I'm standing on top of a flying fortress hundreds of feet in the air, as around me, 15 or so players wage a losing battle against a swarm of flying robots armed with rockets and lasers. It's utter chaos. We fight further and further into the ship, unlocking platforms, defeating waves of enemies and giant turrets which pop out of the deck to gun down unsuspecting looters. But I think we're done.

Time is running short and we've once again stalled at this stage of the puzzle. All that's left now is to try and make it back to ground in one piece and live to attempt another day. This is the Frigate, one of Arc Raiders two new raid-style activities, and it's exactly what the game needed.

Rather than content you can complete the day the update comes out, Frozen Trail's Frigate and Fallen Emperor represent a deeper loot chase, tied into upgrading the new outpost and workbenches to fashion special weapons which fire explosive bullets or incendiary grenades.

More than that: they're properly fun. I've raided a lot in Destiny 2, completed its dungeons more times than I can count (including soloing some) and I'm quite impressed with the variety of these endgame challenges, how they demand cooperation from players, but also really tie into the features and loot chase that Frozen Trail added.

While the Arc Frigate is a pitched battle blasting endless waves of robots as you try to unlock its cargo hold with a bunch of other raiders, the Fallen Emperor is more of an individual challenge. This series of mostly randomised encounters sees you solving puzzles and painstakingly platforming your way through its labyrinth of hazards and Hydra turrets, which love to pick you off when you're dangling in some precarious position.

It's a race to perpetrate a bank heist in the corpse of a colossal robot, and if that doesn't get your juices flowing, I don't know what will. Part of the fun is Frozen Trail's new Grappling Hook item, an easy to craft traversal tool that lets you scale and swing in a much more enjoyable way than the game's existing Snap Hook—I always carry one now, just for ease of exploration.

The Fallen Emperor is also smart in terms of loot, designed like a kids' gameshow (did anyone here watch Jungle Run?). Players who want the guaranteed big score at the end are incentivised to rush there, lest another raider beat them, but since there are loot containers between each encounter and concealed in them, other players can filter in and still have a chance at getting rare items and rewards for encounters without making it to the end.

The same goes for the Arc Frigate—it's not just about who gets there first; these encounters are layered with loot, and often reward exploration as much as pushing for the end goal, especially as the new upgrades require a wide range of materials.

Though Frozen Trail has its bugs—my reward pass still isn't fixed—this is such a positive update for the game's direction. If the PvE-mode test is anything to go by, we'll soon be able to play Arc Raiders' endgame events like the Fallen Emperor, Frigate, Matriarch, or Harvester without fear of getting ratted and having our loot stolen while we're trying to fight big arc, work together, and puzzle stuff out.

I'm not a player who minds PvP or the way it elevates the tension and excitement of the extraction shooter genre, but I think there's a good case to be made for a PvE-only option when running PvE-centric endgame events, which often require cooperation. It's also uniquely frustrating getting ambushed after successfully completing one.

This happened to me after landing a huge loot haul on the Frigate and basically being the only raider to make it out alive—I was riding high, I wasn't cautious, and of course some punk with a Kettle was waiting at extraction. He even said "Hello" before he ratted me. It's a sucky way to end these cool events and it dissuades players from investing in their challenge, so hopefully any eventual PvE mode that does appear will include these.

Still, these new raid-style events have me so excited for the future of Arc Raiders. I can't help but fantasize about how fun and rewarding a Destiny 2 length raid in Arc Raiders would be, or something similar to Building 21 or Koschei Complex in DMZ—a dedicated mode with its own timer, challenges, and bosses. I can't wait to see what endgame content Embark cooks up next.

God, life is stressful. There's too much to do and too few hours in the day to do it. So when I get a couple of hours of free time in the evening I have to be pretty mindful of what I do, and let me tell you getting domed in Arc Raiders by some rando hiding in a bush is not at the top of my list.

It's a shame, because I love the world of Arc Raiders. I love its mystery, its grandiose landscapes, and its bizarre communal storytelling that you just can't get in most games. But there's finally a solution: the PvE test.

Embark teased the test a few weeks ago, finally admitting that due to a large portion of its audience favouring a more passive approach to the game, it would test out a temporary PvE toggle . While Frozen Trail released a few days ago, the PvE test has only gone live now, and it's a hell of a lot of fun.

Dropping into Pendola Pass has never been so chill, well, it's more chill than usual; as soon as I came out of my bunker I was met with hellfire raining down on me and the pinging of bullets as they shot past my face while a couple of players attempted to take down the newer arc, a Bully. 'Ok' I thought to myself, 'I guess I'll start here'.

The Bully isn't anywhere near as lethal as a Queen but it's tankier than I expected it to be for its size as it ate my Wolfpack grenade like it was nothing. I hadn't come equipped for a fight like this but thanks to the growing group of curious raiders we managed to take it down before long. It may sound boring to someone who loves the adrenaline dump of PvP, but for someone who just wants to explore the map, take down arcs, and perhaps help out their fellow raider along the way this experience right here is golden.

Instead of shuffling around bushes and hiding in the shadows I feel relatively free to wander about the surface and actually take in the surrounding views. You still have to be careful of arcs, but not having your blood run cold when you hear footsteps closing in to your location is such a welcome change.

In fact, it's quite the opposite now, hearing raiders close by reassures me that if things were to go wrong, someone would help—which is especially nice when arcs in the PvE mode will finish you off if they catch you moving while downed. After taking out a number of arcs on my way to the Observatory my hubris was bolstered, so when I saw the new Skulker, a seemingly small and insignificant enemy, I thought that it would be easy pickings. I was wrong.

Maybe I was just unlucky, but this Skulker had a couple of other friends with it, and it took way more ammo than I thought to take it down. I was pinned behind a couple of crates, quickly going through all my reserves and trying to come up with an exit strategy when I heard gunfire. I have no idea where it came from, perhaps it was an angel from above, but a stranger saw I was in need of assistance, helped take the Skulkers out, and then moved on.

