Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Moonlighter dev's next haunt is ReVamp, a tower defence roguelike where Dracula is cursed to defend his castle forever

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 22:57:09 +0000

The devs behind Moonlighter are already back with something new. While they're still tinkering away with the early access release of Moonlighter 2, at the Future Games Show Spring Showcase they revealed another roguelike entirely: ReVamp, a tower defence spin on the genre that pits you as Dracula himself protecting his castle.

Hazard Pay is a block-pushing puzzle game you can really sink your mop into

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 21:42:30 +0000

Video games are such funny things, because I think if you were to tell someone unfamiliar with them that there is genuine enjoyment to be had in pushing some blocks around in a virtual space they'd look at you as if you'd told them there's genuine enjoyment to be hand in pushing some blocks around in a virtual space. And yet it's true! It's one of the classic puzzle game genres, going way back to 1982 with Sokoban. And here we are now, many years later, with a new entry to the genre in the form of Hazard Pay, a dystopian take that sees you cleaning up mysterious messes in secret labs.

Behold Subnautica 2's fancy fresh windows that come as part of its new procedural base building system

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 19:05:23 +0000

Subnautica probably wouldn't be the beloved ocean exploration/survival crafting game that it is without its underwater base building, so of course it's no surprise that it's returning for the impending sequel. But being a sequel, it of course can't just be the same thing with a new coat of paint slapped on, and in a dev log some of the improvements of base building in Subnautica 2 were put on display.

I am going to be playing this rap album that's also a walkthrough of indie classic Cave Story on repeat

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 17:56:51 +0000

What's the best video game guide you've ever used? There's an art to it, knowing what information is imperative to include, how to include it, is it a written guide, or a video? Well, how about a 21 track long rap album? I only ask because, I am so delighted to say, someone has done just that for indie classic Metroidvania Cave Story.

Don’t know your FSR Diamonds from your DirectStorages? Here’s what all that Project Helix tech-speak actually means

James Archer — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 17:48:54 +0000

A man with a gun stands above the crowd at GDC, the barrel levelled at the words "Next Gen Raytracing Performance & Capabilities." Alas, he is not here to shoot the technojargon out of existence, nor to ballistically punish the unforgivably inappropriate use of title case. He himself is a ray-traced gamething, here to illustrate at least three of the many hardware-based tricks and tools that Microsoft are hyping up for Project Helix: the next, apparently PC game-running Xbox console.

Ex-Overwatch director reveals a multiplayer lovechild of Read Dead and Rust, which I hope boasts nude shootouts

Mark Warren — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 17:16:02 +0000

That's cool, but can I whip out a six-shooter while my private parts dangle in the breeze and cause a rootin' tootin' ruckus that leaves my enemies with chills going up their spine whenever they see bare buttocks? This is the question I've found myself asking of The Legend of California, a multiplayer survival shooter that the studio currently led by former Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan are releasing in early access this year.

Co-op Shadow of the Colossus and hero looter shooter: the genres Arc Raiders devs' thought it was during development

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 17:14:17 +0000

I think that genres, particularly in the realm of games, are often more used as marketing tools than signifiers of the contents therewithin. Still! Genre labels are a useful thing to quickly ascertain the thing you're doing in a game. Take, for example, Arc Raiders and its specific genre of extraction shooter. You know you'll be shooting, and extracting something, even if it technically isn't that simple in practice, but you get the gist. However, at one point in time, the genre of the game completely depended on who you asked.

A week from its release date, Crimson Desert swallows some Denuvo DRM

Mark Warren — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 16:01:51 +0000

Well, a week out from the gargantuan merging of MMO and RPG bits' release, we finally know what Crimson Desert is. It's a game that's just slurped down some Denuvo DRM (. Yep, the shonky enormity of exploding slippage whose devs reckon they announced it too early has been fed some anti-tamper software at the last minute.

PEGI announce plans to slap higher age ratings on games with loot boxes, daily quests, and paid battle passes soon

Mark Warren — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 14:54:52 +0000

The folks behind PEGI - the age rating system used for games in Europe outside of Germany - have announced plans to update their criteria so that games which feature likes of loot boxes, harbour NFTs or blockchain-related bollocks, or pressurise players into returning via daily quests will automatically be given specific age reccomendations to match.

"We're going to lay off 1,000 people and that's going to be on you": Ex-Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan says redundancy ultimatum led to his Blizzard exit

Mark Warren — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 12:24:27 +0000

Former Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan has said his 2021 departure from Blizzard followed an ultimatum about redundancies which "ultimately broke" his resolve and led him towards the exit door. The developer frames that moment as the culmination of a number of tough years working on the hero shooter, which included a 2018 push into esports with the Overwatch League serving as a drain on resources for a team who were also trying to get Overwatch 2 off the ground.

Microsoft confirm their PC game-running Project Helix should be in devs' hands by 2027, and packs next-gen AMD innards

Mark Warren — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 10:59:14 +0000

Microsoft have shared some more details about the hardware Xbox's next-gen console - the PC game-running Project Helix - will be packing. The new box is set to run on AMD-built tech with support for FSR upscaling, and should start to rock up on developers' desks as of 2027. That last bit means it'll likely release in 2028 at the very earliest.

"Valve does not cooperate with gambling sites" - Counter-Strike publishers issue rare public defence of lootbox mechanics, following New York lawsuit

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 20:15:58 +0000

In an unusual show of candour, Valve have spoken out publicly against a lawsuit filed in New York, USA that accuses them of "letting children and adults alike illegally gamble" via loot boxes in Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, and Team Fortress 2.

With the caveat that I am no Atticus Finch-esque legal expert or even a Louis Tully-grade bumbler, I find Valve's rebuttal to be a mixture of whataboutery and tactical mitigation, with a couple of fair points. It basically sidesteps what I think is the lawsuit's most important argument – that lootbox mechanics are fundamentally manipulative. You can read the thing in full here, or you can read my slapdash summary-with-notes, below.

PETA and Edmund McMillen are trolling each other again, as the activist group hand Mewgenics a "Hero to Animals Award"

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 18:30:27 +0000

Many moons ago, Mewgenics developer Edmund McMillen successfully lured the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals into developing a vegan parody version of Super Meat Boy, Team Meat's gut-slathered 2D platformer. Team Meat responded by triumphantly adding a spoof vegan character to Super Meat Boy, the puny and crater-eyed Tofu Boy. As McMillen himself recently recalled on MechaMusk.com, "I personally trolled the peta forums for months seeding info about this 'ground breaking new indie game coming out soon that must be stopped!; I never thought they would actually take the bait but it was amazing to see and a very fun exchange."

Well, McMillen and PETA are at it again. PETA have just released a video honouring a character in Mewgenics, which very much isn't a game that promotes the ethical treatment of animals, or of beings in general.

