Before action RPGs relied on seasonal ladders and DLC treadmills there was Darkstone, a 1999 hack and slash where you clicked on things until they died and liked it. It had some interesting ideas, like the companion mode that lets you switch between two player-characters, the other controlled by the CPU while you took the lead, but it remained true to the basics of a genre I got into precisely because it was basic.

Now it's back, with a remaster in early access that improves the UI and controls (you can move characters with WASD now, or play with a controller), and the graphics (though I had to turn off volumetric fog and procedural grass for the sake of my poor framerate).

It's got a demo too, which lets you make characters from any of its eight classes and explore the early-game dungeons, letting you play three of its quests, which are selected at random each time you start a new game.

It's just nice to start up an action RPG without having to worry about which build I'm going to pursue, or look at a massive node full of future skill unlocks, or wonder if I should start a seasonal character or whether I'm missing out by not buying the latest DLC. Darkstone is just Darkstone, a game of clicking on skeletons and goblins until they die, and as that annoying guy who though the first Diablo was the best Diablo it's really scratching the itch.

I want an action RPG that understands these are games I play when I need a break from thinky puzzly heavy games and want something light and, you know, more action-packed. I'll get back into them later, right now I really want to fight some giant wasps in a hole in the ground. Darkstone Restoration is perfect for that.

The only notable thing missing from the early access build is online multiplayer, though it does have couch co-op. A permadeath mode is also in the works. You can download the demo on Steam.

New Blood's comic book golden age noir detective immersive sim shooter, Fallen Aces, just got a beefy new update: Its second episode, Shadow of Death, is playable right now, while the usually $15 game is on sale for $12 until August 8.

I'm kind of allergic to playing games in early access, so I haven't touched Fallen Aces since I fell in love with its first few levels back in 2024. Those levels were fun, the stealth tense, the combat beautifully slapstick, and the pulpy story engaging. But I mean it as a compliment when I say that the Episode 2 trailer shows a practically unrecognizable game.

It's got car chases, sprawling city environments, medieval broadswords, and I lost track of how many new guns. Shout out to the cartoony Mateba Model 6 Unica in there, a.k.a the cyberpunk detective gun. The more games that sport this beautiful Italian oddity, the better.

New Blood's entire main lineup of the 2020s has been slow to cook, but the three games have justified that time with ambitious increases of scope. Ultrakill's recent layer of Fraud looks like its most striking and unique yet, while Gloomwood's development updates with monster serums, armored pig constables, nonlethal takedowns, and Rat Mode give me a "how did we even get here" feeling like looking at my phone and seeing an Uber driver in the ocean or something. In a good way.

New Blood likes to start its games cheap and raise the price as value is added in early access, so it's long been curtains for Fallen Aces' launch price of $10. 15 bucks is hardly shabby, though, and you can take advantage of that nice compromise $12 sale for the next two weeks on Steam.

As part of an interview in the latest issue of GameInformer (spotted via GamesRadar), Capcom producer Masachika Kawata outlined the resurgent Japanese publisher's approach to Resident Evil: Quality and quantity, with remakes bolstering the process and helping fund the development of more adventurous projects.

According to Kawata, Capcom would like Resident Evil to be a fully annual franchise, but "producing a new entry in the Resident Evil series every year would be quite an undertaking and a difficult task." That's where the remakes come in.

"Being able to revisit older games and remake them helps Capcom meet that goal of releasing a Resident Evil title each year, but it also allows the team to continually challenge themselves and hone their craft," said Kawata. "That's not to say the remakes are any less important. In fact, they're just as important as the mainline titles.

"Capcom is lucky enough to have found this cycle that can continue to provide us with the financial resources to create things like new entries in the Resident Evil series and completely new IP like Pragmata. So there is that relationship there."

Phrases like "every year" tend to get my dander up when it comes to game development, but Capcom has a track record as perhaps one of the most successful and, crucially, healthy game publishers of the 2020s. After a mixed decade-plus in the late aughts and early '10s, it's been hit after hit since the one-two punch of Street Fighter 5 in 2016 and Resident Evil 7 in 2017.

Even its less beloved recent games⁠—like the RE3 remake or Monster Hunter Wilds⁠—have their defenders (not to mention profitable sales figures). Other publishers and developers at Capcom's scale have sloughed off staff and struggled to release games in a timely fashion, but the long-lived giant just keeps trucking.

As GamesRadar pointed out, though, we're running out of runway on Resident Evil remakes after this year's Code Veronica. The OG RE1 GameCube remake was a perfect game I don't think you could improve on⁠—though that didn't stop Capcom from trying with RE4. After that, you've got some pretty mixed reputation entries up for grabs in Residents Evil 0, 5, and 6. I'm not a fan of the three, but as PCG news writer Joshua Wolens has pointed out, why not remake flawed games into good ones instead of mucking up something that already works? Though, the less said about Resident Evil's real stinkers like Survivor or Dead Aim, the better.

First reported by Tom's Hardware, it's come to light that, not only are the four "Backward Compatibility on PC" original Xbox games released last week running on a double layer of Xbox console emulation, but savvy independent developers have already used those emulators to run other Xbox games on PC.

Developer Nathan on X, "The Everything App," has a succinct topline explanation: "The new OG Xbox Backwards Compatibility layer released by Microsoft for the PC is actually an Xbox 360 emulator running XeFu (the OG Xbox emu for the 360)," he wrote, pointing to telltale indicators visible in a dump of XeFu (the Xeon Fusion Emulator) pulled from the Fuzion Frenzy PC re-release.

For an even more in-depth explanation, developer Milenko has an article on the subject, also on X. The big takeaway? It's a "Beautiful piece of engineering. Also: Emulators, all the way down."

Rewind all the way back to 2005: The very first instance of Xbox backwards compatibility on the 360 was XeFu emulation, as outlined in this 2018 video from Modern Vintage Gamer. When you popped your old Halo 2 or KotOR disk into a 360 back in the day, they weren't running natively on the console. The 360 emulated the original Xbox to run those games.

This tech is the basis of Microsoft's later backwards compatibility efforts on Xbox Series consoles as well. So instead of building a new Xbox emulator from scratch to run these games on PC, the company ported its in-house Xbox 360 emulator to PC, then ran XeFu through that. Pretty neat.

Meanwhile, the devs of the XWine1 project, an Xbox One translation layer for PC, shared that it's possible to use the in-development XWine1 with the dumped official emulator to get other OG Xbox and 360 games running on PC, though with "varying degrees of success."

As for how this will affect game preservation and end-user emulation quality in the long term, that remains to be seen. The xemu OG Xbox and Xenia 360 emulators have been in development and available for use for some time, but better public understanding of Microsoft's internal emulation methods can only be a good thing.

I wasn't expecting Final Fantasy 14 director and producer Naoki Yoshida to directly call out World of Warcraft during a media Q&A at the MMO's Berlin Fan Festival, but that's exactly what happened.

When asked about how the team plans to modernise Final Fantasy 14's housing system—one which is regularly criticised for a lack of supply to meet demand and a fairly obtuse UI to boot—Yoshida's first response was: "I get the feeling that what you really want to ask is, well WoW has come up with this amazing housing system. How about [Final Fantasy] 14?"

Blizzard's own MMO has finally taken its first stab at player housing, and I do admit I've been looking on with some envy. It looks far easier to wield and far more customisable with freely scaling and placing objects, and that's something that Yoshida has absolutely taken notice of.

"We have immense respect for the World of Warcraft team," Yoshida said. "So when we saw that the World of Warcraft team announced the new housing system—and they said specifically that they looked to 14 and incorporated things which they wanted to surpass us in—I think that in itself is a great honour for us to hear."

Yoshida said that he's had "a hands-on" with WoW's housing system, calling it "amazing" and "a good source of research." For what exactly? Well, perhaps for two major overhauls the team has lined up to tackle Final Fantasy 14's housing, which should be releasing during upcoming expansion Evercold.

The first one is set to tackle the housing UI which, by Yoshida's own admission, is "quite technical and not very accessible." He says that the plan with the overhaul is to make it "more accessible for casual players, so that they can easily create elaborate housing." I do wonder if that'll just be a flat menu change, or a larger overhaul that allows greater freedom of item placement which, without utilising floating glitches (or third-party plugins) can be pretty darn restrictive.

Yoshida is being considerably tighter-lipped about the second planned overhaul, though. "But I think you will be much happier to hear what it is compared to the UI update," he said. "It's currently in the planning process right now on our end, and there is a chance that it will get released earlier than the UI update."

He finished by saying that while he couldn't share any specifics, "once we're able to share those details, it's probably the number one thing on the list a lot of people are requesting." Whether Yoshida is referring to housing in general here—it wouldn't surprise me if that and glamour were the two aspects the team received the most feedback about—or the specific overhaul in mind, it's not super clear.

Either way, I'm excited. Even though I've been clinging onto a small house for dear life since 2021, I've yearned for an easier decoration system, the ability to make a cute little neighbourhood with my pals, and easier access to larger housing plots. Seriously, I've been bidding on medium houses in the Lavender Beds for seven months with zero success. Free me, Yoshida, I beg of you.

Remember Chort? He's a sub-boss in one of Final Fantasy 14's newest dungeons—a magnificent large-and-in-charge lad who rolls up into a ball and charges around the arena like a giant, fleshy Sonic the Hedgehog.

I couldn't stop laughing the first time I fought him, and I wasn't the only person to immediately fall in love with how ridiculous he was. He quickly became memed to hell and back—from his goofy name, to the real "Mom, I frew up" stance he's rocking as he patiently waits for you to enter the boss room and beat him up.

His immense reception came as quite the surprise to director and producer Naoki Yoshida. "I'm really glad to hear that Chort was so well received, but honestly I couldn't really understand the appeal of Chort," he said during a press Q&A at the game's Berlin Fan Festival.

"Of course, we do understand that he's very popular and there's been many memes. But really, I just couldn't understand like… why." Yoshida then said he'd love to hear what exactly it is about Chort that people find so appealing, before continuing: "I can understand maybe a little. I mean, this is some huge bulky guy, and then suddenly he's standing there and then he rolls. So from that perspective, I can kind of understand."

I'm not quite sure how exactly to tell Yoshida that Chort just sounds kind of funny, at least to my English ears. His large body, small head, and goofy name give me war flashbacks to the reign of Big Chungus, which I have to assume is a similar image for a lot of other players. Also, you know, the fact that he's in a dungeon called The Clyteum. Yes, Chort is in The Clyteum. I'm not sure if those unintentional saucy undertones translate in Japanese.

But despite not fully getting what made us go crazy for Chort, Yoshida's just happy to see the community doing silly things with the game. "It's really fun for us to see," he told the media. "So, if the people in the community also find some unexpected appeal in any content we produce moving forward, do make your voices heard because the development team is looking at all of the responses on social media, and we very much do enjoy looking at them. We have big smiles on our faces when things like this happen"

In a recent appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, prolific actor J.K. Simmons dove into his relationship with the games he's acted in. While not much of a gamer himself, the script for Portal 2 (where Simmons voiced Aperture founder Cave Johnson) seems to have left its mark on the actor.

"Tom Britney from The Westies, he texted me a week ago, a little video text of my character from Baldur's Gate," Simmons said when asked if he gets recognized for his videogame roles. "He said, 'I'm about to kill you.' Okay, well, good luck with that."

Host Josh Horowitz followed up by asking if Simmons enjoys playing games at all, and the answer was a firm no. "My hands don't work on those controllers," said Simmons. "I've tried⁠—my kids, of course, my twentysomething kids play them a lot. My wife, she'll actually get in there and play some Mario Bros. or whatever with them. I just, I cannot. No. Sorry."

But even if he doesn't play, Simmons does have a firm favorite among all the games he's acted in. "It was Portal 2, for me," he said. "Just because it was such a hilarious script. I could have done the feature film, or the play, or whatever. It was just such fun writing."

Simmons did, indeed, reprise his role as Cave Johnson for the 2022 Steam Deck tie-in game, Aperture Desk Job. Portal 2 writer Eric Wolpaw, who is credited with creating the character, also returned to the series to write for Desk Job.

Given the more siloed nature of their work on games, actors often have a wide range of engagement with the hobby. Deus Ex, Marathon, and Starfield actor Elias Toufexis is all-in on games, for example, while Silent Hill f actor Konatsu Kato streamed her first playthrough to much fanfare. Grand Theft Auto 5 actor Steven Ogg, meanwhile, thinks you should put away childish things and read Dostoevsky instead.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, a game with a title that feels like it ought to have a colon or an em dash somewhere in there, is finally here and it's selling like whatever the nautical equivalent of hotcakes is. Hardtack, I guess. Not only did it sell 2 million copies in a single day, a recent financial report includes Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot saying "Two weeks in, the title has already exceeded the annual expectations we had."

"The strong launch of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced in early July by Vantage Studios is an encouraging proof point," he said. "The game is the highest-rated Assassin's Creed title since the original Black Flag, and we are very pleased with the praise it received from players … I would like to warmly thank the teams whose talent and dedication brought it to life."