They were gone before I could say thank you, so I decided to pay it forward instead. On my way to the extract I saw a bunch of arcs swarming an outbuilding, I didn't have much ammo left but I still wanted to help, so help I did. I started taking pot shots at some of the Wasps to distract them away from the shed and before long another raider popped their head out and together we took them out. Nothing was said, but after a thankful wave we went our separate ways and I extracted back to Speranza.

As I said before, I love Arc Raiders for its world, action, and crafting, but it also just feels really nice to help without the worry that the person you've just saved may shoot you in the back of the head and ruin any faith in humanity you had left. The PvE test is a welcome change of pace, and I'll be playing it almost exclusively while I still have the chance.

Dan Houser is a co-founder of Rockstar Games and so I would never presume to tell him he's wrong about any of the games Rockstar has made—except in this one particular instance, where I feel obligated to step up and say, 'Dan, I'm sorry bud, but you're wrong.'

The game in question is Max Payne 3, on which Houser played a central role, and one he seems rather down on: In an interview with IGN, he said the game was a "failure" because, simply put, he's not Sam Lake, the Remedy creative director who wrote the first two Max Payne games.

As a very linear game, Max Payne 3 "was a little different" from the open world GTA games he was accustomed to, Houser said, but he also really enjoyed the experience. "I loved what we did design-wise, the way the game didn't have loads, the way it felt like a 12-hour movie, some of the visual stuff we did with words on screen.

Alas, he continued, "I felt we were creating a really cool digital noir experience, and the consensus at the time was that people hated it.

"So I got that completely wrong," Houser said. "I know Sam Lake well, and he's a very good guy and really talented. I thought we'd done a good job of doing another Max Payne game. Some people liked it; lots didn't. So we got it wrong, or I got it wrong. I failed. My bit was not a success.

"The game is beautifully made, and it wasn't as successful as it should have been. So I would say a large amount of that failure was on me as one of the people making the decisions and also as the writer, when people really missed his writing."

Max Payne 3 is a really interesting case study because it's very much a Max Payne game—grim and gritty, filled with bullet time, body drops, and snappy commentary about how much life sucks—but it's also a full-on Rockstar game, and thus a very different vibe from the previous two entries in the series. Fans who were expecting more of the same—or insisting on it, really—were bound to be disappointed.

But Max Payne 3 itself is nothing short of a brilliant, powerhouse cinematic shooter. It really does feel like "a 12-hour movie," powered by lush cut scenes, a brilliant soundtrack by industrial rock group Health, and great performances across the board, in particular from James McCaffrey in the title role.

With all due respect to Remedy, this is where McCaffrey really hit his stride, digging deep to deliver some truly great lines:

• I wouldn't know right from wrong if one of them was helping the poor and the other was banging my sister.
• Look at me, I'm standing in a nightclub, listening to music I can't stand, I'm five thousand miles from home, I'm armed, and I'm drinking. You don't want to listen to advice from me, amigo.
• I had a hole in my second favourite drinking arm, and the only way we were likely to get Fabiana back now was in instalments.

• I'd killed more cops than cholesterol and still no sign of Becker. It wasn't the first time it dawned on me I should probably have gone over the plan in more detail, but it was too late for that now.
• I was a dumb American in a place where dumb Americans are less popular than the clap.
• I'd put a big shit-eating grin on my face and let these assholes take turns trying to kill me. That's my style and it's too late in the day to hope for change.

• We'd half destroyed Sao Paulo's most hallowed place of worship. Looking back it was strange how the cops never showed up. But things had a habit of only making sense to me looking back, long after I'd run out of time to fix them.
• I'd been sitting at the bar for three hours, or about five years, depending on how you looked at things. I tried not to look at things.

It is fair to say that Max Payne 3 wasn't a massive commercial success: In 2012, publisher Take-Two Interactive said sales of the game came in "lower than expected," resulting in a significantly increased net loss for the quarter. But that's hardly the only measure of success, and I think it's notable that Take-Two said the same, at the same time, about Spec Ops: The Line, a game widely heralded, then and now, for its daring, subversive narrative.

Max Payne 3 was a slower burn, but I think the passage of time has given us a far better perspective on what Rockstar actually delivered: As former PC Gamer writer Andy Kelly wrote a full decade ago, "Over the years I’ve developed a greater appreciation for the risks Rockstar took in breaking Remedy’s established, and beloved, mould."

"It’s a radical departure, but it works," the other Andy wrote in his very correct take on Max Payne 3. "It’s always interesting to see a familiar character thrust into an unfamiliar situation, and Max is hilariously out of place in Brazil. As if being a white American in a favela didn’t draw enough unwanted attention, he makes his life even more difficult by wearing the loudest Hawaiian shirt imaginable. He was comfortable in New York, but here he’s an outsider, and the game plays up to it brilliantly."

And so, Dan, with all due respect, I have to say, 'I'm sorry bud, but you're wrong.' Max Payne 3 may have been divisive in its time, and it may not have been the big hit you were hoping for, but I sure wouldn't call it a failure. I'd say Rockstar, and you, absolutely nailed it.

Arc Raiders' new outpost system arrived with the Frozen Trail update, and like many I'm sure, I pretty much ignored the entire furniture aspect of it. My mind was occupied with upgrading the outpost itself, building rooms, and trying to get an Emperor Modulator and Frigate Inductor to level my Gunsmith and Research Bench. I wanted those spicy new amplified weapon upgrades like explosive bullets or incendiary shells.

I assumed the whole building outpost furniture thing was a cosmetic feature, but I was dead wrong. Crafting furniture in your Arc Raiders outpost actually gives you hundreds of extra storage slots for items and weapons and it's fairly easy to unlock, you just need to:

• Reach level 18 to start the Sheltered Retreat project.
• Take a picture of the Ruined Homestead.
• Donate some materials including planks and sheet metal.
• Damage flying arc and a Bully for the final step.

After that, you can complete the project and move in, recycle all of the boxes under blankets to get some planks, and start crafting some furniture.

Select an empty furniture slot in your main outpost, or by building a new room to put some in.