Learn about real-life rewilding in "idle city-builder + creature collector" Grow Wild, which is taking playtest sign-ups

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 17:17:33 +0000

Spectrum48's Philip Sinclair has spent 15 years rewilding a field, "rewilding" being a process of restoring ecosystems to something like a state of 'natural' equilibrium. Now, he's making a videogame about it. That game is Grow Wild, which is currently accepting playtest sign-ups. It sees you restoring biomes across the globe, touching down on sickly square arcadias like an avenging angel equipped with a trowel, magnifying glass, and probably some tartan-pattern slippers, out of shot.

It makes me think a little of Viva Pinata, but it's populated by representations of non-digital creatures, flowers and trees with convincing growth cycles. There are some lovely 'time lapse' shots in the trailer, below.

Tracking down the Dark Souls 2 hacker who injected me with 500 cursed Black Knight Ultra Greatswords

Robert Yang — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 16:00:00 +0000

Years ago I was lost in the Shaded Woods, a foggy forest full of moaning trees. I didn't have enough health to fight the invisible backstabbing murder ghosts, and every time I ran away from the spooky sound of their footsteps, I got lost in the fog all over again.

That's when a hacker invaded and injected me with hundreds of cursed swords, corrupting my save file and dooming Dark Souls 2 to crash over and over.

It was deep magic, more powerful than any game system or lore, overwhelming the code itself. To uncurse myself, I'd have to embrace the darkness and download cheat tools too.

And now I've tracked down my hacker, to thank him.

Marathon update makes UESC enemies weaker, but they're still messing me up at every opportunity. Bungie have "no plans to change that"

Julian Benson — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 15:15:11 +0000

The latest Marathon update looks like it will mean an easier time. UESC enemies have been made weaker, the frequency with which they chuck EMP grenades has been reduced, and free loadouts now come with even more ammo. Yet, after spending an hour over lunch being killed repeatedly in Maintenance on Dire Marsh, I can confirm that Marathon has not become a cakewalk.

Dark Messiah Of Might And Magic is getting a Community Edition with Source upgrades and Ubisoft's blessing

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 13:35:28 +0000

A team of modders are creating a Community Edition of Arkane's footloose fantasy RPG Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, with Valve's support and publisher Ubisoft's approval. The modders in question are the same outfit who received a "completely blank check" from Ubi to develop a modding SDK, back in 2023. Now, they're devising a new version using the latest Source Engine SDK. Kickbait, indeed.

Intel’s new, "fastest ever" desktop CPUs put their focus back on game performance

James Archer — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 13:01:18 +0000

Intel have announced a handful of new gaming CPUs, the Core Ultra 200S Plus series, to release next month. After 2024’s original Core Ultra 200S family went for efficiency gains at the cost of frame-punching game power, these 200S Plus chips are once again tuned more for straight performance, which sounds good to me. I like lower electricity bills and heat generation as much as the next hardware editor, and was fairly optimistic about that initial batch of Core Ultras at first, but they ended up so slow and dull it essentially put me off writing about CPUs for a year and a half.

Say hello, then, to the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and Core Ultra 250K Plus, which’ll be out on March 26th 2026 at $299 and $199 respectively. There’ll also be slightly cheaper KF variants, without integrated graphics, for each. Intel VP Robert Hallock says these will be the "fastest desktop gaming processors Intel has ever built," which they’ll need to be – while the blue team have been fiddling with efficiency, AMD’s 3D V-Cache tech has ran away with the gaming advantage, especially on the outstandingly quick Ryzen 7 9800X3D.

Come experience the original LucasArts vision for Star Wars Battlefront 3 in the leaked First Assault beta, finally playable on PC

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 12:31:42 +0000

A long time ago in a games industry far, far away, a team of LucasArts developers were making a multiplayer first-person shooter called Star Wars: First Assault. Slated to release on console in summer 2013, it was set in the original Star Wars era with Stormtroopers, Rebels, objective modes, team deathmatch, and maps on Tatooine and Bespin. It was also a stealth Star Wars: Battlefront revival project, pitched well before the EA DICE reboot. The devs envisaged a second game in 2014, offering vehicles and larger maps, followed by a full-blown official new Battlefront in 2015, complete with a singleplayer campaign and space dogfights.

According to some sources I spoke to at the time, the First Assault beta was only $10,000 in certification fees away from launching on Xbox Live in late 2012. But then, Disney blew up LucasArts like Alderaan and cancelled a swathe of Star Wars games, including the once-feted Star Wars 1313. First Assault never got its beta. Until now, sort of. A team of Battlefront modders including iamashaymin have finally gotten an ancient, leaked First Assault build working on a PC server. Many Bothans died to bring us this information.

New tactics RPG Never's End blends Final Fantasy with the turbulent spell combos of Divinity: Original Sin

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 11:14:12 +0000

Never's End is the new strategy RPG from a former Destiny developer in which you lead a party of possessed villagers against a ravening (yet cuddly) tide of undead. At a glance, it's an elegantly muted Final Fantasy Tactics, with doll-sized characters on a spinnable grid-based map. In the hands, it's surprisingly reminiscent of Larian's Divinity: Original Sin games, with a nerdy application of thermodynamics that lets you transform each map into a vortex of mist, flame and increasingly naked skeletons.

Why did Dispatch's devs push through to make it despite initial disinterest from investors? "Arrogance and stupidity"

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 22:56:06 +0000

It's no secret that those shadowy guys with all the money to fund games generally don't have much interest in narrative heavy, singleplayer games. And yet even still, games like Dispatch continue to do very well for themselves. Even still, for developer AdHoc Studio, the funding process doesn't sound like it was an easy one, but in their self-admitted "arrogance and stupidity," they went on to make it anyway.

Mega Man's voice actor says he won't be returning in Dual Override over non-union contract concerns

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 21:36:40 +0000

Mega Man will be sounding a bit different in his next game Dual Override, it seems. Earlier today, voice actor Ben Diskin, who voiced the character in Mega Man 11, shared on his personal Bluesky account that he would not be reprising his role as the character, claiming that he was asked to return for it, "but only on the condition I work without the protections of a union contract."

Nightdive re-announce SiN Reloaded with the promise that it's coming out this year

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 18:51:44 +0000

Video games are weird little things. It's pretty rare for films to get scrapped part way through production, even if these days some production companies opt to use even finished projects as tax write offs. But games can frequently get canned, disappear for a bit, and even return after many years of silence. Enter SiN Reloaded, the Nightdive-made remaster of the classic boomer shooter, that is alive once more!

As of today, your RuneScape subscription will be just that little bit more expensive every month

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 18:01:55 +0000

To pay for an MMO subscription is to unfortunately know that you will eventually have to pay more than you'd like to because prices never go down, now do they. Today, the MMO in question is RuneScape, with Jagex announcing an increase for both monthly and yearly subscriptions, the second price increase in under two years.

It's not a mirage, Crimson Desert's system requirements are here, and don't seem half bad

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 17:04:02 +0000

The everything but the kitchen sink RPG Crimson Desert is finally out in a little over a week, but those of us in the realm of personal computers have been left wondering what it is exactly we'll need to run the thing (I'm sure those flashy particle effects take their toll). Well, wonder no longer, intrepid Crimson Deserter, Pearly Abyss have released the PC specs you'll need to be sporting to get this thing running.

