Well, I think we all knew we'd end up here eventually, right?

It seems that Cyberleek, perpetrator of the last week's GTA 6 leaks and perhaps the world's least-convincing self-appointed champion of consumer rights, may not have ultimately been encouraging the use of their $CYBERLEEK cryptocurrency for benevolent purposes: As of this morning, it seems the leaker has cashed out on their scheme to the tune of over $200,000 in a rug pull that just about everyone saw coming.

Since their first leaked GTA 6 gameplay video, Cyberleek used the uploaded illicit footage as a platform for users to buy and trade $CYBERLEEK, a token minted on the Solana blockchain. Eventually, Cyberleek allowed viewers to use the cryptocurrency to vote on the subject of their next leak video.

By doing so, Cyberleek claimed viewers would be supporting "a secret project" to fight for a generic slate of vaguely consumerist talking points, and that the funding would be "directed toward the infrastructure needed to strike, as well as the security and protection required to withstand the inevitable corporate counterattacks."

If that doesn't pass the smell test to you, you aren't alone: As their leaks continued and Take-Two's legal manhunt intensified, Cyberleek's pleas for support became increasingly desperate—and increasingly corny, as public sentiment steadily soured on their compulsive crypto hucksterism.

That skepticism was apparently well-placed, because it looks like Cyberleek finally cashed out on their scheme early this morning. As spotted by user Vice Cit on Gtaforums.com, a series of transactions occurred starting today at roughly 3:27 AM EDT, resulting in one $CYBERLEEK trader earning an estimated $270,000—and tanking the token's value for everyone else.

To understand what exactly happened here, let me offer some context about the token itself. It was minted by a walletholder on the Solana blockchain 12 days ago, and after its minting, the walletholder—presumably Cyberleek themself—placed the initial supply of the token along with an amount of an another cryptocurrency into what's called a "liquidity pool" on the Raydium platform, making that walletholder a "liquidity provider," or LP.

When currencies are traded through a Raydium liquidity pool, transaction fees are charged which are then split between its LPs. Which means that, by encouraging viewers to buy and trade tokens from that liquidity pool, Cyberleek was generating profits for its LPs.

Unsurprisingly, it was the same walletholder that initially minted the $CYBERLEEK token that initiated a fee collection transaction from the Raydium liquidity pool early this morning, receiving over $200,000 of $CYBERLEEK that they had accrued in transaction fees. That walletholder then immediately cashed out all that $CYBERLEEK for alternative currencies, which were quickly squirrelled away into a handful of different wallets.

In the aftermath, the value of $CYBERLEEK has plunged by roughly 40% for anyone who made the questionable choice to acquire any. But that's not Cyberleek's problem anymore. They're sitting on a nice new chunk of change—which they'll presumably need for their eventual legal fees.

For the rest of us, let this be a valuable lesson: Don't listen when a weird onion on the internet says to buy his special secret money. Not again, anyway.

We see games getting delayed all the time, but today's delay is particularly notable because this particular game was first supposed to come out in, ooh, let me check... Yep. All the way back in 2015.

Squadron 42, the long-awaited, celebrity-packed episodic singleplayer component of Star Citizen has been delayed once again. And why? This time, according to game director Chris Roberts, it's to avoid the media hubbub around another oft-delayed game: GTA 6.

"At CitizenCon 2024 we announced we would ship in 2026. Our plan was to release in Q4 around IAE," Roberts said in a post on the RSI website.

"But much like the rest of the industry there is no way I want to launch my spiritual successor to Wing Commander, a game that has had twelve years of blood, sweat and tears invested into it (we started Squadron 42 development in 2014 as 2013 was opening studios, hiring people and getting the Hangar module out for Star Citizen) launching into the attention buzz saw of GTA 6.

"While GTA 6 isn’t launching on PC this November, pretty much all outlets and most content creators will be all over it, not leaving a lot of room for other coverage," Roberts said.

"We have taken a look at the release windows at the start of 2027, and decided that Q2 provides a better time for Squadron 42 to release."

Look, I dunno. Roberts isn't wrong: there will be absolutely tons of attention on GTA 6—there already is, if you haven't noticed—but not everyone plays GTA 6 and not everyone wants to watch videos or streams or read about it. There's no game so big it swallows absolutely everyone's attention for months, not even a new GTA game.

We've seen a lot of games getting out of the way of Rockstar's path, but pushing the release that far into 2027 suggests CIG just wants more time. And judging from the state of the recent disastrous Star Citizen livestream, it may need more time.

"I know a lot of you will be disappointed to not be playing Squadron 42 at the end of this year," Roberts said, "but it is the best thing for the project as it is truly something special and so needs to the opportunity to have the focus of the wider gaming world."

The new Torrent skins in Elden Ring's Tarnished Edition are tricky to find for bonuses that are meant to appeal to new players. It is FromSoftware we're talking about, though, so I can't say I'm exactly surprised they're a little tucked away. There are three Spectral Steed Regalias to find for Torrent in the Lands Between, plus new armor and weapons. I've tracked down one so far, but I'll include the others when I locate them.

Spectral Steed Regalia: Tree Sentinel location

You can grab this Torrent skin after you beat the demigod, Godrick the Grafted, in Stormveil Castle in Limgrave. After the boss is dead, open up the throne room, and head through the right-hand doorway behind the throne. Elden Ring players will likely remember that this room has always been empty, but now you'll find a chest containing the Spectral Steed Regalia: Tree Sentinel, which makes Torrent look like the aforementioned mounted boss.

After you have a Spectral Steed Regalia, you can change it at any site of grace. Simply select "change spectral steed appearance" and pick the one you want. There are two more Spectral Steed Regalias in Tarnished Edition, one for the Night's Cavalry, and one for the Carian royalty. Considering this first one is linked to a demigod's defeat, and the other two fit perfectly with Rennala in Raya Lucaria, and Morgott in Leyndell, I suspect that's where the two others are located.

If you already have an Elden Ring character, or aren't making a new one for Tarnished Edition, you should be able to backtrack and grab this chest even if you defeated Godrick many, many moons ago.

The new Elden Ring Tarnished Edition has arrived with two new starting classes, the Idus Knight and Heavy Knight, and also new armor sets, some new weapons, and Torrent skins for your trusty steed. You can get one of the new armor sets and weapons straight off by starting the game with either Idus Knight or Heavy Knight, but otherwise here's where to get the others.

It appears that the Tarnished Edition is also bringing a lot of DLC weapons to the base game, such as Backhand Blades, the Thrusting Shield, and the Great Katana, so I'll add these as I find them, too.

Idus Sword and Silver Grooved Set location

This armor is worn by the new Idus Knight class and there are two ways to get it. Firstly, you can choose this class at the start of the game to get the armor. This will also get you the Idus Sword weapon.

If you don't do this, or already have a character, you can purchase the set from the Nomadic Merchant in north Liurnia of the Lakes. This is the merchant on the east side of the ravine that leads to the Ruin Strewn Precipice, north of Bellum Church, southeast from Carian Manor, and west from the Grand Lift of Dectus. You can either get here through Bellum church via the plateau above, or ride to the end of the ravine and turn right up the slope.

You can also find the Idus Sword in southern Liurnia of the Lakes. Simply travel northwest from the Liurnia Lake Shore grace and look for it on a corpse by a tree, location marked above.

Hefty Scimitar and Heavy Knight Set location

This armor is worn by the new Heavy Knight class and, like the Silver Grooved, there are two ways to get it. If you choose this class as your starting, you'll get the new armor set as well as the Hefty Scimitar weapon.

If you don't start new, or want it on a pre-existing character, you can purchase it from the Isolated Merchant at the Isolated Merchant's Shack in the west of the Weeping Peninsula, south of the Fourth Church or Marika and the Witchbane Ruins, past the walking mausoleum towards the coast. Sadly, I'm still looking for the Hefty Scimitar's location in the world, so will add when I find it.

Leontiel's Greatsword and Armor Set location

Leontiel's armor set is available in Caelid after you defeat Starscourge Radahn at Caelid Castle on the southeast coast. Once the boss is done, take Torrent and ride north from the Starscourge Radahn grace towards the War-Dead Catacombs. Along the way, at the spot above, Leontiel will invade, and you'll have to defeat her, which will earn you Leontiel's armor and her greatsword. Leontiel will also help you as a summon during the Radahn fight, which is a fun addition.

Golden Order Flail and Broken Gold Mask Set location

The final set is available in Leyndell, Royal Capital, in the Altus Plateau. You get it by casting the Law of Regression spell on the statue of Radagon, which you do during Brother Corhyn's questline. You can buy the Law of Regression spell by giving the Golden Order Principia prayerbook to Miriel or Corhyn, found on the upper floor of the arena where you fight the golden shade of Godfrey, First Elden Lord.

When you perform the spell at the statue, revealing Marika, you'll be invaded by Broken Gold Mask. Defeat him to get the Broken Gold Mask headwear, Gold Tattoo arms, legs, and chest, plus the Golden Order Flail. If you've already transformed the statue, presumably Broken Gold Mask will just invade when you get to the location marked above. If not, performing the spell again might do it.

If you can't remember how to get here, from the Erdtree Sanctuary grace (where you fight the golden shade of Godfrey), head out the door, down the stairs, and go down the lift. Follow the path down the next staircase to the bottom, where you'll find the statue just ahead of you.

Manor Lords is on a roll—with the medieval management sim celebrating the monumental milestone of over 4 million copies sold across all stores. And to commemorate the good news comes its next major update.

The new Major Update 8 will add a bunch of new features and quality-of-life bumps to Manor Lords. Soon you'll be able to use apples to make cider, honey to make mead, and thresh easy-to-grow oats so you can feed both humans and livestock.

Speaking of, there's also the chance for players to become "a cow-herding mogul with the ability to breed and import bovine livestock" alongside the new benefit of being able to make little barns for your sheep to help them last through the cold winter months.

As an accomplished Manor Lords sheep farmer, this is music to my ears. I love my sheep more than I love the townsfolk I'm stuck with, so I'll gladly take advantage of any way to make their wooly lives a bit warmer and a lot more comfortable.

Other features include welcoming cheesemongers to the hamlet, who will "form the basis of a future cheese-related perk" (I'm going to start trading in charcuterie—just watch me). Alongside a new river map which is known as Wide Valley, "a verdant region ripe for lording over".

I've been looking for a reason to get back into Manor Lords for a while now. I didn't even fall out of love with it, I just felt as if my time managing the hamlet had run its course. But with all of this new content on the way, this may be exactly what I needed to spur on another medieval sim session.

It could also be an equally good time for those who've never checked Manor Lords out before, because it's also currently discounted on Steam thanks to a bunch of Hooded Horse bundles and one very generous Kingdom Come: Deliverance x Manor Lords bundle, with the game being 35% off for the next two weeks.

Men. What is wrong with them and how can they be fixed?

Philosophers and scientists have asked this for generations, but the problem has only become understandable—and tractable—with the advent of modern technology. They are lonely. Contrary to the popular aphorism, all men are islands, struggling to exist in tempest-tossed seas. I have tried to solve this before, at least for Franklin, Trevor, and Michael, by introducing Pokémon to Los Santos. This did not work, and only resulted in me beating Charmander to death in the street.

The gentlemen of GTA require human companionship, not magical pets. They must find in others what is missing in themselves. They must use the 2gether mod for GTA 5, which allows you to approach random NPCs and adorn yourself with them like they are some kind of boa or backpack. This is what friendship is all about.

The good news is: the people of Los Santos are remarkably pliable. No one objects to hopping on your back, or assuming the lotus position in your cupped hands, and they are utterly unfazed by the chaos unleashed by all the mods I have previously installed: flying cars, ongoing gang warfare, and so on.

To test their quietude, I asked a hiker to nestle himself in my hands as I attempted to sprint through an intersection. He was utterly placid as we were struck by three cars in a row, his murmured 'om mani padmi hum'* unbroken as an expensive German car used our combined mass as a ramp by which it could enter heaven.

It was a true friendship, but it had to end eventually. Satisfied by his invincible tranquillity, I returned him to the nature spot in which I found him. Setting him down, he wandered off into a bush. In the distance, a Winnebago caught the sun as it drifted into the sky.

*He didn't actually say this, but I like to imagine he did.

We're getting dribs and drabs of news about Arc Raiders' upcoming major update which is scheduled for October. A new "high-level" challenge has been promised to returning players, alongside a frozen map full of new arcs, plus there'll also be the small addition of a photo mode.

"Time to remember your raids, cameras are coming to the Rust Belt in October," a new social media post reads. By the looks of things this will let players record all the weird, wonderful, and downright stupid antics they get up to during Arc Raiders sessions. The only problem is, well, that the games just aren't as enjoyable as they used to be.

Arc Raiders has had its issues with cheaters for almost as long as it's been out. While PvE lobbies are still ok, PvP is a swamp of bad actors right now, and it's only been getting worse the more decent people leave, meaning cheaters take up a bigger portion of the playerbase. Some are even throwing themselves in front of friendly fire just so they can trigger a self-defense clause and murder without consequence, you just can't win against these guys.

So with all things considered, players aren't exactly overjoyed about photo mode when the house is on fire. "Using number keys as a heal bind [has] been bugged since near launch," one player says, detailing how borked their hotkeys are. "But sure, let's add a fucking camera!"

"We finally need proof that we can believe what we have been promised, not just some gimmick to string us along," another player adds.

The frustration with Arc Raiders is clear, but I have to say I don't think it's fair to completely write the October update off before we've been able to play it for ourselves. I think it actually makes sense that Embark hasn't given too much away far in advance, hype would peter out quickly otherwise. I'm actually really excited to see the October update for myself, I'd love for it to spur on another stretch of raiding.

That isn't to say, however, that the October update doesn't have a lot to prove. On release Embark promised a grand 10-year plan for Arc Raiders. It hasn't even been a year since then, and that promise seems to be teetering on the brink. October might be the developer's final chance to convince players that this game really does have enough to take it further, because I fear patience is running thin.

Even as it achieved fractal complexity by modeling feline alcohol poisoning, procedural bardic traditions, and delayed-action thermonuclear dragonfire, the creators of Dwarf Fortress—brothers Tarn and Zach Adams—have maintained still loftier ambitions for their legendary fantasy sim. In recent years, that effort has been guided by one goal: Creating magic. Procedural, universe-specific magic, interwoven with the unique cosmology and mythology modeled each and every time the player clicks the "create new world" button.

For a game already setting a high watermark for simulational complexity, it's an incredibly ambitious endeavor. It's taken a decade. It's demanded a complete scripting overhaul, aided by the heroic effort of Bay 12 Games' first non-Adams programmer, Putnam. Frankly, it's almost strained believability. And it'll start arriving later this year.