• Each piece of furniture you craft has a listed number of slots.
• Right click on the piece of furniture and choose "Decorate" to place items on it.
• There are shelves and gun racks that attach to the walls, but also standing pieces of furniture you can place items on.
• As with your stash, you can place full item stacks on furniture, too.
• To quickly return all the items stored back to your stash, just right click on the furniture piece and choose "clear all attached items".

You can find more blueprints for furniture out in the world, usually in residential areas—I've found tonnes in Pendola Pass's Old Town. If you fully take advantage of the three rooms your outpost offers, filling them with furniture, it'll give you a whole heap of extra storage.

The only problem right now is that you can't change your outpost's rooms and layout once constructed, so pick wisely.

Arc Raiders' Frozen Trail update adds a series of upgrades that let you create "Amplified" weapons, but to do this you'll need a Level 4 Gunsmith bench, which requires an Emperor Modulator to craft.

To get this item, you first have to acquire an Emperor Gateway Conduit blueprint to craft the key required to open The Emperor on the Pendola Pass map. You can apparently find this as a rare drop in Arc Couriers and on other maps, but you can also get it the same way you acquire the materials to craft it:

• Arc Conductive Coupler
• Arc Insulated Coupler
• Arc Plated Coupler

You get all three of these as random drops in the Redirection event on Pendola Pass. Wait for one of the Damaged Emperor Relays on the map to activate, grab the beacon from it, place it down in a quiet open area, and stand back. Harvester payloads will drop in—loot the big central one sticking out the ground for a chance to get one of these materials. You could also try entering The Emperor when someone else unlocks it.

How to complete The Emperor dungeon

Once you have your key to open The Emperor, you're ready to attempt the dungeon by opening the door in the west of Pendola Pass, though you'll need to bring a decent amount of equipment:

• Snap Hook: This is mandatory in my opinion for the platforming puzzles. You could even bring a Grappling Hook as backup in case it breaks, which is a real possibility your first time.
• Anvil or Renegade: You'll need this to destroy the yellow nodes in the more puzzly encounters.
• Hullcracker: This is for destroying the Hydra turrets inside The Emperor. You could also use a Rascal, though it'll slow you down a bit.
• Plenty of healing and shield rechargers: There are many hazards inside the dungeon, so you'll want plenty of healing.
• A Looting augment: You'll want plenty of space to pack in loot, plus a couple of safe pockets for more valuable items, including the modulator.

In terms of a play-by-play of the specific encounters, this walkthrough by crazymrpipz is really good and I can vouch for its accuracy having completed the dungeon myself, though I'll also lay out the encounters below.

The initial section with the corridor, the Hydra turret, and the electrified elevator you make safe by destroying the yellow nodes is always the same, but at the top of the elevator, The Emperor has multiple possible encounter layouts:

The Emperor layout one

The Emperor layout two

There might be more layouts than this, but the Hydra room seems to be a fixed encounter no matter what. After this point you will:

1. Descend down a tube, carefully dropping from platform to platform.
2. Enter into another room filled with pillars, but this one is a maze.
3. Ascend up a couple of tubes by Snap Hook-ing between boxes, avoiding the electrified ones, and climbing ladders to reach a door.

You will enter the final room, drop down onto a lower platform and descend a ladder to the base, though when you touch the floor, the big door at the far end will open and a load of Arc enemies will appear. Hiding is a good idea to see if they leave as opposed to fighting them all. Afterwards, you can loot the containers and also destroy the yellow nodes on either wall to reveal even more loot payloads which pops out of the racks.

One or two of these will contain Emperor Modulators, so make sure to stow one in your safe pocket. After that, you can either leave via the big hatch that opened, or the side doors if you destroyed the yellow nodes.

Arc Raiders has made lots of new tweaks and additions with Frozen Trail's 2.0 update, but one long-requested change of significant note is that you can turn off the light on your backpacks.

To do this, you need to:

1. Select the "Raider" menu.
2. Enter "Customization" on the bottom left of the screen.
3. Go to the "Style" menu at the top.
4. Choose "Backpack" on the left side.
5. Toggle the Emissive option to "off".

As you'll see, while looking at the backpack, the light will disappear and reappear as you toggle this, though where exactly the light is varies from pack to pack. This should help you be a little sneakier, though it might make your character a bit harder to spot in some of the game's darkest areas.

I remember being a kid and wishing I had shoes that lit up. I know now that I was a fool. If I festooned myself with garish lights, how would I scavenge for supplies in a frozen wasteland without being spotted by strangers who may or may not kill me before I can use my grappling hook to get away? This isn't a real problem I have, nor is it a real problem Arc Raiders players will have anymore, since your backpack now has an emissive toggle.

That's one of many little overhauls that arrived in Embark Studios' popular extraction shooter Thursday, and you can read all about the rest in the 2.0 patch notes. If you've not been tuned into the extraction world as of late, you did indeed read that right: Arc Raiders has gotten a big shakeup with the Frozen Trails update, which comes bearing snowy mountains and grappling hooks.

But that's not what's exciting about patch notes—the best part of combing through each little bullet point is seeing all those long-awaited bug fixes and little quality-of-life changes like the aforementioned emissive toggle for backpacks. That and tidbits like "added mouth animation for when players are talking in proximity chat," which I can only hope looks as silly in-game as it does in my imagination.

Some other big, but also small changes include the fact that you can open the map when you're downed now, new contextual animations for a variety of things (your character should look more exhausted when sprinting for a while), and an increased max stash size: 328 without expedition bonuses.

Snowy and desolate as it might look, Arc Raiders seems to be picking up momentum with the new update. Its average player count has gone way up recently, probably due to the free weekend that's going on right now, so it seems like as good a time as any to dive back in if you're so inclined. If that's you, try out our guides on how to arc raid with the best of 'em.

Here's a truth no one but I am willing to admit: Mafia 3 was good, actually. Please disregard PC Gamer's 54% Mafia 3 review. I don't know what happened there. Possibly Andy Kelly put the wrong game disc in by mistake. I understand they were still using game discs in 2016, alongside gramophones, the telegram, wax cylinders and what have you.