Epic are hiking Fortnite V-Buck prices to “pay the bills”, because those server farms don't run on peanuts

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 15:13:40 +0000

Epic are raising the price of Fortnite's V-bucks currency, in what the billion dollar publishers frame as a bid to keep the wolf from the door. You'll now stand to pay almost twice as much for Exact Amount packs, with smaller increases kicking in for the larger fixed wodges of Fort-doubloons. You'll also learn less from Fortnite's battle pass in future, though this and other Fortnite passes will also be cheaper to compensate.

Regions of Ruin: Runegate is a pleasantly pixelly RPG about rebuilding a lost dwarven kingdom, and it’s out next month

James Archer — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 13:42:45 +0000

I tend to take my videogame dwarves spacefaring, but there’s something inviting about the more classical, beards-and-barrel-chested adventuring being offered by Regions of Ruin: Runegate.

An expanded and prettified sequel to 2020’s Regions of Ruin, which I also knew nothing about until this morning, Runegate casts you as a lone dwarf charged with travelling the treacherous (but attractively pixel-arty) wilds to bring about the rejuvenation of your peoples' ruined subterranean home. Here’s the new release date trailer; not to spoil the ending, but it’s out on April 14th 2026.

Capcom reveal Resident Evil Requiem story DLC and minigame while dangling sweaty carrot of Hot Uncle Kennedy romance sim

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 13:12:21 +0000

Resident Evil Requiem is getting a story expansion and a new minigame, together with the already-promised photo mode, Capcom have announced. What the expansion and minigame involve remains unclear, but there is just the dimmest possibility that we'll finally be able to play the official Leon Kennedy Meet 'n' F*ck game of our wildest dreams.

New lawsuit wants Valve to repay "billions" earned from "illegal gambling" lootboxes in Counter-Strike, Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 12:34:16 +0000

Tis the season for taking Steam to court, apparently. A new class action lawsuit has been filed in Washington, USA accusing Valve of running an unlawful gambling operation through lootbox mechanics in Counter-Strike 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, and Team Fortress 2.

Jurassic Park, parkour and Five Nights At Freddy's meet in Terrible Lizards, in which you must go faster

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 10:08:34 +0000

"Jurassic parkour!" I bellowed to myself in pure delight, when first I read the trailer blurb for Terrible Lizards, announced yesterday. I can only applaud the immense willpower required to not make that the game's actual title. In this new first-person horror platformer from WDR Studios LLC, your car has broken down somewhere in the deserts of New Mexico.

It's 1992, so you can't just Whatsapp your mate who works at the garage to ask which cacti fluids make good engine oil. Instead, you must venture into a nearby abandoned roadside museum, Dalton's Dinos, which is full of gorgeous animatronic brontosaurs and suchlike. Oh, yeah - 'oooh, ahhh', that's how it always starts. Then later there's running and screaming.

Battlefield 6 developers face layoffs despite making one of the best-selling games of 2025

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 19:08:54 +0000

Battlefield 6 was "the biggest launch in franchise history", EA told us back in October – indeed, it was the best-selling game in the US in 2025... so now it's time to lay off an unspecified number of those who made it, with cuts reportedly taking place across Criterion, Dice, Ripple Effect, and Motive Studios, though none of these studios face outright closure.

Resident Evil director Shinji Mikami has a new studio, Unbound, who are making original games for PC and console

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 18:34:40 +0000

Resident Evil director Shinji Mikami has founded a new studio, Unbound, after leaving The Evil Within creators Tango Gameworks in 2023. The studio has been lurking in the open for a while - it started business back in May 2023 - and exists to create "high-end", "original AAA" games, or at least, "AA" games that are trying very hard to look all big and blockblustery.

Crusader Kings 3 is getting a Roblox adaptation

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 17:44:04 +0000

All changed, changed utterly: a terrible beauty is born. Paradox Interactive are partnering with My Little Pony developers Magic Spark to make a Roblox game inspired by the legendarily mucky and backstabby strategy sim Crusader Kings 3. Out in early access this year, the currently untitled spin-off "captures the spirit of medieval intrigue in a fun, social environment", according to a press release.

"If we love this work, we have to protect it" - Hyper Light studio Heart Machine is now a "wall-to-wall" union

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 16:42:03 +0000

Developers at Hyper Light Drifter, Solar Ash and Possessor(s) studio Heart Machine are unionising. They've signed up with a local branch of the Communications Workers of America, in a "wall-to-wall unit [that] represents all frontline employees". This comes in the wake of layoffs, and takes inspiration from larger unionisation drives at megacorps like Microsoft.

Xbox Full Screen Experience, Windows 11's gaming UI overhaul, is available to try now on Legion Go handhelds

James Archer — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 15:17:47 +0000

Last year, Microsoft finally put some effort into making Windows 11 less dreadful for handheld PCs, launching Xbox Full Screen Experience - a stripped-back, more gamepad-friendly interface specifically for launching and installing games – on the Asus ROG Xbox Ally family. The same update has been strangely unforthcoming to other Steam Deck rivals, but it sounds like the Lenovo Legion Go series is finally getting access soon. There’s a preview build that Legion Go, Legion Go S, and Legion Go 2 owners can try right now, too.

A Nioh 3 boss made me so pissed off that I smashed a hole into my desk

Jeremy Blum — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 14:46:27 +0000

A few weeks ago, I became so irked at a boss battle that I smashed my Xbox wireless controller upon my desk. A loud crunch resulted. My rage quickly melted into horror as I turned my head downwards and realised that lo and behold, my gaming table now had a hole in it.

It was the human form of Nioh 3's Takeda Shingen, so not even the toughest boss in the game - merely one who managed to vex me in a very particular manner on a trying day, resulting in the aforementioned cavity decorating the piece of Ikea MDF that rests atop two cabinets and holds up my computer.

“He doesn’t have a heart, but he has heartstrings”: The making of Nick Valentine, Fallout’s best-loved companion

Jeremy Peel — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 12:46:29 +0000

When Emil Pagliarulo was growing up in South Boston, he lived in fear of Whitey Bulger: a local crime boss who had been shaped not only by street gangs but Alcatraz, and a stint in the CIA’s mind control program, MKUltra.

"He was basically the boogeyman," Pagliarulo says. "He was the evil bad guy. You didn’t know where he was or even what he looked like, but you knew he was out there. I’m 10 years old, and I know this name."

Decades later, as Bethesda Game Studios shifted into full production on Fallout 4, Pagliarulo drew on those memories to bring a post-apocalyptic Boston to life. "The game was missing something, as far as one of the overall themes," he says. "I remember having a conversation with Todd Howard that there should be this overriding sense of paranoia that people have, and they don’t know who to trust."