Tarn Adams confirmed that Dwarf Fortress' first Myth and Magic update will land before the end of the year in a short announcement video, embedded above. His goal, he said, was to create "procedural magic systems that go beyond combining spell effects and go straight to the fundamental cosmological makeup of the universe," enabling "magical situations that you cannot get any other way."

It's a notion Adams has shared as we've spoken with him about his Myth and Magic ambitions for years, going back to 2017: By creating a procedural magic system that's anchored in each world's simulated creation myths and cosmology, Dwarf Fortress wouldn't be generating world variations to play within—it would become an entire fantasy setting generator, conjuring universes with their own emergent forms of magic that are as fundamental as the laws of physics.

"It allows your fortresses to pursue magical research that really feels like discovery," Adams said.

The video's only a minute long, but it offers some brief glimpses of magic-wielding Dwarf Fortress figures in action. A goblin sorcerer teleports a cat. A dwarven wizard repeatedly force-blasts a goblin against a wall. A six-limbed fly-man holding four magic staves macerates a hallway full of enemy swordsmen with a barrage of magic bolts. A necromancer curses an innocent dwarf with undeath, and they immediately start ripping into a nearby comrade.

"Now, there will be magic effects that blow things up," Adams said over footage of magic projectiles rapidly demolishing a dwarven outpost. "There will also be magic materials, enchantments, rituals, ancient ruins, everything that makes fantasy what it is—with every piece tied into how that particular universe works, down to its bones."

The first Myth and Magic update doesn't have a release date yet, but Dwarf Fortress is available on Steam and at the Bay 12 Games site now.

One of the quiet tragedies of Valve's game library is a standalone Ravenholm game that never came to fruition—it was being worked on by Arkane Studios in the late 2000s, and it would've probably been pretty damn good if Valve had the moolah to make it. Over a decade later, an entire hour of footage would drop online, with reports stating that around 10 levels had been fleshed out prior.

Now, almost 20 years later, Arkane's founder Raphaël Colantonio has managed to find his zen with the heartbreak, speaking with Press Box PR in an interview earlier this month (thanks, GamesRadar+).

"It took us a decade to move on from the pain of the Ravenholm project because we were incredibly excited about doing that game and we put in a lot of creative energy into it and eventually when the decision was made to cut it, we did not understand it as it happened," said Colantonio. "We were young and we were just refusing to see the reality of the situation, and the reality was much simpler than the way it looked to us."

Colantonio, who left Arkane in 2017 but was instrumental on one of its all-time greats, Dishonored, says that "it all came down to the economics behind Half Life 2 and how the DLCs were selling. They had a business ratio between how much they could spend and how they could make it to be worth it to them, because it takes the attention of the entire structure on their side."

With time to reflect, Colantonio views Arkane's involvement as more of an experiment in retrospect—especially given that a Ravenholm game had already been in development between 2005 and 2007: "They thought, you know, why not try these guys? We seemed pretty effective and eventually, like the two other attempts that they had looked at, we went somewhere with it, and it was cool. What we had was really, really cool.

"But it still needed more time, and too much time to finish … There was a business call at some point where it was decided that it didn’t really make sense. It was very painful for us but it made sense, we grew up and got a little bit more mature about it."

It's not all bad, though. It got them in touch with Viktor Antonov, a concept artist whose work was instrumental in forming the aesthetic of both Half Life and Dishonored. Antonov sadly died in 2025: "Eventually he joined us to create Dishonoured and we did not betray the Valve mentality. We learned a lot from them, actually. It’s just that we probably snuck in some of our own Arkane stuff in there as well."

Honestly, while I'm glad Colantonio's found peace, I can't help but feel a touch melancholy. The same Arkane that couldn't ship a game, but got a second chance with Dishonored in the 2010s, is now cleaved in two, with Arkane Austin closed entirely by Microsoft, and a thin film of French law protecting Arkane Lyon. Not that the earlier videogame industry was a cakewalk, Ravenholm's ill fate proves that, but still. It was a different time.

Picking the best talents in Star Wars Zero Company is something you'll start pondering when you unlock recruitable operators in the game. Each of these will have both a class and a talent, but the good news is that you can respec both in the change specialization menu once you've recruited them.

This means it's usually a better idea to recruit a character you like the look of, versus one with a talent you can tweak anyway. Some of these talents have a very clear and strong synergy with Zero Company's specializations, so I'll run through all available talents and talent levels below, plus give my top picks for each class.

All talents in Zero Company

There are ten talents available to recruitable operators in Star Wars Zero Company. These are:

The Bigger They Are…

This Operator's ranged and melee attacks deal +2 damage to elite and boss enemies.

• Level 1: +3 damage
• Level 2: +4 damage
• Level 3: +6 damage

Anticipation

This operator gains 1 stack of evasion (next attack is evaded). Once per turn.

• Level 1: Two per turn
• Level 2: Three per turn
• Level 3: You can use it on an ally instead

Cold-Blooded

Applies 1 stack of vicious (next attack is a crit) to this operator. Once per combat.

• Level 1: Two per combat
• Level 2: Three per combat
• Level 3: Applies two stacks of vicious

Taunt

Taunts the selected enemy. Once per turn.

• Level 1: Reduces target's damage by 2
• Level 2: Reduces target's damage by 4
• Level 3: Reduces target's damage by 6

A Life of Labor

This operator gains a bonus +5 health and +1 defense.

• Level 1: +5 health, +1 defense, +2 melee damage
• Level 2: +5 health, +1 defense, +2 melee damage, +2 critical hit damage
• Level 3: +7 health, +2 defense, +4 melee damage, +4 critical hit damage

Thievery

Earn an additional +150 credits when this operator completes a combat mission. Does not stack.

• Level 1: +200
• Level 2: +250
• Level 3: +300

Sabotage

Trigger an explosive object on the battlefield to detonate, immediately affecting any units nearby. Once per combat.

• Level 1: Two per combat
• Level 2: Three per combat
• Level 3: Unlimited uses

Espionage

Earn an additional +5 intel rewards when this operator completes a combat mission. Does not stack.

• Level 1: +7
• Level 2: +9
• Level 3: +12

Grit

Applies 1 stack of invulnerable (prevents all damage from next attack) to the operator. Equipping this ability also increases health by +2. Once per turn.

• Level 1: +4 health
• Level 2: +8 health
• Level 3: +12 health, two stacks of invulnerable

Fortitude

Increases defense by +2 while this operator is injured.

• Level 1: +3 defense
• Level 2: +4 defense
• Level 3: +6 defense, operator ignores chance-to-hit penalty from injury

Best talents for each class in Zero Company

Now we've gone through all the talents, here are the best ones to pick for each specialization in the game.

Personally, I think the top-tier talents for any class are Life of Labor, Anticipation, and Grit. The former grants an all-round stat boost that's useful to pretty much every class, while the latter two give you ways to straight-up avoid damage. Anticipation, in particular, lets you dodge three attacks per turn at its highest level, which is somewhat cracked.

There are some obvious synergies between talents and classes, though. For example, the Heavy—a class all about taking hits—benefits from Taunt, Anticipation, or Grit, because it gives them a way to mitigate the damage more. Single-target focused Sharpshooters also benefit from Cold-Blooded, since you can combine the guaranteed crit with their guaranteed hit ability, or The Bigger They Are… to make them better at picking off elites.

And for more support-based classes like Medic or Scout, you can give them a way to avoid damage when out reviving someone with Anticipation, or make them support your wallet, too, by having them farm credits or intel with Thievery and Espionage respectively. I like giving Scout the Sabotage talent, which is incredibly situational, but feels very thematic, like they planted explosives before combat began.

It's unclear whether you can respec Hawks when you first start out in Star Wars Zero Company, but the good news is you can, and it's an entirely free process. You can change class, but also refund every Focus Point you've spent in its dedicated tree to start levelling another. Here's how it's done.

How to respec in Star Wars Zero Company

You can change your class once you reach Cycle 3, which is very early in the game. All you need to do is:

1. Interact with the Personnel console by the map table
2. Cycle right to the Focus Tree tab
3. Select Change Specialization in the bottom right
4. Pick whichever class you want

There's no cost to changing class and it will also refund all of your Focus Points, letting you respec entirely. The only thing this doesn't refund (if you're respec-ing a story character) is the Focus Points you've put into your talent at the top.

When you unlock recruitable operators a little later on, you'll also be able to change their talents in this same menu, letting you customise anyone you hire entirely. This means it's better to grab operators because you like the look of their character more than it is to recruit them based on their talent and specialization, which you can change at will.

While I do have some best class recommendations early on, it's well worth experimenting and playing around with different specializations. You can even change them on the initial story characters you work with like Trick and Kabb Uppercut, so team composition is always variable.

Picking the best starting class in Star Wars Zero Company is a little challenging when you haven't played any of the game yet. But don't worry: you can change your class specialization once you hit Cycle 3, which is very early on. After that point, you can also change the specialization and talents for hired operators too.

The only thing you can't tweak is named character talents, like Hawk's Fearless Leader. Below I'll offer my recommendation for the best starting specialization in Star Wars Zero Company, plus some options if you don't want to double-up classes with any of the named characters you initially team-up with.

Star Wars Zero Company best starting class

The best starting class in Star Wars Zero Company is the Scoundrel. This specialization has a great kit focused around making enemies vulnerable (for guaranteed critical hits), penetrating their defenses, and increased assist damage. This ties in perfectly to Hawk's Fearless Leader talent, which increases assist damage for the whole squad when they're present. Assists are free attacks that also generate advantage, so they're very strong.

While you can respec any character specialization when you reach Cycle 3, the first three companions you'll get are a Scoundrel (Kabb), a Soldier (Trick), and an Assault (Jae). Having two Scoundrels in a party isn't a bad thing considering Hawks will buff everyone's assists, and more assists are always good, but if you don't want to double up or change pre-existing character specializations, you could also take:

• Gunslinger
• Medic
• Heavy
• Scout
• Sharpshooter

I personally wouldn't recommend Medic or Scout. Medic is plain overkill early in the game when most combat encounters aren't that tricky (depending on your difficulty), and Scout is a class entirely about farming advantage, something you won't need to worry about much either in the game's initial missions.

Of the Gunslinger, Sharpshooter, and Heavy, I'd definitely recommend the former. Gunslinger is a strong early pick because of its ability to hit and finish off multiple enemies (getting you more advantage), plus its general buffs to ranged attacks. By comparison, Sharpshooter is more single-target focused, which can feel a bit limiting when you're not facing bosses or elite enemies, and the Heavy has more of a passive playstyle around taking hits and retaliating. This specialization works much better on an operator with the Taunt or Anticipation talent, allowing them to avoid or tank the damage better.

As you'll realise when you unlock operator recruitment, many of the best talents for recruitable operators are far more synergistic with specific classes than Hawk's Fearless Leader. Either way, don't be afraid to change specialisations often—it'll refund all of your Focus Points (apart from those in your character talent) so there's really no drawback to experimenting with party compositions.

Warlock, Hasbro and Invoke's open world action romp, looks like a good time—at least if your idea of fun is using magic to steal an ogre's sword before tossing it at another horrible creature, or using fancy blood rituals to ruin a sunny day, bringing rain and gloom. "Creative use of magic," Invoke calls it. I call it being a magical party pooper, but I'm here for it.

OK, so here's the deal. You're Kaatri, an experienced swinger of swords who's made a deal with D&D celebrity Tasha—you might know her from such spells as Tasha's Hideous Laughter—who has gifted you with a wide range of tricks. I'm sure it's not going to be a deal that comes back to bite her on the ass. Weird goths offering power? Always trust them!

Since Kaatri had this whole other life before making a deal with Tasha, she doesn't exclusively rely on magic. She's perfectly capable of removing heads from bodies the mundane way, in melee scraps that look snappy and cinematic. How the melee actually feels, well, I'm going to have to wait to find out, as Invoke and Hasbro aren't handing over the controller just yet.

Honestly, though, I'm more interested in the magic—even if using a sword is sometimes a bit more efficient. Take a simple obstacle, like some nasty, stabby brambles blocking a path. Now, you could just chop them away with your sword, but you know what's cooler? Using the spell Tasha's Leash to grab a lamp, which can then be used to set fire to the brambles. If too much fire is the problem, then you can use the same spell to grab a bucket of water to put it out.

It strikes me that Kaatri might be a victim of Maslow's hammer. No, that's not another spell. It's the idea that when we become overly familiar with a tool, we start to see it as the solution to everything. If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything becomes a nail. Which is bad. But screw Maslow—magic is awesome, why wouldn't you want to use it to solve everything?

And to be fair to Kaatri, magic is a wide-ranging bag of tricks. In the demo, I get to see her Shadow-stepping all over the place, teleporting to and away from enemies, as well as through obstacles. Any heavy objects in her way can be deftly moved aside without her breaking a sweat, or even moving. And when she's faced with a big gap and an imposing drop, some magical tentacles build her a bridge. I wish hammers were this useful.

So magic is incredibly convenient for traversal and puzzles—and traversal puzzles—but seeing it used in combat is where it becomes downright seductive. This is why you make dodgy deals with witch queens.

I kinda hate when videogame combat gets compared to ballet—a deadly ballet, a lethal ballet, blah blah blah—but seeing Kaatri firing on all cylinders (all credit to the Invoke dev driving the demo) really is physical poetry. It looks elaborate, technical and elegant. Yes, I'm annoyed I didn't get to play myself. The stringing together of melee, teleporting, time manipulation and telekinesis is just a delight to watch. And the interplay between all these spells and attacks goes beyond the immediate, instantly gratifying stuff.

At one point, we see Kaatri summon a little table, at which she performs a blood ritual to change the weather. It starts to rain. Bummer. But this drizzle does more than make enemies sad and damp—it makes them more conductive. And Kaatri can hurl lightning at them. Now we're cooking.

After the methodical, measured chaos of Baldur's Gate 3, I find myself really in the mood for this more action-dense, almost DMC or Bayonetta-style approach to D&D magic. It's flashy and over the top, but there's still this tactical grounding. Invoke's got something pretty cool brewing here, and I'm keen to see more as it gets closer to its 2027 launch.

It's been a long road, but a mod we called The Witcher 3's best graphics overhaul will no longer be needed—and for once, I can talk about a mod becoming obsolete with a smile on my face, because the reasons involved here are all good ones.

The Witcher 3 HD Reworked is a cornerstone of the game's modding scene. We're talking over 325,000 unique downloads (725,000 in total), and that's just the version that was uploaded back in 2024. The "OldGen" version, uploaded in 2015, has an eye-melting 1.7 million unique downloads (5.8 million in total). It's a frankly astonishing upscaling and remodelling project that effects thousands of textures, models, and so on in CD Projekt Red's classic.

It's so impressive, in fact, that CDPR just snapped the guy up for The Witcher 3 Remastered. HalkHogan writes: "It's been a while since the last news and I would like to clarify any questions and confirm that I am cooperating with CDPR on The Witcher 3 Remaster, and my work will be officially available in the game on September 29 (on PC and consoles). HDRP will no longer be needed.