Guillemot's thanks come at an interesting time, given that nearly a third of Ubisoft Barcelona was laid off just weeks ago, triggering a labor strike. This was part of a larger wave of layoffs which affected hundreds of workers. As it has done with a variety of Ubisoft games, Ubisoft Barcelona supported the development of Black Flag Resynced and "did all the underwater levels" as tech and gameplay animator Manel Cota posted on X back then.

Regardless, the ludicrous sales Black Flag Resynced is enjoying seem like a signal that the original game's reputation is strong enough to carry this remake through potential turnoffs for prospective players, such as the day one DLC, simplified swordfights, and in-game shop. In his review, PC Gamer's Morgan Park called the game "a well-made, but inessential remake that loses more than it gains."

If you've been hitting the high seas yourself, check out our guide on how to see all the new stuff—if not, the original is there and as good as ever.

A vulnerability in Meccha Chameleon, which has already been patched, allowed multiple Steam Workshop maps to distribute malware to players.

As a post on Medium from user Feint discussed (via Kotaku), "A couple of my friends reported seeing a command prompt window briefly appear while Steam was downloading a custom workshop map … What I found was a seemingly ordinary workshop map that contained what appears to be a malware dropper, despite having passed workshop review."

The full details regarding the map, Laser Tag Neon, are in the blog, though Feint updated the post to say another map called Chroma Grid Arena was uploaded in its place.

Meccha Chameleon developer Haganeiro confirmed the issue in a post on X Saturday, clarifying it has since been fixed. "The vulnerability in the custom maps described in today's update 3.1.0 has been fixed, so there are no issues after applying it," Haganeiro wrote. "We have also confirmed that the malware is disabled for the affected maps both before and after the update."

As comments like one from X user Jeff reading "Your discord is fucked man" indicate, malicious custom maps weren't the only issue the devs encountered this past week. The game's official Discord server, which has nearly 100,000 users, was hacked. This was confirmed and addressed in a Steam Community blog post yesterday. "We have already contacted Discord Support and are currently awaiting their response," it reads. "If the server cannot be recovered, we will set up a new one."

Developer lemorion_1224 confirmed in a post on X that this happened because a system engineer's PC was infected with malware while fixing the aforementioned vulnerabilities: "The hacker bypassed the engineer’s two-factor authentication on Discord, altered the server permissions, and banned all the staff members."

The affected PC, a backup device, was wiped and can't be used to edit game files, but lemorion_1224 warned players not to follow any "suspicious links" on the compromised Discord.

I still remember the long ritual of installing World of Warcraft to my parents' laptop as a young'un, mystified by the sheer number of discs it took to squeeze the game onto a hard drive.

The more discs a game took to install, the better it must be, I figured—child me would be aghast at the contemporary world, where game boxes come with mere codes inside and PlayStation is killing off disc production. That last factoid has triggered commentary all over the industry and beyond, with everyone from Ubisoft's Yves Guillemot and French politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon weighing in.

Speaking to IGN, Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser gave his own commentary on the physical vs. digital debate with a multifaceted answer. "I don't know that I care. If people want that, I think companies should provide it," he said.

"But I don't know that I personally care. And I also think the ability to update games, as critical as people are of digital releases, the ability to update and fix problems in games has been really useful for the quality of games." Notably, both physical and downloadable patches existed before digital distribution became the rule. Magazines like the superlative PC Gamer would even help distribute them!

Grand Theft Auto writer Jeffrey Crawford "Lazlow" Jones, who was with Houser for the interview, weighed in as well. "I mean, we all have that sort of feeling of when you get that copy and you put the disc on the console, but I also have to say, I really like being at the airport and going, 'oh cool, I can download some quick games to my Steam Deck for this 12-hour flight."

Jones went on to talk about how tangibility still has its perks even as a creator: "[It's] just really fulfilling to have a physical thing you can say, 'Look, we made a thing.'" Houser followed up, "I love physical media. I think everyone does, you know." It's worth noting that Grand Theft Auto 6 will be both a digital-only game and console-exclusive at launch.

One aspect of Helldivers 2 I've repeatedly lamented is how many of its new toys are locked away inside Warbonds, with too few new weapons, equipment and stratagems unlockable through regular play. Hence, it's worth giving Arrowhead credit when they do let you unlock a new toy through spending requisition slips and nothing else. Such is the case with the M-103 Supply FRV, which will become available for all Helldivers to unlock in October.

The Supply FRV is one of three variants of Helldivers 2's offroad truck. The vanilla FRV is equipped with a mounted machinegun, while the Incinerator FRV swaps that out for a flamethrower. The Supply FRV comes equipped with both an automated turret and a supply rack at the rear of the vehicle, good for eight full restocks of Helldiver ammo and equipment.

The Supply FRV was originally made available as a stratagem to players who participated in June's "Census Thunder" campaign, which saw players battling hordes of Illuminate 'Voteless' spewing from voids opening up across the galaxy. Now though, Arrowhead has decided to roll the vehicle out to all Helldivers 2 players—albeit with a significant delay. In a Steam post, Arrowhead said that players who earned the FRV in June had "enabled the rest of your comrades in arms to access this equipment in October," adding that "a rising tide of firepower lifts all divers".

The Supply FRV is the first stratagem reward to derive from Arrowhead's new galactic campaign system, which replaced the previous system of running objectives in June. Introduced to give players a better chance of taking part in the shooter's collective objectives, galactic campaigns are part of a much broader overhaul that Arrowhead committed to earlier this year, following growing player dissatisfaction with the live-service shooter.

The second galactic campaign—Lightning Intercept—is currently underway, with players attempting to destroy an Automaton orbital platform. We don't know what the next campaign will be, but Arrowhead has said that a Warhammer 40,000 themed Warbond will be revealed on July 30, one of the few video game crossovers that I'm actually intrigued by.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 was not the series' finest hour, but one aspect of the sequel that has gone down well with players is its experiments with matchmaking. For years, players have complained about the effects of skill-based matchmaking (SBMM), which is intended to level the playing field by sorting players into groups of similar skill. But some players claim that SBMM can outright flatten the experience, neutering much of the fun and unpredictability of arena shooting.

Until recently, Activision had tried to convince players of the merits of SBMM. But last year saw a change in attitude from the publisher. For Black Ops 7's multiplayer, it introduced an "open moshpit" playlist alongside its standard match allocator, wherein skill consideration was "drastically reduced in matchmaking".

It appears this option has gone down well with CoD players, as Activision has said it plans to carry low-SBMM playlists forward into Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. This was revealed in a post on Call of Duty's official X account, where it explained its broader plans for multiplayer matchmaking going forward.

"Over the past year, we've continued to learn a lot about multiplayer matchmaking through player data and community feedback," the developers wrote, adding that these learnings had been "reinforced" by players' reception of the releases of Black Ops and Black Ops 2 alongside Black Ops 7. Clearly, it has concluded that open playlists are worth keeping around, as it says. "We'll continue to offer Open playlists in Black Ops 7, and we'll also include Open Playlist options in the upcoming Modern Warfare 4 beta."

On top of this, Activision is introducing a "new matchmaking system" for various modes in Black Ops 7, including Black Ops classic, quick play and party games. It says that this system is "inspired by" Black Ops and Black Ops 2, and in a follow-up post, explains it builds upon "what we've learned, with smarter team balancing, wide match variety, improvements that keep matches full, and a better experience for mixed-level parties."

It'll be interesting to see how the matchmaking changes align with Modern Warfare 4's adjustments to gunplay and general combat, with a renewed emphasis on making players "feel like they're really behind the gun". The beta kicks off on August 21, though unlike last year Game Pass subscribers will not be entitled to early beta access.

H. R. Giger's biomechanical nightmares have inspired plenty of videogames. If we go way back, his work was repurposed for baffling puzzle adventure Dark Seed, and more recently there was the fleshy horror of Scorn. Tormentum: Dark Sorrow was more in the vein of the former than the latter, a point-and-click adventure that took Giger's stylings (and those of Zdzisław Beksiński too) as inspiration for its hand-painted horrors.

A full 11 years after its release, and after eight years of development, Tormentum finally has a sequel. Tormentum 2 is a standalone game though, just one in a similar style, which is to say that it's full of bones and alien faces and naked people who are embedded in walls.

In Tormentum 2 you're trapped inside a simulated world that's got out of hand, the supposedly digital characters within suddenly out of control and talking about gods from distant places. You have to cross the islands that make up this world, solving puzzles as you go, and working your way toward one of multiple endings.

Tormentum 2 is currently available for 15% off on Steam, where there's also a demo if you want to give it a try before you buy. The original, Tormentum: Dark Sorrow, is also on sale for 67% off.

This year's Gen Con event is one Wizards of the Coast has said it's "pulling out all the stops for", with a keynote to be hosted by Theo Solomon (who played Wyll in Baldur's Gate 3) including a bunch of announcements about what's coming up for Dungeons & Dragons. One release seems to have been leaked early: a crossover with World of Warcraft.

According to a news post on virtual tabletop Roll20 that has since been removed (you can find it on RPG site EN World), we can expect Warcraft to get at least a setting book for D&D 5th edition, as a couple of Magic: The Gathering worlds have previously.

This wouldn't be the first collaboration between Blizzard and D&D. Around the time of Diablo 2 there were several official books by Wizards of the Coast adapting the world of Sanctuary to D&D's rules. Later there was a World of Warcraft RPG using D&D's 3rd edition, though that was published under the terms of the Open Gaming Licence by White Wolf, the publisher responsible for Vampire: The Masquerade (which also has a D&D crossover in the works).

I can see why die-hard WoW fans might enjoy having a version of D&D with rules for playing a tauren or whatever, but Warcraft has always been so close to D&D I'm not sure I need a whole rulebook explaining its slightly different version of elves and whatnot. At least Diablo's heavy metal vibes made for a different-feeling kind of fantasy, but Warcraft is as generic as they come.

Gen Con runs from July 30 to August 2, and I'm sure it'll include some announcements more interesting than this. Maybe this will be the year they finally pull the trigger on bringing back Dark Sun or Birthright, or even give us an Al-Qadim book?

Larian Studios has reiterated that it is fully, 100%, without a doubt, donezo in the bunzo when it comes to new Baldur's Gate-related projects. It's latest statement was in response to a Dark Horse comics announcement that could have been interpreted as implying the studio's involvement.

On X, "The Everything App," Dark Horse announced that a yet-untitled comic series starring Karlach, our favorite BG3 companion, is coming down the pike. The issue: Dark Horse signed off its post by saying the project was "With [Larian] and [Wizards of the Coast]," tagging both companies.

Makes sense. I mean, Larian famously did make Baldur's Gate 3 and the character of Karlach in the first place. But the studio seems keen to head off any suggestion that it is involved in Wizards of the Coast's post-BG3 spinoff projects.

"Maximum hijinks are happening right now, but we’re not involved in any BG3 related projects," the official Larian account wrote in response alongside a picture of CEO Swen Vincke and writing lead Adam Smith doing some kind of script read-through. "As soon as we bust outta here, we'll share more about [Divinity]."

Ever since Larian revealed that it would not be making Baldur's Gate 4, there has been a popular conception that there must have been some kind of dispute or grievance between it and D&D owner Wizards of the Coast. Vincke, for his part, has insisted that the split was amicable, and that the developers were just creatively spent working in someone else's setting.

The quick, sharp way Larian distanced itself from any suggestion of its involvement in Dark Horse's upcoming spinoff is certainly eyebrow-raising, but it's also understandable that the studio would not want any misconceptions about its output to spread, regardless of the nature of its parting ways with Wizards⁠—I noticed at least one commenter say that they thought the studio's writing team may have been collaborating on the comic project before this exchange.

I, for one, am looking forward to Larian's next game, Divinity, set in its own fantasy world of Rivellon. If you'd like to catch up on the project, we've collected everything we know about the upcoming RPG in one place. We also have a guide to the Divinity series, including a recommended play order for the games⁠—spoilers, it's pretty much reverse-chronological order of release.

They say money can't buy happiness, so I guess Meccha Chameleon creators lemorion_1224 and Haganeiro will have to get a yacht instead. Much has been said about the ludicrous success of the hide-and-seek game, but a recent figure from Newzoo (shared by GamesIndustry.biz) further puts things into perspective: for June revenue on PC in a handful of western countries, it came second only to Fortnite.

Newzoo analyst Mert Şahin told GamesIndustry.biz that the game's sudden and huge success "shows that lower-budget, socially driven multiplayer experiences can achieve significant commercial results." The game's low barrier to entry, both price and spec-wise, alongside all the viral popularity it experienced on social media sites like YouTube, certainly helped it along.

The full list offers the top 20 games by revenue in the US, UK, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy, and after Meccha Chameleon comes Counter-Strike 2, Valorant, and League of Legends. There's a list for console games as well that looks quite different, though Fortnite is the uncontested king of both rings. Other common threads include usual suspects like Minecraft and Marvel Rivals.

Whether you have any interest in these sorts of low-budget party games or not, there's no denying their broad appeal. It's hard not to think of the sudden ubiquity of Among Us in 2020, which just got a TV show and continues to enjoy collab after collab six years later, as Meccha Chameleon puts up such astonishing numbers and teases its own first collaboration.