A Steam Machine update reignited release date fears, but Valve say the new hardware is still shipping this year

James Archer — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 11:57:12 +0000

Valve have reworded a Steam blog post after its original, unsure-sounding text left open the possibility of further long-term delays to the new Steam Machine. The 2025 Year in Review article only briefly touches on the Machine, as well as the upcoming Steam Controller redesign and the Steam Frame VR headset, but its previous phrasing of "We hope to ship in 2026" – accompanied by a reminder of ongoing and widespread memory shortages – did have the kind of noncommittal yeah-we’ll-seeism that one might apply when responding to an unwanted dinner party invitation. The grim possibility of another delay, this time into 2027, hung heavy.

Now, however, that passage has been replaced with a more confident and definitive commitment to a 2026 release. "We shared recently that there have been challenges with memory and storage shortages," Valve’s update reads, "but we will be shipping all three products this year."

This week in PC games: John Carpenter's Toxic Commando, Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly Remake, and a myth-inspired match-3 game where you combine three dogs into Cerberus

Julian Benson — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 11:54:44 +0000

Sadly, I must report that Edwin has once again been eaten by the Maw. I want to say it was through some devious ruse but, reader, it was not. As Edwin worked the gaps between the Maw's canines with the 8-foot toothpick, one of the Maw's smaller tentacles slipped behind our news editor and tapped him on the shoulder. Edwin turned his head. It was only for a moment, but it was all that was needed to gobble him up.

Not to worry, Edwin will surely have worked his way out of one of the Maw's orifices (orifici?) and be back on duty shortly.

In his stead, let me provide this week's delivery of games.

Slay The Spire 2 update fixes some spectacular multiplayer bugs, like the relic that gives infinite block

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 08:28:49 +0000

Slay The Spire 2 launched into early access last week to the tune of over half a million Steam concurrents, which isn't too shabby for a game with placeholder art that looks like it was knocked up in MS Paint. I played a couple runs of the roguelike deckbuilder this weekend, and experienced such positive emotions as Wait, Doesn't This Basically Break The Game? Delightfully Devilish, Seymour and Oh, I Forgot I Had That Potion.

I wouldn't say I'm bowled over, mind. The original Slay The Spire precipitated a Cambrian explosion of roguelite or roguelike deckbuilders. The sequel has to stand apart from both its predecessor and from all the games Spire has in-Spired, like Monster Train. While not without precedent, the co-op functionality could be its silver bullet. So it's just as well that the game's first round of patches are targetting problems with multiplayer.

Website that let Marvel Rivals players pay each other to throw matches pivots to "transparency initiative" after NetEase get mad

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 07:25:22 +0000

Marvel Rivals developers NetEase have introduced new systems for detecting thrown matches. This follows a bizarre wave of people getting bribed to take a fall, instigated by a third-party website who are now advertising themselves as some kind of community advocacy initiative.

The Sunday Papers

James Archer — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Sundays are for celebrating the 800th-est ever Sunday Papers. Happy big 8-0-0, Sunday Papers. Here are four fun facts about the number 800, followed by some quality writing from the past week.

I really wish Rizz Dungeon: Skeleton Key to My Heart wasn't called that, but its flirtatious dungeon crawling has still charmed me

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 23:00:59 +0000

To be cringe is to be free. I stand by this saying! The moment you unshackle yourself from the notion that something is embarrassing simply for existing, you will have a much easier time enjoying things. However. I do think I will be a bit embarrassed telling you about Rizz Dungeon: Skeleton Key to My Heart, a dungeon crawler where you are a useless failgirl who flirts with and subsequently recruits monster girls to do all her battles, because oh my gods why would you call a game Rizz Dungeon.

Oh no, Wikipedia has been turned into a gacha card game and I can already feel my time slipping away from me

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 21:26:12 +0000

Do all roads lead to gacha? It feels like an inevitability, the endpoint of the universe. When there is nothing but a handful of atoms left, the rolls will keep on coming. It's destiny! That's the only explanation I have for Wikipedia Gacha, a simple browser game that truly is what it says on the tin. Let me explain it for you anyway.

Menace's first roadmap, while light on details and dates, is here to give you an idea of what's on the way

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 18:56:12 +0000

Menace, the latest very XCOM-ish game from Battle Brothers developer Overhype Studios, has been out in early access for about a month now, and with that the arrival of a roadmap has appeared to grace us with very sparse details regarding what you can expect in the game's numerous updates to come.

After listening to your complaints, Bungie is making it just a tad less annoying to buy cosmetics in Marathon

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 18:01:01 +0000

Upon Marathon's launch earlier this week, Bungie revealed a pair of in-game currencies that you have to use to unlock various bits. One is called SILK, which you can earn through play and is used to unlock rewards in rewards passes. The other is LUX, a premium currency you have to spend real, cold, hard cash on to get, though its sole purpose is for cosmetics. However, much like all in-game currencies that cost real-world money, the amount you can buy and the amount it costs to buy cosmetics didn't line up, leading to a good bit of pushback that has resulted in Bungie simply giving you more bang for your buck.

NetEase has reportedly pulled funding from Yakuza creator Toshihiro Nagoshi's studio and next game Gang of Dragon

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 17:08:16 +0000

It's looking pretty likely that Gang of Dragon, the debut game from Yakuza/Like a Dragon creator Toshihiro Nagoshi's studio, won't be coming out at all. According to a report from Bloomberg, Nagoshi Studio employees were told by NetEase Inc. Friday, March 6th, that it would be pulling funding for the game from this coming May.

'The teenagers have it coming' I tell myself as I set another spike trap in this Greek myth-infused tower defense game

Julian Benson — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 12:00:00 +0000

At the center of the labyrinth is a minotaur. He is bound with muscle. He is fearsome. He is… snoring. Asterion, bored with how long I am taking to place my traps, has gone to sleep. This is despite warriors armed with swords and bows lining up at the gates leading into the maze, itching for their chance to battle the bull-headed, human-bodied creature.

Still, even though he is in mortal danger, I, Daedalus, the labyrinth's designer, am happy for him to sleep. If I do my job in roguelite tower defense game Minos right, my minotaur won't have to lift a finger to defend himself.

Marathon's story is told like it's a single player game and that's no good when my friends are talking on Discord

Julian Benson — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Marathon is set in a cyberpunk future in which the air is thick with data and information. You play a runner, a human that's given up their body to become a being of bits and bytes whose consciousness can be transferred into whatever artificial shell they choose. We can't begin to perceive life in that world. A world where to see the data as it flew through the air it would be an onslaught to the senses, overwhelming and impossible to make sense of.

Scatch that. The experience of a tsunami of stimuli is easy to recreate: you simply need to try and follow Marathon's tutorial popups and story cinematics while also on a Discord server with your friends.

What are we all playing this weekend?

Julian Benson — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Oi, you! Yes, you, the sun. There's no hiding. I saw you creeping up over the hill at 6am and staying there for nearly a whole 12 hours yesterday. Stop looking sheepish, you're not in trouble. Why, in fact, I think I might spend this weekend outside and enjoy your almost springly warmth.

