Features archive

June 2025

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109 articles

June 24
- 11 little Death Stranding 2 improvements that made me say 'hell yeah'
- It's been so long since I played a 30 fps console game, it took me a week to realize Death Stranding 2 was literally giving me headaches
- In Crimson Desert, the true boss battle is wrangling its controls to unlock the cool combat within
June 23
- I'm not built for whatever I heard in Phasmophobia's Chronicle update, which adds terrifying new sounds you can't afford to run from
- Moonlighter 2 perfectly refines and streamlines the first game's engrossing shopkeeper RPG formula, and it's got a free demo you can try right now
- Death Stranding 2 cements Hideo Kojima's legacy as a PC game designer still living in the console world
- Five new Steam games you probably missed (June 23, 2025)
June 21
- In a world without Dishonored, I've started to wish for a sequel to Thief 2014
June 20
- Should you play Rematch with a mouse or a controller? It's a harder decision than you might think
- Baldur's Gate 3 Karlach actor Samantha Béart was initially turned down for roles like 'Goblin 49,' but 2 years later they were hired 'within a day' of their audition as 'the muscle mummy we know and love'
- I've already found the best fishing game in Steam's Fishing Fest, Scale the Depths, which lets you feed fish to Nessie in Loch Ness and hunt for the mythic Beithir
- Design your perfect battle car block by block, then watch a legion of alien robots blow it up because you suck at 3 point turns, in this explosive Vampire Survivors-like
- These 7 games need a remaster, and they need it now
June 19
- 10 years later, no one has replicated Rocket League's mojo
June 18
- Sword of the Sea fuses Journey with Tony Hawk to make a pro skater game that feels as good as it looks
- How ranks work in Rematch: What you need to rank up in each league and division
- Date Everything claims to be a dating sim, but it doesn't love or understand its own genre
- Survival game AETHUS sees you rebuilding a sci-fi colony after the ravages of galactic capitalism—and forging a new kind of future from the wreckage
- This is all the best PC gaming gear we recommend in one techie tier list
- Doom: The Dark Ages gets path tracing for even better graphics but unless you've got an RTX 50 graphics card, it's not worth using
- I don't believe it, but this Digimon RPG really was the best game I saw at SGF
- Elden Ring Nightreign's relic system could learn a lot from MMOs like World of Warcraft, which figured out pure RNG loot sucks years ago
- Borderlands 4 hands-on: Yeah, it's just 'more Borderlands,' but Gearbox's consistency is respectable and there's a cool hoverbike
June 17
- Turns out that fantasy Factorio is a pretty good idea, and if you doubt me try the MoteMancer demo
- FBC: Firebreak doesn't have the eldritch chaos I had hoped for so I'm going back to one of my favourite games that you've never played
- Keep an eye on Wildgate, a PvP space FPS out later this month: Solo queuing can be rough, but it's still cool as hell to join a ragtag group of scavengers in space
- Who the heck is Evelyn? Why a custom Baldur's Gate 3 character with millions of TikTok likes keeps getting confused for an actual NPC
June 16
- Rainbow Six Siege is more popular and better than ever. That's one point for 'make something actually unique and stick with it,' zero points for 'give up and lay everyone off'
- Pentiment and Fallout: New Vegas designer Josh Sawyer isn't usually a fan of RPG romances, but thinks Cyberpunk 2077 nailed it: 'If I were gonna base romances on anything, I'd probably do something like that'
- He was devastated when his favorite Facebook game shut down, but at 10 years old, what could he do? 8 years later, he's got the rights, the original code, and is about to relaunch Dungeon Rampage on Steam
- Lies of P's new easier difficulty modes reveal the true soul of a soulslike, and surprise: it's not dropping dead every time a monster sneezes
June 14
- Real-life rally racing is dying and triple-A rally games are dead, but the sport's gotten a second life thanks to these excellent indie racers
- The FPS genre is addicted to sprinting and clambering, but Halo just proved we're better off without them
June 13
- Out of Words features one of the cutest videogame characters I've ever seen, but there's a tinge of Kafkaesque darkness to it, too
- Wuchang: Fallen Feathers made me grapple with the parry vs. dodge conundrum
- Absolum isn't just the best demo on Steam, it's one of my favorite things I've played in 2025
- This strategy roguelike is like trying to fight off an alien invasion with a bunch of PCs from the late 1970s
- '225,000,000,000 attacks per day': Computer users and gamers are significantly more at risk of cybercrime than at any other time in the past