It might have to deal with cheating problems and sloppy AI ripoffs, but ignore the noise and there's a genuinely great game waiting for you. In his review, PC Gamer's Lincoln Carpenter called it "a delightfully elevated take on hide-and-seek … Meccha Chameleon's game of competitive camouflage is a multiplayer experience that exceeds its friendslop trappings."

Fantasy RPGs have become too comfortable with delivering the expected gaggle of familiar character concepts. Archers, monks, paladins, you know the drill. I've seen it all before! Give me, I don't know, a Viking that shoots triple-barreled laser guns out of its dual shields, which also have metal claws, you know? Final Fantasy 14 knows what I'm talking about—down to the last detail, in fact.

Indeed, the first new job to be introduced as part of the Evercold is just that: the bastion, a main tank that blocks, shoots, and stabs all with the same instrument. Those dual weapons, "known as skyltborg," seem to be entirely new to the Final Fantasy setting, though they are reminiscent of Rhitahtyn Arvina's supersized gunshields. Granted, most of my experience with that setting is through Kingdom Hearts, but I know I would have remembered if Mickey Mouse picked a pair of these up at any point.

The teaser trailer shows off some of its combat animations, and as is FF14 tradition, they're extravagant and accompanied by some badass electronic rock. The roegadyn in the trailer lifts himself into the air to fire laser blasts and uppercut his foe—it looks cool when he does it, but I'm reserving judgment until I've seen how ridiculous a lalafell looks doing all these same animations. Game director Yoshi-P certainly pulled the look off, showing up to the Berlin Fan Festival in full bastion cosplay, as players shared on X.

Notably, the bastion will only be playable in evolved mode, the pruned battle system coming as part of Evercold. More expansion details will come later this year during the Tokyo Fan Festival, and the full thing is set to launch January 2027.

A new report from Reuters alleges that it took an alarmingly long time for OpenAI to respond to one of its prototype AI agents⁠—programs with the ability to act independently of specific prompts⁠—breaking containment and hacking another company. That company, Hugging Face, had reportedly neutralized the threat and contacted the FBI before ever being contacted by OpenAI.

According to anonymous sources, OpenAI's testing of an agent powered by two advanced models⁠—GPT 5.6 Sol and an unnamed "even more capable" model⁠—showed troublesome behavior in testing even before the Hugging Face incident.

Reuters' sources spoke of the model leaving itself instructions to bypass testing constraints, as well as an incident where the agent had seemingly disabled some of the company's monitoring systems.

Hugging Face made its first public statement about the hack on July 16, before it had identified or without disclosing OpenAI's involvement. OpenAI publicly acknowledged the incident on July 21. According to Reuters, OpenAI's prototype escaped its testing constraints on July 9 and began attacking Hugging Face on July 11.

Sources told Reuters that OpenAI did not realize that its agent had gone rogue until after Hugging Face had neutralized the threat, contacted the FBI, and made its public statement on July 16.

The FBI declined to comment, while Hugging Face is preparing a full timeline of the hack. OpenAI told Reuters that there were "several inaccuracies" in its report, but did not specify what those inaccuracies were.

Speaking to Reuters on the matter, World Ethical Data Foundation principle intelligence specialist Marley Smith outlined two possible explanations for OpenAI's delay in response: "Does that mean that they left it unattended and didn’t realize what it was doing? Or maybe they did and didn’t know how to contain it? Both are equally dangerous and alarming."

First reported by Japanese site GameWatch and translated by Automaton, Silent Hill producer Motoi Okamoto revealed a surprising demand placed on Silent Hill f's scenario (or story) team: Read a ton of books.

Okamoto spoke in a lecture at Japan's CEDEC 2026⁠—that's "CESA Developer's Conference" longwise, or "Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association Developer's Conference" extra longwise.

In his talk, "The Art of Producing Silent Hill," Okamoto said that he believes being well-read is an important trait for videogame producers to cultivate, and that reading the entire body of work by any game writer he collaborated with was a matter of "basic respect."

But that drive for literacy doesn't just stop with Okamoto. In the interest of having strong "input" for the developers, Okamoto said that, "within the team, we put pressure on each other, especially among the scenario writers, to read at least 100 to 200 books a year."

That's a lotta books, man. I've been working on my reading habit, and I'll be happy if I crack 20 this year, with a bullish forecast for a two-a-month pace in 2027. I'm usually circumspect of workplace quotas or "KPIs" (key performance indicators), but this is one I can get behind. Books are good for you.

I really caught on Okamoto's mention of "input:" Having a base of artistic inspiration outside videogames is something I've heard many other veteran developers stress. Obsidian design director Josh Sawyer recently spoke about being influenced by fine art, cinema, and theater in a video on his YouTube channel.

Last year, Final Fantasy composer Nobuou Uematsu lamented the stagnation he saw in game music, which he partly attributed to new composers overly relying on other videogame music for inspiration.

Final Fantasy is very much a theme park for the series. It regularly references other games or weaves their themes into the very fabric of Eorzea and beyond. Occasionally, it straight-up implants entire characters or plots.

Despite all that, it's done surprisingly very little with the series' golden goose: Final Fantasy 7. Sure, there's the Gold Saucer. And materia melding. And Cloud's Advent Children fit. And the Fenrir motorcycle. But as for actual characters or dipping into the game's world? There's not all that much to be found.

Until now, that is. Director and producer Naoki Yoshida took to the stage at Berlin's Final Fantasy 14 Fan Festival this weekend to reveal that upcoming expansion Evercold is dedicating its eight-player raid series to Cloud and the gang.

Yoshida was joined by Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and Revelation director Naoki Hamaguchi to reveal the collaboration, titled Beyond the Lifestream. Unfortunately we know criminally little regarding what or who will be showing up, but considering both Cloud and Sephiroth were plastered on the screens during the reveal, I'd be surprised if neither one made an appearance.

Hamaguchi and Yoshida assured players that the two teams are working closely together—long-time Square Enix veteran and FF7 remake co-director Motomu Toriyama is assisting on the raid's story, supervised by the OG FF7's writer Kazushige Nojima. And for the belt-crazed fiend that dwells within me, I'm especially stoked to see Tetsuya Nomura on design. Those raid pieces are gonna be rad, I'm sure.

That's not the only FF7 bit making its way into the game, either. An update to the Gold Saucer on October 28 is going full Saucer-ception by adding in an attraction modeled after the same venue's appearance in Final Fantasy 7. There's also, er, a typing game attached to it. Which—as Hamaguchi himself joked during the keynote—isn't exactly the first connection I make between the two. But I'm a sucker for a typing game, so no complaints here.

Even as someone who isn't a huge Final Fantasy 7 enjoyer, it's hard to not succumb a tiny bit to the hype that something this massive brings. Will we see Sephiroth cap off the raid series as the final fight of Evercold's final tier? God, I hope so.

A CRPG in the vein of Baldur's Gate without a bird's-eye view camera sure sounds wrong, but it feels so right. If you're looking for something a little more Dragon Age and less Divinity for your next replay, Modder Relysia has gone and stuck an over-the-shoulder third-person camera in Baldur's Gate 3, uploading it to Nexus Mods last week, and it looks a lot better than you may expect.

In the brief showcase teaser, you can see the player wandering around the Undercity Ruins. Animations are a tad jittery, but because BG3's environments are made to be zoomed in and gawked at and shown off in dialog cutscenes, everything is at a believable scale. I'm not sure this would work in all of the game's environments to the same extent, but that it works at all is nifty.

You've always been able to get the camera up close in BG3, but it's always angled slightly downward, feeling less like a proper third person action game cam, and more like a compromise with its classico tactico overhead view. Even playing with a game pad, it's distinct from other videogame cameras.

The Nexus Mods page states that it's compatible with the WASD character movement mod, which we dubbed one of the best mods for Baldur's Gate 3, so if you wanted you could conceivably replay the game pretending you and your invisible cameraman have been isekai'd out of Dragon Age and into Faerûn. (Throw in the real time with pause mod as well if you're a true sick freak who rejects the turn-based revolution, comfortable in the knowledge that you'd rather die in four seconds than win if it takes four minutes.)

There are lots of settings, too. You can adjust FOV, offset, camera height, and even customize "horizontal tracking speed" if you'd rather the camera not immediately jerk around with your every impulsive movement. While it's true a third-person camera option was already achievable via Native Camera Tweaks or the WASD mod, having one that's so precisely customizable is a win for anyone who wants to appreciate that character they spent four hours customizing up close.

Jedi are a key ingredient in most Star Wars adventures, but a little bit of a Jedi also goes a long way. Put too many Jedi in your Star War and you end up with an Attack of the Clones or a post-New Game Enhancements Star Wars: Galaxies—the magic and mysticism of those berobed space wizards drowned in a sea of lightsabers.

With its upcoming tactics game Star Wars Zero Company, developer Bit Reactor appears to understand this well. According to a recent AMA hosted by the studio, there will only be one Jedi Operator in the entire game. What's more, if you act cavalier with them, you may end up with none whatsoever.

As Bit Reactor has noted previously, permadeath is a major feature of Zero Company, with the main players in your adventure able to shuffle off this mortal coil at any point. For most classes, you will be able to recruit other Operators to fill in those class roles. But in the era when Zero Company is set, Jedi are supposed to be exceedingly rare.

So what does this mean for Zero Company's Jedi Padawan operator, Tel-Rea? Can players recruit other Jedi operators if she dies? This question was posed to BitReactor by SammyBoii in the Zero Company's discord server, to which lead designer James Brawley responded: "Tel-Rea is the only Jedi Padawan class Operator in Star Wars Zero Company—be careful that nothing happens to her!"

It's worth noting here that although permadeath is a big part of Zero Company, it isn't mandatory. Some difficulty levels will allow you to turn it off. Even if you do play with permadeath on, Zero Company's authored characters are "woven in the critical path of the story" for their respective introductions. Once you're into the full swing of the game, however, "they're very vulnerable, and it's up to you to keep them alive and make sure they're part of the team."

Taking permadeath to its logical extreme wasn't a decision Bit Reactor arrived at easily. Narrative lead Aaron Contreras previously told PC Gamer that "there were some fights" among the team about letting the whims of the game limit the impact those authored characters could have in the story. But Contreras added that he ultimately lost this argument, and that "it was good that I did." With Zero Company releasing next month, we'll soon discover for ourselves whether Bit Reactor was right or not.

As a series, Grand Theft Auto has spent decades cycling between the same three locations, with each variation of Liberty City, Vice City and San Andreas being more detailed than the last. But players haven't been able to explore all three locations at once since the release of the original.

Until now. A modder has done what Grand Theft Auto hasn't since 1997, creating a mod that lets players travel instantaneously between the settings of Grand Theft Auto 3, Vice City, and San Andreas. And it's all thanks to that most underutilised of game technologies—portals.

Veteran Grand Theft Auto tinkerer DryxioGTA posted a video of the mod—which is still in development and doesn't seem to have a proper name yet—on YouTube (via GamesRadar) The clip shows the player travelling between three brightly coloured portals located in San Andreas' Grove Street. Walking through each portal transports the player instantly to the relevant game and location, switching to the appropriate player character in the process.

DryxioGTA provided some technical details in the video's comments. He confirmed that all three games are running "inside the same process, sharing one Direct 3D device" and that "each portal is a live GPU texture" with the relevant game "actually running behind it, it's not a video or a captured window". DryxioGTA also says that the three worlds maintain their own saves, missions, and settings, and that they continue to run the world state, including traffic and physics, in real time.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the mod is that the portals don't just let the player travel between cities, they also allow for interactions between those cities. DryxioGTA demonstrates this by shooting through a portal, gunning down several civilians. This causes peds in his current world to attack him and triggers a wanted rating.

It's seriously impressive work, and the GTA fans responding in the video's comments are clearly bowled over. "The fact that you can shoot the peds and other objects through the portals is just beyond unimaginably insane," writes li_B4shar_il, while ross3695_basedhax observes that "We got inter-GTA portals before GTA 6."

In fairness, it's not that long before Grand Theft Auto 6. Rockstar's hugely anticipated sequel is due to land in November, and that fact alone has already had a substantial impact on gaming. Every other developer is scurrying to get out of the way of Rockstar's behemoth, resulting in the next three months being crowded with dozens of highly anticipated launches.

Despite a poor reception, weak sales, and losing publisher IO Interactive, developer Build a Rocket Boy hasn't given up on its open world shooter MindsEye. Which might be commendable, were it not for the multiple rounds of layoffs, the wild conspiracy theories emanating from its executives, and allegations from former workers that spy tech was covertly installed on their machines.

But whatever's going on in and around the studio, MindsEye itself is still receiving updates. And the most recent update adds quite a lot of stuff, though whether it's stuff everybody wants is another matter.

Described as "one of the biggest yet" by BARB in a Steam post, Update 8 brings a major new component to MindsEye—multiplayer. Specifically, it adds a team-based mode called "grenade football", in which players apparently "swap their boots for launchers and bring the firepower to the pitch."

Contrary to what this implies, grenade football participants do not in fact wear the launchers on their feet (though that would arguably make for a more interesting spectacle). Instead, grenade football is basically Rocket League without the cars, with players in red or blue jumpsuits running around a pitch blasting a giant ball at each other's nets.