It's now 10 years old, which is deeply troubling, but earlier this week it got a new patch. "We're honouring a decade of Lincoln's legacy with a new Steam update bringing quality-of-life enhancements to Mafia 3: Definitive Edition, live now," says Hangar 13.

Don't expect anything gargantuan. If you bounced off Lincoln Clay's stylish and impeccably soundtracked (though, yes, a little repetitive, I will grudgingly admit) crusade against '60s mafioso racists back in the day, this probably won't lure you back in. Nevertheless, there are some nice changes here, and the ones that the devs give a particular spotlight are less janky mission progress, better NPC behaviour, and better achievement tracking.

That last one is self-explanatory, but for mission progress, the various little hitches that could interfere as you made your way through Mafia 3's main story have now been tended to: "We addressed several spots where players reported getting stuck and unable to make progress in missions like 'Get Enzo Conti,' 'Kill Tommy Marcano,' and the Epilogue" as well as some other mid-mission crashes that could occur.

Meanwhile, the fixes to NPCs should mean "Characters like Alcee, Father James, and others" no longer freak the hell out mid-mission. Which is less charming but probably better for completing the videogame.

There are a bunch of other changes, which I'll stick down below. But personally? I'm just glad Mafia 3 is still getting love.

Arc Raiders' Pendola Pass is packed to the gills with loot. No matter where you search, you're likely to come away with some rare items, whether you're smashing open iced up doors to get into sealed rooms, or climbing into hard-to-access spots with the Grappling Hook and yoinking everything not nailed down.

But some of the best loot spots I've found are the Storm Huts. Pendola Pass has a special weather condition called Flash Freeze where a snow storm randomly moves in and you start taking damage after a while, similar to the previous Cold Snap map condition. You'll also hear an emergency broadcast over loudspeakers explaining that the temperature outside is deadly, and special shelters are being opened up.

These are the Storm Huts and they won't appear on your map until the Flash Freeze occurs. Even if you find one, the door will be sealed, so they're only accessible when the cold hits. You might be thinking, well, I can shelter in any building, right? True, but these Storm Huts are also little loot rooms and they're one of the only places so far that I've found some of the more vague outpost crafting materials, like the Epoxy Bucket, Insulation Roll, and the Radial Press. I even got a Mountaineer Detector, a Riven Tides-style metal detector for snow I've never seen anywhere else so far.

They also usually contain some other crafting bits, useful raider items like extra healing and ammo, and there are also a couple of gun cases which usually contain a rare or uncommon weapon. The only kicker is that these locations only appear on the map when the Flash Freeze occurs, even though they're there all the time.

So, next time you find yourself in sub zero, rather than running into the nearest building and hanging out for a while, see if you can rush the nearest Storm Hut and while away the bad weather doing some looting.

You'll need to find the new plank and sheet metal items in Arc Raiders for the new Sheltered Retreat project, after you've taken a picture of the Ruined Homestead, and are ready to start committing resources.

There are a few ways to get both items:

• Celeste sells planks and sheet metal for three seeds a piece.
• You can find loads of planks in residential and old world areas, particularly in the houses in Old Town in the southwest of Pendola Pass, as well as research items and furniture blueprints, too.
• You can find loads of sheet metal in technological and industrial areas, such as the Assembly and Loading Bay in Stella Montis, where every yellow drawer container (pictured above) seems to be a guaranteed drop for sheet metal.
• You can also find planks and sheet metal in other areas, though less frequently.

Thankfully, you don't need much for the project, so you might want to simply spend the 24 seeds required to just buy them all from Celeste.

The Tracks of the Beast quest in Arc Raiders involves travelling along some train tracks and pinging the new Pendola Pass enemies, the Bully and the Skulker.

First off, head to the northern tracks area in the north of the new map—this area encompasses the entire north, so it's easy to complete. After that, head to Almaterra Station to the south, preferably following the train tracks, since there are often Bully and Skulker enemies in this area for the next step.

Ping a Bully

The challenging part of Tracks of the Beast is you have to do all of the steps in a single round. The Bully is the first enemy you have to ping and it's kind of like a big arc horse-dog robot:

• There's usually a Bully in Old Town in the southwest of the map.
• I've also encountered one on the tracks north of Almatera Station.
• Also at the Railroad Junction to the east.

Ping a Skulker

The harder enemy to track down is the appropriately named Skulker, a little turret on four wheels that rolls around and emits a beep beep noise:

• I've found a lot of Skulkers in the ravine between the Railyard and the Commissary Supermarket.
• I've also encountered them by the Gondola exfil north of Old Town.
• Or in the northern tracks area north of Almatera Station.

There are plenty around the map, they're just quite sneaky and small, so you have to keep an eye out and listen for the beep beep. They're also hard to damage before they've deployed their turret, though a heavy ammo weapon can still kill them.

Once you've pinged both and completed the other steps, you're all done. You could attempt the optional steps to destroy three Skulkers and extract a Skulker Targeter, but frankly, it's hard enough to find one, so I wouldn't worry about that just yet.

Arc Raiders' To the Skies quest involves finding a few arc parts to repair one of the Prototype Gondolas being used to shuttle raiders to Pendola Pass.

First things first, to complete To the Skies you're going to need a variety of arc parts:

• 1x Arc Performance Steel: Salvaged from big arcs like Bastions, Bombardiers, Leapers, or Baron Husks.
• 1x Pop Trigger: Salvaged from small exploding Pop robots or couriers.
• 1x Arc Thermo Lining: Salvaged from Pops, Fireballs, or Baron Husks.
• 1x Arc Synthetic Resin: Salvaged from intact Arc Probes or Baron Husks.

There are a number of other ways to get the materials above, generally by salvaging arc enemies, so if you don't have one of each yet, keep your eyes peeled.

The first step is to scan a crashed Arc Probe and an Arc Courier. These spawn on almost every map and you can find them by following smoke plumes and looking for their icon when you're close on the map. Your best bet for finding lots is the Electromagnetic Storm map condition (you can see the current event schedule here). To scan them, simply interact with the icon at the head of each.