After trying Subtractive Runemixer, I can't unsee the links between RPG element systems and colour theory

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 17:22:44 +0000

Subtractive Runemixer is a work-in-progress RPG by Starbage, recently released for free on Itch.io. I know about it because artist and writer Oma Keeling shared it on Bluesky. It's a first-person RPGMaker production in you are a gloomy automaton called Caster, who is searching a labyrinth of religious icons and technology for another automaton who wants to kill you.

The school bus is unleashed in Wreckfest 2's latest update, which also introduces car upgrades and waypoint races

Mark Warren — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 16:57:57 +0000

Put down your pencil case and get ready to answer when your name's called. Or prepare to pancake a bunch of rolling wrecks. Either way, early access banger Wreckfest 2's latest major update's delivered a school bus. It's far from the lone addition either, with the sequel's first crack and car upgrading and waypoint races arriving alongside the usual extra cars and tracks.

World of Darkness lovers take note: new "Hunter" game accidentally released as a RoboCop: Rogue City update

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 15:40:25 +0000

The people behind RoboCop: Rogue City may have accidentally released an early version of an unannounced Hunter: The Reckoning game, set in the same World Of Darkness universe as Vampire: The Masquerade. The files in question were shared as an update for Rogue City, in what could be either a coded message from Hunter-Net's witness1, or a classic case of backend butterfingers.

Slay The Spire 2's placeholder art should be a lesson to all the developers caught up in AI-generated nonsense

Julian Benson — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 15:12:39 +0000

Do you remember the days when we didn't need to talk about generative AI? Whatever side of the pro or anti fence you sit on, or even indeed if your buttocks are firmly planted on those white picket panels, you may be tired of hearing about which games do or don't feature AI-created artworks. Even the US supreme court seems done with the whole business, as they recently refused to take a case about copyrighting AI art.

I wish, instead, developers would avoid the whole kerfuffle and do what Slay The Spire 2's developers Mega Crit Games have done: just bodge it in Paint.

Massive Skyrim mod Lordbound is now semi-canon, thanks to a new Bethesda-approved expansion from its devs

Mark Warren — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 14:21:54 +0000

Last year, beefy Skyrim quest mod Lordbound finally soft launched, having spent a decade in the oven. Now, two of the modders behind it have managed to make their creation semi-canon, by weaving some of its lore into a fresh add-on approved by Bethesda.

You won't have any standing armies in Total War: Medieval 3 at first, so better get chummy with the commoners

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 12:58:22 +0000

Yesterday, Julian wrote about the possibility of changing inheritance laws in Total War: Medieval 3, and thereby revealed to me that Creative Assembly have been sneakily talking in depth about the forthcoming strategy game on their forums. The audacity of those people! In other posts, we learn about their plans for standing armies, which are probably what interest me most about TwarMed3, in that each campaign will be an exercise in getting to the point where standing armies are a thing.

Marathon's credits include the artist whose work Bungie used without permission

Mark Warren — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 12:15:30 +0000

Marathon sprinted out of the blocks yesterday, so naturally some folks have already seen its credits. One of people listed in those credits is an especially noteworthy inclusion, with Antireal (or 4nt1r34l) - an artist whose work Bungie were caught using in the shooter without permission - having been credited as a consultant on the game.

Bungie ask Marathon critics to delay "full reviews" till the release of an endgame zone, and I am wistfully reminded of Vault of Glass

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 11:52:50 +0000

Bungie's Marathon reboot released yesterday, but you might not get that impression from the developer's coverage embargo guidelines, which request that critics delay their "full review and impressions" until the launch of a "pinnacle endgame zone and experience" later in March.

It's a "request/suggestion", not a demand, but it rubs me up the wrong way regardless. The Marathon reboot is not an early access launch that is marketed to buyers as unfinished.

Microsoft's next console will play PC games too, and it's currently codenamed Project Helix

Mark Warren — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 11:20:00 +0000

Microsoft have moved quickly to shut down the speculation that Asha Sharma's recent appointment as Xbox boss might be a harbinger of the company moving out of the console hardware for good. Sharma has announced that Xbox's next-gen console is codenamed Project Helix and, much more intriguingly, will play PC games as well as Xbox ones.

Rally Point: Whiskerwood suggests that, even without the violence, colonialism is a scam

Sin Vega — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 11:18:32 +0000

Whiskerwood has made it undeniable: I have the opposite of a speedrunning problem. Give me a stretch of land, a supply of loyal builders, and a free hand to go nuts building some impressive metropolis, and I will, within mere dozens of hours, produce a small, haphazard hamlet reluctantly beginning to flirt with ironmaking. Rome was not built in a day. If I'd had my way, it still wouldn't be.

Whiskerwood, to my pleasant surprise, does not hold this against me. It's most obviously reminiscent of Timberborn, and its premise recalls Colonization, of all things, as your "Whiskers" build a colony for the "Claws", who are largely absentee (there are no cats in America) but extract a regular toll of goods as taxation. You'd assume they quickly ramp up the pressure and force the issue because games are Like That. The real pressure, though, is a much more interesting model of colonialism, and how even absent of political context, that kind of economic arrangement can constrain and shape a town.

US governor boosts US-Iran 'combat footage' that is actually from War Thunder, featuring WW2-era weapons

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 10:34:09 +0000

The entanglement of war with simulation continues with the discovery that a video of a US battleship shooting down an Iranian fighter jet is very likely a clip from videogame War Thunder, depicting ordnance from the World War 2 era. The clip in question has circulated on social media to the tune of millions of views. It has also been shared around by at least one sitting US Republican statesman, Texas governor Greg Abbott, who reposted it with the caption "Bye bye". The tweet in question has since been deleted.

Pragmata gets a release date change once again, albeit in a good way this time

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 22:56:50 +0000

Somehow, Pragmata was announced almost six whole years ago. Where did those years go? I certainly didn't allow them to go anywhere! Originally slated for release in 2022, it was eventually delayed into 2023, then indefinitely, before Capcom finally locked in a 2026 release date. Which it will not be making, technically, as while it was originally slated to launch on April 24th, it'll no longer be doing so… because it's coming out earlier. Teehee, I fooled you, what a little trickster I am!

Almost 10 years on from the first one, Ruiner is getting a sequel, and this time with co-op

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 21:32:42 +0000

Not all that long off the heels of releasing parkour boomer shooter Metal Eden, developer Reikon Games have now announced that they'll be returning to their cyberpunk world Ruiner in the form of… well, it's just called Ruiner 2. And it's a sequel that sure, looks like more of the same, but the immediately noticeable difference in this one will be that you can play it with a couple of your buddies.

Prepare your decks once more, Slay the Spire 2 is now out in early access

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 20:03:46 +0000

Hear ye, hear ye! It is time to play your hand, for the day of prophecy has come: Slay the Spire 2 has, finally, launched into early access. I know, I know, there's some game about running a marathon or something by a team of folks that run a bungee jumping business out today too. Forget that! Running is difficult, deckbuilding is… also difficult, but, I don't like running, so there.