There's a video of grenade football in action below. Like so much else about MindsEye (certainly post-launch MindsEye) it looks very basic and rough around the edges. The ball, which is far too large to actually fit in the launchers, just kind of disappears into them when a player collects it, so reading where the ball is and who currently possesses it is tricky.

There's also the question of who you're going to play Grenade Football with. At the time of writing, MindsEye had attracted a peak of 36 concurrent players in the previous 24 hours. Which I suppose is enough to get a game or two of Grenade Football going—just. But if you are interested in checking it out, I'd recommend doing so promptly.

In short, I don't think the developers of Rematch have much to worry about. But that isn't everything the update adds. Alongside the addition of multiplayer, the update also introduces some extra racing circuits, a raft of social features to help players interact across the game, and further improvements to the singleplayer.

These are what I'm most intrigued by. The update reworks numerous elements of the vanilla game. Improvements include better enemy physics when being hit by explosions, difficulty adjustments to various missions, a general overhaul to AI pathing and behaviour, improved vehicle handling, and animation transitions between moving, combat, and interactions.

I couldn't care less about all the clearly doomed multiplayer and metaverse stuff BARB seems hellbent on adding. But I would like it if the basic campaign was half-decent to play. Aside from Grand Theft Auto 6 looming over the horizon, there aren't many games of this ilk being made anymore.

Hence, while the launch version of MindsEye was undeniably terrible, I've no objection to seeing it improved. There are some questions over how BARB is attempting to improve MindsEye, however. Earlier this month, former MindsEye developers protested at a fan event being held at the studio in the wake of yet more layoffs and the secret surveillance scandal, as the Independent Workers of Great Britain Union claimed that BARB was "handing over work, both paid and unpaid, from the BARB workforce to the BARB fanbase, during a game sector job crisis."

If you're looking for something to do this weekend and would prefer it comes in the form of shooting guys, then allow me to direct your attention to Hell Let Loose: Vietnam, which is holding an open beta that's set to run until Monday.

Announced in 2025, Hell Let Loose: Vietnam is a more-modern follow-up to the WW2 milsim Hell Let Loose. It features the 50v50 battles of the original, expanded with the addition of air power—helicopters, naturally—across six large-scale maps. Battlefield Vietnam may be the obvious point of comparison, but as PC Gamer gunner Morgan Park pointed out, Hell Let Loose is more of a hardcore milsim. The Steam page reflects that as well, emphasizing the need for teamwork and tactics, and the game's focus on historical accuracy.

To get in on that action, just pop around to the Hell Let Loose: Vietnam on Steam and punch the "join the playtest" button. The playtest is fully cross-platform, so you can jump in on consoles if you like—instructions for that are also available on Steam, but the short version is to look for the playtest on either the Xbox or PlayStation Store, and then install it. Console-exclusive servers are also being offered, for those who don't want to get hammered by the mouse-and-keyboard set, but you'll need to have either a PlayStation Plus or Xbox Game Pass Essential subscription to play.

There are a number of known issues with the current build of the game, including dodgy voice chat, occasional performance drops, and "infrequent crashes or stability issues" on some AMD GPUs. Players are encouraged to provide feedback via the playtest survey, and reminded that any progression, XP, and unlocks earned during the test will not carry over to the full release. That's set to happen on August 13.

While Nintendo has a long and infamous history of petty litigiousness, its recent efforts to secure a series of Pokémon-related patents have been particularly obnoxious—obnoxious enough that even the Japan Patent Office seems like its patience for the publisher's quibbling is wearing thin.

Earlier this month, Japanese patent examiners issued a rebuke of Nintendo's objections to a Patent Office's prior rejections of one of the publisher's Pokémon patent applications. In its refusal of the publisher's arguments, the JPO's examiner was so atypically blunt that Japanese patent attorney Kiyoshi Kurihara described the exchange as containing "things rarely seen in standard patent practice" (via Automaton).

At the heart of this particular squabble is Nintendo's Patent Application 2026-019762, one of a number of patent applications the company has submitted in an attempt to secure ownership over systems related to Pokémon catching, battling, and riding. While the publisher has successfully been granted some of those patents—like those cited in its ongoing legal dispute with Palworld developer Pocketpair—the JPO sent a notice of refusal for the 2026-019762 patent application in April 2026.

Something can't be patented if it doesn't demonstrate "an inventive step" indicating it wouldn't be obvious for other practitioners in the relevant field, and the JPO examiner found that the Pokémon mechanics that the 2026-019762 application described were too similar to "prior art," or preexisting works.

In particular, the rejection referenced a 13-year-old gameplay video of an unofficial, fan-made Pokémon game, which resembled many of the systems Nintendo claimed in its application over a decade later.

As you might expect, Nintendo didn't like that.

In June, as patent procedure allows, Nintendo submitted a written opinion contesting the application's refusal. First of all, Nintendo wrote—presumably while pushing up its glasses—the examiner didn't reference a fan game, but "merely a video" of a fan game; videos can't be considered disqualifying prior art for a videogame patent, it said, because videos aren't videogames. Worse, as an unlicensed work using Pokémon designs and characters, it's a video of copyright infringement. Something can't be considered obvious for practitioners in the field, Nintendo insists, if it's illegal.

Not only that, Nintendo said, but the examiner—despite the alleged copyright infringement on display—called the Pokémon shown in the video by their official, god-given Christian names like "Bulbasaur" and "Pikachu." It would have been more fitting, it said, to use language like "a character that infringes on Pikachu" or "a character that infringes on Bulbasaur."

"It is extremely inappropriate for the examiner to deliberately misidentify the infringing product as if it were a genuine product," Nintendo wrote.

Unfortunately for Nintendo, that's not how anything works, and the JPO said as much in its decision of refusal sent earlier this month.

Nintendo's assertion of copyright infringement, the JPO examiner notes, has no bearing on considerations of patentability, because Japanese patent law "contains no provision excluding inventions that infringe upon the copyright of others." Whether or not a cited work infringes on copyright, the examiner continues, "is irrelevant to the inventive step judgment, and this view is considered standard among patent practitioners."

Further, the JPO said that it would be "an absurd misunderstanding" to think that its examiners misidentified the fan game as an authentic Pokémon product, and even if there were "the possibility that the reasons for refusal could be subject to such an absurd misunderstanding," it would still have "no bearing on the inventive step judgment."

Even the JPO examiner seems baffled by why Nintendo objected to using a gameplay video as evidence, writing that they're unclear whether Nintendo thinks a video of gameplay can't sufficiently demonstrate the relevant software concepts, or that Nintendo thinks it could be a video animation meant to look like a videogame and narrated as such by the uploader. The former, the examiner says, is more than sufficient evidence for refusal, while the latter is "too ridiculous" to consider.

The best bit, however, is where the examiner addresses Nintendo's complaints about misusing official Pokémon terminology by deploying Advanced Pedantry:

"If it's impermissible to refer to the character name in the reasons for refusal, then—accepting some redundancy in favor of precision—the elements should have been identified as follows: 'an object in the form of a small animal' instead of 'Pokémon'; 'an object in the form of a boy wearing a red hat' instead of 'Ash'; 'an object in the form of a small yellow animal' instead of 'Pikachu'; 'an object in the form of a small green animal' instead of 'Bulbasaur'; and 'a spherical object with a red upper half and a white lower half' instead of 'Poké Ball.'"

But, the examiner says, even if those terms were used, it wouldn't make the application's claims any more inventive, so the JPO's judgment remains unchanged. Oh well.

Despite how thoroughly the refusal reads like a proverbial newspaper swat on the nose, GamesFray notes that Nintendo has three months to petition for an appeal trial before JPO judges, and could still file further divisional patent applications with more carefully-crafted claims. And since this application is unrelated to the Palworld dispute, it won't have any bearing there either way.

Still, it's nice to know we're not the only ones who find this whole thing exhausting.

Leave it to trademark filings to publicly utter the name of a new videogame before anyone else: The next Kingdom Come will almost surely be called Kingdom Come Salvation. Huzzah.

That's according to a July 23 trademark filing by Warhorse Studios with the EUIPO, first spotted by Phrasemaker. Had the owners of the trademark not already been confirmed to be Warhorse, the styling of the Salvation logo (see below) would've been a dead giveaway, as is matching legal information for the Czech studio's other trademarks.

While Warhorse has yet to comment on the name reveal, it did already say back in May that another "Kingdom Come Adventure" was inbound. That announcement came at the same time as its upcoming Middle-earth RPG was announced—a high-profile project that I wager will become the studio's primary focus in the years ahead.

I'm trying not to read too much into the wording of that initial announcement, nor the name. Warhorse described its LOTR game as an open world RPG, but the Kingdom Come followup simply as an adventure—will Salvation take on a different, smaller format? Will it be an RPG at all? God I hope so. Middle-earth is cool and all, but I'd take another Bohemian romp any day of the week, and this series still needs to get to Prague!

Phrasemaker calls attention to a section of the trademark that refers to "entertainment services for matching users with computer games," which kinda sounds like Salvation will have multiplayer, or online functionally in the least. Intriguing.

If Salvation is another open world RPG on the scale of KCD2, it probably won't star Henry of Skalitz. Warhorse has been open about closing the book on Henry's story, and switching up the subtitle from "Deliverance" does suggest a fresh start.

Bad news for anyone looking forward to playing the new Tomb Raider game Catalyst next year: It's not going to be out until the year after that.

Word of the delay came from Amazon Gaming chief Jeffrey Gattis during an interview with The Game Business. Talking about Amazon's game investment strategy, Gattis said the company is into pretty much everything, "from what we call game night games, which are those phone-as-a-controller games, which I think of as single-A games that are in the single millions of dollars to develop, all the way up to triple-A."

Then, to provide an example of how Amazon remains committed to big-time, he dropped the news: "We've announced the two Tomb Raider titles—Atlantis comes February 12^th of next year and then we'll follow on in 2028 with the next one."

Tomb Raider: Catalyst hadn't locked in a hard release date, but when it was announced at The Game Awards in 2025 it was set for launch in 2027.

It's possible that Gattis merely got his years or games mixed up: I still occasionally do the 'what year is it?' Jumanji meme in real life when my wandering mind is suddenly snapped back to reality by someone asking if I've finished filling out the form.

But this strikes me as unlikely, for two reasons. One, saying "2028" specifically is very different from rolling with "next year" when you're not completely sure what year it is right now.

Two, and more to the point, Tomb Raider: Catalyst developer Crystal Dynamics appears to be in a bit of disarray. In March, the studio conducted its fourth round of layoffs in 12 months, and studio leadership—not just at CD, but anywhere that's taken a big hit—may say that cutting to the bone isn't going to impact ongoing projects, but at some point that's probably just not so, as presumably those laid off people served a function that they're not around to handle anymore. Even if you're only talking about the psychological toll that constant layoffs take on those who remain, that's going to have an impact.

To be sure, I've reached out to Amazon to ask if the 2028 target as expressed by Gattis is correct, and will update if I receive a reply. Until then, though, I'd suggest making other plans to occupy your gaming time in '27.

Saudi Arabia's proposed $55 billion acquisition of Electronic Arts has cleared one potentially significant hurdle, as the European Commission says it will not oppose the buyout.

"The European Commission has approved, under the EU Merger Regulation, the acquisition of sole control of Electronic Arts Inc. of the US by the Public Investment Fund ('PIF') of Saudi Arabia," the ruling states (via RPS).

"The Commission concluded that the notified transaction would not raise competition concerns, given its limited impact on competition in the markets where the companies are active. The notified transaction was examined under the normal merger review procedure."

The European Commission's approval of this deal came much more easily than its thumbs-up of Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard a few years ago, which spawned an in-depth investigation and specific commitments from Microsoft before the green light was given.

But the EA deal is also quite a bit different: Not a merger, but a transfer of ownership that will see the company taken private. That carries significant risks of its own, including the $20 billion in debt EA will take on to finance the deal, but those factors don't enter into this ruling, which is based solely on its impact on competition within the EU.

There are still obstacles ahead, at least nominally. Game developers and US lawmakers alike have expressed "profound concern" about the deal and called on the US Federal Trade Commission to "carefully scrutinize" the proposed takeover.

That doesn't seem likely to go anywhere, though. FTC chair Andrew Ferguson is a stalwart supporter of US president Donald Trump, Trump is tight with Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman, bin Salman is chair of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund—which will own more than 93% of EA if the deal is approved—and the whole thing is being backed by an investment firm founded by Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.

The RAMpocalypse, and more specifically the obscene price inflation it's driven, sucks for just about everyone with an interest in gaming. But one person it maybe doesn't suck for is Amazon Gaming boss Jeffrey Gattis, who said in a recent interview with The Game Business that high hardware prices could be good for Luna, the company's cloud gaming business.

Gattis said cloud gaming has historically "been a little bit of a solution in search of a problem," thanks primarily to the relatively low cost of consoles. Because of that, Amazon's goal with Luna hasn't been to supplant consoles, but rather to expand gaming to players who for one reason or another aren't interested in buying the requisite hardware.

Given the way prices have gone (and will likely continue to go), Gattis thinks, probably not incorrectly, that demographic is probably going to grow—and therein lies the opportunity.