Repairing the Gondola Prototype

After this, you'll have to find and repair the Gondola Prototype on any one of four maps—I did it on Spaceport, so that's the one I'll show you. Grab those listed arc materials and head to the spot above, just east of the eastern exfil elevator, north of Communications Tower and south of East Plains Warehouses.

There, you'll find the Gondola Prototype resting on its side on some crates by a raider structure. Now just install those four parts and interact to activate the Gondola Prototype and complete the quest, though you might want to back away from it a bit.

Arc Raiders' new Boarding the Frigate quest is about finding a way up onto the giant flying Arc fortress during the new Arc Frigate map modifier. Since this is a colossal arc event, you'll want to bring plenty of ammo and healing. A Grappling or Snap Hook will come in handy, too.

You can get onto the frigate (as shown in the video) by finding one of the circular Arc drones that it spits out when it arrives on the map, climbing or grappling on top of it, and then interacting with it to disrupt the drone. This will cause it to fly back to the frigate, allowing you to climb aboard.

The ship is absolutely massive, and as you make your way through it with other raiders, it'll spit out Rocketeers, Vaporizers, and Hydra turrets will pop out on the top level as well. To finish off the quest, you'll have to damage all three, though you don't have to get the killing blow on any of them. Rocketeers and Vaporizers (if you somehow haven't encountered them before) are big flying arcs that fire rockets and lasers, respectively, while the Hydra is a multigun turret that's pretty deadly.

Presumably, you can also damage these enemies elsewhere to complete this step, though I haven't encountered a Hydra anywhere else except on top of the frigate so far, so that's likely your best bet. If you're struggling to navigate the ship, you can open new platforms with switches and by shooting the yellow nodes sticking out, though a Grappling Hook will also help skip some stages.

Arc Raiders' new Sizing Things Up quest sees you help Celeste analyse the Emperor corpse splayed across Pendola Pass, but like Clean Hands, some of its locations are tricky to track down.

The first step is to "take a picture of the Emperor's leg by the bridge outside Old Town," and you can see me doing just that in the video above. As with taking a picture of the Ruined Homestead in the Sheltered Retreat project, you'll need the camera Celeste gave you, or to craft another at the workbench or buy one from Shani.

The spot you need to take the picture is directly east of Old Town on the bridge that runs parallel to the Emperor's southern front leg (the Emperor is the giant robot dominating the west side of the map.) Take a picture of the leg's lower portion to complete this step.

Analyse the exposed area on top of the Emperor's leg

Now, skip the second optional step and "analyse the exposed area on top of the Emperor's leg near Railroad Junction." As above, here's another video of me doing that, but you can find the spot directly south of Railroad Junction, where you can see the base of the Emperor's leg on the map—simply climb up and interact with the marked point.

Reach the base of the Emperor and search the payload

Your last step is to "reach the base of the Emperor" and "Search the Buried Harvester Payload". Here's one final video showing both of those, but seeing as the Emperor is the giant robot on the west side of the map, you can simply head to the base of its corpse, directly east of the Fallen Emperor marker on the map, just by the P in Piazza Della Rupe. There, you'll find a chest at the very front and centre (the Harvester Payload).

Interact with it to drop the Arc Conductive Coupler and stow it in your safe pocket. Extract with the item for Celeste and that's the quest done.

Arc Raiders' skill rework has added new abilities such as the wall run at the top level of the mobility tree, and Nomadic Crafting at the top of the survival tree—just a shame it doesn't say what the items you can make actually are.

The items that Nomadic Crafting unlocks are as follows:

• Shotgun ammo
• Light ammo
• Medium ammo
• Heavy ammo
• Grappling Hook
• Zipline
• Shrapnel Grenade

This adds to all of the crafting items you already unlock via the earlier In-Round Crafting and Traveling Tinkerer skills in the survival tree, including traps, hatch keys, and all the usual craftable bits and pieces.

Clean Hands is a new quest in Arc Raiders Frozen Trail update which sees you searching for a Nomad Camp under the Railyard in Pendola Pass.

You can enter this camp via a pipe (shown in the video above) that's between the Railyard (towards the centre of the map) and the Transit Tunnel to the west of it—though I'd advise maybe not doing it when there's an Arc Frigate hanging about like i did.

Once inside, climb up onto the middle section of the walkway and interact with the highlighted yellow bag container to "search for the polluted item", producing an Equatorial Sundial. Pick this up and stow it in your safe pocket.

Bring the Equatorial Sundial to the top of the Old Town church

The next step is to "Bring the Equatorial Sundial to the top of the church in Old Town". Again, here's a video showing the location, but the church is easy enough to spot in the center of the Old Town; an area in the east of the map by the Arc Emperor corpse.

You'll want to:

1. Climb the spiral staircase in the southeast corner of the church all the way to the top.
2. Use the zipline to ascend into the tower.
3. Interact with the railing to hold up the sundial.

The final step is extracting with the item, so simply stow it in your safe pocket. If you haven't extracted on Pendola Pass yet, you have to activate a gondola console (marked on the map) and then head to the location where it drops to leave, a little like calling in a supply drop.

The first step in Arc Raiders new Sheltered Retreat project to build your outpost is to "take a photo of any farmland house around the Ruined Homestead on The Blue Gate map."

You can find the Ruined Homestead in the south of the region, just by the Olive Grove where everyone used to fight over lemons and olives for Scrappy. First, though, you'll need a camera item. Unlike in the past, when you could just interact with a structure to take a picture, you now need an actual piece of gear to do it. You can get a camera by:

• Purchasing one from Shani for 1.9k.
• Crafting one at the basic workbench for:
  • 8x Plastic Parts
  • 1x Wire
• Certain quests, like the new Sizing Things Up also give you a camera upon accepting them.

Of course, having to bring a camera also means you can no longer use free loadouts to complete quests involving photos. I suggest storing your camera in your safe pocket until you need it.

Now, head to the Ruined Homestead, equip the camera, use right mouse button to aim, and then left mouse button to take the snap. Any of the main farm buildings in that area seem to count, so it's easy enough to finish this stage.

