Don't worry, James Cameron lovers, the director is still planning on helming the fourth and fifth Avatar films, and there's not much anyone can do to stop him.

After more than a decade of waiting, Avatar: The Way of Water finally came out, and it made the reality of a third, fourth, and fifth film actually possible, rather than just years of "yeah, they're definitely going to happen." Over the weekend, Avatar 3 also finally got a subtitle, Fire and Ash, and we know Cameron has directed that one as he filmed it simultaneously with the second film. Fire and Ash is currently due out next year, December 19 2025, but Cameron does also have plans for two more films after that one. The director had previously said that he thinks he'll pass the directing baton on to someone else, unsure as to whether that'll be after the third or fourth film, but in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Cameron made it clear that he has every intention to direct at least up until the fifth film.

After being asked if he planned to direct Avatar 4 and 5, Cameron said, "Sure. Absolutely. I mean, they’re going to have to stop me. I got plenty of energy, love doing what I’m doing. Why would I not? And they’re written, by the way. I just reread both of them about a month ago. They’re cracking stories. They’ve got to get made. Look, if I get hit by a bus and I’m in an iron lung, somebody else is going to do it." The interviewer, understandably, noted they hope that won't happen, with Cameron joking that he tries "to avoid that kind of scenario."

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I hope you don't have too much nostalgia for The Real Ghostbusters, as Netflix's newly greenlit animated Ghostbusters series probably won't be much like it.

As reported by Variety, Netflix has finally greenlit its Ghostbusters animated series that's been in the works since at least 2022. According to sources that spoke with Variety, Elliott Kalan has joined the project as writer and executive producer. Kalan sounds like a pretty good fit for a series like Ghostbusters, given that he was the head writer for the 2017 version of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and has previously written for various comics too - he's the guy that wrote that frequently memed Spider-Man comic where there's an anthropomorphic pterodactyl who could cure cancer, but just wants to turn people into dinosaurs.

Details about this new animated Ghostbusters show are very slim, but those of you that loved the '80s classic The Real Ghostbusters and its 2D animation might be disappointed to hear that this outing will be a 3D one. Variety also notes that sources say the show will be tonally in line with the more recent Ghostbusters films, so don't expect any of that classic SNL-cast humour.

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Speculation that a PC port of the original Red Dead Redemption from Rockstar is on its way has been kicked back into the saddle, thanks to an update to the PlayStation Store description of the game’s PS4 version.

This comes after a datamine of Rockstar’s PC launcher by prominent community member Tez2 triggered a similar swell in hype back in May, as it uncovered updates that also seemed to point to John Marston’s first adventure being slated to arrive on the platform at some point.

Now, as spotted by Wario64, the PlayStation Store page for the PS4 version of RDR has had its description — the bit under the heading “Game and Legal Info” — updated to one which mentions the game being available on PC.

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Fallout: London’s massive, but naturally there’s still some stuff that didn’t quite make it into the Fallout 4 mod. For example, in addition to the whole cut Wild Card questline that’ll be arriving in a future update, the team had a go at making rideable horses and bikes.

Yep, if you’ve not run into Fallout: London’s Sleipnir - eight-legged post-apocalyptic horses which look just as terrifying and goofy as they sound - there were once plans to let you clip clop about the capital on one of them. Sadly, the mutated broncos shared a bit too much DNA with their Elder Scrolls cousins to make them worth keeping in.

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“Don’t.”

That’s the first thing Fallout: London project manager Dean ‘Prilladog’ Carter, through a cheeky grin and a chuckle, says when I ask him, aside from the obvious point of not being a modding novice, what advice he might give to someone who sees the massive Fallout 4 mod and decides to embark on a similar project of their own.

He’s obviously joking, but there's a serious point to be made in there - don’t sign up for something like this unless you’ve got a good idea of what you’re in for and are sure you want to do it.

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Escalation of Freedom, Helldivers 2's latest update, hasn't gone down well with fans, so much so that players are protesting by letting the Automatons win.

Last week, Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead released one of the game's biggest updates in a while, and quickly players felt unhappy with the nerfs, resulting in the game sliding down to a mixed rating on Steam. Even Arrowhead's CEO says a lot of the devs themselves are unhappy with how things have gone down. And while those Steam reviews are obviously one way players are expressing their frustration, as spotted by GamesRadar, there's another, possibly even more drastic tactic being taken up. Evidenced by a popular post on the game's subreddit, and the unofficial Helldivers 2 galaxy map, many players are simply refusing to take down any Automatons, and now the robot baddies are getting worryingly close to Super Earth.

"Though it takes the last drop of my blood, I will see the galaxy freed once more and if I can not save it from your failure Managed Democracy, then let the galaxy burn!" wrote a user in Reddit, obviously still trying to stay in character as many players have down since the game launched earlier this year. Another user even notes that players refusing to play resulting in the bots in the bots encroachment towards Super Earth is actually quite "realistic" because of the nerfs, saying "Sucky guns and outclassed artilery lose wars! So, we can't defend Super Earth because our enemies have better weapons than us and Super Earth can only produce crap for us to fight with."

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EA Sports FC 25 is adding 13 brand-new Heroes to its roster of niche and cult legends in Ultimate Team including Real Madrid hipster-favourite Guti, TV’s Jamie Carragher, and England’s all-time leader appearance maker, Fara Williams.

Coming in as more accessible options than Icons, who’re pitched as true greats of the game, Ultimate Team Heroes are fan-favourites, players who had slightly shorter careers at the very top, or, in some cases, players who built up a cult following because of how overpowered they were in-game (we’re looking at you Ramires).

https://youtu.be/yj2QH6wLQhM

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It's one minute to midnight, and you're wandering the front hallway of what looks to be an average American suburban home. The place is a bit of a mess, but for a house that presumably accommodates a young family nothing looks too unusual on first inspection. The lights are flickering intermittently, but that's probably just from the storm you can hear outside.