"We saw the Steam Machine opening at $1,000," Gattis said. "We hear rumors about consoles, because of the RAM crisis, pushing up over $1,000 in Gen 10. So, I do think you get to a point at which more people will be in the consideration set for a cloud gaming solution, just because of the sheer cost of buying dedicated hardware."

The rising cost of games is also a consideration: "Games can be big investments, to go buy a $70 game, to go through the download experience, to pair a controller, and then spend hundreds of hours, in some cases, to complete them. So, we see an opportunity to serve a group of people who haven't really been well served because the console and PC companies are mostly focused on those hardcore players."

Amazon jumped into mainstream gaming with both feet several years ago, but despite having limitless money to throw at the problem it was never able to make serious inroads: Its biggest success was the MMO New World, and that one wasn't big enough to dodge the bullet when Amazon decided it was time to take the whole enterprise out behind the woodshed.

But now, according to Gattis, Amazon knows exactly what it's doing. "For the first time in a long time, I feel like we have a single gaming strategy. We understand what we're doing, we understand what we're not doing, and we're executing against it. And time will tell how well we can execute and how right we are about our thesis."

One of the challenges facing Luna is the selection of games it offers: Leading with AI-powered Judge Snoop Dogg is not the sort of thing that gives me high hopes for a platform. It does, however, afford me the opportunity to run the trailer!

Gattis said Amazon is trying to encourage a wider range of publishers to put their games on Luna, a process that includes convincing them won't cannibalize conventional sales—and ties into his belief that high hardware prices could be a boost for the platform.

"The reality is, at least the pitch that we keep making—and it is the truth—is that this is about reaching players that a lot of those games are never going to be able to reach," Gattis said. "Particularly in a world of $1,000 consoles."

I'm personally dubious about cloud gaming in general: That arises in part from personal bias—I live in a rural area with internet access that would never support serious cloud gaming—but even so, infrastructure concerns are real.

Despite that, I think Gattis is probably correct: Skyrocketing hardware prices are going to force some people away from conventional PC and console-based gaming, and to some extent—based largely on how effectively it's able to fill the gap—that's going to be a boost for Luna.

Minecraft has been out a whole 17 years now, which makes me feel very old as I played it as a teenager when it launched, using (I believe) an AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition and 9600 GT. Oh how times have changed. Now, Microsoft has updated its system requirements to 16 GB of RAM and an RTX 2060 or equivalent GPU for recommended performance in the Java version of the game.

Comparing this to an archived snapshot of the requirements from May last year, that's 4x the RAM that was previously recommended, although another snapshot strangely does suggest that Microsoft recommended 4/8 GB back in 2022. And regarding the GPU, well, last year Microsoft still suggested a 700-series Nvidia GPU or equivalent for recommended performance. In other words, a big shift.

Here are the new requirements in full:

Note that the minimum requirements have been upped, too, from 2 GB of RAM to 8 GB (or 12 GB if you're on an integrated GPU) and from Intel HD Graphics 4000 or equivalent to a GTX 950 or equivalent. CPU requirements have all been upped too, of course, with the recommended now being a Core i5 12400 or Ryzen 5 5600.

Bear in mind Microsoft isn't saying anything has actually changed from when the previous system requirements were listed, it's just updating its listed requirements to reflect the current state of the game, as these "no longer represent what the game needs to run well today."

"Our goal is simple: we want to make it clear for players what kind of computer can run Java Edition smoothly. While older devices may still launch the game, they will struggle to deliver a good experience. This can lead to low frame rates, visual issues, long loading times, or performance that doesn’t match what players expect."

Updating the requirements also helps us keep improving Minecraft. Supporting hardware that no longer runs the game well can limit what we’re able to modernize behind the scenes. By setting clearer recommendations, we can focus on making Java Edition better for our players."

It's still a very easy game to run compared to a lot of modern games, of course. You don't want less than 16 GB of RAM these days even in a budget rig, and the RTX 2060 is now over six years old. I mean, compare that to a new game like Halo: Campaign Evolved which recommends an RX 9070 or Nvidia 3080 Ti, and it's clear Mincraft Java Edition is still pretty lightweight.

We'd be fools to expect much talk of desktop chips at the 'Advancing AI' event, but we can always grab pinches of salt and attempt to infer what talk about server chips might mean for desktop. To that end, I'd say (tentatively) that what AMD has revealed about its upcoming Zen 6-based 'Venice' server processor platform is promising for the Zen 6-based desktop chips, which are expected to launch either late this year or early on in 2027, perhaps at CES.

In the event keynote, AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su says the new Zen 6 core has "higher IPC, higher frequency, and that delivers up to 1.8x more performance than [Zen 5-based] Turin. That is one of the largest generational gains."

We don't know what exactly that 1.8x performance figure refers to, but we can make a reasonable speculation when we put it in context. The context is that AMD says it will run at up to 5 GHz, which is the same max clock speed we see in Zen 5 Epyc.

There could be differences here in the specific processors AMD is showing us, of course, and Su did say Zen 6 has higher frequency. But I think we can tentatively infer that if there are no massive changes in maximum clock speed, the fact that AMD can claim a performance increase of up to 1.8x could imply a decent gain in instructions per clock (IPC) to make up that extra performance, even if the reference point AMD is using for it is cherry picked.

That IPC gain would of course transfer to Zen 6 desktop chips using the same cores, which would mean more powerful and efficient chips. That's all very speculative, of course, but the seeming lack of big clock speed change plus such a big claim as 1.8x performance has me hopeful.

At the event, AMD also shared its roadmap for future server chips. Zen 7 will be coming in 2027, and Zen 8 in 2028, meaning there will be a yearly cadence. Presumably that will mean a yearly cadence for the desktop chips, too, though those will lag behind each server launch. Pass the salt, eh?

ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) is planning to break into the US memory market. According to sources close to the matter, branching out overseas is part of a longer-term plan for the Chinese firm that has swiftly become the fourth-biggest maker of memory in the world.

CXMT has been on my radar lately as multiple motherboard and PC component makers have made moves to validate its memory for their products. Considering the news that CXMT is reportedly massively ramping up its DRAM capacity during these times of memory shortage, it's not hard to see why.

However, we're still a ways off from seeing CXMT DRAM become more readily available in the US; in the nearer term, CXMT will have to navigate both intense domestic demand in China, as well as Western competitor Micron urging US lawmakers to curb the company's access to key equipment, plus a sword of Damocles in the form of a spot on the Commerce Department's trade blacklist (via Reuters).

Not even Apple has been safe from the effects of the memory crisis, and has been keen to seek assurances CXMT won't be placed on the US' "Entity List". Even with such a powerful supporter looking to buy its wares, what remains is still a challenging geopolitical obstacle course for CXMT to navigate.

Still, CXMT may have sufficient weight behind it to bulldoze through. For one thing, the firm saw $7.5 billion in revenue in Q1, which both represented a 719% year-on-year increase and erased six months of losses. The company also enjoyed Asia's largest IPO of the year, raising $8.6 billion. It's also obviously worth noting that CXMT is also supported by the state-backed semiconductor investment vehicle often simply referred to as the 'Big Fund'.

Money talks, but here's an illustrative example: Huawei, arguably the major player in Chinese big tech, has reportedly been demanding relief from CXMT over escalating costs. CXMT has chosen not to relent, with the situation finally coming to a head on one of its factory floors in June. Sources say a number of engineers were carrying out equipment maintenance when CXMT ordered them to leave its factory. Why? Because the engineers hailed from a vendor with extremely close ties to Huawei.

Though the company continues to work with Huawei, the engineers have not been allowed back. Huawei also remains without recourse to challenge CXMT's prices, just going to show how much power the memory manufacturer wields at home. Though seemingly unstoppable in China, whether CXMT will ever realise its Stateside ambitions remains to be seen.

Bethesda is eager to reassure you that its house is not, in fact, on fire in the wake of 3,200 layoffs (1,600 that already happened, 1,600 that are still to come) at Xbox that claimed numerous devs at the studio, including the artist responsible for designing The Elder Scrolls' khajiit and argonians. Thus, its recent announcement that it currently has Fallout 3 and New Vegas remasters in the oven as well as an incoming, Obsidian-made Fallout.

Now, in response to questions from YouTuber MrMattyPlays, Bethesda has said that the layoffs also won't affect its plans for The Elder Scrolls 6. "The roadmap [for TES6] is unaffected," said the studio. That's all you're getting. No, really.

Bethesda was ever-so-slightly more chatty about its plans for Oblivion Remastered. Yes, Bethesda has plans for Oblivion Remastered. I'm as surprised as you are.

Since a one-two punch of patches the game got shortly after it released last year, the UE5-ified re-do of one of the funniest games ever made seems to have been largely forgotten, despite still having its fair share of performance hitches and bugs. MrMattyPlays also asked if Bethesda planned to remember Oblivion Remastered on other platforms when it gets its Switch release in August. Apparently it does!

"The team working on remasters is focused on the Switch 2 launch," said Bethesda, but take heart: that version "has optimizations we hope to bring to console/PC." I also hope that. I had a good time with the Oblivion remaster despite its issues, but I'd quite like to be able to enjoy it, you know, not in spite of anything.

Anyway, Bethesda has said a few times now that it would like to be a bit chattier and more open with fans going forward, and it reiterated that here. It also said its new Glasnost policy isn't because Xbox boss Asha Sharma is making the studio do it: "Look, we read the internet too," said the studio.

"All of our fans and plenty of creators have been asking for us to lay out our road map for a long time. As bits of info or announcements come out individually, they get lost in the larger picture of all we're doing as a studio. So, we felt it was best to do it all at once and paint a clear picture for everyone. This is a shift in our approach to communication that Bethesda Game Studios has been contemplating for some time now."

I'll be honest, I can't say I completely buy that, given the timing of all this, but I suppose I welcome a more communicative Bethesda anyway.

The Halo remake has released for those who forked out for the advance access version, and they're not thrilled with what they've got. At time of writing, Halo: Campaign Evolved is sitting at a humdrum 68% Mixed rating in the Steam user review scores—a mere 2% off the score given to the game by our Morgan Park in PCG's Halo remake review.

Why are fans—who were sufficiently John-117-pilled to pay the advance access premium—underwhelmed? Oh, the classic reasons: bugs, server problems, utterly extraneous account linking requirements. It wouldn't be a 2026 videogame release without those, would it?

"Login failed. Cannot play the singleplayer game as servers are overloaded," reads a review from Steam user GoatMedic󠁳Echoo. "Screw your DRM. Combat was not evolved." That's pretty much the vibe when it comes to how users feel about signing into their Microsoft account to play. "Error 400 or 500 when trying to login to Microslop's online services to connect Steam account," says user LVL13_. "Typical."

On the plus side, Halo Studios is replying to complaints about login issues to let fans know they're fixed. "This login issue should now be resolved. If you're still encountering this issue, please close and restart Halo: Campaign Evolved," reads the dev comment posted in reply to various different login complaints.

It seems to be more and more common for devs and publishers to wade in and start answering negative reviews these days, which makes me feel a little bad for whoever it is that gets saddled with the responsibility.

Anyway, Halo Studios does not yet have a canned answer for the other complaints players have. Many are encountering technical issues, with one user complaining of "constant crashes, graphical shimmering effect with fast movement [and] inability to disable upscaling". "Disgusting frametime spikes and stutters," laments another. They're far from the only ones. Plenty of the negative reviews touch on performance problems at least once.

All Halo Studios can offer in reply to that is a comment that performance feedback is being passed onto the devs, which probably would not mollify me if I had paid extra money for advance access to a videogame.

The best gaming mouse on the market right now is the Razer Viper V4 Pro. It's the best because it's light, very well-built, performant, and has great battery life. This last quality—its battery life—is largely thanks to Razer's new FrameSync tech, which is kind of like G-Sync but for a mouse sensor rather than a monitor's refresh rate. And now we have independent testing confirming that the new and innovative tech works as Razer describes it.

We had indirect confirmation of it before just from the fact that the Viper V4 Pro's battery life is so good (180 hours at 1 kHz polling), but it's reassuring and, frankly, just cool to see it confirmed regardless.

With any gaming mouse, there are two main things going on: optical scanning and polling. In the first case, the sensor scans for movement across your mouse pad in many snapshots per second. In the latter, the PC polls for (requests) that movement data from the mouse.

Well, actually, there are three things going on, because in between those two lies the microcontroller unit (MCU), which prepares the sensor data to hand off to the PC when it polls. Razer's innovation with FrameSync is to get all three of these aligned by making the sensor only scan at the same time it's polled for, meaning it can keep things responsive but also keep the sensor scan-outs low and save power.

Anyways, all this is great on paper, but how could we even confirm it? Well, X user and peripheral YouTuber piaknow has figured it out and put FrameSync to the test. Using a cornucopia of wires and a Rigol DS1102Z-E oscilloscope, they confirm that "Razer's FrameSync is REAL."

They explain: "Yellow line shows the USB signal and blue line shows the sensor light source. The phase between them being fixed shows that they are actually synchronized, as advertised."