Hard drive space for all! Helldivers 2's slimmer install size is rolling out to everyone later this month

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 18:00:27 +0000

There is no greater source of tepid rage than when I see a game, I buy it, I proceed to download it, and it tells me it needs to take up one billion gigabytes of my hard drive space (NB: one billion is an exaggeration). It fills every corner of my being with a potent darkness, and I would like it to stop. This is a feeling many had with Helldivers and its ludicrously large 154GB install size, leading to a test build of the game to be released by Arrowhead last year knocking it way down to only 23GB in size. And now, after some testing, this build will be available to everyone!

Two genres and seven years on, Remedy attempt to define what a Control game even is in the lead-up to Resonant

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 17:01:29 +0000

What is a Control game? It's a fairly reasonable question to ask, as the only follow-up there's been to the original 2019 game in the intervening years (apart from some DLC) was FBC: Firebreak, a live service FPS spin-off that… well, you know. And then last year Remedy revealed what was long dubbed to be Control 2 is actually Control Resonant, and that we won't be playing as Jesse this time around, oh and also, it's a Devil May Cry-esque action game. So with all these shifts, in a new interview some of the leads behind the sequel have shared their perspective on what a Control game actually is.

One of Marathon's more controversial mechanics brings back a neat idea from Anthem

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 17:01:21 +0000

Bungie's Marathon reboot is out on PC today. Based on last weekend's playtest, it has already been deemed the most difficult, aka "sweatiest" extraction shooter in a while. For as the old Victorian saying goes, women glow, men perspire, and gamers sweat.

Activision pressured Call of Duty studio Infinity Ward to make a game about Iran invading Israel, claims former developer

Mark Warren — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 16:31:16 +0000

Chance Glasco, an ex-lead animator on the Call of Duty series, has claimed that Activision once pressured Infinity Ward to make an entry in which Iran attacked Israel. He did so in response to a video montage posted on the official White House Xitter account, which combines the USA's real life military strikes against Iran with killstreak animations and Call of Duty interface elements.

Resident Evil Requiem's mystifying Final Puzzle is case-closed after its solution was discovered by accident

James Archer — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 16:24:28 +0000

The chillingly named 'Final Puzzle' in Resident Evil Requiem filled much of the action-horror game’s launch week with cheevo-hunting intrigue. What began as a simple search, a box-checking exercise to complete the last of Requiem’s optional challenges, has since shredded nerves (and driven at least two RPS guides writers into frazzled despair) as the puzzle revealed itself an almost sadistically opaque game of Simon Says, where Simon doesn’t actually say anything. He wants you to do something with that severed arm, though.

Earlier this week, however, the code was cracked, seemingly after a Pokemon card YouTuber stumbled into the solution by accident. Gengar Collects, whose videos typically involve showing off colourful paper rectangles rather than borrowing creepy dolls from flesh monsters, is now widely credited with 'discovering' the requisite steps through sheer luck, with the precise details confirmed hours later by dataminers. Here’s Jeremy and Callum’s Final Puzzle guide, if you want to see them for yourself.

With Marathon's release imminent, Bungie say it's got "no pay for power" microtransactions and confirm seasonal rewards will stick around

Mark Warren — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 14:36:25 +0000

I hope you've got some decent trainers and plenty of bottled water on hand. The time to run a Marathon is nigh, with Bungie's shooter set to burst out of the blocks today, March 5th. Ahead of the starting gun going off the Destiny 2 developers have shared a bit more info on how Marathon's in-game currency and seasonal pass rewards work.

"In a sense, we're kind of victims of ourselves" says Crimson Desert's chief marketer, who reckons it plunged over the announcement Kliff too early

Mark Warren — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 12:24:55 +0000

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a really shonky Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom? Is it a dork ass enormity of an open world action-RPG? Is it a sort of janky Assassin's Creedlike where you explode stuff a lot? Is it something with slippery combat that'll break your heart? Is it a game where you've got to press 15 million buttons just to pick up a thing?

All of these are the sorts of questions folks have asked as they've grappled to understand exactly what Crimson is ahead of its release this month. According to developers Pearl Abyss' main marketing man, that's a consequence of the shonky enormity of exploding slippage being announced way too early.

In Total War: Medieval 3, you can change the laws of your kingdom to ensure your feckless heir doesn't inherit the throne

Julian Benson — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 11:22:50 +0000

While Creative Assembly will readily tell you that Total War: Medieval 3 is still years away from release, with the project currently only in pre-production, the team are being quite open with their plan for the long, long, long-awaited strategy game. A recent message from the game's creative director, for instance, goes into how you can mess around with inheritance planning for the whole kingdom of France.

As someone who is currently going through the process of creating a will and signing life insurance paperwork, I am delighted to turn this boring bureaucracy into a transferable skill to ensure my friends and family can keep sticking it to the British throughout my 12th century campaign.

More importantly, potentially even than that, is how these systems are an example of the replayability Creative Assembly is hoping to build into Total War: Medieval 3 and what they've learned from Crusader Kings 3.

Oblivion Remastered multiplayer mod announced by company aiming to give a bunch of single player games their GTA 5 moment

Mark Warren — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 11:00:00 +0000

From Skyrim Together to the more recently released Witcher Online, modders bringing multiplayer to big single player games isn’t new. Folks spend hundreds of hours mucking about in Tamriel or on The Continent alone, so the idea of being able to do so with a gang of mates has obvious appeal, as much as it can be fiddly to pull off.

A newly announced mod will add multiplayer to Bethesda’s Oblivion Remastered later this year. But this one’s not from your typical group of hobbyists.

Highguard's beefy final update is live, with a "skeleton crew" having voluntarily "crunched" to get it out ahead of shutdown

Mark Warren — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 10:58:18 +0000

Ahead of Highguard's impeding shutdown on March 12th, developers Wildlight have released the big final update they mentioned when delivering the news of the shooter's forthcoming demise. Pulled together in short order by the "skeleton crew" left behind following recent layoffs at developers Wildlight, the update delivers skill trees, a new gun, and a new warden.

Nvidia hotfix targets broken GeForce driver that followed previous broken GeForce driver

James Archer — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 10:28:29 +0000

GeForce graphics cards drivers are having their most torrid time since, um, last year. As reported last week, Nvidia’s Game Ready 595.59 update – the launch driver for Resident Evil Requiem – spun up reported cooling fan issues, and its replacement, version 595.71, has been accidentally kneecapping clock speeds and voltage caps on the newest RTX 50 models. Cue yet another new driver, 595.76, which released yesterday as a hasty hotfix.

MindsEye studio confirm more layoffs, as CEO claims they've got "overwhelming evidence of organised espionage and corporate sabotage"

Mark Warren — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 10:02:05 +0000

MindsEye developers Build a Rocket Boy have announced that they're making more redundancies, with CEO Mark Gerhard using the statement to continue insisting that proof the game was targeted by "organised espionage and corporate sabotage" will be forthcoming.

Ubisoft talk up "unique, darker" Assassin's Creed Hexe, also promise their Invictus multiplayer game is making progress

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 17:47:44 +0000

Ubisoft have released a broad update on the future of Assassin's Creed, with thoughts from new head of content Jean Guesdon. It doesn't tell us much, but it doesn't tell us nothing. At the very least, it's not another layoff announcement.