A voice on the radio soothingly narrates the actions of a man — maybe you? — who murdered his wife and their children. You take a closer look at the piles of rubbish on the floor and see that it's all a bit more sinister than you thought at first. The lights dim again and a baby with a way-too-raspy voice starts crying somewhere in the house. Yeah, something bad definitely happened here.

It's a setup many of us are extremely familiar with, despite how comparatively few of us ever got to actually play it.

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Great news, horror fans: John Carpenter's Halloween is getting not one, but two video games, and the director himself is helping on one of them.

It might be the middle of summer, but you can never celebrate Halloween too early, can you? Alright, we'll hold off on the seasonal celebrations for now, but there are a couple of reasons to be excited about Halloween, and that's the announcement that two games based on the classic film series are coming from Evil Dead: The Game developer Boss Team Games. This comes from IGN, who shared that details are currently limited at the moment, but what is known as the both games are being developed "in conjunction with the producers of the Halloween franchise."

Notably, one of them is being developed in Unreal Engine 5, and will include some input from the original film's director John Carpenter. "As a huge gamer myself, I’m thrilled to help bring Michael Myers to life again in this game, and my hope is to scare you silly," Carpenter said in a statement. As Carpenter notes, the film director loves to play video games, and even spoke about his Fallout 76 addiction a couple of years back - and he even shared that he thought Dead Space would make a great movie.

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The 2XKO alpha lab test is well underway, and as expected players are digging into it and uncovering all manner of nasty combos and dastardly tech. However, through this journey of twitter-clip exploration a question has risen to the top of the general 2XKO discussion. Are overly-long combos any fun, and should they have a home in 2XKO?

By overly-long, I'm referring to those eye-watering combos that weave between characters, sometimes linking multiple supers together, that leaves the victim locked into a period of helplessness as their oppoent styles on then for ages. For some, this ability to pull off 15+ second combos is where the juice is, where all expression of mastery can be found. For others, being able to take your hands of your controller and check Twitter mid-match isn't exactly riveting.

This debate is playing out online. On one side, thsoe who feel these long periods of essentially downtime aren't great for the game. Game developer Keits from Iron Galaxy brought in his own research, which found that 6-8 seconds of downtime is where frustration starts to bubble up. Whereas, others like influencer Cosmonaut Marcus have spoken up about how fundamental overcoming this feeling is to the fighting game experience. The idea that you're meant to lose a lot, for a while, and pushing through that feeling is how fighting games become rewarding.

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With such a long gap between Dragon Age: Inquisition and Veilguard, there was always the worry the two might be unrelated, but BioWare was always sure they would be.

It's been a bit of a weird 10 years for BioWare. Following the strong reception of Dragon Age: Inquisition, it's only managed to put out two games, the critically lukewarm Mass Effect: Andromeda, and the even-worse rated Anthem. That second one is likely more the fault of a top-down push for live-service games, considering how much of a push there was for them in the late 2010s. And now, sometime this year, the beloved developer is finally releasing a new Dragon Age game, The Veilguard. So it's pretty understandable if you as a fan are a bit worried about it, particularly as to whether or not the sequel would pick up where Inquisition and its DLC left off.

Thankfully, in an interview with Edge Magazine (via GamesRadar), director John Epler made it clear that The Veilguard was always going to continue the story Inquisition setup. "The world exists as it does because of Solas," Epler said. "He shaped the world because of the kind of character he was. That's, to me, what makes Dragon Age so interesting. Everything can tie back to a person who to some degree thought they were doing the right thing."

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The infinite debate about what is and isn't an immersive sim continues to rage on, as one of the co-creators of Dishonored says he thinks Skyrim is one.

Immersive sim, as a genre, is a really hard one to define. I'm not even going to try to define it in any meaningful way for you, I just know that games like Thief, Dishonored, and Deus Ex fit within that genre. It's a type of game that has major qualities of lots of other genres, which is why it can be hard to define. But in a recent interview with PC Gamer, Dishonored co-creator and Arkane founder Raphael Colantonio has shared the bold opinion that he thinks Skyrim is an immersive sim (and that Baldur's Gate 3 is "immersive-sim adjacent").

Explaining himself, Colantonio said "If you really think about it, Bethesda games - or Obsidian games - are very, very immersive sim. The overlap between first-person RPG and immersive sim, it's very blurry. I would say they are less physical than Arkane games, and they're more on the stats, but at the end of the day they totally rely on simulation. Doing things such as fooling a merchant by putting a bucket on its head is definitely an immersive same thing, right?"

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Helldivers 2 studio Arrowhead’s CEO has revealed that it basically seems like close to no one - players or developers - involved with the game has been left happy following the deployment of the Escalation of Freedom update and the backlash that’s followed.

If you’re out of the loop, the inclusion of some nerfs to fire damage in the update’s changes well and truly reignited the discourse as to whether Arrowhead’s going in the right direction when it comes to its tweaks. Amid all the debate about limiting meta weapons vs just letting people have fun with them, the game’s recent Steam reviews dropped to “mixed” last week, and currently still sit at that mark.

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Valve needs to start talking about its frequently rumoured and leaked hero shooter Deadlock, because 17,000 people can't just be playing nothing.

We've known about Valve's next game, supposedly titled Deadlock, for quite a while now, with a trademark even having been filed back in June for the game's name by the developer. But even all these months on, with leaked footage having been shared online proving it exists at least in some capacity, Valve just hasn't even let out a whisper of its existence publicly. And yet, as you can see on the game's SteamDB page, it managed to attract a concurrent player count peak of almost 17,000, a pretty impressive figure for a game that doesn't technically exist just yet. At the time of writing there's 4664 people in-game, so the test is clearly still ongoing too.