The grapple hook is a legit game changer

Yeeeeeeeeehooooooooooo!

Yeah yeah, sure, Arc Raiders is getting some new guns, but the real star of my session was the grapple hook. Embark made an honest-to-god grapple hook: Not the kind that zips you straight to where you aim it (that already exists), but a simulated rope that's quite rare in videogames.

The grapple hook is only a green tier gadget, but very versatile. A single hook lets you:

• Climb straight up to the top of most buildings
• Swing from rooftop to rooftop like Spider-Man
• Safely descend from tall buildings
• Annoy the crap out of flying Arc bots

What makes the grapple hook so useful is that it sticks to just about anything. Wherever the hook lands becomes a pivot point that you can either climb toward, descend, or swing against. You can also redeploy the hook midair, without a cooldown or use limit, meaning you can chain swings together.

Above: Scaling a building with the grapple hook is about as fast as climbing a ladder, which is surprising.

It's a level of pendulum-based freedom that videogames rarely afford—let alone in a multiplayer environment—and makes the hook immediately fun to play with. The first match I had one, I ended up ignoring most of Pendola Pass' new locations and instead tried to see how long I could stay in the air with just the hook. I broke my ankles more than once, but in a short time I felt like the hook had tripled my movement options in Arc Raiders, and that's exciting. I really want to see how it performs on the other maps. Frozen Trail also adds a launcher that tethers two objects together and a grenade that yanks Arc bots to the ground, but I didn't test those thoroughly.

I'm delighted by Arc Raiders' embracing of physics-based tools and impressed that Embark isn't afraid to let these emergent gameplay ingredients be a little jank. You can tell while using the grapple hook why other videogames are so restrictive with similar mechanics: Sometimes you'll climb all the way up the rope only to not grab the ledge at the top, or the rope itself gets tangled between a protruding balcony, or you slide off the giant Emperor bot in Pendola Pass that Embark clearly doesn't want you to climb. It takes trial and error to use it well, and it's way more interesting than it is frustrating.

The skill tree rework is big… on paper

Arc Raiders' reworked skill tree is a mix of old and new abilities, with certain branches on the tree forcing you to pick one ability over others. Such as:

Conditioning 10

Vault Spring: Lets you jump at the end of a vault
OR
Vaults On Vaults On Vaults: Vaulting no longer costs stamina.

Mobility 30

Sprinting on Fumes: Stamina never fully drains while sprinting.
OR
Wall Run: Sprinting at a wall allows you to run up it for a few steps.
OR
In The Flow: Chaining together mobility moves while sprinting increases the speed, and reduces the stamina cost.

We were given a pile of XP points to dump into the skill tree. I focused on Mobility and Conditioning, and while it was nice to sprint for a long time without stopping, I can't say the new abilities led to me playing Arc Raiders any differently than before. The majority of the nodes on the tree are still incremental stat boosts that make the basics easier. It's a meaningful progression track in the long-term, but not instantly transformative so far.

To be fair, that may be exactly how it should be. Loot and crafting is the focus of Arc Raiders, and if the skill tree offered dramatic upgrades that make you a bigger threat, like better shields, it'd undermine other systems like the research tables and blueprints. This is an improvement, but I'm not clamoring for any one skill.

Pendola Pass is beautiful, but familiar

I've played 80 hours of Marathon since the last time I booted Arc Raiders, and that game's tremendous maps left an impression on me. Each one not only looks and feels different, but has unique, gameplay-specific hooks that makes my destination a huge decision from the jump. Arc Raiders does this in smaller ways, but I've yet to discover the big hook of Pendola Pass.

If it's snow, then sure: The white blanket is visually unique, flash freezes are sort of a threat (though I didn't even encounter one by accident) and raiders appear to leave trails one could follow.

If it's the new Bully Arc enemy, it's certainly an annoying new threat, though I plan to stay out of its way 90% of the time like I do the Leaper. When it comes to the stuff I do most in this game—plundering research facilities, stores, and residential districts—Pendola Pass feels like retreading chunks of existing maps.

Pendola Pass is welcome variety, but so far, it makes me wish Embark would take more Stella Montis-sized chances with its maps. Perhaps the real draw is getting inside the Emperor itself—I didn't manage it during the preview period, but it's apparently possible.

What's the most stunning revelation in this Gears of War prequel? Marcus Fenix used to have a jump button. Yes, the king of cover-based shooting, a man more rooted to the ground than a scarecrow, spent his youth jumping to some bits of cover. So E-Day contains at least one literal leap forward for the franchise. Shame it's trapped in a slog of a campaign that's otherwise anything but.

But before I moan about that, plenty of good news first. Gears has never felt better to play. These third-person cover shooters have always been a blast when they're working, and a miserable swearing fit when you dodge roll into certain death instead of snapping into cover like you wanted to. Again.

That nonsense has finally been excised, mostly, thanks to slightly more acrobatic characters and some wise button remapping. It's amazing what a difference sticking run on L3 and giving climb its own designated button makes.

Gears of War's biggest haters are liable to characterise its cover-shooting as a dull game of whack-a-mole. Perhaps on Normal difficulty, but Hardcore is where the experience sings. Here, staying in the same spot of cover is rightfully punished. You've got to keep gaining better ground, constantly weighing up the risks of lining up a sniper shot, a chainsaw insta-kill, or making a desperate dash for cover. It's a turn-based tactics shooter with a missing pause button. There's a reason that it translated so smoothly to a tactics spin-off.

E-Day introduces new weaponry that makes cowering in cover harder than ever. It loves a blast of acid, this game, either delivered from a massive evil frog or a new gun that shotguns it at you. Devastating, but a loving kiss on the cheek compared to the Goreshot, a grappling hook only interested in grappling your torso from your body. So gloriously over-the-top, it almost makes up for the insta-kill tedium from the elite enemy who wields it.