"Almost all in-game characters, monsters, animals, vegetation, armors and equipment for Geralt & Roach and a large part of the environment have been reworked, and I've put a lot of effort into ensuring the highest quality. Thanks and see you later!"

This means that you're not gonna need The Witcher 3 HD Reworked anymore because, well, the guy who made it worked on the remaster. Our own Joshua Wolens spoke to executive producer Jakub Kutrzuba about it earlier this month: "We are integrating the most popular mod on Nexus mod, the HDD Rework mod, with tons of upgraded textures, meshes. [It's] something which is bringing great visual improvement across the whole game."

As for how it turned out, he took a peek more recently during Gamescom 2026, where he wrote: "It's something else now. Letten is gorgeous from all angles, whether you're watching the sunrise crest the hills or stepping into the oppressive darkness of its sinister woods."

Too much of a good thing, believe it or not, can be bad, even when that thing is Silent Hill. Especially when faced with the prospect of a new game every year, though franchise producer Motoi Okamoto has tried to reassure us that it's totally a good thing.

"Our aim is to, hopefully, have an annual release of new games," Okamoto says in an interview with GamesRadar at Gamescom 2026. "We would like to let players know that we have more experiences coming up, and many types of games that, we believe, will be able to provide positive kinds of surprises for players waiting for this for the series."

Silent Hill f was perhaps the most pleasant gaming surprise I've had in a long time. My expectations weren't exactly low for the game, but I was still apprehensive to see whether Konami and NeoBards could pull off a Silent Hill game which left behind the foggy American mountain town and did something different. But as you can probably tell from my glowing Silent Hill f review, they managed to pull it off.

They did such a great job, in fact, that it single-handedly made me excited for future games to take the curse of Silent Hill to new locations. So why am I so apprehensive about the idea of a new Silent Hill every year? Well, because I also used to play Call of Duty.

What scares me most about an annual release is the pressure both development studios and devs at Konami may face to keep up. Silent Hill isn't exactly an easy formula to replicate, yes its atmosphere and vibes are distinctive, but it takes more than a bit of fog to pull it off. The key is having a story which is traumatic, believable, and substantial enough to not only justify the fog descending on the protagonist, but to also keep players interested.

Okamoto does at least understand the need for keeping the series fresh with new ideas, however. "If we stay laser-focused on the same American setting, that would exhaust [narrative] possibilities, and also potentially cause fatigue for the playerbase," he adds.

While teams need to "work within the types of environments and the types of storytelling that works best for them" they also need to push the boat out, creating new circumstances which justify new games. I never want to finish a new Silent Hill game and think to myself: 'I should've just replayed Silent Hill 2'. Hopefully, it never comes to that.

You've got to give Crimson Desert kudos—it's been getting hit with free update after free update, including, most recently, an overhaul to the game's story. But that'll be slowing down in coming months, as Pearl Abyss gears up to release the game's first major paid piece of DLC content.

"While there still will be updates," says director of marketing and PR Will Powers in an interview with IGN at Gamescom 2026, "I don't think the scope and scale and pace of them will be as consistent past this point. What we're taking this opportunity to do is shift our development resources from these regular updates to focus on the upcoming DLC."

And you know what? Good. Crimson Desert was already a systems-heavy game at launch with an absurd amount of stuff to do—but just look at what's been added already. 20(!) small critters, a shotgun, a ton of different chest types, difficulty options, new animal mounts and inventory management, the ability to have your own hoard of pets, boss rematches and legendary creatures. Birdwatching? Why not, put it on there.

This game is an everything bagel that has only had more everything bagel seasoning heaped on top. It is a glorious leaning tower of mechanics that somehow hasn't collapsed under its own weight. It is a monument to game development hubris and as much as I respect Pearl Abyss' energy and commitment, I think it's probably for the best that it slows down.

Not too slow, though. As Powers confirms, the paid DLC will still be aiming for a release sometime in the final quarter of this year, which is wild to me. I wouldn't have even blinked if Pearl Abyss decided it was coming later, but no—the Kliff train stops for no-one.

By the time the studio finally puts Crimson Desert down, it's going to be a mammoth of a videogame. This thing takes around 250 hours to complete, baseline. I suspect that by 2036, Crimson Desert will have created infinite energy, cured every illness in existence, and given Kliff a railgun or something.

The Total War: Warhammer 40k Gamescom demo is underway, with lots of players getting their hands on the upcoming grimdark strategy game for the first time. Total War's content creators have been giving their impressions, but Creative Assembly also snuck in a new Alpha Strike livestream, and this is one of the biggest information drops we've gotten yet.

The stream finally reveals the campaign structure for Total War: Warhammer 40k, explaining that each solar system we fight through will comprise a campaign, as we battle across multiple regions on each planet. Once a campaign is done, we'll zoom out to the wider Crusade Theatre, where we can start a new campaign in another system, carrying through our characters and retinues. Apparently, there are about ten systems per theatre, culminating in a final battle on Armageddon.

It's not necessary to complete every campaign in a theatre, but it's already reportedly bigger than anything Creative Assembly has made before, including Immortal Empires. There were lots of other little information tidbits, too, including:

• Heroes will have 'followers' they can equip to change the unit composition of their bodyguard. Imagine something like the Imperial General's retinue in Dawn of War.
• All unit weapon loadouts are fully customisable.
• There are planetary governors who you'll have to appease to unlock certain diplomatic actions and support.
• Space Marines can co-opt Planetary Defense Armies from the Imperial Guard to follow them as backup.
• The Imperial Guard have a variety of structures they can build on planets (similar to forts or watchtowers in Medieval 2 and Rome Total War), including artillery batteries and deathstrike missile launchers.

One of the best and most loreful additions, though, is that you can place 'dead' Space Marine characters inside Dreadnoughts (1:20:41 in the stream).

"It wouldn't be Space Marines if you couldn't take the mushed-up, almost corpse of a Space Marine, stuff it in a big metal tin can, and send it back into battle as a Dreadnought," says Will, Campaign Designer on Total War: Warhammer 40k. "There will be a little mechanic where even if your character has died, they might continue to serve the Emperor in a slightly chonkier form.

"Dreadnoughts and Land Raiders as well, we're treating them more like characters. Like these are super rare, super powerful ancient creations that are really valuable."

For those unfamiliar with Dreadnoughts, they're effectively what happens if you attach an array of deadly weapons to a life support sarcophagus and give it legs. Most mortally wounded Space Marines who are interred in them gradually lose their minds as they turn to mush over the long centuries, repeatedly roused from slumber to face each new battle, or provide wisdom and ancient memories to the younger brothers of the chapter.

Still, knowing that one of my Space Marine heroes who I've battled with since my first campaign can stave off permadeath by hopping into a Dreadnought is a great feature. After all, it sounds like we're going to grow very invested in our small, yet elite, self-created Space Marine retinue as we fight across the many campaigns of the Crusade Theatre.

Grand Theft Auto 6 is finally doing a gameplay reveal (it's definitely a gameplay reveal, right?) and it's going to drop on Netflix first. If you've been cutting back on subscriptions in your life then you're going to have to wait a few extra hours for it to land on YouTube with the rest of us unwashed, unsubscribed masses. Recent events in GTA 6 news have proved that there's simply no possible way to see any information about this thing on the internet before Rockstar wants you to, sorry! Here's when and where you get to watch based on your monthly fee status.

When is the GTA 6 gameplay reveal?

The GTA 6 gameplay reveal premieres first on Netflix at 3 pm Eastern / 8 pm UK time on Thursday, August 27. You can find it listed as "Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look" on Netflix. The gameplay reveal will land on the Rockstar YouTube channel six hours later at 9 pm Eastern / 2 am August 28 in the UK.

What can we expect from the GTA 6 reveal?

We're sure expecting to see some real, officially-sanctioned gameplay. If I don the tinfoil hat for a second I might point out that Rockstar has not said "gameplay" in all this stuff about Netflix. It's been an "extended look" and "debut the next part of the Grand Theft Auto story," in all the official communication. But it's going to be a gameplay reveal.

Rockstar also hasn't said how long this extended look is going to be. Everyone armchair guestimating online seems to be suggesting 20-30 minutes which, yeah, is a pretty safe bet for a single game showcase.

Otherwise, Netflix's mention of the GTA story suggests we're probably going to get some more snippets of Jason and Lucia cutscenes. As these things often go, it'll likely also have flyover shots, a bit of gameplay interspersed, and a lot of voiceover walking us through GTA 6 features like a museum curator for the next evolution in gaming.

Tim Curry has died at the age of 80, leaving behind a rich legacy in movies, television, and videogames. As well as playing Gabriel Knight, Premier Anatoly Cherdenko in Red Alert 3, and Arl Howe in Dragon Age: Origins, Curry voiced the villainous Doviculus in Double Fine's heavy metal epic Brütal Legend. To pay tribute to his passing, Brütal Legend is currently available for free on itch for a very metal 666 minutes. You can download it now, or claim it to download later.

Doviculus, Emperor of the Tainted Coil, is the extremely Cenobite-coded bad guy of Brütal Legend, who was originally going to be voiced by heavy metal singer Ronnie James Dio. "Tim Curry just has the perfect voice," Double Fine's Tim Schafer told USA Today of the casting decision. "When we told him this guy was not just big and tough, but also has this kinky side who, when hit with an ax, might scream in pain or squeal with delight, Tim laughed and said, 'Perfect for me.'"

This isn't the first time Double Fine has given their game away for free. Last time it was in honor of Ozzy Osbourne, who has a cameo as the Guardian of Metal shopkeeper in Brütal Legend, and likewise it was made available for 666 minutes. At the time of writing, that means you have a little over nine hours to claim it.

We've had you identify games just based on a screenshot of their open world, but could you do the same if I made the quiz a little more specific? Maybe test your water hazard knowledge?

Well, I plan to do just that, so turn back now if big bodies of open water activate your fight-or-flight. I won't judge you (they do the same thing to me), but I delight in terrifying myself into clenching every muscle in my body. Remember the Sea Hag from Tomb Raider Chronicles? She must've given me my first tension headache.

Anyway, the lakes, oceans, and various water levels in games aren't always scary. In fact, most games on this list aren't, and I've sampled a bit of everything to include water in all its shapes. Some answers are here just because they're serene eye candy, while others are memorably nasty. They may not share a common theme either, so be ready to recall games with water exploration as a focus, and games that hardly let you dip a toe in.

Now that you've been briefed, will you sink or swim? You've got 10 minutes to identify 15 games by a screenshot of their water. When you're done, let us know how you did! I'll be over here rooting for you from a safe distance in the shallow end.

After lying fallow for over a decade, Heroes of Might and Magic is enjoying a bit of a renaissance. Earlier this year, Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era launched into early access and will hit 1.0 in 2027. And now it's going to be joined by an old friend with a new look. The series' golden child, Heroes of Might and Magic 3, is back. Again.

HoMM 3 Remake is actually the third version of the third game in the series, which was remastered back in 2015. At a glance, however, you could be forgiven for assuming that it's a brand new entry, as it boasts a new art style along with a few more tweaks. But this is still absolutely HoMM 3.

I took it for a spin over a couple of hours ahead of its Gamescom reveal, playing the simple campaign prologue and the Arrogance scenario—a popular map first introduced in HoMM 3: The Shadow of Death. It's a compact, well-paced adventure that I remember being a good place to start when you wanted to delve into multiplayer (or if you just wanted a fun comp stomp).

This remains true in the remake. It's a four-player deal, and each starting position is close to a second town of the same faction, rapidly expanding your ability to recruit big unit stacks and making it easier to support multiple heroes early on. With entrances to the underworld close by, and nearby shipyards letting you cross the tiny ocean, it gives you the full HoMM 3 experience extremely quickly.

I confess, however, that I did embarrass myself a little bit. It's been a while since I've played HoMM 3, but I've been playing Olden Era in early access, so I expected to crush the AI. Unfortunately, I spent too much time just mucking around and fiddling with my army composition, so by the end I'd been outpaced by my computer opponents. I'm still convinced I could have clawed my way back, but we'll never know.

So this is largely the game you'll remember, but with some convenient quality-of-life improvements. Of particular note is the ability to see movement ranges for enemy troops, letting you identify which of your units might be at risk on the enemy turn—something that exists in the later HoMMs, but not HoMM 3 or its 2015 HD remaster.

If you don't remember because you never played the original, here's the skinny: you command heroes and their armies as they scoot off on grand adventures, hassling monsters, conquering towns and gobbling up resources. Inside those conquered towns, you can construct a plethora of buildings—most of which can be upgraded—allowing you to recruit more units and heroes, as well as unlocking new spells.

Each day lets your heroes travel a specific distance, and as time moves inexorably forward, your recruitment pool and treasury will expand, allowing you to field larger armies and more heroes. You'll eventually have hordes of dragons, giants, angels and demons ready to smite your foes in grid-based battles.

The hallmark of the series—and 3 in particular—is how easy it is to get to grips with, which belies its impressive depth. There's an accessible lightness to the proceedings, accentuated by a frequently whimsical tone, that eases you into a level of complexity that would otherwise be daunting. There are so many layers to juggle—economic management, big-picture strategy, tactical combat, RPG systems, and then the literal layers, as you try to conquer both the overground and underground regions.

HoMM 3 was exceptional in 1999, and age has not tarnished it.

The most obvious change in the remake is the art style, and this is something I'm a bit more ambivalent about. It's vividly colourful, fantastical fare, with units that are considerably more detailed than its predecessor's. The combat animations are cracking, too, making each attack more dramatic and weighty. The quality is there, then, but I fear the soul might be lacking.

OG HoMM 3 simply had a bit more character, with big, bold monster designs. It veered towards the cartoonish, certainly, but these goofy-looking units had a lot of rizz. The remake may have smoothed out the edges too much, aiming for fidelity over personality. And this is more obvious because we have another modern HoMM with which we can compare it.

HoMM: Olden Era's mere existence makes this remake pretty unusual. Olden Era is a completely new entry in the series, but it's obviously a spiritual successor to HoMM 3, both mechanically and aesthetically. It feels like a natural evolution. So it does feel bizarre to see it now sharing the limelight with a remake. There's just a heck of a lot of overlap.

Still, after waiting over a decade for more HoMM, I'm not going to turn my nose up at two coming along at the same time. HoMM 3 Remake launches next year, and Olden Era should be leaving early access then, so tactics nerds will have plenty to keep them occupied.

After 11 years, The Witcher 3 is getting a new story expansion and a remaster. CD Projekt Red has announced The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered, which is coming in 2026 and will be a free upgrade for all current owners of the game, paving the way for the shiny new DLC coming next year. It isn't just a technical update, either: CDPR is making changes to The Witcher 3's combat, skill system, and hey, transmogs!