Looking at Deadlock's monthly players breakdown, you can see that it had players as far back as May, with more tests happening in June and July too, but the highest player count out of the three only amassed to a little under 3000. That certainly suggests that Valve is doing a much larger scale currently, but considering just how many players there are it's a bit wild the dev hasn't just properly announced it. Noted Valve content creator and reporter Gabe Follower says that more than 200,000 players have access to the game, so it's not like it's easy to hide.

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Zenless Zone Zero is due some more characters in the Sons of Calydon faction right? If you agree, then you're in luck. HoYoverse has teased the introduction of not one, but two new additions to the biker gang. With this tease, you can expect them to land in the game within the coming months, after version 1.1 wraps up.

The two characters in question are faction leader Caesar King and Burnice White, the latter of which just got their teaser video posted online early this morning. With these two the Sons of Calydon will hit the full four-character roster limit alongise Lucy and Piper, who have already proven especially popular for four-stars among the Zenless community.

Caesar, who was announced over the weekend, is a sword and shiled wielding physical tank. We know precious little about her, but a social media post featuring some character-quotes provide a glimpse of where she'll fit into the story. Namely, Billy refers to her as Big Sis. Billy's own roots in the Outer Rim (where the Sons are based) haven't exactly been subtle hinted at so far, but those who've maxxed out his friendship in-game should know for sure that he's got connections out there.

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The first big patch for Fallout: London has now arrived and is full of fixes for the various technical teething issues which afflicted the launch version of the mod, just as Team FOLON had said it would be.

This should mean you’re finally able to drop into Blighty without having to worry about running into as many annoying gremlins as we did while reviewing the massive mod. Fallout: London’s definitely worth braving some crashes and bugs for, but hopefully this update’ll mean you’ve got way less of that to worry about.

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Uh oh, the Borderlands movie is off to an incredibly rough start, as the box office figures point all sign towards a flop.

I think it's pretty safe to say that Borderlands is a pretty popular series, right? Do we all agree there? It has to be, otherwise the idea of making a movie adaptation would be unthinkable. Said movie has been in the works since 2015, which is always a surefire sign of a hit, and was finally released last week after almost a decade of development. And how was it? Well, I gave it a singular star in my review, because I simply couldn't find anything to like about it. And it seems that that sentiment is pretty much universal, with the film sitting at a Metacritic critic score of 27/100, and a user score of 2.8 out of 10. So it shouldn't be any surprise to hear that, as reported by Variety, the film has opened with a painfully low $16.5 million on a $115 million budget.

Domestically it took home $8.8 million, with $7.7 million coming from international sales, painting a picture that quite clearly says "yeah, we're good thanks." Variety also notes that just under 60% of production costs for the film were covered by international presales, according to sources anyway, but it's still a result that is far behind expectations. I think it's pretty safe to say we won't be getting a sequel, at least not any time soon - the games will probably have to redeem the series' image a bit.

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Finally some good news! Krafton Inc, the South Korean games company best known for its work on PUBG and The Callisto Protocol - has acquired Tango Gameworks and the award winning Hi-Fi Rush IP from Microsoft ahead of the studio's closure.

Tango Gameworks, which created the excellent Hi-Fi Rush in January 2023, will be leaping from one company to the other, taking all the staff who would otherwise have been laid off with it. In a PR statement, Krafton describes this as its "first significant investment in the Japanese video game market", though other video game IP from Tango including Ghostwire Tokyo and The Evil Within remain in Microsoft's hands.

This is quite a sudden and exciting bit of news in what has otherwise been a depressing spree of video game layoffs and studio closure stories. The announcement that Microsoft was closing Tango Gameworks, alongside Arkane Austin and Alpha Dog Games, hit the industry like a frieght train. While all three studios had obvious merit Tango had only recently won awards for Hi-Fi Rush - a relatively cheap game with a brand-new IP, something Microsoft seemingly would want in this current climate.

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Everyone's favourite witcher Geralt of Rivia will be in The Witcher 4… it's just sounding like he won't be the main character.

When The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt first came out… almost 10 years ago (holy moly I'm getting old), it was clear by the end of the game that it was meant to be a big finale. In fact, CD Projekt Red said as much in an interview with Polygon a couple of years before the game was released, making it clear that this would be the end to Geralt's story: "With the third installment, we should wrap it up and conclude a lot of threads," CEO Marcin Iwinski said. "We might even include Geralt in later games potentially," further explained executive producer John Mamais.

So it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to you that Geralt's voice actor himself, Doug Cockle, has said in a recent video for Fall Damage (thanks, PC Gamer) that The Witcher 4, or whatever it ends up being called, won't be about the beloved character. "Witcher 4 has been announced. I can't say anything about it," Cockle said. "What we know is that Geralt will be part of the game, we just don't know how much, and the game won't focus on Geralt. So it's not about him this time. We don't know who it's about. I'm excited to find out. I want to know! I have not seen any script yet, I mean, I couldn't tell you if I did. This is the thing, so I could be lying through my teeth. But I'm not. Or am I?"

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The 10th anniversary of Life is Strange is fast approaching: in January next year it'll have been a full decade since Max, Chloe, and co. first entered our lives and, in many cases, won our hearts. For many of us who really loved Life is Strange upon first encountering it, it's fair to say that we're still just as besotted with the world and its characters all these years down the line as we were back in the day.

For a fairly niche choose-your-own-adventure series about marginalised superheroes growing up in modern-day USA, Life is Strange has become a surprisingly sprawling franchise over the past decade, no doubt spurred on by the deep pockets of publisher and IP owner Square Enix. Life is Strange: Double Exposure, due for release on October 29th, will be the fifth main game in the series; but to focus on mainline releases alone is to rob yourself of some delightful side-stories in the form of DLC chapters, comic books, a planned TV series, and now even a couple of novels.