So yep, it seems it's true: Razer FrameSync does, in fact, sync the sensor to the polling rate. Although it's worth noting that one commenter claims they get some small deltas, and piaknow confirms "I do get 0.25 ms intervals periodically... but because the counts are doubled at the same time, maybe it's simply packet loss due to some type of periodical extra process?"

I'm not the one with the oscilloscope, so I certainly can't say, but at any rate the periodical deltas don't seem too big, and certainly not enough to throw off the overall oscilloscope picture and the fact that FrameSync is seemingly doing what it says on the tin, just perhaps not absolutely perfectly.

That being said, there's apparently still a DPI downshift problem, which I've explained previously. Sensors, eh, there's more to them than we might think! For my part, I haven't noticed any issues with the Viper V4 Pro's sensor, and it's great to see some genuinely new tech confirmed independently.

On its early access launch yesterday, those who paid to get early access to Halo: Campaign Evolved on Steam couldn't seem to open the game, as it simply wouldn't stop opening up the art book instead. I mean, I enjoy a good art book as much as the next guy, but not being able to play the game you bought on the day it launches sounds like a nightmare to me. Luckily, a fix rolled out pretty quickly.

Forty minutes after reports came in, a member of the Halo team took to the Discord to report "the Steam Art Book issue should be resolved shortly and will only require a Steam Client restart." Checking in on the Discord, this did seem to go live shortly after, and reports started to slow.

Only took 40 minutes but they’re looking into the issue now from r/halo

However, even then, there was a workaround, which is worth trying next time something like this happens. As pointed out on Reddit, right-clicking on the game, clicking Properties and uninstalling the artbook seemed to get around the problem for users.

In fairness, it is a pretty nice art book, and surprisingly involved. It is its own application, coming with the aforementioned art, a game manual, and even a short story. Adding to this, it has music while you scroll. Coming in at a handful of GB, it is an impressive art book. It's just a shame it got in front of people's eyes in one of the worst possible ways.

This is not the only problem stopping players from playing Halo: Campaign Evolved. You need to link your Microsoft account in order to actually play the game. This is a problem as it means that just booting it up for the first time requires a connection to a server. As you might be able to guess, that server was having problems yesterday.

Still, once you have linked your Microsoft account, you can play the game offline on your PC. It's just a shame how many hoops players are jumping through to play the game they just bought.

If you do happen to get stuck into Halo: Campaign Evolved this week, my personal advice is to skip Ultra graphical settings and stick the game on Low. There's very little difference between the two, and you get a healthy performance bump for picking the latter. If you are on a gaming handheld, I'd recommend playing the game on Very Low (a handheld exclusive mode) with FSR Medium, as even the mighty Asus ROG Xbox Ally X can't handheld the game very well on Native.

Finally, and this is evergreen advice, turn off motion blur. It's particularly egregious in Halo: Campaign Evolved.

From leading technology company to talk of it being sold off to the highest bidder, Intel has had a bumpy ride as of late. The company just reported its Q2 2026 earnings, however, and they're surprisingly upbeat. Revenue, margins, and earnings per share are all above expectations, and even the Foundry business doesn't appear to be floundering quite so badly as it was once made out to be.

Let's start with Foundry, Intel's manufacturing arm. When Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan joined the company a year ago, he threatened to halt development of cutting-edge process nodes (if not a death sentence, pretty close to one) if a big customer wasn't found or goals left unmet for the 14A process.

"There are no more blank checks," Tan said at the time. Yet he couldn't sound much more positive about the Foundry business today.

"My confidence in our foundry process roadmap has grown significantly since joining over a year ago. I am more confident than ever of the strategic in significant and unique value proposition of Intel Foundry," Tan says in the earnings call (via Seeking Alpha). "During Q2, our factories across Intel 7, Intel 3 and Intel 18A exceeded internal volume targets, driven by improving yields, better cycle times and increasing wafer starts."

That's good news on Intel 18A, which is used for Core Ultra 3 Panther Lake chips. Though whether Intel would be quite as honest to admit when yields were a bit pants, I'm not so sure. Improvements were recently suggested to have taken place with 18A to reduce wafer-to-wafer variability issues, which sure would help out a lot.

There is also a rumour that Nova Lake processors, destined for desktop, are also returning to Intel 18A following initial planned production using competing foundry TSMC, as Arrow Lake chips currently do. But it's tough to say if there's much truth to this.

Further out, Tan is positive about progress with 14A, the next big leap to come in chip production, which is reportedly on track for risk production in the second half of '27 and high-volume production in '28. It'll be a while before we see anything using this node for our gaming PCs.

"Looking beyond 18A, I'm encouraged by our progress on Intel 14A. Defect density and transistor performance are all outpacing 18A development."

Overall, Foundry work is still very expensive, leading to an operating loss of $2.1 billion in just the three months of Q2. Yet that's an improvement, would you believe, on the previous quarter, to the tune of $348 million.

As for Intel's overall earnings, it's great news there. David Zinsner, Intel CFO, reports revenue up to $16.1 billion, from $13.6 billion in Q1, and 25% up from this time last year. That's apparently the company's best growth since 2011. Revenue was $12.9 billion in Q2, 2025, and back then, Tan and the top Intel crew were sounding a lot less positive about the company's trajectory. This was also a time when it was making sweeping cuts to employee counts.

"Let's say, I also know that turning the company around will take time and require patience," Tan said in 2025. "We have a lot to fix in order to move the company forward, and I'm determined to drive the changes necessary to improve our performance. I'm equally confident that as we execute, we will rebuild this company and have a bright future."

In the latest earnings call, Tan has been thanking employees for their efforts and signalling renewed interest and excitement for Foundry and the company's own products.

"Our advanced packaging and wafer foundry capabilities become increasingly vital assets. Our strategy is clear and pace of execution is accelerating. Opportunities in front of us are substantial. Our strategy is showing early results, and I'm confident that Intel is well positioned to help define the next era of computing."

Intel's CCPG, Client Computing and Physical AI Group, covers chips us lot use for gaming PCs—well, if you're one of the few eschewing AMD for Intel—made $8.9 billion. That's up 15% from last quarter, and Zinsner notes it as "better than our expectations". No wonder, as the memory crisis grips the PC gaming hardware world and won't let go.

We were quite down on the idea of Intel even bothering with an Arrow Lake refresh before the release of the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and Ultra 5 250K Plus. Yet these chips are actually pretty great for the money—perhaps this is, too, part of a new direction for Intel.

Yet, in less positive news for us lot, it looks like demand is outstripping supply even on the CPU side of things.

"It's important to note that despite exceeding our expectations for wafer outs in the quarter, strengthening demand continues to outstrip our growing supply," Zinsner says. Though he notes that server-chip supply is where all the growth is set to be later in the year, as client-side (including gaming stuff) demand is set to soften as the memory crisis rages on.

Later in the call, Zinsner says, "we can't fulfill the demand… So we'll pivot as much of the production as possible over to CPUs and data centers to try to do our best to catch up to what is a pretty significant difference between our ability to supply and the demand out there."

So, again, that's not great for us lot, but Intel is probably squealing with excitement that it finally has demand to float its big Foundry boat.

Most of all, the tone just feels very different for Intel today compared to just 12 months ago, when arguably it was still making serious cash every quarter but really down in the dumps about it. Tan seems to be less doom and gloom about the Foundry business, the company isn't signalling any sweeping changes to employee counts (which were mentioned in last year's Q2 earnings), and it seems to have demand and at least one more customer lined up for its Foundry service (Fortinet) this week.

Is the company back on best form? No, it's still got a long way to go to outcompete TSMC, AMD and Nvidia in various ways, but it'd be tough to imagine this Intel in 2026 subject to such claims as being bought by one of its biggest competitors, as was rumoured to be considered with some degree of seriousness, in 2024.

I fulfilled a childhood ambition over the past week: I finally got the notoriously elusive Big Boss rating at the end of Metal Gear Solid 1, a feat I've simultaneously been drawn toward and terrified by ever since I first played the game on my PS1 in 1998. How did I do it? Stick-to-itiveness, gumption, and raw skill.

Also, cheating. I played the much easier Japanese version of the game and exploited a couple of speedrunning skips in order to hasten my progress. Hey, it counts.

Anyway, my challenge to you, reader, is to accomplish the same thing in the ongoing free-to-play period for Metal Gear Solid 1 on Steam, which expires Monday, July 27 at 10 am EDT / 1 pm PDT / 6 pm BST. You should probably do it the non-cheating way. It was cool when I did it, but for you? A bad look. I don't make the rules.

If you'd like to know why a three-year-old re-release of a 28-year-old game is currently running a free-to-play trial thing, I have two answers for you. The first: the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol 2—which finally frees Metal Gear Solid 4 from its PS3 prison—is due out on August 27, and this is a way to gin up some MGS hype. The second: Konami is a baffling company that operates according to no law but its own.

If you shied away from Vol 1 of the MGS Master Collection for the state it was in at release, I have good news: it is much better now. All three MGS games in the collection have received significant patches since its lackluster opening day, and MGS1 in particular now looks and feels a lot better, thanks to the ability to switch on higher-resolution rendering and actually functional analogue controls.

And if you still want to sand down the remaining rough edges, I recommend the MGSM2Fix mod, (which can be easily installed via Luxtorpeda if you're playing on Steam Deck or desktop Linux).

I've been squirrelled away in the PC Gamer office all week testing Halo: Campaign Evolved on all manner of hardware, including a beastly rig with an RTX 5080 and Ryzen 7 7700X3D. To my surprise, the difference between Low and Ultra is incredibly subtle and, frankly, not worth the performance hit.

Across the majority of my testing, I saw the swap from Low to Ultra take a big bite of performance (around 20%). That may not be a huge deal at close to 200 fps, but in my RTX 4070 Super rig, that makes the difference between being able to run the game at a consistent 60 fps at 1440p with no upscaling.

Below, you can see the difference between Low and Ultra in the very first mission of the game. Other than the UI element up the top left, you'd be forgiven for assuming there is no difference between the two images.

Low | Ultra

Image 1

Image 2

I did spot a slightly bigger difference between Low and Ultra when you are sucked up into the spaceship on the third set of missions. Though blood textures look nearly identical, the light hits the gun every so slightly differently, and shadows are a tad softer on Ultra.

Low | Ultra

Image 1

Image 2

Perhaps the biggest change I noticed between Low and Ultra is in foliage, as some detail is removed on the former. Lighting looks a bit worse too. But it's not a huge detractor from my enjoyment of the game.

Low | Ultra

Image 1

Image 2

From my testing, there is a reason to go for the Ultra preset: if you want to play the game with DLSS or FSR set to Low (which renders 33% of the resolution and upscales it). The swap between Low and Ultra when DLSS is set to Low has a very small effect on the fps, so I'd probably just opt for Ultra in that specific use case. However, with DLSS at Ultra, I saw dips of 22%, so I'd once again pick Low here.

Halo: Campaign Evolved | Native (1440 Low)Halo: Campaign Evolved | Native (1440 Medium)Halo: Campaign Evolved | Native (1440 Ultra)Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Low (1440 Low)Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Low (1440 Medium)Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Low (1440 Ultra)Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Medium (1440p Low)Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Medium (1440p Medium)Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Medium (1440p Ultra)Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Ultra (1440p Low)Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Ultra (1440p Medium)Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Ultra (1440p Ultra)Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Low (1440p Low)Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Low (1440p Medium)Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Low (1440p Ultra)Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Medium (1440p Low)Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Medium (1440p Medium)Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Medium (1440p Ultra)Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Ultra (1440p Low)Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Ultra (1440p Medium)Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Ultra (1440p Ultra)

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

51

45

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

74

55

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

118

100

Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)

101

90

037.575112.5150

Halo: Campaign Evolved | Native (1440 Low) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	51 Avg FPS, 45 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	74 Avg FPS, 55 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	118 Avg FPS, 100 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	101 Avg FPS, 90 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

49

44

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

65

47

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

111

96

Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)

91

83

037.575112.5150

Halo: Campaign Evolved | Native (1440 Medium) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	49 Avg FPS, 44 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	65 Avg FPS, 47 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	111 Avg FPS, 96 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	91 Avg FPS, 83 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

37

28

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

52

41

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

88

79

Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)

69

64

0255075100

Halo: Campaign Evolved | Native (1440 Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	37 Avg FPS, 28 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	52 Avg FPS, 41 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	88 Avg FPS, 79 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	69 Avg FPS, 64 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

77

44

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

127

97

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

168

116

Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)

205

155

075150225300

Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Low (1440 Low) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	77 Avg FPS, 44 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	127 Avg FPS, 97 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	168 Avg FPS, 116 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	205 Avg FPS, 155 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

79

45

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

118

90

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

169

114

Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)

198

152

050100150200

Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Low (1440 Medium) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	79 Avg FPS, 45 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	118 Avg FPS, 90 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	169 Avg FPS, 114 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	198 Avg FPS, 152 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

77

45

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

108

81

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

163

105

Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)

174

155.9

050100150200

Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Low (1440 Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	77 Avg FPS, 45 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	108 Avg FPS, 81 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	163 Avg FPS, 105 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	174 Avg FPS, 155.9 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

77

45

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

114

87

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

162

114

Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)

178

155

050100150200

Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Medium (1440p Low) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	77 Avg FPS, 45 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	114 Avg FPS, 87 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	162 Avg FPS, 114 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	178 Avg FPS, 155 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