That stuff's good, but it's the renovations to the old guard that stand out. The spike trap now opens with a hugely satisfying thunk-thunk-thunk as its horrible insides prepare themselves for a good gouging. The explosive arrow-firing torque bow gets a great glow up—the sound design as it finds its target is wonderful, practically a doomsday drum roll, so good I still enjoy it even when a locust is aiming it at me. And if I'm ever called upon to assassinate God, this game's sublime sniper rifle is what I'm reaching for.

So if the gunplay's a treat and the core combat never better, what's the problem? Well, almost everything else, unfortunately.

Dis-may

E-Day is a prequel, referring to the fateful day when the locust got bored of living underground and burst free from the surface to say a very messy hello. This is covered in the opening cutscene of the original Gears of War. And if you're wondering what insights E-Day has that weren't covered in said cutscene, same here.

The game opens with Marcus Fenix and Dom 'boy isn't it great that my wife and kids are alive' Santiago. Instead of the cynical, traumatised, seen-it-all-before combat veteran of the original Gears, here Marcus is… a cynical, traumatised, seen-it-all-before combat veteran. Oh.

Discovering Marcus was once a flamboyant drag queen who was changed forever by E-Day into the man we know today was probably too much to hope for. But the fact he's essentially exactly the frikkin' same is the first alarm bell that this prequel is struggling to justify its own existence.

Once the locust arrive, E-Day tries cosplaying as Resident Evil for a bit, complete with a trip through the panicking city to the police station. Some of these horror moments work. The drone gets an excellent introduction, though not so much for the poor sap stuck in the interrogation room with it. Other attempts at horror atmosphere are hilariously clumsy. I find the blood-soaked helmet of a transit worker, and the game immediately shatters any sense of foreboding with text popping up saying 'Bloody Transit Worker's Helmet Found!' Er, hooray?

The game then has some dumb fun giving little origin stories to its iconography—chainsaws being attached to machine guns! Grenades being tossed in emergence holes! Problem is, by the start of Act 2, you have the weaponry, armor, and the squad. At which point E-Day just becomes standard Gears of War again. You explore the ruined city (not open-world, more wide-ish linear) with goals never more complicated than 'shoot those locusts' or 'survive this wave of locusts' or 'why haven't you shot those locusts yet?'

Gears 5 understood the value of variety. It had sections where you had to stealth around a mad scientist's factory to stealth kill infected robots. Or ride a skiff down an icy mountain. Or fight an enemy on the stage of a Hamilton-inspired musical which starts rotating at the worst moment possible (play Gears 5—it's one of the best 7/10s ever).

True, not all of Gears 5's ideas worked. But I wanted a sequel that improved upon them, not a regression that believes the only thing you should ever be doing in one of these games is endlessly pulling the trigger. It's just slightly remixed combat encounters all the way down. Battle a giant frog and several snipers! OK, now two frogs, one sniper, and several shotgunners! OK, OK, now three giant spiders that fire insta-kill rockets, and loads of grunts, and the last checkpoint was seven minutes back! …Hey, why are you suddenly aiming at me?

Is the shooting strong enough to sustain this? Yeah, just, though it does get exhausting. It's an action movie with everything ripped out that isn't bullets going into bastards. The 20+ hour campaign is also waaaaay too long considering how one-note it is (well, aside from two crap shooting-from-a-turret-inside-a-helicopter bits, but I was planning on being nice and not bringing those up).

Moderate improvements

New for E-Day are mod slots for your weapons and armour. Mods include less recoil, better scopes, faster chainsaw revving, etc. Not as useless and incremental as the crap you get in [insert whichever live service shooter you currently have the most beef with here], but it's borderline and hard to get excited about. Far better is the gizmo that can send out rippling shockwaves that stun enemies, perfect for a chainsawin'. I found a mod for it that also sets enemies on fire. Lovely.

You get these mods for completing sidequests or finding them in cases. But E-Day is so terrified of you missing anything that tiresome all-caps text saying HARD CASE NEARBY blazes across the screen. And the location of the case is immediately added to your map. Oh and if you activate whatever this game's version of Eagle Vision is called, we'll show you exactly where the case is. Ugh.

Gears 5—which I promise to stop swooning over soon—did all this so much more elegantly. You had a robot companion with abilities that were upgraded with currency you found through exploring. No map markers, screaming text, or other BS that belongs in the Ubisoft dark ages. You were actually incentivised to explore properly, with any world-building or character moments you encountered along the way a nice bonus.

E-Day's a less interesting place to explore regardless. A city in ruin is one of gaming's most overdone settings, so you really have to pull out the stops to make it interesting, like in The Last of Us 2, or the opening Leon section of Resident Evil Requiem. Otherwise, seen one ruined city block, seen 'em all, like in the second half of Resident Evil Requiem (at least E-Day is less grey and brown, shockingly).

Other frustrations just feel like they shouldn't be happening in the seventh game of a series. There's a special place in hell for games that put checkpoints before long dialogue exchanges that you can't skip through. Normal difficulty still isn't challenging enough. Opt for hardcore and you get the compelling challenge, but also have to swallow the occasional ocean of stale piss, with boss health bars so overlong I'm amazed they fit on the screen.

And how can a game with such outstanding skull-popping, blood-geysering headshots still have such pitiful damage feedback against elite enemies? There's no satisfaction in emptying clip after clip into a monster, not feeling like you're having any impact whatsoever until it finally falls over. Do I actually love E-Day's sniper rifle, or is it the only gunshot against the more bullet-spongy cretins that feels like it has any kick?

A new enemy at least has the decency to have a nice big eye that it doesn't like being shot in, which means I actually feel the impact of my gunfire. This thing is called… actually, to try and describe it myself when I can let the game do that in the following screenshot would be like snatching the pen from Shakespeare. My apologies. Take it away, E-Day:

Thank you, Lucas. God this game is infuriating. Great shooting trapped in a horribly overstretched campaign, telling a story that clearly didn't long to be told. It feels more like Microsoft taking a page out of the Jack Donaghy playbook and tapping a sign saying 'make it 2007 again'. Marcus is gonna have to open Gears 6 with one Hell of a drag show to make up for this.