Life is Strange: Heatwaves was published on July 31st, a conveniently-timed prose addition to the franchise for anyone itching to get an LiS fix in before Halloween rolls around. It follows Life is Strange: Steph's Story as the series' second prose entry and, now that there are two LiS tie-in novels to compare and contrast, I'm more confident than ever in my overall assessment of the current state of the franchise. Sure, like most long-running series, it's essentially a fanservice machine; but I'm consistently impressed by the wildly different interpretations of "fanservice" at work here.

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My summer has been a bit miserable so far. Work is (somehow) good. Personal relationships are going well. But everything else has either kind of sucked or felt exhausting. In this situation, you'd think I'd be checking out something calm like Stardew Valley (yes, I've yet to touch it) outside of my work commitments. Think again: I started playing The Outlast Trials.

I can't speak about its early access period nor the transition into 1.0 earlier this year, as I've just jumped into it this week for the first time. Part of me was curious about both the game and its seasonal model, but one funny thing about my brain is that it's traditionally thrived in stressful games the more stressed I've been in real life. That's how I now find myself looking around for keys inside rotting corpses and hiding in closets from grossly deformed freaks.

This might need a bit more background without getting into specifics (as this isn't a blog post): Sometimes it's hard to juggle a lot of stuff all at once, and chances are you either break down or become bitter. But you can also just keep plodding along, waiting for the storm to pass. As stated before, my life is good right now, but I've got that fatal weakness of worrying too much about those close to me. Also, experience has shown me bad stuff tends to come bundled together. So, yeah, you can guess how things have been recently. As a direct result, I've put too much weight on my figurative shoulders while, well, plodding along.

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Fallout: London has been a big hit with fans, and it sounds like the team that made it wants to stick together to make their own games.

It was a long time coming, but the highly anticipated mod Fallout: London finally came out last month, and it's been incredibly well received so far, including by our own Mark who reviewed the DLC-sized mod and gave it four out of five stars. Of course, despite still having to deal with various bugs, and promising more content further down the line, the Fallout: London team has plans beyond its massive mod. The mod's project lead Dean Carter recently spoke with the BBC about the aftermath of the project, discussing the team's feelings on having released it, and what's next for them (thanks, PCGamesN). Quite notably, Carter shared that they will "hopefully" go on to make their own indie studio so they can pay the bills.

Carter explained that "as much as I love the fact that this is a free project - that we can offer this thing for free for all the community - free doesn't pay our bills." He went on to say, "What has been great for us is that a lot of people who have really enjoyed [Fallout: London] have donated to us, and we're channelling that into Team Folon, which is what we're going to be moving into. We should hopefully launch our own indie games company which will allow us to come up with our own ideas, create our own games, and work… without having to speak to anyone above us, such as Bethesda, or anything like that.

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PlayStation appears to be testing user-written reviews on the PS Store, meaning you'll be able to do more than just rate your games with stars.

Xbox has allowed its users to leave written reviews for quite a while now, but on PlayStation the only thing you can currently do is give a game a star rating from one to five. Well, as shared by one user on the PlayStation subreddit earlier this week, it appears that the console maker is currently testing written user reviews. The user in question asked the community "when did PlayStation start allowing written reviews? Seems to only be allowed for [a] few games on their store pages for now." They also shared a screenshot of the page that lets you write reviews, with Helldivers 2 being the game in question.

It's a simple enough page, just prompting you to put your star rating in and whatever your thoughts about the game are, asking you to tag spoilers and agree to the terms and conditions. Nothing fancy, but it would obviously be a big change for how players can offer their opinions on PlayStation games, currently relegated to writing some lengthy comment on a social media post about a completely different topic in the hopes that someone will respond but knowing no one ever will.

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It looks like Marvel is going all in on Doom, as at D23 it was revealed that Fortnite's next season will be all about the comic book villain.

Last month, at San Diego Comic-Con, Marvel made the big reveal that Robert Downey Jr. would be returning to the MCU… not as Iron Man, but as fan favourite super baddie Doctor Doom. And it seems like Marvel is happy to go all in on the metal faced Doom, as Epic Games revealed Fortnite chapter 5 season 4 is called Absolute Doom, which will also see some new skins for a bunch of popular Marvel characters.

Right off the bat, if you pick up the game's battle pass, you'll unlock the Gwenpool outfit, another fan favourite character. On top of that, you'll also be able to get skins for War Machine, Emma Frost, Mysterio, and Shuri, as well as a Wolverine-themed Peely skin, and a Captain America-themed Jonesy suit. Doom himself will be available as a skin through battle pass quests in September.

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My skeleton has become detached from my body. It looks quite painful. Whenever I crouch, I find myself staring directly into a patch of my own crimson innards. I think it’s my ribcage, and it’s stopping me from being able to see the prison guards I’m trying to stealth kill from the first-person view. It’s not the end of the world. I switch to the third-person view, keep calm, and carry on what’s largely been a wonderful adventure through post-apocalyptic London.

However, like the various other technical teething issues which have plagued the release version of Fallout: London, it is there, and it is an annoyance.

Sure, Team FOLON is, as you’d expect, working hard to get them fixed ASAP, so that people can play the mod as it was intended. And as we’ve seen before, games that launch in a shaky state bug-wise can be thoroughly redeemed in this regard with time and effort. But still, right now, the bugs are there, and they're persistent.

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Do you remember Thatcher's Techbase, the Doom mod that lets you kill deceased former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher, whose actions while in office rendered her more hated by working class people than even the numerous Tories that've followed in her footsteps since the 1980s? Well, it's now playable on modern PlayStation and Xbox consoles.

If this is your first time hearing about Thatcher's Techbase, first of all, where have you been? Oh, and second of all, it basically turns the classic shooter into a battle with the demonic forces of a robo-Thatcher, complete with enough union jacks to properly convince you that you're in a hellish dystopia.