Witcher 3 Remastered release date

The Witcher 3 Remastered release date

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered launches on September 29, 2026. That's only a month away from the day it was announced, which is a treat! It was revealed just before the teaser trailer for the new expansion Songs of the Past, but that's not coming until 2027.

The remaster is a free update and the original DLCs are now free

The Witcher 3 Remastered will replace the current "Complete Edition" on storefronts when it launches in September. It will also be a free upgrade for anyone who already owns the base game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. The original two story expansions Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine have also been made free for all base game owners in an update the same day as the remaster announcement.

There's a good chance you do already have those expansions either from the Game of the Year edition years back or the more recent Complete Edition that's been the default version for sale since 2022. If not though, they're yours now!

Witcher 3 Remastered features

Here's what CDPR told PC Gamer about the remaster

Our own Josh Wolens got to see The Witcher 3 Remastered (and the Songs of the Past expansion) played at Gamescom in August and talked with CDPR about the upgrades a bit.

CDPR's executive producer of external projects Jakub Kutrzuba told Josh that it wanted to think about what The Witcher 3 would play like if it were launching in 2026.

"We put a lot of our time into how the game actually plays," says Kutrzuba. "So, the animation system, the camera work, small quality of life improvements, accessibility changes, enemy behaviour in combat, maybe the pathfinding for the roads, etcetera—these are areas of the game which we know could cause some frustration here and there.

"We went through all of them and asked ourselves, 'What can we do about it, without rebuilding the game from scratch?' And we have changed a lot… the game just plays smoother, you know? There's no immersion-breakers anymore, I would say."

What's new in the remaster?

At the end of its announcement trailer, CDPR listed a ton of changes coming in the remaster. A lot of the inscrutable acronyms here are graphics tech to do with making the game prettier, which is great, but does pad out the list with relatively minor changes like "improved motion blur."

• Enhanced combat
• Improved traversal and movement
• New Witcher signs FX
• Revamped mount handling
• Enhanced monster behaviors
• Skill tree revamp
• Armor transmogrification
• New combat finishers
• Expanded photo mode
• Cross platform mod support
• Immersive meditation
• Refined animations
• New quest tracking
• UI improvements
• Looting rework
• Refreshed motion blur
• New accessibility features
• Updated textures
• Foliage shading rework
• Tutorial modernization
• HDR improvements
• GTAO
• Improved menu navigation
• Ray tracing improvements
• Global lighting rework
• New shading model
• Subsurface scattering
• New tone mapper
• PlayStation 5 Pro support
• Xbox Play Anywhere support
• Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive features
• Nvidia DLSS 4.5
• AMD FSR 4
• Intel XESS 2.0
• Path tracing on PC
• Ray reconstruction on PC
• Raytraced hair
• Native DX12
• Rendering parallelization

When Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi left Square Enix in the early 2000s, he started a new studio, Mistwalker, to keep making RPGs. For the last 20 years, every single one of his games with the exception of Fantasian has been stuck on one defunct console or another, never ported or re-released. And that's a shame, because some of them are great RPGs.

Or I should say it was a shame, until now—because as of Friday, Blue Dragon will be playable on PC thanks to a fan-made port that's likely far more impressive than an official release ever would've been.

re:Blue, a static recompilation of the Dragon Quest-inspired JRPG, follows in the footsteps of the unofficial Sonic Unleashed PC port that proved how effective fan-made ports can be. These projects cleverly translate the original game code to run natively on modern PCs, but don't include any of the original assets to avoid copyright issues.

This technique has proven so popular that it's inspired a wave of AI vibe-coded ports that don't take the time and care to thoroughly adapt the original game to PC. But in spite of that, the good projects—like the recent Zelda: Twilight Princess port—have made it one of the most exciting things happening in games right now.

"My standards have always been pretty high when it comes to this kind of stuff—I like to make quality products," says Tom, the programmer behind re:Blue as well as ReXGlue, a toolset meant to help developers create more recompilations of Xbox 360 games like Blue Dragon. Tom introduced ReXGlue earlier this year, but has spent much of 2026 working on his port of Blue Dragon as a showcase for what his tools are capable of.

Some other ports have beaten Tom to the punch by quickly releasing rough works in progress, but re:Blue is by far the most polished and fully featured recompilation built using ReXGlue. And the game deserves it: while it looks very much like Dragon Quest thanks to Akira Toriyama's art, there are some fun RPG class system ideas and turn order jostling hiding within what at first appears to be a rudimentary turn-based system. More importantly for Tom, he's got backup from several superfans helping develop the port, and it presented a juicy technical challenge: a three-DVD game built on an engine that has never been documented.

I've been playing early builds over the last month, and have been surprised by how much better it looks and runs on my PC than many Japanese PC games did in the 2000s.

Just take a glance at the feature list:

• Resolutions up to 4K, windowed or fullscreen
• Aspect ratios 16:9, 4:3, 16:10, 21:9, 32:9, plus auto and stretch
• Four quality presets, Low through Ultra
• MSAA up to 8x or SSAA up to 4x
• Anisotropic filtering
• Shadow quality and draw distance
• Field of view adjustment, 45 through 120 degrees
• Unlocked frame rate, with optional caps at 30, 60, 90, or 120
• The field HUD can fade out once you stop pressing anything, or stay off entirely
• Achievement list viewable in game, with eight new re:Blue achievements alongside the original ones
• Fully native keyboard and mouse support with cursor and look modes supported by mouse
• Custom input based icons/glyphs for HUD elements, following the device you last used or pinned to Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, or Steam Deck

It works on the Steam Deck. It has a mod manager. It seamlessly combines the game files from Blue Dragon's original 3 DVDs into one executable. Itt fixes up tons of funky graphical effects that didn't scale well from the Xbox 360's original 720p resolution.

And all the new features Tom built for re:Blue integrate into the original UI so seamlessly that you could mistake them for elements that were there when the game released in 2006.

Inside the recompilation

"Going into this, I was fairly naive that a lot of this could be generalized," Tom says. "But [now] I don't know how much of that is true. When it comes down to making it look nice, and the features, that's all going to be game-specific. I think that's the beauty and the distinguishing factor between emulation and recomps. With emulation you're going to get the original thing, and it's probably going to play pretty damn well. Good enough for most people. But if there's a group of people crazy enough to want to port a game to PC, this is where they would come and find ReXGlue and spend the time to make it look good. Put the effort in, and not just make it a standalone emulator, really, which I think there's no value in. There is value in adding extra quality of life features."

Prior to re:Blue, ReXGlue ports have technically been using a hybrid of recompilation and emulation—to grossly simplify things, the CPU code was recompiled to run natively while the graphics were handled by an implementation of Xbox 360 emulator Xenia. Much of the work for Blue Dragon has gone into building a native renderer tailored to the game engine and modern PC graphics cards.

"When we talk about game-specific engines, we're thinking about: How does this build a scene, how does it simulate that scene, render that scene, and how is it presented? What are the subsystems? How do they talk? You start naive. To add the config menu, I started digging into the assets, seeing if I could get a window to pop up. Then I started digging into the functions to see how the game creates windows; that's a pretty involved process that can take days, months for some people.

"That's probably the hardest part about this: how you get the recompiled code in a way that you can inject extendable parts to make it a true PC port. The more you iterate, the more you're going to understand the engine, its quirks, how it works, and these small building blocks start to build a larger structure and the architecture starts to form. Then we're getting pretty close to a decomp, and that's when stuff starts getting really fun. That's happened in the last month or two: We've got a lot of these building blocks that are making something cool. How can we take that next step? And that next step became increasingly easier the more we had reverse-engineered and reimplemented."

For re:Blue, Tom and his collaborators had to tackle visual elements like bloom, gamma, and even overscan—because Blue Dragon was originally released in late 2006, it was still designed with CRT TVs in mind—to look correct on modern displays. They also had to work around its hard-coded 30 fps lock with frame interpolation to support smooth animations at higher framerates even as the logic still ticks along at 30 Hz.

He credits Unleashed Recomp as a big inspiration for ReXGlue and a marvel of optimization that pushed him to make re:Blue run as efficiently as possible.

"Skyth, the guy who worked on a lot of the rendering backend, is incredibly smart, an absolute wizard," he says. "They set the precedent on what performance and compatibility should be like, so we tried to strive for that. A lot of his stuff was the basis for how I optimized… to achieve the lowest [system specs] we could compatibility-wise."

If you have a GPU with at least a gig of VRAM, you should be set for re:Blue—and it'll run at a nice 1080p, 60 fps on the Steam Deck without taxing the handheld.

After months of iteration and testing, the 1.0 release of re:Blue is out Friday and will be available on GitHub, timed to the 19th anniversary of Blue Dragon's release in the US. But it won't mark the end of the project. While Tom will be porting some of the work he's done for re:Blue back into ReXGlue, his team also has plans for more updates and mods for Blue Dragon, including one that will insert the Nintendo DS sequel's characters into the original game.

They hope that mod will be just the start of a vibrant scene focused on Blue Dragon now that it's finally playable on PC.

As a former employee of Playtime Co., you've explored the depths of its horrifying toy factory and met many of its inhabitants, including Huggy Wuggy, who just wants to hug you (to death).

Today Mob Entertainment, makers of Poppy Playtime, have announced a new game, and it's sending you back to that haunted toy factory once more—but this time you can bring some friends along. Escape from Playtime is a co-op horror game for 1-4 players and it's coming to early access on Steam. Here's the announcement trailer:

This time around you're playing "from the perspective of the cute-yet-disturbing Smiling Critters," says Mob Entertainment—the Critters being the misfit toys you meet in the original episodic (and singleplayer) Poppy Playtime.

"Tasked with scavenging materials for a mysterious building project that promises escape from the factory, players will need to work together and follow instructions from an ominous voice lurking somewhere in the shadows, all while evading the factory's most dangerous denizens," the developer says.

"Along the way, players can solve puzzles, uncover clues, scavenge tools, use hiding spots and alternate routes, and turn the factory layout to their advantage. Proximity voice chat adds another risk: communication is essential, but an irresponsible whisper can bring the mission to a brutal end."

Fans of the original horror series will see some familiar sights in the factory, but just because you've been there before doesn't mean there won't be a few surprises: "The mysterious Voice seems to be altering the factory's layout, creating procedurally generated environments that change with each run," says Mob Entertainment.

Well, a spooky factory full of mechanical horrors sounds like a great fit for co-op, so I'm not surprised Mob decided to make their next survival horror game a multiplayer experience. There's no date shown in the trailer, just that Escape from Playtime is "coming soon" to early access. Here's its home on Steam while you wait.

The most anticipated game of all time continues to spring leaks. The mysterious Cyberleek, an individual who apparently has access to a build of GTA 6 and has been attempting to profit from it with a meme coin ever since, has released the biggest chunk of the game yet.

This time, it's not just joyrides and beating up random civilians: The 4 minute 38 second clip is all early Lucia story content. This is the first time Lucia, GTA 6's co-lead, has made an appearance in Cyberleek clips, which until today have focused on the other protagonist, Jason.

A message superimposed in the video reads:

"This build is actually recent and the game is not ready at all. Sony and Rockstar are killing your right to own and resell your games and Rockstar is killing their own employees too, the work required to reach gold is way too much for so little time left. Trading volume/price is how CL measures your support. CL will not continue without support. You decide."

It is certainly the most spoilery these leaks have gotten so far, and the escalation seems intentional. Cyberleek seems unsatisfied with the money they're making from the leak spree, and is doubling down on their supposedly altruistic motive while pushing their crypto. Or perhaps Cyberleek can feel the heat of Rockstar's lawyers fast approaching and hopes to squeeze more cash out of the adventure before the book is thrown in their direction.

While you should obviously avoid watching this one if you don't want to know anything about the GTA 6 story going in, I have a feeling Rockstar will reveal a lot more than this about its two main characters during the big Netflix reveal happening tomorrow.

More details about GTA 6's world and mechanics came today in the form of an early preview from youth magazine Dazed, which touched on how food and exercise will affect Jason and Lucia, how character switching works, and Rockstar's dedicated research team embedded in Miami.

"But why?" That's the question I kept asking myself as I played through a few skirmishes of Game of Thrones: War for Westeros, an RTS based on HBO's TV show. It's a competent, workmanlike creation that nonetheless fails to capture any of what made the show and the books that inspired it such a phenomenon.

It just feels so ill-timed, too. It's not due out until 2027, but Game of Thrones concluded in 2019, with a final season that even GoT defenders such as myself had to acknowledge was a bit of a dud. These days, HBO is busy with its prequels: the plodding but still entertaining House of the Dragon, and the delightful, brisk A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

Instead of giving us something new, or even current, War for Westeros returns us to the fight for the Iron Throne. You can command a tiny Kit Harrington, listen to narration from Charles Dance, or enjoy a rendition of The Rains of Castamere while you build another mine. These touchpoints are too recent to engender feelings of nostalgia, but not recent enough that they elicit much excitement.

Now, don't get me wrong. GoT provided us with some of the greatest battles to ever grace our TVs. Even as the story went off the rails, the muddy brawls were a sight to behold. There's plenty for an RTS to take advantage of—but this style of RTS fails to play to the strengths of the source material.

GoT's gargantuan pitched battles call to mind the epic scale of Total War—it's no surprise that there are several GoT Total War mods. War for Westeros, meanwhile, has been fashioned in the mould of Age of Empires, or its fantasy cousin, The Battle for Middle-earth 2.

You plonk down buildings that generate resources, which you can spend at other buildings that spit out troops or let you research upgrades, and then you send your army to capture territory or boldly torch your opponent's HQ. You can build fortifications and siege engines, but most of your conflicts will be between generic soldiers, sometimes led by heroes drawn from the show's roster of important folk.

It's fine, I guess. There are certainly worse GoT games—most of them on mobile. But War for Westeros is so straightforward and plain that I probably would have had more fun with something uniquely awful. A bawdy brothel management game with Littlefinger, perhaps?

Where Age of Empires had a multitude of bespoke civilisations to play around with, and The Battle for Middle-earth 2 was full of exotic fare like giants and goblins and horrible spiders, War for Westeros is simply full of dudes. Squads of spearmen, squads of swordsmen, slightly smaller squads of elite Night's Watch warriors.

The full game will feature four factions, but I was only given access to arguably the dullest: the Starks and Lannisters. No dragon-loving Targaryens or hordes of the undead for me. Of the two, the Starks are the most conventional, though they can field direwolves, as well as troops drawn from the Night's Watch and the Free Folk. The Lannisters, meanwhile, are more economy-focused, featuring quirks like a debt mechanic that allows you to quickly fund expansion.

So there's some asymmetry, but that's par for the course. And at least where the Starks and Lannisters are concerned, the asymmetry is broad rather than exciting. It's hard to get pumped about one faction needing to spend a wee bit more gold to recruit their slightly better swordsmen.