- Mio: Memories in Orbit has all the wonder of playing Inside for the first time and its devs are working hard to make it even better
June 12
- 3 things I liked and 2 I didn't after 30 minutes with Grounded 2
- Spine is a gun-fu love letter that wants to make you feel as OP as John Wick
- Onimusha: Way of the Sword was the best thing I saw at Summer Game Fest
- Code Vein 2 made me realize what I've always wanted in a Souls game: a sick motorcycle
- This Minesweeper roguelike is a chaotic corporate nightmare, and I love it
- Darktide's first DLC class gets a cybernetic dog who is a very good boy, and will arrive alongside a free update that structures missions in a campaign at long last
- I think it's a safe bet The Witcher 4 will run just as well as its tech demo after talking with UE5 devs and analyzing Unreal Fest tech data
- 'Most chairs labeled as 'gaming' chairs are simply budget task chairs with colorful accent stripes': here's what annoys industry experts the most about gaming chairs
June 11
- Steam review bombs can be harmful, says Mecha Break dev, but it had a positive takeaway after Chinese players hammered the beta: 'We underestimated players' passion to get into our game'
- 'We encourage you to live with your choices, but if you want to change it, you can:' Supermassive explains why it's adding a flowchart to its narrative horror with Directive 8020
- Summer Game Fest no-shows: 9 big games that were absent from 2025's showcases
- Dune: Awakening's dungeons are so atrocious that I'd rather get slowly digested by a sandworm than fight through another one
- Resident Evil Requiem's behind-closed-doors demo was weirdly boring, but it's got me donning a tin foil hat and joining the 'Leon's back' chants
- Fight predatory capitalism with a yo-yo possessed by your aunt's spirit in this brilliantly bizarre metroidvania
- Switch 2 vs Steam Deck: A closer battle than I expected
- Date Everything turns everyday household objects into gorgeous love interests, and now I can't look at my refrigerator the same way
- I've played 2 hours of MindsEye and it's pretty bad so far, I'm afraid
- I've played my share of cozy games, and Tales of the Shire is definitely one for the maximalist decorators
June 10
- With Oblivion Remastered's first patch looming, I wish Bethesda had taken a leaf from CDPR's book and straight-up incorporated popular mods at launch
- After a weekend packed with game reveals, I can't stop thinking about Clockwork Revolution's time-traveling shenanigans
- The 10 best games of Summer Game Fest 2025
- 'Sheer practice and willpower': Real-life telekinetic heroine PerriKaryal beat Elden Ring's bosses by thinking about a cricket jumping and twitching her inner ear, and Nightreign is next
- Dune: Awakening review-in-progress: Fun in the sun
- Persona 4 Revival finally has the chance to fix its terrible dungeon design
June 9
- I love Hideo Kojima's games, but last night's fawning over his genius from Geoff Keighley and the Death Stranding 2 cast got me the opposite of hyped
- GIGABYTE AORUS: the premier choice for an AMD gaming PC
- Xbox is no longer a console, it's a platform, and it's already entered a battle for control over your handheld gaming PC
- Space Marine Master Crafted Edition provides a slick second life for a Warhammer cult classic—but you might struggle to find a match in the multiplayer
- Turn-based RPGs are officially back in fashion, but I want more: It's time for modern developers to take another pass at FF12's gambit system
- Every videogame showcase is a PC gaming show now
June 8
- Every game, trailer, and announcement in the PC Gaming Show 2025
- “That evening, I told the company: This is the first game we're publishing”—how vibes, fun, and aggressively mashing a keyboard landed the Vampire Survivors dev its first publishing client
- FBC Firebreak asks the brave question: 'What if you were just really drunk?' while coming up with all their wacky loadouts and weapons
- 007 First Light is the 'culmination' of IO Interactive's work on Hitman over the last 20 years: 'All that skill, all that practice coming together and finally seeing the ultimate spy fantasy come to life'
- Leaving Fallen London: How Failbetter Games spent several years growing hope and ‘discovering the art of the possible’ in their new eldritch farming sim
- ‘We could go from a shooter to a platformer to a horror theme’: How stepping away from Payday 2’s real-world framing has helped Den of Wolves turn high-stakes heisting on its head
- 'It’s a bit of an existential priority for us to stand out': ex-Ubisoft and Bethesda devs on new studio Soft Rains, longevity, and debut sci-fi game Ambrosia Sky
June 7
- Nightreign's distilled shot of Elden Ring juice makes it my ideal level of soulslike investment after 14 years of getting good
June 6
- Deltarune's new chapters defy every rule of RPG logic
- James Bond doesn't need an origin story: IO's game looks great, but why has it turned 007 into a baby-faced Nathan Drake?