Now, thanks to the fact Bethesda and Id Software have just released DOOM + DOOM II, a "definitive enhanced version" of the two classic games, complete with "online cross-platform deathmatch and co-op for up to 16 players" and "community-published single-player mod support" via an in-game mod browser, you can kill Thatcher on modern consoles.

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The Battlefield series is a classic for a reason. Battlefield multiplayer has always been its strongest element, even when DICE squandered built-in potential or fumbled something or other seemingly unnecessarily. For as old as it is, however, it never really had any proper competition.

Delta Force: Hawk Ops may be a bit of a silly title, but spend just a few minutes with it and you’ll see just how serious it is at taking on Battlefield. After a bit of a delay, the game’s alpha test kicked off in the West this week, allowing players access to a subset of modes, maps, vehicles and operators.

Let’s get this out of the way quickly: this is really Battlefield 2042 in all but name. It’s going for that specific look to the point it’s hard to tell the two apart just by casually glancing at them. The menus, HUD design/elements, icons, and even some of the lighting quirks are nigh identical. Even one of the alpha maps bears a surprising resemblance to a certain classic Bad Company 2 map (which itself inspired a recent BF2042 map).

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A financial report from Remedy Games released this morning has confirmed that the Max Payne remake - a modern combination of Max Payne 1 and 2 - is in "full production". This report reveals that the game entered this state within the quarter spanning April - June 2024.

In addition, Control 2 has entered its production readiness stage, pointing towards that game's gradual development towards its release. CEO Tero Virtala noted as well that "development fees increased from the comparison period due to higher development fees from Max Payne 1&2 remake". What this essentially means is that its full steam ahead on the remake's development, and those loses stem from the money faucet being turned and cash flowing towards its creation.

As for the wider financials for the company, things are looking better than last year, with revenue increasing 16%. Operating loss is still 3.2 million euros, which sounds a bit nasty, but that's a 1.6 million euro improvement from last year too. So for Remedy, things appear to be moving in a positive direction.

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“I studied at University College London where they have the Jeremy Bentham auto-icon and the whole concept of that is weird,” Fallout: London project manager Dean ‘Prilladog’ Carter tells me.

“For those that don't know, basically he mummified himself and he called it his auto-icon and in his little box in UCL is his skeleton. His head didn’t get mummified correctly, so it all melted, so they gave him like a plastic wax head,” he continues. “Literally, I love the idea so much because that alone in the real world - it's there now - seemed very Fallout. I was like, let's put Futurama in this kind of deal. We're gonna whack that head in a glass thing sitting on a Protectron and yeah, the rest is what you see in the mod.”

Thus was born Fallout: London’s Jeremy Bentham bot, a mechanical marvel which lets you see just how dire a failed mummification can be for a person’s hairline. Oh, and it also lets you debate the state of post-apocalyptic London society with the founder of modern utilitarian philosophy.

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Right, so, as you know, us Fallout fans have been really hard done by when it's come to modders and companies doing things with this series we like so far in 2024. It definitely isn't like we've had a Fallout TV Series, Fallout 76 things, and most recently Fallout: London's release, all giving us Fallout stuff to do.

Well, if you've still got room in your schedule for more Fallout stuff, I've got some good news. The modding team behind Fallout: Vault 13, a project dedicated to remaking the very first Fallout game as a Fallout 4 total conversion mod, has just delivered the demo it'd previously told us all to look out for once the summer hit.

To play the demo, you'll need to head on over to Nexus Mods, where you'll find it under exactly the name you'd expect 'Fallout Vault 13 - Demo'. The team says it's "being released as an early access preview to gather feedback from players".

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The 2XKO's Alpha Lab test has been publically available for less than a day, and already players have found touch-of-death combos. These combos - some of which niche, others genuinely quite useful - provide a glimpse at the saucy potential of Riot's very own fighting game.

The reason these have been found so quickly comes courtesy of two main reasons. This Alpha Lab test period, which is set to last roughly two weeks, isn't just a online matchmaking alpha. Instead, dedicated training mode tools are present for players looking to optimize their play, allowing for stable practice spaces for discovering such combos. In addition, many of the pioneers of such combos have actually played the game before, be it at public play sessions at Evo 2024 and elsewhere, or private Riot events.

So let's dive into some of these combos! Edwin - community manager at Square Enix and longtime fighting game player - has posted their own Darius x Ekko touch-of-death to Twitter. This starts off with a regular old medium hit in the centre of the screen, and requires five bars in total. So very costly, but not overly impossible to pull off in an actual match. It also uses the double down fuse, allowing Edwin to link supers together and cash out some big damage.

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Are you a Final Fantasy 7 fan? Have you played a little too much of the Final Fantasy 7 remake, but still hunger to experience the ups and downs of Square Enix's beloved RPG one more time? I have some good news for you! A solo developer has recreated much of the remake in Little Big Planet 2.

This project, handled entirely by Jamie Colliver, has been a project of passion for years. Originally releasing a decade ago, this fan remake has been totally overhauled with the Wutai section of the game, new models, new animations, and more. This should now be the finished version of the Little Big Planet remake, having taken an additional 3.5 years of work, and now ready and waiting for you to try it out.

The entire process of creating the project has been uploaded on Colliver's YouTube channel, which you can check out for yourself. There's even a snazzy 15 minute trailer that presents many of the biggest moments all in one spot. Special shout out to the recreated FF7 OST, all done inside the Little Big Planet level creator.

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Dead Rising: Deluxe Remaster is aiming to be the definitive version of 2006’s stone-cold classic, and this do-over is smart in terms of what it adds to the game, and in terms of what it retains. A few changes have been made throughout the game that involve taking things out, however - and one of the most notable is an omission from the photography mechanic.