OK, maybe I'm being unfair. There are more substantial differences than that. Like being able to recruit both Stark heroes' fluffy pets, which bumps the available heroes up to four (with a fifth locked in the preview build). That's double the Lannisters' roster. There are some more unique units, faction-specific upgrades and special mechanics—but they all fell a bit flat for me. It's all just very, very dry.

The nature of this type of RTS means that it's never going to give you memorable fights like the Battle of the Bastards or titanic Total War-style clashes, but after a few upgrades you can field some pretty meaty armies and get some big, messy scrums going. The rather plain aesthetic does mean that they aren't always the easiest to read, however, or particularly engaging to watch. That said, I am a fan of the physicality of the cavalry charges, which send any infantry units that get in the way flying.

The big problem is the lack of an obvious hook. This is an extremely conventional RTS, and while the genre isn't especially healthy at the moment, there are still plenty of alternatives. If you're in the market for something fairly traditional, Age of Empires 4, Age of Mythology: Retold or Tempest Rising have a lot more going for them.

The GoT skin is simply not enough to carry it, and there was little that felt uniquely GoT about the skirmishes I played. Perhaps the campaign will inject some much-needed flavour into the proceedings? The more exotic Targaryen and Night King factions might spice things up a bit, too. But so far, it's just very safe and predictable.

We've got more Grand Theft Auto 6 details to chew on, and this time not from a vegetable. An interview in magazine Dazed has revealed a bunch of details about the design of GTA 6, including how character swapping between protagonists Jason and Lucia works.

We'll get straight into it. Here are the most notable details from the interview:

1. Exercise and diet

Dazed says that food will affect Jason and Lucia's weight, and "exercising visibly builds and tones their muscles." Playing for long periods without sleeping will also impact their appearance.

Rockstar has played around with these life sims systems in past games—most recently in Red Dead Redemption 2, where Arthur could gain or lose weight based on his diet. GTA hasn't had systems this granular since 2004's GTA: San Andreas, in which CJ could gain weight and lose it through working out.

2. Character swapping

The way GTA 6 handles multiple playable characters will differ from GTA 5. The Dazed preview notes that you can "choose to either play as a couple, or go off and cause chaos independently." They described a scenario where you can cruise along the highway as Jason, then swap to Lucia in the passenger seat to "scroll on the in-game phone."

That sounds, to me, like GTA 6 will have a dynamic 'couple mode' for open world roaming—in keeping with this being a love story—but missions themselves might be solo or together.

3. Rockstar's team size

According to Dazed, Rockstar has massively expanded its team and resources to get all the details in GTA 6 right. The studio has more than doubled in size since Red Dead Redemption 2. It has an office in LA dedicated to the pedestrian NPCs that fill the open world. It also brought in over 50 real world street artists to help design the murals for GTA 6's version of Wynwood, Miami's outdoor art galleries, and there's a team of actual race car drivers handling the vehicle physics.

4. Expect to see a variety of Florida Men

Per Dazed: "Players can expect encounters with virtual iterations of Florida Man, the cultural archetype-turned-meme known IRL for wrangling alligators, drunken antics, and literal grand theft auto."

5. On music

Regarding GTA 6's music, senior vice president of narrative Ruper Humphries told Dazed:

"We love Miami music, particularly Miami bass, going through to more recent Miami artists like Kodak Black and Sexyy Red. We were also really interested in how the hip-hop scene in Miami exists in house parties in Overtown, clubs like Booby Trap on the River, and then high-end places on South Beach where bottles can cost thousands of dollars. We needed characters who could take us through those worlds."

6. Jason and Lucia's backgrounds

The preview notes that Jason is ex-military and a drug runner. Lucia is an amateur fighter (as seen in trailers) fresh out of prison.

7. Choices

Dazed suggests that player choices or behavior will affect Jason and Lucia's relationship in ways that "cut much deeper than Rockstar’s previous titles or 'honour' systems."

If you watched the Nodusfall trailer during Gamescom's Opening Night Live and, like me, thought the combo of Elden Ring's aesthetic and Monster Hunter's fights sounded awesome, but were worried about selling your soul to the god of gacha, fret not!

Nodusfall isn't just a visual departure for HoYoverse, swapping the vibrant anime aesthetic for something gloomier, it also represents a (partial) change in business model.

According to the devs, "Nodusfall will be a free-to-play, long-term game. What we can share at this time is that characters are not obtained through random draws. We hope to allow players to unlock this core gameplay experience through continued play. Cosmetic monetization is an important avenue we will be considering."

In my hands-on, the four available characters could be customised with different outfits, hairstyles and accessories, and I can imagine folk dropping some cash on some new fits for their boss-slaying crew, but it's a relief to know that I won't need to go through RNG hell or wipe out my bank account just to play as a surly warrior who can transform into a dual-wielding giant.

Gamescom is absolutely full of the typical anime cast gacha games this year, so it's a pleasant surprise to see the studio best known for them trying something a wee bit different. It feels different, too. Not like Genshin or Zenless Zone Zero, but not exactly like Elden Ring or Monster Hunter, despite them both being obvious inspirations. The fights are a bit more forgiving, for one, and also snappier and more fast-paced.

I've only just finished sending a trio of bosses back to whatever afterlife they go to, so I've still gotta digest what I played, but Nodusfall definitely makes a great first impression. Check back in the next couple of days for my full hands-on preview.

It's kind of strange that the state monopoly on violence is the only gang you can start an even slightly lasting beef with in Grand Theft Auto 5. Real-life gangs aren't known for their live-and-let-live attitude, and yet if you stroll around town shooting Ballas and Cartel members, they will adopt a stance of Christ-like forgiveness the second you're out of eyesight. The cops at least will spend a little time hunting you before they give up.

This is what I aimed to fix when I installed Gang Notoriety into my tottering Jenga tower of GTA 5 mods. The pitch is simple: gangs will get sustainably angry with you now, accruing wanted stars much like the cops do until you manage to lose the heat.

To test this new facet of GTA 5's rich simulation, I teleported (I can teleport now) to Grove Street and began shooting.

It sort of worked? The minimap blossomed with a thousand red and orange rings—each denoting a gang member who was very cross with me and ready to do something about it. I got a wanted star, too. Whether that was the gang's wanted star or just regular cops being upset about me shooting people in the street? Hard to say.

But things quickly got weird. Before too long, the assembled Ballas of Grove Street started to lose interest in me and started to gain interest in… each other? They ducked behind cover and started attacking each other, and at some point one loosed a rottweiler, which just seemed rather confused by the entire situation. Meanwhile, the frictionless vehicles of Los Santos continued to wheel all about us, including in the sky.

Though my minimap was still red, everyone had lost interest in me. The Ballas seemed to have become notorious among the Ballas. They all eventually took care of themselves, save the sole survivor, who had quite the wanted level himself, thanks to a previous mod.

I will get back to you when I figure out the moral of this story.

Even if Mega Man's been out of Capcom's spotlight for a few years now, there's still been something refreshingly reliable about his presence. Sure, he might get a leaf shield or a throwing saw sometimes depending on which of his machine-kin he's forced to cull, but by and large, his capabilities are easy to wrap your hand around: He has an arm cannon, and you can charge it. It's predictable. It's safe. It's comfortable.

So what the hell is that?

During last night's Gamescom Opening Night Live, Capcom released its first glimpse of gameplay for Mega Man: Dual Override, the first entry in the classic Mega Man lineup since 2018. And it's with the appropriate gravity that I'm forced to report: They've gone and overclocked Mega Man.

According to Capcom, Dual Override has Mega Man "overriding his limits and powering up for a new adventure" by using "new Custom Chips to freely modify and enhance your abilities" and an Override system that can "unleash overwhelming power for a limited time." In other words, someone thought it would be a good idea to crank up the voltage on our sweet android son beyond the recommended manufacturer guidelines.

The results, I'll admit, seem pretty effective: In the gameplay trailer embedded above, Mega Man's aftermarket mods can let him shoot a barrage of damaging projectiles, hover over platforming hazards, and dash around enemies for a more advantageous shooting position.

I can't help but notice, however, that after deploying those modifications, he's forced to expose his visibly incandescent heatsinks to avoid overheating. There's even a moment late in the footage where he pulls a Unicorn Gundam and enters Destroy Mode, exposing all his available cooling surfaces to fire a massively overcharged shot that—to his credit—insta-KOs a boss. But it also leaves him sparking and billowing smoke.

This just seems irresponsible during a hardware shortage crisis, is all I'm saying.

We don't have a precise release date for Mega Man: Dual Override yet, but it's set to launch sometime in 2027. You can wishlist it on Steam now.

Have you ever looked at your cat and thought, 'I bet they'd love Metal Gear Solid'. Well, if you have, then not only does your cat have impeccable taste, but you can share in the hobby with these new MGS-themed cat toys. Just not at Gamescom.

No, unfortunately, for everyone wandering through the Koelnmesse right now, Konami is bringing its set of MGS cat gear to CatCon 2026 instead, the "world's largest cat-centric pop-up event—ok, I guess that makes more sense than Cologne. Fans will be able to pick up plushie pet toys, cat collars inspired by Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, and scratch boxes both online and at the booth from October 10-11.

But those who make it to the booth will also get the added benefit of meeting Uno the one-eared cat, who Konami aptly names a 'cat-fluencer'. I'm not the biggest fan of influencers, but I'll make an exception for Uno because she looks very polite. "Uno and Kat featured in a special playthrough video of Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 2 where they revealed the specialty cardboard cat boxes."

I don't even have a cat and I want to get one of these—they actually look surprisingly good for videogame merch. So I guess the next logical step is to get a cat and then find one of those scratch boxes. But for now I guess I'll just add it to my cat-centric video game items, somewhere between the cat-themed PC case and the fluffy cat keyboard.

This is just one way in which Konami plans to celebrate the release of Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 2, which comes out tomorrow August 27. But honestly, I think I'm more excited for the cat scratch boxes now.

The Metro series has its roots in war-scarred post-apocalyptia, as such, it grapples with a lot of themes: The indescribable cost of nuclear war, the grim, complicated grey at the heart of humanity, and the cost of human life in a world no longer built to support it.

Which, to those developers who founded the studio in Ukraine and have been under similar duress as their contemporaries at GSC, has become all too real of a prospect. The studio even tragically lost one of its animators, Andrii 'Nizrok' Korzinkin, who fought and died in Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Speaking to Eurogamer's Dom Peppiatt in an interview concerning the studio's latest game Metro 2039, executive producer Jon Bloch tells the site: "The previous games were about preventing war; the themes and the morals and all that supported this idea that revolved around 'how do we as humans stop the cycle that we keep finding ourselves in'.

"And when Russia started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, that brought war to our doorstep. Now, our team has been living in a state of war for the last four and a half years. And that changes things. Significantly."

This manifests for 4A Games as a major shift in how it thinks about morality. Namely, this idea that a post-apocalyptic world has to deal with shades of grey—the 'everyone is the hero of their own story' idea that comes from an imagined world where resources are scarce and everyone's starving.

But faced with the evils of the real world, that's shifted: "in a situation like this, as the story explores what authoritarian regimes do, and what happens when one takes over, and what happens as they grow and take more and more power… there is nothing good about that. There is only evil involved in that.

"And so the grey morality of the past needs to be more defined now. It needs to be more specific and clear. And so our approach needed to change and, therefore, the story needed to change … Now that war is here, we need to talk about the consequences of it. We're not building this based off of literal real-world events, but Metro has always been political and it continues to be that in the lessons and the morals that the game tries to teach."

Co-creative director Pawel Ulmer concurs, telling the site: "we have this chance to show people what can actually happen if the world would stop working on preventing war. And ironically, we're making [a game] in a world which is already dead! But our world - the real world—still has a chance."

"Metro was always about the cult of war, the propaganda, people dying, and the cost of others' ambitions. It didn't become politicalised; it always has been. But what's become uncomfortable is that the franchise's very nature is getting too close to reality."

It's perhaps easy to dismiss the role that any art—not just videogames—has to play in the bluntly horrifying existential circumstances the modern day finds itself in. But given Russia itself tried to spark a boycott of Stalker 2, a game that nonetheless grew so popular it throttled Ukraine's internet for hours, it's clear that these studios continuing to put their experience into art is vital.

The Star Wars Zero Company release times are almost here, letting us step into the shoes of Hawks and their band of misfit operators as they try to eke out a living during the Clone Wars. As noted in our Zero Company review, it's "a new all-timer Star Wars game" that will appeal to both tactics fans and those desperate for more of the universe. Here's when you can play it.

Star Wars Zero Company release times for each region

The Zero Company release date for most territories will be August 27, though due to timezones, that'll push into August 28 for a few. Here are the release times for each region:

• West Coast US: 8 am PDT
• East Coast US: 11 am EDT
• UK: 4 pm BST
• Europe: 5 pm CEST
• Australia: 1 am AEDT (August 28)
• New Zealand: 3 am NZDT (August 28)

If you're unsure whether you can run the game, you can check its requirements on the Steam page.

Can you preload Star Wars Zero Company?

Yes, you can preload Zero Company as of *checks watch* right now. The game size is reportedly 34GB, which is refreshingly tiny in our current climate of frequently 100GB games, so even if you start preloading late, you should still get to play on launch, internet connection depending, obviously.

It's kinda weird that it took somebody this long to make a Star Wars squad tactics game, but studio Bit Reactor has, for all intents and purposes, knocked it outta da park. Star Wars Zero Company is a superbly executed⁠—if familiar⁠—tactics game, but it's also a new all-timer Star Wars story: I'm talking Rogue One, Knights of the Old Republic, TIE Fighter-tier.

Melt away everything else, and it's got a Terminator skeleton of pure XCOM, the trendsetting tactics series many of Bit Reactor's senior developers cut their teeth on. But the studio struck out from there into more uncharted territory: lavish production values, zoomed-in action game-style exploration, and some truly knockout set pieces and story beats.

Crucially, none of it came at the cost of challenge or crunchy complexity. It feels like Bit Reactor has pitched a big tent where tactics sickos, RPG storytelling fans, and Joe Sixpack cinematic console game-enjoyers can truly find something to love, not just tolerate.

Zero to hero

Zero Company takes place in the twilight of the High Republic, and sees you inhabiting a Commander Shepard-y point of view character, Hawks. Hawks is a disgraced former Republic officer and, at least in my save file, a Zabrak (Darth Maul guy) who delivers every line in a charmingly incongruous cowboy drawl. While Hawks has a largely set character, their gender, appearance, and dress are highly customizable, including your choice of combat class and Bit Reactor's admirable embrace of Star Wars' cantina-going humanoid aliens. I felt a sense of ownership of my Hawks the same way I do with Geralt of Rivia.