- Having spent time testing the Switch 2 mouse controls I no longer think it's a gimmick, but it just cannot compare to a gaming mouse
- Xbox Games Showcase 2025 preview: The big games and developers to expect on Sunday's livestream
- How to watch the Summer Game Fest livestream
June 5
- This MMO can run Doom: EVE Frontier is so moddable, players are building entire games within its space survival sandbox, and the devs say it's just the beginning
- Guilty as Sock may be the only game where you can sue Master Chief for indecent exposure and then write sensational articles about Mr. Bean committing financial fraud
- 'Our drivers are incredibly fast': I've been testing a prototype gaming headset with ultra-responsive speakers and it's transformed my Gray Zone Warfare sessions
- Dying by sandworm in Dune: Awakening is way, way worse than any other death you might face
- Thief VR is a huge slap in the face and kick in the teeth for everyone who has been waiting for more than a decade to return to the City
June 4
- Summer Game Fest 2025 preview: The big games and developers to expect at Friday's livestream
- I wasn't expecting a FromSoftware game, of all things, to be so gut-bustingly funny—but just like Helldivers 2, Elden Ring Nightreign turns death into a punchline
- I built a real SteamOS Steam Machine out of the guts of an old laptop so Gabe doesn't have to go through that whole sad dance again
June 3
- The Witcher 4 tech demo has me hyped for a big budget open world for the first time in years—but not because of the Unreal graphics
- The PC game releases we're most excited about in June
- Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater: All the key details on the remake of a PS2 classic
- Death Stranding 2: All the key details on the next game from Hideo Kojima
- Slay the Spire 2: all the key details on the beloved deckbuilder’s sequel
- Elden Ring: Nightreign bucks the extraction trend, but it would have been a better game if it hadn't
- The Edge of Fate will be the biggest change to Destiny 2 since it launched—an injection of fresh ideas, but also of ARPG grind
- 'In a very interesting way, it actually reduces the work': Destiny 2's director explains why reinventing the wheel with The Edge of Fate was actually the easier option
- After almost 18 years, Team Fortress 2 just had its toughest tournament ever, and there could be more to come
- I tried the 'oops, all status effects' Executor loadout in Elden Ring Nightreign that turns his starting katana into a god-killing uber-sword—shockingly, it's pretty good
June 2
- Singleplayer Elden Ring Nightreign is no longer hell to play, but it's still a compromised game of 30-minute boss runbacks
- Forget Divinity: Original Sin 3: For its Baldur's Gate 3 follow-up, I implore Larian to revisit its okayest game
- I found a mysterious demo disc with no name hiding a game almost no one in the world has ever seen, and it made me feel like I'd uncovered buried treasure
- The worst part of Elden Ring Nightreign, like all multiplayer games, is that you need to rely on the kindness and intelligence of strangers
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's tremendously messed-up endings aren't what I'd hoped for—and I hope Sandfall keeps it that way
- Five new Steam games you probably missed (June 2, 2025)
June 1
- I didn't even know what roleplaying was until I experienced this bizarre '90s B-game where you slowly turn into a bug
- Elden Ring Nightreign is the first FromSoftware game that I honestly wish I could play on easy
- 'The soundtrack to skate parks was punk rock music': Tony Hawk on the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater soundtracks, and how they shaped a generation of videogame skate kids