As he tells everyone, Frank West is a photojournalist - and taking snaps of the chaos of the zombie-infested mall of Willamette is as large a part of his story as saving survivors, taking down psychopaths, and uncovering the truth behind the outbreak. The photography mechanic has one major adjustment in the Deluxe Remaster, however - and it’s sure to ruffle some feathers.

In the original version of the game and its near-identical 2016 re-release, photos that Frank takes can trigger one of several photo categories - Brutality, Drama, Outtake, Horror, and Erotica.

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Thanks to a massive new intel drop, we now know a lot more about Black Ops 6 Zombies than we expected at this point in the year. The co-op mode looks to be an overhaul to many of the underlying systems, but it’s also keeping a few classic features intact.

Easter egg hunts; essentially hidden quests players have to figure out how to finish on their own, have been a staple of Zombies for years. Their obtuse nature, however, made them off limits to most casual players.

While past Zombies iterations have toyed around with different ideas to try and bring new players into that part of the game to varying degrees of success, Black Ops 6 may have a best-of-both-worlds solution.

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Paying for mods. If you’ve ever said those three words to anyone who plays games or makes mods for them, odds are you got a pretty strongly held opinion in response, or at least an acknowledgment that - as many Facebook relationship statuses say - it’s complicated.

With Bethesda’s latest attempt at creating a system designed to facilitate such a thing having proven pretty much as polarising as its predecessors, we recently asked Dean ‘Prilladog’ Carter, project manager of the massive and free Fallout 4 mod Fallout: London, how he views the current state of play when it comes to whether mods are paid, or remain free to play.

“I wish they would just choose something,” Carter said when I brought up Bethesda’s Creations in the interview, which also featured chat about the cut quest line that’ll be arriving in a future update and how both John Bercow and Neil Newbon ended up starring in it.

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Treyarch has officially unveiled Black Ops 6 Zombies, the highly-anticipated return to the round-based, zombie-slaying action Call of Duty has been missing for several years. This is more than just a new episode of Zombies, however, it’s a fresh start in a number of ways.

While the story itself may be a continuation of the Dark Aether timeline from Black Ops Cold War, a lot of the gameplay, quality of life, and behind-the-scenes tweaks are entirely new, and should make for a rewarding experience for veterans and newcomers alike.

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Fallout: London, the DLC-sized mod — which is a complete lie given how gargantuan this mod is — from Team FOLON launched on July 25. Now that the team at VG247 has had enough time to wet their appetites and see what this highly-anticipated mod is all about, we decided to discuss and share a few of our favorite things across post-apocalyptic London.

The mod is, unsurprisingly, full of neat Britishisms (not that there’s anything great about being British), and Easter eggs which are a real joy to experience. Sure, Fallout: London hasn’t been without its fair share of bugs and crashes (which is authentic to the Bethesda experience, if you ask me), but this hasn’t removed from the amazing amount of passion and detail that has gone into making Fallout: London a reality.

Without further ado, here are some of our favourite things in Fallout: London.

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The world is due another Wuthering Waves update, and luckily for all of us, we won't have to wait long. Wuthering Waves version 1.2 will be launching on August 15 worldwide, and brings with it new characters, events, and even a dancing turtle.

This announcement comes in the form of a flashy new gameplay trailer, which wraps up all the new content in a nice visual package. The stars of this update are the two new playable characters, obviously. These are Zhe Zhi and Xiangli Yao, both of which will be earnable in-game with this update.

These characters come with weapons as you might expect, including the Rime-Dripped Sprouts rectifiers, and the Verity's Handle gauntlets. With both as five star weapons, you'll have to get quite lucky to get these in addition to the new five star characters. Either that, or get ready to bust the wallet out.

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Kingmakers, developed by Redemption Road and to be published by tinyBuild, recently took everyone by surprise with its eccentric (and technically impressive) first trailer, and while we don't have a release date yet, it seems that Hollywood is already interested in bringing it to the big screen.

Via GamesBeat, we've learned that Story Kitchen, a recently-formed production company behind the Sonic the Hedgehog movies and the upcoming Tomb Raider animated series (as well as many other gaming-related projects), has signed a deal to help develop a live-action movie based on the yet-to-be-released third-person shooter.

"The action, world-building, and intriguing sci-fi of Kingmakers make it a perfect concoction to build a propulsive new franchise in Hollywood... We have always been massive fans of tinyBuild. As publishers, they’re putting out great games that we love playing. We’ve kept a close eye on the things they’re working on and have been trying to figure out the next best opportunity to collaborate with them," said Story Kitchen cofounder Dmitri M. Johnson. Looking at Kingmakers' simple yet punchy premise, one can easily see how it could deftly translate will into an uncomplicated action movie that taps into several subgenres at once.

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With a seemingly unending barrage of layoffs and studio closures, it is incredibly heartwarming to see some of the talent that escaped the triple-A hellscape survive and thrive. Wolfeye Studios, the team behind the clever immersive sim Weird West, has begun working on its next project.

It doesn’t have a name yet, but Wolfeye announced today that production has officially kicked off. The even better news? It’s even more of a return to the team's roots!

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J.J. Abrams might not be liked much in certain places online after The Rise of Skywalker (a so-called franchise-killer that didn't even kill the prospect of more sequels), but he remains an effective producer and filmmaker, and while he's been sticking to producer roles for a while, he's ready to get back in the director's chair. Now, we're starting to learn who will be joining him.

Via Deadline, we've discovered that Wednesday and Beetlejuice 2 star Jenna Ortega is in advanced talks to join the cast alongside Twisters and Top Gun: Maverick's Glen Powell, another name we've been hearing over and over again as of late.

It comes as no surprise that top acting talent wants to work with Abrams, who's helmed two Star Trek and two Star Wars movies, on top of a successful reinvigoration of the Mission: Impossible franchise and Super 8, and that's without counting his many achievements on the TV side of things and all the stuff he's helped get off the ground through Bad Robot. Like it or not, he remains a huge name in Hollywood, and rising stars such as Ortega and Powell have very little to lose by teaming up with him (likely) to make a crowd-pleaser.