The entire cast shares a similar easy charisma, both in your home base crew and recruitable story-centric operators⁠—it's a winning, "family of friends" ensemble straight out of the BioWare playbook. There are a lot of comfortable Star Wars archetypes among them⁠—ponderous-but-loveable alien bruiser, uptight princess, and laconic bounty hunter, to name a few⁠—but, like the comfort zone combat mechanics, they're executed extremely well and belie surprisingly affecting twists.

There is some serious "Aerith dies in Final Fantasy 7" stuff in Zero Company's back half that knocked my socks off, and Bit Reactor went to such great lengths establishing a narrative status quo, the moments that upended it felt like I was getting smacked in the chest.

Even when the story's cruising at a relatively calm clip, your lovable crew can be at each others' throats. The cast has the sense of friction and conflict I'm always looking for in an ensemble, and the ex-Separatist characters are some of my favorites. Former bean counter and Zero Company operations lead Runa is abrasive, smarmy, and unpleasant in the best way, while Umbaran bubble boy Luco hates your guts, as well as those of your clone buddy, Trick.

Zero Company is basically Star Wars A-Team: You're mercs with hearts of gold who do private war stuff for the highest bidder, but in, like, a cool, fun, and ethical way. Galactic Republic Intelligence drops a fat contract in your lap to investigate a kooky cult (it's always a cult), leaving Hawks and crew to turn-based battle their way into saving the galaxy.

You gear up and manage your operation from the Den, a small but well-realized home base in an asteroid-bound smuggler city. From the galaxy map, you can choose to execute from a selection of text-based, noncombat espionage operations reminiscent of the War Table stuff in Dragon Age: Inquisition, while each "Cycle" (read: day) at the Den is capped off with a full-fat combat mission that moves time⁠—and, when appropriate, the story⁠—forward.

You explore the Den with full on, action game-style driving third-person controls, and this is one of Zero Company's neatest tricks. Every environment is as tactile and richly detailed as something in Jedi: Fallen Order, and major story missions even feature exploratory interstitials between the fights. But, as soon as combat starts, Zero Company seamlessly zooms out to a classic, tactical view.

The exploration gameplay is almost painfully simple⁠—interact with points of interest for small bonuses, otherwise you're mostly walking down corridors⁠—but I found it had a really outsized effect in this tactics game context. Even as a first attempt, it adds this revelatory immersive quality, while Bit Reactor managed a level of presentation and wow-factor that I'd love to see in other tactics games and CRPGs.

Squad wipe

You're limited to four squadmates on a mission, and can embark on a variety of odd jobs between main quest blowouts: Hostage rescue, steal the thing, blow the thing up, and the surprisingly rare "kill all the guys." Even on side missions, there's an impish, trolling quality to Zero Company's design that I always love to see.

Enemies will spawn just far enough away that you'll struggle to reach them on a first turn, but they'll have no problem counterattacking after you've committed. Reinforcements often spawn right in your path to an exfiltration, and it seems only enemy snipers have access to the really good rifles that can pinpoint strike you from across the map.

Zero Company's difficulty feels very well-judged to me: I felt pressured enough on Normal, but not overwhelmed. My guys would get downed here and there, but I only had to take a second try on one fight in my playthrough.

I'm a huge sucker for gimmick battles in a turn-based game⁠—the Iron Throne in Baldur's Gate 3, for example, or the flaming oil tower from Divinity: Original Sin 2⁠—and Zero Company's main campaign missions are consistently full of "oh shit" challenges that had me grinning. One of my favorites had me and my squad trooping out in explore mode down a suspiciously deserted catwalk with the MacGuffin of the day at the far end.

Once we grabbed the thing and the trap was sprung, enemies started filling in the path to the exit, and droid bombers began strafing the bridge in a turn-by-turn expanding killzone that pressured me to stay moving even as bad guy reinforcements blocked my path.

In other missions, things could get really weird: One memorable main story level gifted me a one-time, functionally invincible super-unit to clear a path as I had my normal guys follow along and complete objectives⁠—it felt like a reverse-escort mission in this delightfully surprising way. Another jaw-dropper, season finale of a mission hit me with what I can only describe as "Spec Ops: The Line type-shit," a simple-but-devastating mechanical twist that perfectly complimented the narrative one.

Buildy boys

I was surprised at how much RPG buildcrafting there is in Zero Company. We're not quite at Rogue Trader levels of spreadsheet psychosis, but there are some fun synergies to exploit. A little ways in, Zero Company introduces multiclassing, and then we're really off to the races.

My jam has been the Gunslinger: They get stronger the more attacks they make in a round, and also get a quickdraw ability that refunds its action point cost on a kill. Crowds of one-shot, dopey battle droids came to resemble juicy Thanksgiving turkeys to my quickdraw-addled mind, powering me up for DPS attacks on beefier foes.

Astromech droids are support gods in Zero Company, and I almost never went out without one. They can't make direct attacks, but they can refresh squadmates' AP and get bonus slots and uses for utility items like grenades. They're support-casters that feel like College of Lore Bards in Baldur's Gate or the Officer class in Rogue Trader.

In addition to Zero Company's main cast, you can hire generic mercenaries more in line with the anonymous, proc-gen squads of XCOM. I mostly stuck with the canon crew, but I was pleasantly surprised at how seamlessly the custom operators slot into the Den. They draw from a selection of "personalities," each with their own voice actor, and they can be found chilling around the Den like Mother Base soldiers in Metal Gear Solid 5. They even have relevant commentary on the story as it unfolds, and will converse with each other as well as the story squaddies.

Hanging over all of them is the threat of permadeath. I didn't experience its consequences directly in my playthrough, but even the threat of it lends each fight higher stakes⁠. I can't help but admire the chutzpah of hanging permanently missable story content on such a lovable, fragile cast. These systemic risks are also supported by the story in a really clever way: Some characters leave the stage in shocking, permanent fashion. It all contributes to a narrative that feels tragic and grown up in a similar way to Rogue One.

Complete package

Zero Company has been a treat from beginning to end, and I've found little to complain about. There's small stuff, some patchable, and some less so⁠; EA has indicated there will be a day one patch I did not have access to in the review period. My biggest issue: I'm a pretty anti-waypoint guy these days, and Zero Company's exploration segments are so linear, the ever-present Skyrim quest marker felt like it was leading me around by the nose⁠—I'm shocked there isn't already a toggle in the options.

I experienced two hard crashes in my playthrough, as well as one severe graphical glitch that required me to reload a save. Smaller issues popped up here and there: minor graphics hiccups, flickering UI elements, a long hang time while the game would try to resolve an enemy turn, but nothing I found particularly odious. I am sorry to say that Zero Company is not a Steam Deck candidate, and it's hard to see how Bit Reactor could make it fit that box. Bottoming out settings and maxing FSR resulted in a soupy, unparsable, 15-20fps mess for me.

Minor issues aside, Star Wars Zero Company is one of the best games of 2026 and a new all-timer Star Wars videogame. While I don't see it having the modding/sandbox "forever game" gravity of XCOM 2, it is excellent, substantial, and highly replayable. I've found it to be a mic drop of a debut from Bit Reactor, a sense that's only compounded by its crowd-pleasingly anachronistic price tag of $50.

How many times do some of the most creative and respected figures in this industry need to explain not only why AI is not the key to making a good game, but that it's actually detrimental to creativity? Or as Dispatch's creative director cleanly put: "maybe it's a creative solution if you aren't creative".

We've seen Larian's lead writer trash talk it, saying that AI-generated text is "a 3/10 at best". PUBG founder Brendan Greene has explained how "it's like a race to the middle of shit" as AI content becomes less and less trustworthy. When asked how Take-Two uses AI to help make successful games its CEO, Zelnick, simply said "clones don't sell". Hell, even the king of overpromising Peter Molyneux is tepid when it comes to using it.

But here we are, beating the same damn horse that just won't die as The Talos Principle 3's writers explain why they're also cautious about AI, the lies it tries to sell, and its actual impact on this industry.

"I'm going to talk for myself," Jonas Kyratzes, narrative designer, says in an interview with Game Informer. "I think it's largely ludicrous. I think the technology itself is very impressive, and I think machine learning has tremendous applications, most of which we're currently not seeing or getting.

"I think, because in a profit-oriented system, a lot of the things that we needed to do, we're just not going to use it for, because we're going to use it for stupid things instead, for people to try and make vast amounts of money before their companies collapse."

Kyratzes notes that it's not a clear-cut situation, though, as the technology itself "has a number of very interesting applications" which are unfortunately overshadowed by "these excessive quasi-religious claims" which are "not rooted in any kind of reality." Such as DeepMind's CEO claiming that humanity will experience widespread change that's "10 times bigger than the Industrial Revolution" or Altman saying the AI singularity is already upon us.

"I think a lot of them are also mainly just meant to juice up the stock market," Kyratzes adds. "It's so complicated because the current AI conversation is kind of a bit strange in that some of the time we're talking about something that we call AI, but it's not artificial general intelligence. It's LLMs or machine learning in various forms, which aren't necessarily the same as artificial intelligence in the sense of conscious being."

Kyratzes is right: We've gotten into the unhealthy habit of referring to everything that sits under the 'AI umbrella' as AI, when in a lot of cases, the actual technology is either vastly different than what we're describing it to be, has already been alive and kicking in the industry for years now, or is simply not as ground-breaking as some would have you believe.

"I'm with Jonas in that the LLMs that we're currently dealing with, they're basically incredibly intelligent versions of the autocorrect that I have on my phone," narrative designer Verena Kyratzes says. "And calling them actual AI, general AI, is just ludicrous. I think in the current system that we have, it's just a plagiarism machine that makes people lose their jobs. But I want to have hope that it's a good thing. It's very troublesome to me."

But even still AI isn't a total write-off for Kyratzes, especially since AI isn't even the sole catalyst for some of the most pressing issues which have risen around it. "I'm not against any technology in and of itself," he adds. "So, to me, a lot of the questions are not questions of the technology.

"For example, when a lot of jobs are being lost because of AI, I don't think that that's an AI issue. I think that's a labour issue. That is, why is the power of labour relative to capital so weak? So low that we can't defend ourselves against the owners just eliminating everyone? Like, what's happened to, you know, militant labor, for example. Where is that?"

The news cycle this past week has been dominated with Grand Theft Auto 6 leaks, and for good reason, Rockstar studios has sprung a big one, with the self-ordained "Cyberleek" drumming up attention with waves of public manifestos, statements, and a little crypto farming on the side.

In preparation for its somewhat-confusing Netflix-exclusive gameplay reveal tomorrow, Rockstar's finally acknowledged the leaks. Both confirming that they're real beyond a shadow of a doubt (not that there was much doubt to begin with), and trying to salvage some hype.

"We know that many of you have been waiting to hear from us regarding the events of the past week," reads a post to Rockstar's Instagram. "It would be an understatement to say that having videos of Grand Theft Auto 6 gameplay leak in this way has been heartbreaking for our team, and this is obviously not how we intended for you to see the game after all this time.

"We are very sorry that everything has taken as long as it has—from getting the game finished (nearly there!) to sharing more details and official gameplay, and providing the community with everything you want to know."

I'm not sure Rockstar needs to apologise for a videogame taking a long time to make, especially when 13 years have already passed since the last, but I'm a little old-fashioned in that I don't think players are owed much of anything beyond fair consumer practices and, like, maybe getting to actually own the things they buy. It is, however, intriguing that the studio's apologising for that given the whole Netflix thing which, speaking cynically, is essentially a six-hour early access gated behind a streaming service subscription.

I do feel bad for the developers, though—especially given that even those who were unceremoniously fired (in such a dramatic fashion that the then-UK Prime Minister commented on it) still want people to see the fruits of their labour. Take-Two's bottom line has likely barely been dented by the leaks, but if I were a person working on a videogame for years, I'd be pretty exhausted by someone making a circus out of it.

"We are very excited for everyone to see the extended look tomorrow. It has taken longer than we wanted to get it ready, but as with everything we do, we know we need to exceed your expectations, and we are determined to deliver at the level you expect and deserve. While it is unfortunate that the intended game experience may now be impacted by some spoilers, we hope that everyone will wait a bit longer to experience the game for themselves on November 19."

Rockstar ends the letter with a show of thanks: "We want to thank everyone in the community who has reached out with messages of support this past week—your words have meant more to this team than you can imagine. Ultimately, we are making this game for you, and without you, we would not have the privilege of making games."

Crimson Desert didn't get its jaws into me as deep as I'd hoped—partially because of its somewhat scattershot, overwhelming nature. This is purely a matter of personal taste, mind. If I weren't obligated to keep up with new games, my MMOs of choice, and y'know, social obligations, I probably would've gotten arm-deep within Pearl Abyss' systems-driven buffet.

I do have to give its developer credit, though. Crimson Desert has been utterly flooded with free updates without any sign of actually stopping. The latest in this long line is the "Crimson Desert Enhanced" patch, which is live now on PC and was announced during Gamescom 2026 opening night live.

In terms of nitty-gritty gameplay changes, it'll now be easier to get skill points for all three of the main cast, rather than having to ration out your Abyss Artefacts across all of 'em. There's also eight new skills for main man Kliff himself, UI tweaks, and bug fixes.

But the premier feature of this patch is a re-tuning of the game's main story—it's unclear how deep this goes, but doing some digging and watching playthroughs (such as this helpful primer by YouTube channel GamingBolt) shows Kliff's first foray into the abyss accompanied by a mournful reflection on his history with his Greymane companions. Meaningful story—or lack thereof—was a major complaint on launch for Crimson Desert, so it's nice to see Pearl Abyss trying to turn Kliff into more than a gruff yes man.

He's no longer completely lacking in introspection, either. In the same video, we join Kliff several months later not nattering to some random jobber, but actually thinking about the crazy magical events that have led him to this point. Character development? Could it be?

I'm yet to invent time travel, so I haven't had 60 spare hours to chew through the opening questlines of Crimson Desert's revamped story to tell you whether it does a good job or not, but I'm honestly charmed by the effort, anyway.

I legitimately think Pearl Abyss could've simply gotten away with allowing the game's storyline to take a backseat, but recognising and addressing that major complaint—the scattershot, absurd nature of the game's opening hours—is a valiant task to take on.

Surprise! Songs of the Past, The Witcher 3's third expansion, isn't kicked off by some Ciri-centric weft in the space-time continuum, nor another curt and urgent letter from Yennefer. As for Triss, well, I didn't spot a single red hair of her in the hands-off demo that CD Projekt Red and Fool's Theory gave us.

It's Dandelion. Geralt's lute-plucking biographer has gone missing, and who better to find him than his best pal in the whole wide world? So when Songs of the Past releases next year, he'll be back on the path in a region of The Witcher's world we've never seen before—Dandelion's family home of Letten, in the kingdom of Redania.

And he's got another surprise for you, too: a full Witcher 3 remaster that aims to make the 2015 classic feel like it released in the modern era, due for release on September 29.