75

43

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

103

78

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

162

112

Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)

168

151

050100150200

Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Medium (1440p Medium) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	75 Avg FPS, 43 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	103 Avg FPS, 78 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	162 Avg FPS, 112 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	168 Avg FPS, 151 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

74

45

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

93

68

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

154

115

Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)

140

129

050100150200

Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Medium (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	74 Avg FPS, 45 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	93 Avg FPS, 68 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	154 Avg FPS, 115 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	140 Avg FPS, 129 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

73

45

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

97

70

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

160

113

Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)

152

139

050100150200

Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Ultra (1440p Low) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	73 Avg FPS, 45 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	97 Avg FPS, 70 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	160 Avg FPS, 113 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	152 Avg FPS, 139 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

70

44

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

91

62

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

152

115

Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)

139

128

050100150200

Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Ultra (1440p Medium) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	70 Avg FPS, 44 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	91 Avg FPS, 62 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	152 Avg FPS, 115 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	139 Avg FPS, 128 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

59

42

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

76

54

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

130

104

Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)

113

105

037.575112.5150

Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Ultra (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	59 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	76 Avg FPS, 54 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	130 Avg FPS, 104 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	113 Avg FPS, 105 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

82

52

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

148

92

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

172

119

050100150200

Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Low (1440p Low) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	82 Avg FPS, 52 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	148 Avg FPS, 92 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	172 Avg FPS, 119 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	N/A

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

80

52

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

145

93

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

172

119

050100150200

Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Low (1440p Medium) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	80 Avg FPS, 52 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	145 Avg FPS, 93 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	172 Avg FPS, 119 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	N/A

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

79

52

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

129

84

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

169

112

050100150200

Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Low (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	79 Avg FPS, 52 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	129 Avg FPS, 84 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	169 Avg FPS, 112 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	N/A

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

80

52

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

130

88

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

170

123

050100150200

Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Medium (1440p Low) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	80 Avg FPS, 52 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	130 Avg FPS, 88 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	170 Avg FPS, 123 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	N/A

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

77

49

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

124

87

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

165

120

050100150200

Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Medium (1440p Medium) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	77 Avg FPS, 49 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	124 Avg FPS, 87 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	165 Avg FPS, 120 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	N/A

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

74

51

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

105

75

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

150

113

037.575112.5150

Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Medium (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	74 Avg FPS, 51 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	105 Avg FPS, 75 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	150 Avg FPS, 113 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	N/A

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

76

54

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

110

78

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

156

122

050100150200

Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Ultra (1440p Low) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	76 Avg FPS, 54 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	110 Avg FPS, 78 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	156 Avg FPS, 122 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	N/A

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

71

53

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

102

73

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

148

119

037.575112.5150

Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Ultra (1440p Medium) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	71 Avg FPS, 53 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	102 Avg FPS, 73 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	148 Avg FPS, 119 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	N/A

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

60

48

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

84

61

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

127

110

037.575112.5150

Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Ultra (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	60 Avg FPS, 48 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	84 Avg FPS, 61 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	127 Avg FPS, 110 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	N/A

Naturally, which combination of graphics settings and upscaling you use will be dependent on what your rig can run, but I'd be picking Native or Ultra upscaling with Low graphics over Medium upscaling with Medium graphics any day.

Gaming handhelds get access to a special 'Very Low' graphical setting, which works well, with a little bit of upscaling sprinkled in. Particularly, in my time testing the game on the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X at 1080p, I recommend the Very Low setting with FSR Medium upscaling.

You can see my results for that test below:

Asus ROG Xbox Ally X performance

Halo: Campaign Evolved | Very LowHalo: Campaign Evolved | LowHalo: Campaign Evolved | Medium

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

FSR Low

49

39

FSR Medium

43

34

FSR Ultra

33

27

FSR Native

22

19

TSR Low

33

30

TSR Medium

32

28

TSR Ultra

31

26

TSR Native

20

14

015304560

Halo: Campaign Evolved | Very Low Data

Product	Value
FSR Low	49 Avg FPS, 39 1% Low FPS
FSR Medium	43 Avg FPS, 34 1% Low FPS
FSR Ultra	33 Avg FPS, 27 1% Low FPS
FSR Native	22 Avg FPS, 19 1% Low FPS
TSR Low	33 Avg FPS, 30 1% Low FPS
TSR Medium	32 Avg FPS, 28 1% Low FPS
TSR Ultra	31 Avg FPS, 26 1% Low FPS
TSR Native	20 Avg FPS, 14 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

FSR Low

32

27

FSR Medium

26

22

FSR Ultra

23

27

FSR Native

16

14

TSR Low

29

23

TSR Medium

29

25

TSR Ultra

29

25

TSR Native

16

14

010203040

Halo: Campaign Evolved | Low Data

Product	Value
FSR Low	32 Avg FPS, 27 1% Low FPS
FSR Medium	26 Avg FPS, 22 1% Low FPS
FSR Ultra	23 Avg FPS, 27 1% Low FPS
FSR Native	16 Avg FPS, 14 1% Low FPS
TSR Low	29 Avg FPS, 23 1% Low FPS
TSR Medium	29 Avg FPS, 25 1% Low FPS
TSR Ultra	29 Avg FPS, 25 1% Low FPS
TSR Native	16 Avg FPS, 14 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

FSR Low

28

24

FSR Medium

24

23

FSR Ultra

21

18

FSR Native

14

12

TSR Low

29

24

TSR Medium

28

25

TSR Ultra

27

24

TSR Native

15

14

07.51522.530

Halo: Campaign Evolved | Medium Data

Product	Value
FSR Low	28 Avg FPS, 24 1% Low FPS
FSR Medium	24 Avg FPS, 23 1% Low FPS
FSR Ultra	21 Avg FPS, 18 1% Low FPS
FSR Native	14 Avg FPS, 12 1% Low FPS
TSR Low	29 Avg FPS, 24 1% Low FPS
TSR Medium	28 Avg FPS, 25 1% Low FPS
TSR Ultra	27 Avg FPS, 24 1% Low FPS
TSR Native	15 Avg FPS, 14 1% Low FPS

Unless you're getting performance into the hundreds and a drop of 30 fps doesn't affect you, I'd be picking Low for my playthrough of Halo: Campaign Evolved. Just remember to turn off motion blur while you're in the settings, too, as it's not pretty.

OtherSide Entertainment's stealth game Thick As Thieves launched in May of this year, but felt like it should have been in early access. It only had two maps, and though its campaign changed the objectives as it bounced you back and forth between them in either co-op or solo play, it felt thin. Frustrations like the specifics of how its time-limit system worked and the absence of options like rebindable keys at launch didn't help.

While the first post-launch content update did give us rebindable keys at least, it wasn't enough to fully turn around the fortunes of Thick as Thieves. Which was a problem, because the other game OtherSide was working on was cancelled, and now it's had two rounds of layoffs leaving fewer than 10 employees remaining.

"Working in the gaming industry is at times delightful and at other times heartbreaking", says a message posted by game director Jeff Hickman, and ain't that the truth. Hickman goes on to confirm that "only a very small team remains" and therefore Thick as Thieves won't be receiving any further content updates. "To be frank," he writes, "this is not the outcome that any of us want, but we're facing the reality that ongoing development of extra content, modes and systems is not a viable path."

However, OtherSide and publisher Megabit are working together to ensure Thick as Thieves remains playable. "This mainly involves putting together a new version of the game that uses Peer to Peer servers for co-op play", Hickman continues. "The gameplay and flow of your experience will remain virtually identical, but will not need the use of dedicated servers in the cloud. This will allow you to continue playing with your friends when you desire and importantly, solo play will be completely unaffected. Once this work is complete, Megabit will take over the care of the game and respond to bugs and other issues as needed."

With hindsight, I wonder how much launching at a price of only $5 hurt Thick as Thieves. It created an impression of desperation and cheapness that even a slightly higher price would have mitigated, and the idea that it was thrown out half-baked as a fundraiser rather than being a game worth buying on its own merits dogged it from the moment of release.

But it's entirely likely that Thick as Thieves was a game that would always have a small audience no matter what its price tag, and whether or not it had stuck to its guns and stayed the PvPvE game it was initially billed as.

Ahead of a showing at Comic-Con in San Diego, StarWars.com has revealed the main cast of Star Wars Zero Company, the squad tactics game by ex-Firaxis XCOM vets. The topline for big Star Wars freaks: Dee Bradley Baker and Matt Lanter will be reprising their long-running roles as clone troopers and Anakin Skywalker respectively.

Baker always reminded me of the actors in Elder Scrolls games (like the inimitable Wes Johnson) in the way he elevated the high-volume job of voicing every clone trooper for like, a decade.

It's something you could see becoming rote or workmanlike, but across multiple shows (most notably Dave Filoni's The Clone Wars), Baker put some zip into named clones and one-line mooks alike. His main role in Zero Company will be Trick, one of the game's RPG-like story companions.

Lanter similarly defined Anakin Skywalker in the animated Filoni-verse. When I got to try Zero Company hands-on back in February, I clocked Baker as Trick immediately. The Summer Game Fest reveal that Anakin Skywalker will appear in Zero Company had me wondering if the Chosen One would get a similar treatment.

Elsewhere in the cast, Vic Michaelis of the popular Dropout universe of improv shows is voicing Runa Blask. Ignoring the "Zendaya is Meechee" of all these very Star Wars names for a sec, Runa was one of my favorite characters from my hands-on time: She's an advisor at your base and an insufferable, rude, former Separatist agent who sucks. She rules.

Alex McKenna (Sadie Adler in Red Dead 2), Judy Alice Lee (Melinoë in Hades 2), and D.C. Douglas (Albert Wesker in Resident Evil, Legion in Mass Effect) caught my eye as notable performers from other videogames.

That strong cast is important, because Zero Company is trying to blend some lavish, cinematic storytelling in with its hardcore tactical gameplay. From my hands-on experience, it's looking like a winning combination. We'll know for sure when Zero Company releases on August 27⁠ for a blessed and anachronistic $50 price tag. Until then, you can wishlist it on Steam.

The Blizzard developer who was caught using World of Warcraft game master (GM) abilities to insta-kill two bosses for some friends has been fired from the studio.

Earlier this week, a Reddit user posted combat logs of a Mythic+ dungeon where a boss with almost full health died instantly to a GM ability. Not long after, another Reddit user found evidence that the GM did the same thing to a boss earlier in the run.

One of the players who was present for the unauthorized intervention then went onto a Twitch stream and admitted to asking their GM friend to cheat so they wouldn't have to redo the dungeon: "I go to my GM friend and I'm like bro please can you do me a solid? This thing has 20 million [health] bro, can you please just one-shot it?"

The only way for the GM to kill the bosses on command would've been if they were spectating the run, which is pretty uncommon these days, to the point that most people were surprised GMs still existed when they heard the story. Most customer service problems are solved on Blizzard's website instead of in-game. The only times GMs need to be on-call like this is when players are testing raid fights on PTR or competing in the world first raid races.

Because of this, many people were speculating that this wasn't an isolated incident and worried that GM friends could've been secretly assisting with other Mythic+ runs. According to Blizzard, that's not the case. "We can confirm that this was the action of a single Blizzard employee, in violation of our Code of Conduct," community manager Randy "Kaivax" Jordan wrote in a forum post today.

Blizzard says it will also be "taking action against the player accounts that were complicit in this violation." There's been a lot of speculation from the community, but it is not clear how many people were aware of the GM in the group.

"It has always been the case that a small number of Blizzard employees can use developer tools and spells on live servers: this lets us test and make urgent fixes to the live game when they’re needed," Kaivax says. "Every use of these internal spells and commands on live realms is logged and shared with our Platform Security team to help ensure that the occasional use of this access is warranted. The use of development tools for anything other than development work is against company policy. It's because of the process we have in place around use of these tools that we're confident this incident was isolated to one individual."

Even though the Mythic+ dungeon wasn't a particularly notable one—the players just wanted to finish it for a title—the record of it has been disqualified by ranking site Raider.io. You can, however, still go and look at what went down.

Don't give me hope, PC Gamer's Elie Gould expressed when Zach Cregger's upcoming Resident Evil film got a teaser in April. They've been let down by Resident Evil movies before, as have we all, but that teaser did give the impression that it might be good.

Now the full trailer for Cregger's take on Resident Evil is out, and I'm not sure if this counts as good news for Elie or bad news—but yeah, it really does look like this might be a winner.

What's interesting about the film, as Cregger explained in May, is that it "takes place alongside the events of Resident Evil 2," but won't include any of them, or anyone you know from the game: "It's an alternate storyline that takes place on the periphery of the hero's storyline, so it's a story that could be happening without necessarily breaking the universe of the story the games are telling."

Cregger said at the time that the film reflects what would happen if he were thrown into a Resident Evil situation in real life, utterly unprepared or unequipped for the situation: "I think it's just fun to be following someone with no combat experience whatsoever as they're walking through hell with a machine gun."