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This might surprise you, but Fallout: London - the big Fallout 4 mod - is proving pretty popular among Fallout modders who aren’t part of Team FOLON. Some of the bigger New Vegas fans among them have even started bringing that game’s faction rep and disguise systems to Blighty.

To be fair, some of them have already done the obvious things mod-wise, such as offering you a cure for your character’s crippling dog food addiction, and it looks like they’ll have to wait a little while to be able to enjoy Fallout: London’s cut Wild Card main quest arc, so let em have some fun in the meantime.

‘Faction Reputation and Disguise System’ by Invatorzen looks to be the most comprehensive attempt so far at allowing you to officially have it confirmed that you’re the most vilified individual in London, rather than just knowing so because every NPC won’t stop shooting at you.

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It's no secret that Warner Bros. Discovery has been one of the most headache-inducing results of a massive merger in recent times (and the competition is fierce in that arena). From completely shelving essentially finished movies for tax write-offs to drunkenly re-branding HBO Max into just Max, it's been rough in there, and now it turns out the once-blooming TV business under David Zaslav's ruthless guidance is taking a massive hit as well.

I may not be great with numbers and market laws and whatnot (I wouldn't be rambling about pop culture online if I was), but I can tell when something's objectively cooked and executives are just BSing their way through generic and/or empty statements to try to maintain peace amongst hungry shareholders and investors, and the folks at Warner Bros. Discovery have been doing that bit for a while now. It's something you simply pick up after a while.

Via IndieWire, it's been revealed WB Discovery's TV business, which used to be a rock-solid foundation for everything else, is actually worth "$9.1 billion less than it originally thought, leading to a net loss of $10 billion in the second quarter of 2024." This blow comes after general disappointment with WB Games' recent financial performance, aggressive job cuts, and Zaslav gifting himself pats on the back and more bonuses instead of being booed off the company and into a cave.

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Following the weapon balancing changes that arrived alongside Helldivers 2’s Escalation of Freedom earlier this week, a pretty big backlash from players to some fire damage nerfs has ensued, and, well, it’s now led the game’s recent Steam reviews to dip from “mostly positive” to “mixed”.

Arrowhead, to be fair, definitely hasn’t responded to the criticism from folks who think the tweaks to fire-based weaponry has made the game less fun in a fashion they’ve previously indicated they’re not fans of by burying its head in the sand.

First, if you take a look at the game’s Steam page, while its overall reviews are still mostly positive, the recent ones are now mixed, thanks to over 2,000 fresh negative ones having rolled in since August 6.

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Sword of Convallaria, having only been out for a few days, has already passed five million downloads. To celebrate, the developers at XD have announced a free giveaway event that'll reward players with some in-game goodies. All they - and you - have to down to get 'em is log in over the next week or so.

This event will run from August 9 to August 18, and will provide secret fates and random legendary weapons to players. It's a log-in event, so all that's required from players to turn the game on. Think of this as a sort of thank you giveaway, rather than a proper hands-on event.

These sorts of events aren't uncommon for gacha games like Sword of Convallaria, especially near launch when many of these big download milestones make for great marketing beats. A look at bigger gachas like Zenless Zone Zero and Honkai: Star Rail will show you multile instances when such giveaways have been done, especially during launches of big content updates.

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Making a post-apocalyptic zombie/heist movie set in Las Vegas which is boring should be more than enough reason to thrown anyone in director's jail for a decade. Yet, Netflix decided to give Zack Snyder another fat stack of dollars to develop Rebel Moon, a brand-new sci-fi universe with no clear defining traits other than being very violent and "not your family-friendly Star Wars" as long as you're watching the just-released director's cuts. Now, it appears the filmmaker's luck might've finally run out, as Army of the Dead isn't expanding with new movies or shows anymore.

Ever since his 2017 Justice League movie was trashed by Warner Bros. and turned into a Frankenstein'd mess by Joss Whedon and the producers a lifetime ago, Snyder has been in the business of selling even bigger ideas and trying to play both sides: one for the big studios, and one for himself. His 'Snyder Cut' of Justice League, only turned into a reality 'thanks to' the most toxic online fan movement in recent memory, was admittedly a very noteworthy rework of the theatrically released husk of a movie into an ambitious vision with a distinct voice behind it. That approach now feels like a one-time trick though.

Via TheWrap, which mainly interviewed Zack and Deborah Snyder about the Rebel Moon DCs, we've learned that Netflix has chosen to quietly step away from more Army of the Dead, a movie that wasn't a massive disaster with critics and viewers, yet simply felt far too bloated and expensive for what was ultimately another zombie flick. Moreover, it was full of head-scratching world-building and ideas that asked for even more money and time to be developed in future movies as well as TV shows. You gotta admit the Snyders do aim high, but with almost everyone in Hollywood cutting down costs and trying to play things safer for a while, it comes as no surprise that Netflix is not seeing the same franchise potential in that universe.

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It's pretty rare that I walk out of a movie theatre thinking "I truly just wasted 90+ minutes of my life watching that." Normally, I get something out of whatever it was I watched, be it joy or elation at best, perhaps anger or frustration at worst. Those negative feelings at least mean I'm feeling anything at all, they're feelings I can work with and talk about. But when I walked out of the Borderlands movie, I think all I felt was… apathy? A general sense of "what was the point"? Which is probably the most damning thing I could say about any piece of art, but calling the Borderlands movie 'art' is too generous.