Over a decade since The Witcher 3's last expansion, the boys are back in town.

There's No Place Like

Where better to get a glimpse of Dandelion's true face than his family home? Dandelion's real name is Julian Alfred Pankratz, Viscount de Lettenhove, and it's to Lettenhove he invites Geralt for Songs of the Past's opening—to the sumptuous manor that marks the seat of power for his blue-blood forebears.

To hear the devs tell it, this is a Dandelion-centric expansion all the way through: the focus is on Geralt and the bard's relationship—their "bromance," as multiple people I spoke to put it—and not so much on, oh I don't know, Ciri, for example.

"[Letten is] a completely new region in northern Redania, where Dandelion comes from," says Karolina Kuzia, Songs of the Past's vision director. "We visit because of personal matters that put a toll on him, so he needs his best friend at his side. Imagine you enter a lush green valley, hidden in a mountain range."

"This place was never touched by war, never ravaged like the rest of the continent," continues Kuzia. "People here are peaceful. They live their lives together with nature."

Not too peaceful, though. "Letten, albeit a land of plenty, has a dark underbelly," says game director Jakub Rokosz. "It wouldn't be a Witcher adventure if Geralt didn't have anything to do."

The morning after

That dark underbelly was there from the jump in my time with Songs of the Past. Geralt awakens, hungover and far from home, in the aftermath of the local Belleteyn celebrations—a kind of Easter-style celebration—but in the party's afterglow, Dandelion is nowhere to be found.

A pretty walk later and the witcher is sat at a long mahogany table in Lettenhove itself, playing mediator between two of his best friend's most fearsome relatives, his grandmama and his cousin Lilla, as they argue over whether Dandelion is truly missing at all and, if so, what to do about it.

Yes, we absolutely asked if you can romance grandmama, and I'm sorry to say it sounds like the answer is no.

Anyway, it's not long before Geralt's Belleteyn turns into a busman's holiday. He and the almost-definitely-romanceable Lilla venture out into Letten's gnarled, dark, and foreboding woods on the trail of a de Lettenhove family legend: the curse of Dandelion's ancestor, the mad Count Humbert de Lettenhove.

Given that it's been a while since The Witcher 3 last got an expansion, it might be worth saying something obvious: this is still The Witcher 3 at its core, with the loops and mechanics you remember.

Soon after starting, the dev playing the demo I saw was dropping into his witcher senses to find lost items and people, and the expansion's first contretemps—an argument between Geralt and a bearded Letten-ite who had snaffled Dandelion's lute—let the player choose between trying to negotiate a peaceful settlement or resorting to the diplomacy of fists. We picked the latter.

"I wouldn't say that [Songs of the Past] will feel different," says Rokosz, "simply because Witcher 3 aged really well, as a game. It's still very relevant—it became a staple for RPGs back in the day when it came out, and even now, when you replay it, you don't really feel it's an old game."

Chain reaction

But while it's still The Witcher 3, it quite literally has some new tricks up its sleeve. Geralt picks up a new weapon in the course of his time in Letten: a silver chain that wraps around his arm and can be used to handle crowds of enemies. You might recognise it. In The Witcher 1's intro cinematic (and in the first book), Geralt used exactly this weapon to fight off a monstrous striga.

And if you don't remember that, you might recall this: Ciri wields an identical weapon in cinematic trailers for The Witcher 4. Cue raised eyebrows.

How does it work? I saw Geralt make use of his new weapon against a couple of different enemies in my time with him. First up, swarmions, a new enemy type and example par excellence of nominative determinism. They're big on swarming, you see, which means having a long chain to handle them with—yanking individual foes from the pack to deal with mano a mano, or whipping it around to keep foes at bay—comes in useful.

The chain is selected much like a sign or bomb in combat, and can either be quickly deployed with a button press or, if you want to give someone special treatment, you can manually zoom in to target specific body parts on your enemies, an action which slows down time to give you time to aim, much like the base game's crossbow.

I also saw the chain used in my demo's concluding boss fight. Having hacked their way through centipedes, swarmions, and a few other nasties, Lilla and Geralt finally come to a mystical well that seems intricately tied to Dandelion's disappearance and the de Lettenhove curse. First things first, though, Geralt has to put down the Slumbering Knight guarding the place, which means plenty of familiar fancy footwork while, at the same time, using your new toy to break the boss's guard and get some licks in.

(Re)master Witcher

That familiar fancy footwork isn't too familiar, mind you. A new expansion isn't the only work being done on CDPR's masterpiece—the studio is preceding Songs of the Past with a full-on remaster too. It's not just a graphical gussy-up, the devs are reworking parts of the game to smooth out the little points of aggravation that might drive players away.

When it comes to gameplay changes, "We're mostly thinking about new players, you know?" says Jakub Kutrzuba, CDPR's executive producer of external projects. "We're looking at The Witcher from that perspective—so what would be the biggest pain points? What would a player expect to be changed in order to enjoy the game?" What would The Witcher 3 look like "if it was a game which released in 2026"?

In practice, that means working on The Witcher 3's combat, movement, and animations to make the whole thing feel more responsive and dynamic and less, well, janky.

"The remaster includes so many improvements, so many fixes, so many changes and gameplay improvements," says Badowski. "All the improvements make the combat much more smooth, much more natural. You can change target while playing the animation or performing strikes, and it gives the game a kind of freshness."

"We put a lot of our time into how the game actually plays," says Kutrzuba. "So, the animation system, the camera work, small quality of life improvements, accessibility changes, enemy behaviour in combat, maybe the pathfinding for the roads, etcetera—these are areas of the game which we know could cause some frustration here and there."

"We went through all of them and asked ourselves, 'What can we do about it, without rebuilding the game from scratch?' And we have changed a lot… the game just plays smoother, you know? There's no immersion-breakers anymore, I would say."

I can't verify that without playing myself, but I can verify that it looks killer. The Witcher 3 was never an ugly game, and it looks better than ever after its 2022 next-gen update, but it's something else now. Letten is gorgeous from all angles, whether you're watching the sunrise crest the hills or stepping into the oppressive darkness of its sinister woods.

But it's the more technical, nitty-gritty simulation stuff that really appeals to me. Geralt's stroll to Lettenhove at the beginning of my demo felt lively in a way that few places in the original Witcher 3 did. People were, simply, up to stuff. Shepherds guided sheep across roads, carts trundled around, a child played on a high railing to the chagrin of their parents, and all around life seemed, in general, to proceed.

"When you think about the remaster features that we apply in Letten," says Rokosz, it concerns in large part "how our community behaves, what you can do, what can they do. They can now use boats, they can drive carts, this is all to bolster the feeling of the area where you are, in Letten."

"We wanted to make it compare with any other game which is launching these days," says Kutrzuba. "We are touching aspects of the game which haven't been touched since we launched it." From what I've seen, it pays off.

Isn't it always the way? You spend so long yearning to leave home, to strike out and make a go of it all by yourself, but the second you step foot out the door you start missing it. All of it. The camaraderie and the rows, the shared meals and the constant, privacy-smothering proximity, and—of course—the mutated beasts from the overland, intent on your complete and utter destruction.

This is how I imagine it went for 4A Games when it came time to make Metro 2039, the fourth mainline game in the Metro series. Artyom is gone—he took a train off into Russia's carcass in Exodus, but Moscow and its metro endure, and 4A has returned to them for 2039.

In Artyom's absence, you play someone new: The Stranger, a gruff and—in contrast to the previous three Metros—chatty protagonist who's on a quest to find and kill Hunter, the former legendary Ranger hero and (it seems) current overlord of almost the entire metro.

Things have gone to pot since Artyom went interrailing. The metro's many fractious stations have largely been brought under one banner, but it is a fascist banner, ruled over by Hunter with an iron fist. Someone should probably put an end to that.

Up top

I've spent roughly an hour in The Stranger's shoes in a sliver of Metro 2039, and I'll say this: it really is a pleasure to be back in the metro. Even streaming the game (a necessity for the demo), it looks lovely, and retains all the thunking physicality that makes the setting distinct and memorable. We are still whipping out a contraption and repeatedly whirring it to make our torch shine brighter, gang. We are back.

But just because we are back in Moscow does not mean we are leaving the innovations of Exodus behind. The bulk of the demo I played consisted not of linear tunnels with the odd secret squirrelled away—as was the case in Last Light and 2033—but an open and above-ground area that invited you to explore and pick through it at your leisure. Or, well, kind of at your leisure. At the leisure of your gas mask filters and your access to resources to craft new ones.

This is a positive development. Metro is a series of small details, and poking into its crannies to find them has always been one of my favourite parts (that and pointing at the screen and telling people when I've been to one of the depicted stations in real life—at which they are always incredibly impressed). Nosing around the area I uncovered modded-up new guns, slices of story, blueprints for new weapon parts, resources and general goodies, locked doors guarding rooms of treasure that I had to suss out the codes for, and multiple angles to tackle my objectives.

It's packed with mutants, of course, who you are encouraged to take on with a degree of stealth. I recommend not doing this at least once, if only to experience the feeling of seemingly the entire map turning and looking at you with murder in its eyes the second you let a non-silenced gunshot crack out. I then recommend, ah, doing it from there on out, as they are still pretty annoying to fight, constantly darting about the map and out of your reticule.

When I was not getting distracted by troves of materials hidden behind locked doors, the first actual objective Metro 2039 gave me was to pick my way through a building of bandits, to access the tunnels beneath it. My first time, I did this the way I usually do anything: without thinking about it even a little.

I promptly ate it. My one-man assault, armed with a silenced pistol, a pneumatic rifle, a shotgun, and an SMG (no bullets) could not quite measure up to the task of storming the fortress in front of me. I figured I would take a break. My gas mask filter supply was high—I could afford to nose around the neighbouring buildings to see if there was anything of use.

There was. For one thing, there were ways into the building that were not 'literally the front door,' which is probably handy for infiltration. But much more useful was the wrecked apartment complex to the base's right. As it turned out, this had been the outpost of a stalker who had been keeping an eye on the bandits in the base I was trying to get into. The stalker was dead, but his scoped Kalashnikov remained propped up on the balcony. The bandits' headlamps bobbed about the building until they didn't, winking out one by one as I put the AK to its purpose. This was very satisfying.

Down low

Once you're back in the tunnels, what you find is fairly familiar Metro. You're at one end of a tunnel and you'd like to be at the other. Between you and it stand many armed men of an irascible disposition. You can start blasting, if you like, or stalk through, taking out sentries with throwing knives and putting out lights with a silenced weapon (your watch will glow blue when you are visible, as in previous games).

My experience assaulting the bandit base fresh in my memory, I opted for stealth. Now, I'll admit it: it's been a while since I last touched a Metro game, and it's possible my memories of the series' stealth are coloured by the bastard of a time I once had trying to get through Metro 2033's Frontline mission without ever being spotted, but 2039's stealth felt more forgiving than I remember. I was able to sneak through and clear practically every room of enemies with just my throwing knives and some gumption, never getting seen once.

And when it's not men, it's mutants. Nosalises and whatnot (mostly whatnot) inhabit everywhere that the metro's human inhabitants haven't squeezed into, and will menace you as you attempt to navigate through cramped spaces and wreckage. This is, for the most part, entirely fine—a little action to break up the haunted spelunking, but the game is enthusiastic about springing boss fights on you. These aren't too hard, but I cop to muttering a quiet 'Really, again?' when the game dropped a big hulkin' brute on me to fight after picking up a blueprint.

Stranger, danger

I muttered a little louder when The Stranger, having defeated that big hulkin' brute, dropped his post-battle one-liner: "I guess someone stronger than you finally showed up." I had a good time with Metro 2039 and am very eager to play the full game, but I suspect I will be doing that in Ukrainian.

The Stranger is comically gruff. Much like Skif in Stalker 2, his English voice acting scans more as an action-hero parody than post-nuclear survivor, to the point that I found myself sometimes missing dear, mostly-mute Artyom.

But that's not much of a complaint, is it? And since it's my biggest gripe coming out of Metro 2039's demo, I'm firmly in the 'interest piqued' camp for 4A's return to Moscow. It's a joy to be back cursing at my ramshackle weapons and burning enormous spider webs with my lighter again.

The HD rerelease of Heroes of Might & Magic 3 from 2015 used to be the only way to get the strategy classic on Steam, leaving many players frustrated since it lacked the expansions and the random map generator. Ask fans of the series, and they'd tell you to get the original version from GOG instead.

So it should be an easy win for Ubisoft that the series' current owner finally decided to put the original version, complete with its expansions Armageddon's Blade and The Shadow of Death, on Steam at last. Its current user review rating of 80% negative suggests otherwise.

Fork out $10 for it and you'll find an install that's only 23.49 KB big, which gives a "dummy executable" error message when you try to launch it. Because Heroes of Might & Magic 3 on Steam does not come with Heroes of Might & Magic 3. Somebody forgot to include the actual game files with the game.

I'm sure this will be fixed soon, perhaps when France wakes up, but in the meantime the complete edition on GOG is still the best version and it's currently on sale for half-price. Here's hoping the upcoming remake has a smoother launch, you know, like one where they actually remember to include the game.

While gameplay footage of the upcoming D&D game shows off a solo warlock, if you'd like to play a warlock as a member of a classic party of adventurers then Solasta 2's next update has got your back. Early access update 1 will add the warlock class and two subclasses (the timekeeper and the dreamer), as well as co-op multiplayer.

Up to four people will be able to join the same multiplayer session, whether starting a new game or joining one already in progress. The host can assign a new player an existing character, or they can bring an existing one, or create a new one on the spot. Control of companions who join your party can also be split up as you go. Every player gets a vote on the big story and dialogue choices, and there's a ping system being added to help you communicate.

New features for people like me who want an entire gang of characters to ourselves include expanded customization (with more hairstyles, tattoos, warpaint, and beards), the option to roll your stats randomly, spell component rules being made optional so you can choose between accuracy to the rulebook or something simpler, roughly 30 extra world events to find while exploring, cloud saves, and a way to switch into cautious mode while playing with a controller.

And of course the warlock, joining the current class roster of fighter, wizard, rogue, cleric, paladin, and sorcerer. Solasta 2's warlock subclasses sound a bit different to your standard hexblade/archfey options. The timekeeper can buff allies to make them act faster as well as robbing enemies of their reactions, while the dreamer controls nightmares and can inflict exhaustion on enemies as well as putting them to sleep. In both cases I suspect they'll be falling back on the classic eldritch bolt a lot, because an endless supply of decently damaging ranged magic is the warlock's whole deal.

Early access update 1 will be out on September 10, and will also include various fixes and stability improvements. The update after that, adding another class, two more ancestries, the start of act two, an increased level cap, and a crafting system, is scheduled for the last quarter of the year. Solasta 2 is currently available on Steam.