Firstly, don't believe the scuttlebutt about their Assassin's Creed multiplayer project, Codename Invictus, which is "progressing steadily" in the hands of some For Honor veterans. It's not some kind of Fall Guy house party malarkey, whatever the rumour-mongers might tell you. It's… well, it sounds like they're still deciding what it is. Announced in 2022, the project is proceeding on a "test and learn" basis.

Trump administration reportedly debating whether to force Riot Games owners Tencent to divest stakes in US game companies

Mark Warren — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 17:24:58 +0000

The US government, currently headed up by the Trump administration, are reportedly discussing whether to push Chinese conglomerate Tencent to divest their investments in US game companies. Tencent currently own League of Legends developers Riot Games and Back 4 Blood developers Turtle Rock Studios, while also holding stakes in the likes of Epic Games, Ubisoft, Remedy, and Paradox Interactive.

Corpses in the censored Japanese version of Resident Evil Requiem are full of terrible darkness

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 16:41:05 +0000

People on social media are upset about censorship in Resident Evil Requiem. Wait, come back! This isn't one of those situations where Twitter dudes with usernames like BasedMaxxing97 rant about the bikini armor being altered to cover up the 'vagina bones'. It seems the Japanese version of Capcom's new horror game doesn't feature any blood and guts in certain scenes, in a bid to appease the country's regulators.

Instead it has… anomalous pools of shadow. Hideous darkness spilling from the cleaved torsos of ostensible cadavers. The same darkness lurks within you and I. What fools we were, to ever think ourselves meat. We are but the place where the light isn't. Umbral puppets. Gabbling event horizons. Arigatou gozaimasu, Capcom! I feel much better now.

"Gary will no longer attack the player from beyond the veil" says The Outer Worlds 2's latest patch, which also makes a death pit work as intended

Mark Warren — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:43:39 +0000

It's been a little bit since The Outer Worlds 2 got that November patch aiming to take care of mysterious eyebrow disappearances. I wonder what the latest one, which is fairly beefy, does. Oh, it adds a number of handy features like the option to advance time by waiting, toggle walking via key press, and extra stealth kill animations.

Nice and boring. Oh, wait. "Gary will no longer attack the player from beyond the veil". "Fixed cases where some NPCs could see the player while they were wearing the bucket hat". "The pit outside of the entrance to Algid Menagerie will now always kill the player as intended". "NPCs should no longer moonwalk, despite being in space".

Sony will no longer release their biggest PlayStation games on PC, claims report, starting with Ghost of Yōtei

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:31:15 +0000

Sony are breaking up with PC, reportedly! The PlayStation creators will no longer release big PS5 singleplayer games on things that are not actual PlayStations, according to "people familiar with the company's plans". In the short term, Sony will no longer publish a PC port of Ghost of Yōtei, sequel to windblown action samurai game Ghost of Tsushima.

It's all part of a pivot back towards the simpler days of console exclusivity, the insiders claim, and forms a stark contrast with rival Microsoft's wheedling ambition to treat every piece of hardware like an Xbox.

Planet of Lana 2 review - a grander, more dynamic platformer sequel that keeps hold of its heart

James Archer — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:00:03 +0000

The original Planet of Lana proposed a science fiction fantasy that appealed on two levels: one, being able to adventure through a wondrously lush exoworld, and two, having a cat who actually listens to you. Planet of Lana 2 is more of the same, on both counts, while adding enough athleticism to its platforming and depth to its puzzling to feel like a worthwhile sequel.

Ahead of Myrient's RAM crisis-linked demise, volunteers are working to archive its entire collection

Mark Warren — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 12:25:02 +0000

Earlier this week, the operator of ROM distribution site and self-described "video game preservation service" Myrient announced plans to shut it down as of the end of this month. They advised folks to download any files from the collection that said folks were keen to hold onto ahead of the closure. A group of volunteers have decided to take that to another level, working together to archive all of Myrient's files so they can be preserved for posterity.

The Division 2's new Realism Mode chops back the HUD, ammo and health regen, and is free for a month

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 12:07:12 +0000

It seems like a million years have passed since the release of Tom Clancy's The Division 2, the squalid shooter-looter set in banged-up Washington D.C. In fact, it's only been seven. Which is quite a lot of years, in fairness, but that period also spans a lot of upheaval - the Covid pandemic, Trump's re-election, the exploding popularity of generative AI, the onset of chronic live service apathy, the lingering undeath of NFTs, and the literal invasion of Washington D.C. by the National Guard.

Both The Division 2's original looting mechanics and its 100% apolitical regime change storyline now feel to me like the products of a different universe, though Ubisoft have been updating the game and releasing new stuff for it throughout. Their latest addition is a Realism Mode, exclusively available through the existing Warlords of New York expansion, which will itself be freely available to all players until 2nd April.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is now back on Steam as a separate entity to Counter-Strike 2

Mark Warren — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 11:37:24 +0000

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has its own dedicated Steam listing once more, separate from follow-up Counter-Strike 2, which was neatly slotted over the top of CS:GO on release a few years ago.

Logitech G325 Lightspeed gaming headset review: cheap wireless cans that don’t sound too shabby

James Archer — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 11:37:14 +0000

It remains unfortunate that 'budget' wireless headsets can still set you back £60-£80 rather than, say, two shillings and a thruppence. But here we are, and so is the Logitech G325 Wireless, a cut-price pair of over-ears that still manages good comfort and serviceable sound.

Attempt to get copyright on wholly AI-generated art gunned down by US Supreme Court

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 11:22:14 +0000

The highest legal authority in the USA has refused to take a case involving a Missouri computer scientist who wants to copyright art created by his own generative AI system. The compsci guy in question, Dr Stephen Thaler, appealed to the Supreme Court justices after lower courts upheld a US Copyright Office decision that his art doesn't make the cut for copyright protection, because it wasn't created by a human.

As reported by Reuters, Thaler's generative AI tech is the winningly dorkish "Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience", aka DABUS. He applied for a US federal copyright registration in 2018, asking for DABUS to be recognised as the author of a picture of a train tunnel surrounded by mucky green and purple vegetation, called "A Recent Entrance to Paradise".

No Fallout New Vegas remaster teases here, Iron Galaxy say, we're just really enthusiastic about meetings

Mark Warren — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 10:06:52 +0000

Have you ever noticed your next company-wide meeting's due and thought the following: 'Oh, we should post an image prominently featuring a screen from a game rumoured to potentially be getting the remake or remaster treatment, but solely to illustrate how much we love meetings'? Well, Iron Galaxy Studios - co-developers of Skyrim's Switch port and support studio on Fallout 76 - say was what happened late last week. The studio say their social media posts featuring Fallout: New Vegas' 'Please Stand By' screen have "nothing to do with anything Fallout being worked on".