A film adaptation of Borderlands has been in the works since 2015, and a decade later it's finally here. Who knows what the story was meant to be originally, but what we ended up with was this: Lilith (Cate Blanchett), a bounty talker who doesn't really seem to care about anyone or anything but making her next paycheck, is tasked by the head of a major corporation to rescue his daughter, Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt). Things don't exactly go to plan, and instead she sets off on a journey with Tina, alongside Roland (Kevin Hart), the mercenary that kidnapped Tina, Krieg (Florian Munteanu), a big hulk of a man that doesn't say much, Patricia Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis), a doctor obsessed with finding a legendary vault, and Claptrap (Jack Black), an annoying robot that makes too many insufferable jokes.

For the most part, that's a strong cast. Both Blanchett and Curtis are Oscar-winning actresses. You'd assume that prestige would seep through into the film. But as Borderland's lead, Blanchett's performance feels like one dampened by regret. She has previously explained that she picked up the role to save her from madness during COVID lockdown, but none of that energy can be seen in the finished product. Every single line seems underlined by the fact she's not really sure why she's there, and it kind of rubs off on everyone else too.

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If you loved Longlegs and think Cuckoo looks pretty solid too, you'll be happy to learn that NEON will be staying in the arena of suspense and horror for the foreseeable. In January 2025, Presence is coming from Steven Soderbergh (Ocean's Eleven, Magic Mike), and it could be unlike anything we've ever seen.

The pitch is simple: This is a supernatural entity story... from the point of view of the supernatural entity. We've had experiments with the format, such as the Paranormal Activity series, but this type of horror tale had never been told (at least in a mainstream feature) from the other perspective, and that alone might be enough to get many horror fanatics and casual moviegoers into the cinema. And if you were wondering who wrote this: It's Jurassic Park's David Koepp, a veteran Steven Spielberg collaborator, who's also helped shape the next Jurassic World movie.

Earlier this year, we also had the opportunity to watch In a Violent Nature in theaters, a slasher movie narrated from the killer's POV. While it wasn't super groundbreaking, it was a welcome change of pace, so maybe Presence can replicate that for the admittedly overdone 'haunted house' subgenre. There seems to be a demand for small twists on classic scary formulas as of late, so these two might be the start of a bigger movement towards reinventing horror for younger generations.

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As you might be aware, massive Fallout 4 mod Fallout: London managed to recruit some pretty big names to go alongside its core voice acting pool.

Baldur's Gate 3 star Neil Newbon and former UK Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow - the latter having become a household name in Britain thanks to memes about him telling MPs to shut up by yelling ‘Order!’ - were arguably the most unexpected inclusions. So, how did their cameos come about?

Speaking to VG247 for an interview which also featured chat about how the mod’s release has gone and the cut quest line that’ll be arriving in a future update, Fallout: London project manager Dean ‘Prilladog’ Carter revealed exactly that.

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Invincible fans might think they know what's coming in season 3 based on what happens in the comics, but it's sounding like they won't know everything.

So far, the animated adaptation of Invincible has been pretty much one-to-one when it comes to what happens in the comics. But according to comic co-creator and show creator Robert Kirkman, you shouldn't go in with too many expectations of what will happen in the show's upcoming third season. During his San Diego Comic-Con panel (via Popverse), in response to a fan's question about season 3, Kirkman said "Are you uh assuming that you know what's coming in the next season based on your awareness of the comic book series? You're gonna be so wrong, sometimes. Sometimes you'll be a little surprised, sometimes you'll be disappointed. Mostly you'll be blown away."

During Comic-Con, a first look at the titular Invincible's new suit, a blue and black number that shows Mark is about to enter a new era as a superhero. "Definitely won't be getting scratched or covered in blood…" reads a sarcastic description from the official Invincible Twitter account.

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Spoilers ahead for Deadpool & Wolverine.

Deadpool & Wolverine is filled with plenty of big and surprising cameos, but possibly the most surprising of all left the actor in question "sick to his stomach."

While a majority of the multiversal variants given a lengthy amount of screentime went to the numerous Deadpools that exist, there were a few alternate universe Wolverines to be seen too. Most notably, one portrayed by Superman himself, Henry Cavill. He was obviously a big surprise given the fact that he is, you know, the Man of Steel (or was, anyway), not to mention his other body of work. And in an interview with the New York Times, director Shawn Levy explained how that casting came to be, and spoke of how Cavill handled smoking Wolverine's classic cigar.

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With the Marvel vs Capcom Fighting Collection on the horizon, a whole new generation of players will be able to hop into an official version of some of Capcom's most beloved games. This includes Marvel vs Capcom 2 which has a wide variety of merits, including a small selection of original characters.

These include SonSon, the granddaughter of a classic Capcom character of the same name, Ruby Rose the pirate, and the much-adored Amingo the humanoid cactus. These characters had their own fanbases back in the hayday of Marvel vs Capcom 2, but according to producer Shuhei Matsumoto, their return isn't off the cards.

"Yeah, there's always a possiblity," Matsumoto states via a translator at Evo 2024. "This is actually a great opportunity for us, because when we do release this collection, there are going to be a lot more people who'll be able to familiarize themselves with the characters who only appeared in these versus series. If there are enough people who are interested in these characters, then who knows? Maybe there is a chance they could appear in Street Fighter 6 or another fighting game. This is another great reason to re-release these old games, it gets people to learn more about the IP and the series. That just creates a bigger pool of content for us to work with."

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Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is perhaps not a sequel I ever expected to play. The original Relic Entertainment game was unusual by perhaps every measure. It was a shooter-melee hybrid that came from a studio chiefly known for its strategy games. It wasn’t especially well-received at its release, but has since garnered something of a cult status among Warhammer 40,000 enthusiasts, and really, anyone who played it.

Space Marine was the full package; a decently lengthy campaign with some all-around solid production values, a horde mode you can spend time in after finishing that, and even a serviceable, if unremarkable, multiplayer mode - as was the standard at the time. By all accounts, it was an oddity you wouldn’t have expected to repeat.

Yet here we are, 13 years later, and we’re playing a sequel to it; albeit one made by different people and published under a different banner.

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