You can see that kind of "fun" in the trailer, which has a very down-dressed Austin Abrams—average guy extraordinaire—suddenly up to his neck in awfulness. There's a humor to it not present in that April teaser that reminds me a bit of the Evil Dead flicks: That zoom-in on the shotgun over the mantle is just about a dead lift from Sam Raimi's groundbreaking splatter flicks, and Abrams' reaction as he looks out the window and sees the zombie running toward the house, well, maybe it's just me but I find it very funny.

I don't think the whole film is going to be played for laughs—Cregger has previously said that what he loves about survival horror and Resident Evil specifically is the "overwhelming feeling of dread," and individual moments of levity don't mean that the experience as a whole isn't going to be horrific. But I do think that by making a parallel addition to the mythos, Cregger has a chance to cook up something much more interesting than previous films—and maybe, one that's actually good.

Resident Evil is set to hit screens on September 18.

A Deadline report says Atari, in partnership with management and production company Entertainment 360, has signed a deal that gives Universal Pictures the right to turn 10 of Atari's best-known games into movies.

"For more than five decades, Atari has created games and worlds that have remained part of popular culture long after their original release," Atari chairman and CEO Wade Rosen told the site.

"We are excited to work with Universal and Entertainment 360 to bring the spirit of our iconic brand and games to a new medium."

The games in question are undeniably Atari classics, although not necessarily obvious fodder for film adaptations:

• Asteroids
• Adventure
• Berzerk
• Breakout
• Centipede
• Crystal Castles
• Millipede
• Missile Command
• Pong
• Yes, Pong
• Yars’ Revenge

The intent, according to the report, is to turn the properties into "big-scale action-adventure fare."

"Matt Reilly and I grew up playing Atari 2600 games and have remained fans ever since," said Guymon Casady of Entertainment 360, a producer on the first film to come out of the deal. "The best Atari games dropped you into a world and let your imagination do the rest.

"[Screenplay writers Carl Hampe and Matt Reilly] saw an opportunity to take that same spirit and build an original, large-scale adventure around it. From the moment we read the screenplay, we believed there was a great movie here."

Well, they made a Battleship movie, didn't they.

Did it suck? Sure did. Did it make money? Eventually, apparently, although it took some time and a tour of duty on streaming services. Is this sort of thing symptomatic of a creatively bankrupt entertainment industry that's running on the fumes of nostalgia and not a whole lot else? I'm gonna say maybe!

But here's the thing: When I read this Deadline report I immediately had a sense that this had been done before, and I was correct—to an extent. Film projects based on Missile Command and Centipede were announced in 2016, and an Asteroids film project was picked up by Universal in 2009. I don't know whatever came of them (and, as an aside, I would advise caution when searching for Centipede-related movie trailers), although I would assume they all fizzled out. I've dropped a line to Atari to ask about that.

Atari itself seemed destined to meet the same fate, although it appears to have turned things around in recent years with notable and (so far) not-disastrous moves like buying Nightdive and Digital Eclipse, releasing a new Jeff Minter game, finally doing great things with its huge back catalogue, and—this is particularly important—getting away from the crypto business.

Does all of that make me think we're likely to get a good movie based on Breakout? Absolutely not. But it might be fun to watch them try.

Sony's decision to stop producing game discs in 2028 has caused a real uproar. Some PlayStation owners see a dire future as they become dependent on digital services and lose the ability to trade old games in for new ones, while at least one analyst says we'll all get used to it quickly enough anyway. Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has now weighed into the debate, and he's clearly in the "no big deal" camp.

Guillemot was asked during today's quarterly investors call if Sony's decision might create "a demand headwind," because of the loss of the secondary market for PlayStation games.

"What we saw on the PC is that it helped to grow the market," Guillemot said, presumably a reference to the explosive growth of Steam that drove a stake through the heart of physical PC game releases.

"There's also some pressure for the future on the cost of machines, and being able to be only digital will help to have more accessible machines, I would say. There are pluses and minuses, but we think it will not disturb the industry too much."

The impact of Steam on the evolution of PC gaming is obvious and undeniable, and while you might argue that it's not entirely a good thing (I certainly would), PC gamers are absolutely eating well these days—at least as long as you don't need to upgrade your rig. Sure, we can't take our old stuff down to GameStop and trade them in for new releases, but we do get regular, ridiculous deep discounts on Steam (and GOG, Humble, Epic, and numerous others) that pretty nicely balance the scales.

But the implied comparison strikes me as flawed. Consoles are walled gardens, and the PlayStation Store is very tightly controlled in ways that Steam never has been, even before it decided that (just about) anything goes. The likelihood of Sony loosening its grip in the all-digital future does not strike me as particularly good, and without that I think outcomes will also be different.

Expectations are different, too: The end of physical releases on PC was never mandated by any central authority, and the wheels started turning on the process well before gaming became the mainstream at-home entertainment it is now. How much impact will the absence of an optical drive have on costs? I do not know. It will presumably give Sony a little extra flexibility on pricing, but I wouldn't expect it to surrender any more of its bottom line than it has to.

Despite all of that, Guillemot is probably correct. If Sony sticks to its guns—and it surely will—then the only options we have are to either roll with it or go outside and find something else to do. Whether or not it's a good thing for gamers is a whole different question, and maybe it'll be a bumpier ride than I (and Yves) expect—on that one, we'll just have to wait and see.

Nvidia is far and away still the biggest AI hardware company, and a large reason for that is thanks to CUDA. AMD, however, thinks that CUDA might have already had its day in the sun and is a "non-event" for some companies.

At an Advancing AI pre-briefing, AMD's corporate VP and GM of its data centre GPU business group Andrew Dieckman explained:

"I used to talk to our customers about CUDA a fair bit. I have almost zero conversations with our customers about CUDA at this point in time. It's a non-event, certainly for our major... Like, everyone's programming at higher levels of abstraction. They're using different serving frameworks.

"And the other thing that's really accelerated [CUDA] not really being the 'moat' that some people still think it is, is the efficacy of the AI agents, the models themselves, to assist our customers optimising to the AMD platform. That's a 2026 phenomenon."

Obviously, AMD isn't an unbiased source on this topic, but if there's truth to what the company says, Nvidia's dominance in the AI hardware space could be threatened. Because the reason Nvidia is the sole AI-related company making significant profit (AMD is making a much smaller margin) is largely CUDA.

Nvidia has been cementing CUDA as the link between hardware and certain kinds of compute like matrix operations—which undergird AI—for years. So part of why so many AI companies use Nvidia hardware is because a lot of the tools, software libraries, and so on, have been built on top of CUDA, and it makes little sense to spend time and energy reinventing the wheel with something else.

That, plus Nvidia's capitalisation on it by leaning into full-scale solutions with CUDA at the centre, is largely why Nvidia has dominated the market.

The conventional view is that CUDA therefore protects Nvidia from competition. However, here AMD is saying it's not such an economic "moat", protecting the company and maintaining its advantage, as people may think.

According to Dieckman, AMD is seeing companies programming at "higher levels of abstraction" where CUDA isn't really needed. At these higher levels of abstraction, you're not interacting with the underlying framework(s) like CUDA at all, so you can take your pick and let whatever tools you're using deal with that translation to lower-level operations. And he also seems to imply that AI agents themselves can help optimise the platform without CUDA.

If CUDA does become irrelevant for these reasons, and if other companies, such as AMD, can offer cheaper alternatives, AI companies might start to branch away from Nvidia and towards AMD's ROCm, for instance. That would mean there'd be less need to buy into Nvidia hardware for AI.

That first 'if' is a big one, though. Because even if CUDA does become a "non-event" for some, others may prefer to play it safe with the infrastructure that's been working well so far. Especially given we're not playing with small sums of money when we're talking about AI data centres.

Less than six months after the release of the survival horror shooter Crisol: Theater of Idols, developer Vermila Studios appears to be in trouble. The studio has not officially closed, as one former employee had claimed, but CEO David Carrasco confirmed that employees have been let go and that a full shutdown "is a feasible possibility."

Vermila's reported closure was initially shared on X by game designer Raúl Pernía Alejandro, who said (via auto-translation) that "Vermila Studios has initiated a redundancy procedure that has ultimately led to the studio's closure and the departure of the entire team." Several hours after that message was posted, however, it was deleted and replaced with one stating that while the "entire team" has left, "for now the company remains active." Alejandro acknowledged the mistake in a subsequent apology.

Still, it was clear that layoffs had taken place, as numerous employees on X and LinkedIn, some of them in senior positions and with long tenures and Vermila, reported that they'd been let go on July 22.

Carrasco subsequently confirmed the cuts in a statement provided to Game Developer, saying that Vermila had not closed but that its future was uncertain.

"Unfortunately, due to financial reasons, we've had to dispense with the staff at Vermila Studios," Carrasco told the site. "We're going to try to pull through for the time being without shutting down, but the circumstances are quite difficult and it is a feasible possibility in the upcoming months."

Crisol wasn't a huge hit by any measure, but it was a reasonably well-received game, if somewhat niche. It's eurojank in all the right ways: more weird than horror, rife with underdeveloped ideas, a silly story, and bad voice acting, but also powerfully atmospheric and unexpectedly compelling.

I don't even think of it as survival horror, really—it's just an FPS with some weird mechanics. But I liked it well enough to play from start to finish, and even though I ran into various frustrations and annoyances along the way, I never seriously considered quitting.

As we've noted previously, though, making a good game is no guarantee of a secure future in the videogame industry—nor is making one that's a big hit. That likely comes as little consolation to former Vermila employees.

In a new message on X, "The Everything App," FromSoftware has revealed the final names and stats of the two additional classes coming in Elden Ring's $5 Tarnished Edition DLC. The Idus Knight looks sick as ever, while the Heavy Knight appears to have gotten the gentlest, most tender of nerfs since we saw their stats leak from a Tarnished Edition playtest last year.

The Heavy Knight will start at level 10, as opposed to eight in the playtest, with their two extra levels shaking out as a plus one to their Faith and Mind stats. Hardly ruinous, and I think HK will still be a new top pick for a very specific niche of builds (Hulk smash), but the change stands out to me all the same.

Due to Elden Ring's one stat point per level system and exponentially increasing cost to level up, it's beneficial for a class to start as low level as possible, avoiding any points lost to "junk" stats not used by your build. Buildcrafters got all in a lather about HK's aggressively min-maxed stats, and now those stats have been ever so slightly less min-maxed.

It's an almost imperceptible change for your average player, but may factor into speed or challenge runs and the like. Otherwise? Heavy Knight = big guy + big sword (of the "curved great" variety) + big armor, and both of those bits of gear are new to the Tarnished Edition.

The Knight of Idus has always been more exciting to me: An agile swordsman class to give the base game Samurai some competition. They start with a scandalously swagged out new armor set, a shield of indeterminate extraction, and the previously Shadow of the Erdtree-exclusive Milady light greatsword, an extremely cool weapon that used to take hours of gameplay to acquire.

Stat-wise, Idus strikes me as a slight upgrade to the Samurai (to the same degree that the Heavy Knight was slightly nerfed): More Faith and Strength, less Arcane, Vigor, and Int, but also a lower starting level of seven.

They also introduce the nation of Idus, which has never before been mentioned in Elden Ring, and will likely be the exclusive domain of the item descriptions for the knight's armor pieces⁠. Never change, FromSoftware. The DLC will be made available on PC the same day as the Tarnished Edition's Switch 2 release: August 28.

Knight of Idus stats

• Level: 7
• Vigor: 10
• Mind: 12
• Endurance: 11
• Strength: 13
• Dexterity: 15
• Intelligence: 8
• Faith: 11
• Arcane: 6

Heavy Knight Stats

• Level: 10
• Vigor: 14
• Mind: 8
• Endurance: 17
• Strength: 15
• Dexterity: 11
• Intelligence: 7
• Faith: 8
• Arcane: 9

My favourite hardware news stories lately have all followed a similar line of logic: 'Why? Well, why not?' But when it comes to the laptop MSI just unveiled as part of its 40th anniversary, I can't move past 'But why though?'

The sticking point for me is the Titan 18 HX Dragon Edition's ludicrous $7,000 price tag. Sure, you're getting an Nvidia RTX 5090 GPU with a pretty face-melting 24 GB of GDDR7, plus an Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus processor. And, sure, some versions of the RTX 5090 will set you back a couple grand all on their own, but not usually the slimmer laptop kind. Anyway, 7,000 smackers is still a lot of money for the power.

I hate to say it but the oodles of SSD storage and the whopping 96 GB of DDR5 might have something to do with it (thanks, memory crisis). Hey, at least if you buy directly from MSI, you also get a free code for Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight.

This very pricey gaming laptop also enjoys an 18-inch MiniLED screen, which features a maximum resolution of 3840×2400. The refresh rate is a not too shabby 120 Hz, but at this price point I was kind of expecting something fast enough to make my eyes roll back in my head.

Joking aside, I'm struggling to understand who this gaming laptop is really for, beyond an MSI super fan (or a scaly fan with deep pockets and terrible taste in dragon art).

It's far from the only spenny anniversary hardware we've seen this year. For instance, the Asus' ROG sub-brand celebrated two decades, launching a shiny, aluminium-dressed-up-as-copper motherboard back in May. The Astral ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 and a China-exclusive DRAM kit also got anniversary editions. Again, it's all a bit too rich for my blood, but I'll admit that those glistening gold designs are almost tasteful.