Humankind 2 was announced today at Gamescom's Opening Night Live showcase, and I have to admit that I was among those who raised an eyebrow at the announcement trailer and wondered: Is this AI generated? A number of commenters speculated that it was. (For instance, under this X post.)

Nope, says the studio.

"The Humankind 2 live-action announcement trailer was filmed at Nu Boyana Film Studios in Sofia using real actors, practical sets, and custom-made props created specifically for the production," developer Amplitude Studios told PC Gamer over email. "We will be sharing behind-the-scenes images from the shoot soon."

PC Gamer has seen a few of those photos, and they do indeed show actors on a sound stage with partial sets and a typical blue backdrop for compositing.

In my and the internet's defense, the trailer does have something of an AI look to it. From the fisheye perspective of recently-birthed infants, we're stared at uncannily by a prehistoric woman, a hollering Viking aboard a longship, an American settler in a wagon, and other new parents from throughout space and time.

In the backgrounds: a giant tornado, bandits on horseback, a nuclear explosion, outer space. The studio hasn't commented on how those special effects were created, but they may well just be old fashioned CGI. I've asked for clarification on that point, as the studio didn't say explicitly that zero generative AI was used.

As for the game, the first Humankind was decent—Fraser described it as "a solid 4X that could use a bit more personality" in his review—and the sequel will introduce "new progression systems, innovative features, enhanced visuals, a modernized UI, and gameplay improvements," according to Amplitude.

Humankind 2 will release on PC in 2027, and there's a Steam page with more information live now.

The latest trailer for Metro 2039 tried to get a scare out of me with its radiation-sickened bugs and monsters jumping at the screen, but the spookiest thing about it is how gosh darn good it looks.

I'm not talking specifically about the gameplay, which this trailer does show more of—gun customization, mask wiping, stealth kills, the Metro hits—but the graphics. 4A has always been one for graphical showpieces (Metro Exodus was an early adopter of full ray tracing), but Metro 2039 is a significant step up in the realm of photoreal.

It's got that high-frequency detail and soft lighting that, at times, makes outdoor spaces look like straight-up photographs. Which begs the question: will a normal person's computer be able to run this thing?

That question wouldn't usually be top of mind, except, well, we're deep into a hardware crisis that shows no signs of stopping. Powerful PC hardware is almost impossible to reasonably obtain, a sad reality that has some of us embracing the great Tech Pause.

Metro 2039's flexibility will come down to how much worse you're allowed to make it look, and there is some good news here: It's a console game, ya'll. That means somehow, 4A will have it running on an Xbox Series S, the low benchmark for modern consoles. Does that mean mid-range PC owners will be happy with how it performs? Less likely: Anything less than a locked 60 fps is a hard sell for a shooter these days.

But I offer another ray of hope: 4A uses a proprietary engine helmed by experienced engineers, so it could be a smoother ride than we've come to expect from realistic-looking Unreal 5 joints.

Metro 2039 has no release date yet, but if you can pop over to Germany, 4A has a playable demo at Gamescom this week.

It brings me no joy to admit this, but recently I've begun thinking that I'm finally nearing my fill of ARPGs. I've gotten a lot of great years out of clicking a mouse button and exploding full screens of skeletons, but the prospect doesn't quite spark joy like it used to.

Or at least that's what I thought until roughly 45 minutes ago, when I saw the announcement trailer for Tarae: The Unbound that had been slipped into a Gamescom 2026 Opening Night Live Montage.

The problem, I now realize, is that I've mostly spent my time with ARPGs looking at the same kinds of things. Most games downstream of Diablo tend to flow into the same basin of interchangeable demons, dark cultists, and piles of weird meat. But looking at the brief clips of Tarae, I realize now I'd just been aching for a jolt to the ARPG aesthetic palette.

Developed by Boundary and published by Krafton, Tarae's Steam page says it's set in "a world that reimagines Eastern myth, folklore, and traditional aesthetics, where beauty and mystery are entwined with darkness and brutality." It shows in the listings screenshots and embedded gifs, where enemies are being fought in Buddhist temples and player characters are battling bosses with hauntingly distended features plucked from East Asian monster illustrations.

If that's not enough, Tarae: The Unbound also includes one of my favorite character class conceits: Just an old guy with a matchlock gun. Although this particular handgunner seems to know something I don't about how historic firearms work, because he's able to pump out rapid fire gouts of firebomb explosives. Good for him.

From the sounds of it, Boundary is aiming to offer a variety of buildcrafting systems: "The balance and conflict of the Five Elements, the harmony of Yin and Yang, karma and the cycle of reincarnation all shape your leveling, equipment, and combat style," the developer says. "Even within a single class, different choices lead to entirely different builds."

I can't begin to guess how that will all work in practice, but I'm eager to experience our K-Diablo future when the time comes. It likely won't be for a bit, however: Tarae: The Unbound doesn't have a release date, unlike the full release of Path of Exile 2 now pegged for December 11, but you can wishlist it on Steam now.

Paradox Development Studio is taking a break from conquering history and space, setting its sights instead on post-apocalyptic North America. Afterworld will see you take control of a tribe of survivors as you explore and conquer the ruins of the fallen continent. Which you might already know, after yesterday's leak. But now it's official!

Afterworld was just revealed during Gamescom's Opening Night Live, with a trailer that's evocative of both Fallout and Mad Max. Paradox has naturally put its own spin on things, however, with features like the Ancients, immortal leaders who existed before the collapse of civilisation, and who are now fighting to rule what's left using forgotten technology. They might cause some problems for you.

Like Stellaris, you'll be able to pick your tribe's origins, including a Fallout-inspired start that sees you leaving the safety of your bunker to begin a new life in the wasteland. There's a survival bent to the proceedings, with your tribe needing to scrounge up the bare necessities like food and water before it can start thriving. Unlike previous PDX games, you really are starting from scratch.

Eventually you'll be able to rebuild civilisation or create something completely new, founding new religions, establishing laws, and taking advantage of pre-Fall technology, like that big ol' spider robot from the trailer. With convoys you'll be able to set up trading routes and supply lines to keep your new civilisation ticking, and if things get too rough you can leave your home behind and migrate to a new land, or just become nomads or raiders.

Afterworld seems to be shaping up to be Paradox's most exploration-heavy grand strategy game—even when compared to Stellaris. Take the ideas tree, for instance. This is essentially your tech tree, and it's based entirely on what your tribe experiences.

Instead of seeing the whole tree laid out in front of you, or getting a random selection of techs to choose from, the tree is revealed through exploration. If your tribe encounters a river, you'll learn about irrigation, unlocking the appropriate idea in the tree. If you meet another tribe and they've established a religion, then you'll discover the organised religion idea.

This is also where the procedural generation can shake things up. While the terrain and geography are immutable, you'll encounter different tribes, resources and dangers when you start a new run. So you'll always be able to find that river and unlock irrigation, but other experiences will be random.

Afterworld's development is being led by Dan Lind, formerly game director on Hearts of Iron 4. But there seems to be plenty of concepts drawn from Paradox's other grand strategy games as well. I've mentioned Stellaris a couple of times already, but it looks like there's plenty of Crusader Kings DNA in here too. Even though you're running a tribe rather than inhabiting an individual ruler, it still seems like there are some RPG nods.

"Afterworld is Paradox’s first non-historical setting in a decade, and I can’t wait to see what stories our players will tell with it,” says Lind. "This is the first world we’ve gotten to build from scratch in a long time, and the first one we've had the pleasure of destroying before the game starts. The old world is still out there in fragments, waiting to be found. What comes after it is entirely up to the players."

I know a lot of PDX fans were hoping for a Stellaris-like fantasy game for the developer's next outing, but we've already got so many fantasy-themed 4X games—the post-apocalypse strikes me as a more novel GSG setting.

A couple of weeks ago I got to go hands-on with Afterworld, so keep an eye out for my preview soon.

Good news from the near future: Space travel has apparently advanced enough to allow humanity to establish a hotel on the surface of the moon.

Bad news: The RAMpocalypse apparently continues unabated, forcing novel experimentation with alternate forms of computer memory not rendered wholly unaffordable by AI datacenters. Namely, rat computers.

This believable projection of the current miserable state of consumer hardware comes courtesy of Ontos, the next game from Amnesia developer Frictional Games. In the trailer above, a man strapped to a chair with electrodes stuck in his head is a bit freaky, though less so than another guy who's missing everything from his upper teeth down; perhaps humanity in the future is so desperate for localized processing power that we're resorting to shoving DisplayPort cables into our brains, too.

The strongest big of imagery in the trailer by far, though, is a computer the size of a wall with 60 rats connected to it in sequence. Or parallel? I'm not great on my circuitry fundamentals, but I know a rat computer when I see one.

I am instinctively scared of the rat computer and the unknown potential of 60 rat minds taking the place of random access asiago memory.

My fear is apparently warranted, given the ominous question posed in the trailer's YouTube description is as follows:

"Do you follow the instructions given through the rodent machine?

Do you seek an alternative approach?

Or simply sabotage the experiment to satisfy your own morbid curiosity?"

The description claims there is "no right or wrong solution in Ontos," but I think the subtext is clear: We must do whatever possible to avoid this future coming to pass. Let's call off this whole AI thing before the next hardware generation arrives, lest Dire Digital Rattus 6 become the only memory accepted by motherboards by the year 2030.

Assuming we even have that much time. Ontos is out next year, and might be a banger; we loved Frictional's last game, Amnesia: The Bunker, scoring it a 93%.

"Oh yea, that's the good stuff," I said as a hipfired a gnasher and atomized a locust drone, raining monster bits all over Marcus Fenix's stoic mug. We're in the midst of a singleplayer shooter drought and I'm happy that Gears of War: E-Day is here to replenish the well.

I recently got access to a two-mission Campaign demo set near the beginning of the game. The vertical slice seemed tactically considered: the first chunk showed off the linear spectacles that Gears of War has always been great at. The second chunk showed off The Coalition's aspirations to do more with its meatheads—letting Bravo Squad loose in an open chunk of Kolona City, complete with a map and optional objectives. Both were fun, but I'm now approaching E-Day with the impression that its traditional bits will be its best.

The demo picked up right as Bravo Squad armors up, so presumably after that intro we've seen in marketing where Marcus and Dom are attacked by Locust in a bar. The crew is tasked with aiding in the evacuation of Kolona by lowering a bridge leading out of the city.

You can probably guess how it goes down in your head: Bravo squad rolls up to the controls and tries to lower the bridge, but it only half works, so they have to cross a hive of locust to access controls on the other side.

A gigantic bridge is the perfect canvas for a Gears level: waves of drones and those guys with big boomshots advance down a sea of abandoned cars, blowing up potential cover spots. It's a claustrophobic sequence that you can tackle from a raised platform, where The Coalition has placed a pile of long-range Breechshots, or immediately jump down to get in the shit with lancers and shotguns.

The Breechshot, by the way, is a work of art. The gun first appeared in Gears of War Judgement, but I never played it, so E-Day is where our love affair begins: a bolt-action, hard hitting rifle that's versatile enough to consider over a Lancer, but is checked by lacking the scope and headshot potential of a Longshot sniper rifle. It's also got an axe head attached to the stock—hat tip to Locust R&D.

A later section has Marcus and Dom crossing a raised section that overlooks the other lanes of the bridge. The pair shimmy along the inside of train subway cars, flanking locusts advancing on their squadmates from above. The Coalition stuffs a lot of cool, intentional encounter design into a compact space—I dug it.

Then came something less impressive: Gears of War, but open world.

City planning

After reaching the other side of the bridge, Marcus and buds are given a waypoint, a map, and a somewhat large open chunk of Kolona to explore. It was initially neat to stretch my legs and appreciate the density of culture that The Coalition packed into the city streets, but similar to when Gears 5 spent half of its campaign making me drive a dull sled from waypoint to waypoint, I don't think Gears excels at quiet stretches.

It's like a regular, linear mission has been spaced out for no clear reason—encounters on the streets are "optional" in the sense that you can technically walk past them, but there's no reason to ignore them, because it's not like there's anything else to do besides beeline toward the end of the level.

These beats were their own fun, contained setpieces—defending a gas station, saving trapped civilians—but they're separated by a lot of jogging down streets, picking up collectibles with text I'm unlikely to read, and chatter between squadmates I wasn't particularly invested in. It was a little like playing E-Day's new Horde Siege mode with a story.

So my big question as I wait to play the full campaign in October: How much of E-Day is this open-world stuff? We know the entire campaign takes place in Kalona, so perhaps the city serves as a persistent hub between more linear missions (Halo Infinite-style). I hope it's a rarer occurrence, because Gears is at its best when it's on a track.

CD Projekt Red showed up to close out Gamescom Opening Night Live with two big announcements: a first look at The Witcher 3's final expansion, Songs of the Past, and a surprise "Remastered" patch coming to the base game on September 29.

If you're just hearing about this now, yes, The Witcher 3 is getting a big expansion 12 years after its release, though we got no firm release date today. To hold us over, we caught a glimpse of the new region that Geralt will explore, Letten, and a weapon type new to the games: the chain whip.

I was wondering if CDPR would ever let the White Wolf wield his favorite weapon from the books. What a nice surprise.

It'd take a bigger Witcher nerd than I to glean much from the trailer story-wise, but I'm willing to bet Geralt has been contracted to kill a thorny, druidical monster. The YouTube description for the trailer says a bit more:

"This full-fledged third expansion takes the White Wolf on a new adventure to the peaceful realm of Letten, where dark secrets lurk beneath the surface."

Songs of the Past, sadly, has no imminent release date. It's out "next year," according to the trailer.

The Witcher 3 got a "Next-Gen Update" back in 2022, and CD Projekt Red is doing it again: The developer announced at Gamescom today that The Witcher 3 Remastered is coming September 29 as a free update for all owners of the RPG.

Aside from graphical updates (of which there are many), The Witcher 3 Remastered makes changes to combat, movement, Roach riding, monster behaviors, the skill tree, and the photo mode.

The kicker: Alongside the update, owners of The Witcher 3 will also get its two expansions, Blood and Wine and Hearts of Stone, free if they don't already own them. For newcomers, the expansions will be bundled with The Witcher 3 Remastered.

The remaster arrives well in advance of the next expansion, Songs of the Past, which releases sometime next year.

"My favorite [new feature] is the visuals. That's new textures, updated rendering, advanced path tracing, foliage, you name it," said CD Projekt Red level design lead Miles Tost at Gamescom's Opening Night Live showcase. "Geralt has never looked this good, even after all those years of retirement.

"And then the other thing, definitely, is combat. It's more modern, smooth and precise. We updated the camera, the targeting system, added new animations, and what I like a lot, new finishers. And then, last one, The Witcher 3 is a full-fledged RPG, right? So we completely revamped the ability system to give players more options."

One thing I'm left curious about is how much can be toggled on and off—ie, can players accept the graphical changes but turn off the combat tweaks if they prefer the original combat?