Features archive

June 2025

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79 articles

June 14
- Real-life rally racing is dying and triple-A rally games are dead, but the sport's gotten a second life thanks to these excellent indie racers
- The FPS genre is addicted to sprinting and clambering, but Halo just proved we're better off without them
June 13
- Out of Words features one of the cutest videogame characters I've ever seen, but there's a tinge of Kafkaesque darkness to it, too
- Wuchang: Fallen Feathers made me grapple with the parry vs. dodge conundrum
- Absolum isn't just the best demo on Steam, it's one of my favorite things I've played in 2025
- This strategy roguelike is like trying to fight off an alien invasion with a bunch of PCs from the late 1970s
- '225,000,000,000 attacks per day': Computer users and gamers are significantly more at risk of cybercrime than at any other time in the past
- Mio: Memories in Orbit has all the wonder of playing Inside for the first time and its devs are working hard to make it even better
June 12
- 3 things I liked and 2 I didn't after 30 minutes with Grounded 2
- Spine is a gun-fu love letter that wants to make you feel as OP as John Wick
- Onimusha: Way of the Sword was the best thing I saw at Summer Game Fest
- Code Vein 2 made me realize what I've always wanted in a Souls game: a sick motorcycle
- This Minesweeper roguelike is a chaotic corporate nightmare, and I love it
- Darktide's first DLC class gets a cybernetic dog who is a very good boy, and will arrive alongside a free update that structures missions in a campaign at long last
- I think it's a safe bet The Witcher 4 will run just as well as its tech demo after talking with UE5 devs and analyzing Unreal Fest tech data
- 'Most chairs labeled as 'gaming' chairs are simply budget task chairs with colorful accent stripes': here's what annoys industry experts the most about gaming chairs
June 11
- Don’t let your rig slow you down, these Kingston upgrades make your battlestation beastly
- Steam review bombs can be harmful, says Mecha Break dev, but it had a positive takeaway after Chinese players hammered the beta: 'We underestimated players' passion to get into our game'
- 'We encourage you to live with your choices, but if you want to change it, you can:' Supermassive explains why it's adding a flowchart to its narrative horror with Directive 8020
- Summer Game Fest no-shows: 9 big games that were absent from 2025's showcases
- Dune: Awakening's dungeons are so atrocious that I'd rather get slowly digested by a sandworm than fight through another one
- Resident Evil Requiem's behind-closed-doors demo was weirdly boring, but it's got me donning a tin foil hat and joining the 'Leon's back' chants
- Fight predatory capitalism with a yo-yo possessed by your aunt's spirit in this brilliantly bizarre metroidvania
- Switch 2 vs Steam Deck: A closer battle than I expected
- Date Everything turns everyday household objects into gorgeous love interests, and now I can't look at my refrigerator the same way
- I've played 2 hours of MindsEye and it's pretty bad so far, I'm afraid
- I've played my share of cozy games, and Tales of the Shire is definitely one for the maximalist decorators
June 10
- With Oblivion Remastered's first patch looming, I wish Bethesda had taken a leaf from CDPR's book and straight-up incorporated popular mods at launch
- After a weekend packed with game reveals, I can't stop thinking about Clockwork Revolution's time-traveling shenanigans
- The 10 best games of Summer Game Fest 2025
- 'Sheer practice and willpower': Real-life telekinetic heroine PerriKaryal beat Elden Ring's bosses by thinking about a cricket jumping and twitching her inner ear, and Nightreign is next
- Dune: Awakening review-in-progress: Fun in the sun
- Persona 4 Revival finally has the chance to fix its terrible dungeon design
June 9
- I love Hideo Kojima's games, but last night's fawning over his genius from Geoff Keighley and the Death Stranding 2 cast got me the opposite of hyped
- GIGABYTE AORUS: the premier choice for an AMD gaming PC
- Xbox is no longer a console, it's a platform, and it's already entered a battle for control over your handheld gaming PC
- Space Marine Master Crafted Edition provides a slick second life for a Warhammer cult classic—but you might struggle to find a match in the multiplayer
- Turn-based RPGs are officially back in fashion, but I want more: It's time for modern developers to take another pass at FF12's gambit system
- Every videogame showcase is a PC gaming show now
June 8
- Every game, trailer, and announcement in the PC Gaming Show 2025
- “That evening, I told the company: This is the first game we're publishing”—how vibes, fun, and aggressively mashing a keyboard landed the Vampire Survivors dev its first publishing client