Antivirus Survivors 2003 Professional is a charming 2000s, Windows XP take on the Vampire Survivors formula

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 22:53:17 +0000

Vampire Survivors clones! They're a dime a dozen these days, primarily because poncle created an admittedly very strong template to mimic. This week's bullet heaven, as the genre has come to be known, is a charming little entry called Antivirus Survivors 2003 Professional, a take on the format that imagines a world where your Windows XP running computer's icons all want to kill you.

And there it is: Highguard is shutting down next week

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 20:58:41 +0000

The above headline will not be a particularly surprising one, but just to make sure it's absolutely clear, developer Wildlight have confirmed that their raid shooter Highguard will be closing its servers from next week, March 12th. The team confirmed as much in a post shared to the game's official Twitter account, where it went into (very little) detail about what's next.

The Sims 4 is going the way of Roblox with a new marketplace where anyone can make moola from their custom creations

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 19:09:45 +0000

It could be that I'm being a tad dramatic here, but Fortnite, and particularly Roblox, might be two of the most annoying things to happen to games. Today, presumably in pursuit of infinite growth, EA announced a pair of Things you can now expect to see in The Sims 4, a new Sims Maker Program and Sims 4 Marketplace.

One of the Legend of Grimrock designers is making a spaceship puzzler inspired by System Shock

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 18:55:05 +0000

Reconfigure is the new "puzzle-RPG-FPS hybrid" from Antti Tiihonen - co-founder of Almost Human, and one of the designers behind "bloody brilliant" dungeon crawler Legend of Grimrock. Where Grimrock threw you into a mountain and challenged you to find your way out, Reconfigure throws you into a starship that is in the process of being, wait for it, reconfigured.

The on-board robots are busy feeding spare components to the engine, as they seek to maintain acceleration towards some mysterious destination. You are the vessel's last human, and your task is to navigate a maze of passages, laser sentinels and pressure plates in order to stop the ship devouring itself.

Bungie lay out their Marathon season plans, which yes, includes forced resets for everybody

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 18:07:29 +0000

It was a little under a year ago that Bungie showed off Marathon proper and told us all it was coming out in September, only for everyone who had a chance to play it essentially say "ruh roh Raggy," leading to an indefinite delay. And here we are now! Within spitting distance of the shooter launching, a server slam that felt like being stuck in an Nvidia graphics card behind us, and now a word straight from the mouths of its developers about what seasons will be like.

It's time to pick up the reins, as the 13th century horse courier game The Legend of Khiimori is out in early access

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 17:09:44 +0000

Are you ready to… horse around? What? No, that's not canned laughter, it's a live studio audience, it's funny! Anyway, on to the mane event! Which is the early access launch of a singular game (in our case, anyway) called The Legend of Khiimori, a game that sits perfectly in the centre of a venn diagram that reads "horse girls" on one side and "history buffs" on the other.

Fantasy RPG Esoteric Ebb is "the most exciting game Disco Elysium has inspired", says former ZA/UM writer

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 15:28:35 +0000

Among the first things I did in Esoteric Ebb was spectacularly injure myself by posing a question to a kobold guard that was actually a statement. To whit, "you are a kobold." My Dexterity hollered at me to stave off embarrassment with a witty follow-up, but I failed the associated dice roll and almost bit my own tongue off.

"Use this to your advantage," growled my Strength stat. "Intimidate him with your life's liquid." So I spat blood through my visor, all over the kobold's feet. "He is baffled," observed my Wisdom. "Your actions have truly made a mark upon his dark soul." Later, the kobold and I agreed - again via dice roll - that neither of us like the taste of milk, which somehow unlocked a quest to become a milkman. Apparently, the money's decent.

Witcher 3 REDkit modding whizz expands Kaer Morhen to match its Witcher 1 equivalent, with references galore

Mark Warren — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 14:42:23 +0000

Since CD Projekt released The Witcher 3's REDkit modding tools a couple of years ago, it's been cool to see location revamps and new quests for the decade-old RPG start to emerge from the woodwork pretty regularly. The latest that's caught my eye is a substantial overhaul of Gerry and co's hangout Kaer Morhen, with a veteran modder having taken on the task of fleshing out the area to match its depiction in the first Witcher game.

How Steven Spielberg, a Pinhead bust, and Robert De Niro's sex appeal gave us the horror shooter Clive Barker's Undying

James Nouch — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 13:30:00 +0000

"As a kid, I’d sometimes go to work with my dad," Brady Bell tells me. "We’d drive onto the MGM lot, and I’d see coin-op games through the window of one office. 'That’s Mr Spielberg’s office,' my dad would say. I remember thinking, 'Wow - he gets to make movies and play games. That’s the life."

Years later, Bell found himself sitting in an LA office while the legendary director gave him notes. Modelers around them were working on outrageously expensive workstations, painstakingly creating mockups for Jurassic Park sequels. But there were no dinosaurs on Bell's screen, not even a tiny Compsognathus or a dinky little Anchiornis. Bell was showing Spielberg a cutscene packed with hellish creatures, occultish symbols, and the tastefully wood-panelled walls of a sprawling gothic manor.

That's because Bell wasn't part of DreamWorks Pictures, Spielberg's movie studio, but DreamWorks Interactive, the game development studio Spielberg founded in 1995. He was the producer on the small team making Clive Barker's Undying, a first-person horror shooter made in collaboration with the author who created Hellraiser and Candyman.

Last month Clive Barker's Undying celebrated its 25th anniversary and while its makers would be the first to say it wasn't a shooter that changed the direction of the games industry, they will tell you that the project was a true labour of love.

They will also tell you that Clive Barker was really quite insistent that they make protagonist Patrick Galloway more fuckable.

Capcom yank Resident Evil 4 Remake's Enigma DRM, which had reportedly impacted the horror flick's performance

Mark Warren — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 12:19:30 +0000

While Resident Evil Requiem's been hoovering up most of the Resi attention as of late, Capcom have managed to drag the Resident Evil 4 Remake back into the headlines. The game's just had Enigma DRM quietly pulled from it, following a recent swap to that software from Devuvo DRM which reportedly had an impact on how well the Resi 4 Remake ran.

Resident Evil Requiem gains an arachnophobia mode done right, with everyone's favourite steam engine subbed for spiders

Mark Warren — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 11:27:47 +0000

Death. Taxes. Thomas the Tank Engine quickly being modded into new games. Resident Evil Requiem's the latest one to gain the privilege of hosting some steam engine antics, but this time around it's not solely for goofs. Capcom are yet to add an arachnophobia mode, so a modder's stepped in to swap out spiders for my friend and yours Thomas the Tank Engine.

Well, that looks like it could be a Fallout: New Vegas remaster tease from a Fallout 76 support studio

Mark Warren — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 10:00:32 +0000

Have you ever noticed your next company-wide meeting's due and thought the following: 'Oh, we should post an image prominently featuring a screen from a game rumoured to potentially be getting the remake or remaster treatment'? Well, that appears to have been the case for Iron Galaxy Studios, co-developers of Skyrim's Switch port and support studio on Fallout 76. It's a screen from Fallout: New Vegas to boot.