- FBC Firebreak asks the brave question: 'What if you were just really drunk?' while coming up with all their wacky loadouts and weapons
- 007 First Light is the 'culmination' of IO Interactive's work on Hitman over the last 20 years: 'All that skill, all that practice coming together and finally seeing the ultimate spy fantasy come to life'
- Leaving Fallen London: How Failbetter Games spent several years growing hope and ‘discovering the art of the possible’ in their new eldritch farming sim
- ‘We could go from a shooter to a platformer to a horror theme’: How stepping away from Payday 2’s real-world framing has helped Den of Wolves turn high-stakes heisting on its head
- 'It’s a bit of an existential priority for us to stand out': ex-Ubisoft and Bethesda devs on new studio Soft Rains, longevity, and debut sci-fi game Ambrosia Sky
June 7
- Nightreign's distilled shot of Elden Ring juice makes it my ideal level of soulslike investment after 14 years of getting good
June 6
- Deltarune's new chapters defy every rule of RPG logic
- James Bond doesn't need an origin story: IO's game looks great, but why has it turned 007 into a baby-faced Nathan Drake?
- Having spent time testing the Switch 2 mouse controls I no longer think it's a gimmick, but it just cannot compare to a gaming mouse
- Xbox Games Showcase 2025 preview: The big games and developers to expect on Sunday's livestream
- How to watch the Summer Game Fest livestream
June 5
- This MMO can run Doom: EVE Frontier is so moddable, players are building entire games within its space survival sandbox, and the devs say it's just the beginning
- Guilty as Sock may be the only game where you can sue Master Chief for indecent exposure and then write sensational articles about Mr. Bean committing financial fraud
- 'Our drivers are incredibly fast': I've been testing a prototype gaming headset with ultra-responsive speakers and it's transformed my Gray Zone Warfare sessions
- Dying by sandworm in Dune: Awakening is way, way worse than any other death you might face
- Thief VR is a huge slap in the face and kick in the teeth for everyone who has been waiting for more than a decade to return to the City
June 4
- Summer Game Fest 2025 preview: The big games and developers to expect at Friday's livestream
- I wasn't expecting a FromSoftware game, of all things, to be so gut-bustingly funny—but just like Helldivers 2, Elden Ring Nightreign turns death into a punchline
- I built a real SteamOS Steam Machine out of the guts of an old laptop so Gabe doesn't have to go through that whole sad dance again
June 3
- The Witcher 4 tech demo has me hyped for a big budget open world for the first time in years—but not because of the Unreal graphics
- The PC game releases we're most excited about in June
- Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater: All the key details on the remake of a PS2 classic
- Death Stranding 2: All the key details on the next game from Hideo Kojima
- Slay the Spire 2: all the key details on the beloved deckbuilder’s sequel
- Elden Ring: Nightreign bucks the extraction trend, but it would have been a better game if it hadn't
- 'In a very interesting way, it actually reduces the work': Destiny 2's director explains why reinventing the wheel with The Edge of Fate was actually the easier option
- The Edge of Fate will be the biggest change to Destiny 2 since it launched—an injection of fresh ideas, but also of ARPG grind
- After almost 18 years, Team Fortress 2 just had its toughest tournament ever, and there could be more to come
- I tried the 'oops, all status effects' Executor loadout in Elden Ring Nightreign that turns his starting katana into a god-killing uber-sword—shockingly, it's pretty good
June 2
- Singleplayer Elden Ring Nightreign is no longer hell to play, but it's still a compromised game of 30-minute boss runbacks
- Forget Divinity: Original Sin 3: For its Baldur's Gate 3 follow-up, I implore Larian to revisit its okayest game
- I found a mysterious demo disc with no name hiding a game almost no one in the world has ever seen, and it made me feel like I'd uncovered buried treasure
- The worst part of Elden Ring Nightreign, like all multiplayer games, is that you need to rely on the kindness and intelligence of strangers
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's tremendously messed-up endings aren't what I'd hoped for—and I hope Sandfall keeps it that way
- Five new Steam games you probably missed (June 2, 2025)
June 1
- I didn't even know what roleplaying was until I experienced this bizarre '90s B-game where you slowly turn into a bug
- Elden Ring Nightreign is the first FromSoftware game that I honestly wish I could play on easy
- 'The soundtrack to skate parks was punk rock music': Tony Hawk on the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater soundtracks, and how they shaped a generation of videogame skate kids