Multiplayer saves the E-Day

Multiplayer is a less qualified success. The 4-v-4 modes are great if you just want to jump right in and quickly discover that you should have been practicing with the shotgun a lot more during the campaign. Conquest is all about taking and holding a certain section of the map, Demolition is all about triggering and protecting a bomb somewhere the opposing team would rather you didn't, and so on.

Nothing revolutionary, but all executed well, and even fun when you get matched against bots. I like how the new jump button means leaping over insta-death chasms is now an option. Which The Coalition have celebrated by sneaking in a bunch of insta-death chasms that are easy to miss, the cads.

Horde Siege is more ambitious as it takes advantage of the city's massive scope. Classic horde saw you setting up defenses like spike traps and turrets before waves of enemies came to tear them down. That's still true here, except now that Horde is basically open-world, there's a lot of commuting between the actual wave-battling bits. But where that padded out an irritatingly wheel-spinny campaign, it works here because the city feels much more alive and spontaneous.

Optional objectives with tasty rewards constantly pop-up, tempting you and your team to hunt down a massive enemy, or carry a core across the city that essentially leaves one of you unarmed. Even if you ignore these because you've unfortunately matched with the dullest squad alive, locusts can still suddenly appear in big numbers at any moment. Not so often that it becomes as exhausting as the campaign, but enough to give even a long encounter-free trudge across the city constant tension.

You're on a squad of four, and there are two other squads out there, too. Occasionally you might cross paths and can join them for a bit of shooting, or maybe they'll save you. There's not much incentive to do so—besides, y'know, compassion or whatever—but it's still a fun touch.

Horde Siege is a fun, smart evolution of what came before, and an experience that tries to expand what Gears can be. It'll still be worth playing whether The Coalition decides to build on it or not. I just wish it didn't feel like it was living in such a separate silo to a flawed solo adventure that's disappointingly conservative in comparison.

Embark is doing some monumental spring cleaning in the lead up to its major Arc Raiders' update Frozen Trail. There's been an overhaul to its anticheat approach, the news of a potential PvE test, and a change to loot hotspots. But amid all of this, we're also getting a rework to one of Speranza's most important residents: Celeste.

Diana Gardner has been the voice of Celeste, Speranza's de facto leader, since the beginning, but Stefan Strandberg, the chief creative officer at Embark, explained in a blog post how Celeste has "never fully represented the depth of Diana’s performance." As her "limited expressive capabilities" held the character back and broke immersion for players, failing to communicate "the stakes and stories we want to tell."

"Sometimes high fidelity, dynamic facial expressions are important to anchor the gravity of the story, and this is something that has constrained us up to this point," Strandberg adds.

So, with this in mind, Embark has set about reworking Celeste, with Gardner becoming her new face. "This is the first time we have used full motion capture, including a more detailed and accurate face, that allows us to map expressions and emotion in more detail. This means that more of Diana’s performance and identity comes through the screen."

This does mean Celeste will look different on October 6 when Frozen Trail releases, but rest assured all "you’re watching is the authentic performance of an incredibly talented actor, the real Celeste on screen for the first time."

It won't just end here though, as this is the start of a new wave of visual reworks for Arc Raiders as the team also intends to take a look at other characters. "In future updates, we plan to bring more characters in line with their real-world actors," Strandberg explains. "Not only will this mean more faithful representations of actors, it’ll be felt by players themselves."

Arc Raiders has always had one of the most exceptional worlds to explore, but it has unfortunately fallen short when it comes to characters. They are by and large just quite dull, sure the designs kind of look cool, but they've have always just been quest giving machines rather than convincing citizens of a game. This is not helped by its use of AI when it comes to beefing up voicelines.

So it comes as no surprise that Embark is seeking to remedy this, by "finding more ways to integrate real human performances into every interaction". Because that is the only way to tell a successful and convincing story.

Embark is bringing forth a monumental effort ahead of Arc Raiders' anticipated major Frozen Trail update scheduled for next week . The devs have teased a bunch of new features like a temporary PvE mode, loot hotspots that change places, and a chance to build a base Topside, among a huge bevy of new items and arcs. And while I've been suitably hyped for all of this the issue of rampant cheating has still been in the forefront of my mind, Embark has now addressed this too.

"Cheating undermines what makes Arc Raiders challenging and fun, and disrupts the experience for everyone playing fairly," executive producer, Aleksander Grøndal says in a blog post. "At Embark, we take it incredibly seriously, and spend a lot of time and money in the ongoing fight against unfair play.

"The market for cheats is constantly evolving. Cheat makers profit from selling to players, often bundling malware with their software, and every time we improve our defenses, they adapt and find new ways around them. We adapt too. Our growing anti-cheat team is continually working to detect and block new cheats, close the pathways they exploit, and add obstacles that make cheating harder and less worthwhile. It's work we're committed to for as long as our games are live."

But Embark has shared its journey of combatting cheating in Arc Raiders for a long, long time now. Periodically peeping its head above the parapet to let players know that the anticheat does, in fact, exist and it's doing stuff. This hasn't, however, made a dent so far and certainly has fallen short of quelling the incessant rage of players. Grøndal admits that "simply saying we’re working on it isn’t enough", so he's trying something different this time around:

"In recent months, we’ve improved our ability to identify and sanction accounts that use cheat software, as well as accounts involved in economy exploits. We’ve also continued working to make it harder for repeat offenders to simply create a new account and return to the game.

"Permanent bans are now standard for all known cheat programs and, as a matter of policy, any account caught using cheats is permanently banned. No warnings, no second chances."

Accounts linked to those which have been banned for cheating will also now receive a permanent ban and Embark is set on more freely using hardware bans when "we have enough evidence that a single machine is being used for cheating".

Long term, Embark is growing its in-house cheat detection models which are "built around machine-learning" and other data. Alongside its Denuvo anticheat and Anybrain, Embark is also preparing to include Elytra, an anticheat which is being used at a "small scale" in The Finals but apparently shows "promise".

I'm not prepared to get too excited for any immediate change as we'll actually have to see what difference, if any, this makes to Arc Raiders rampant cheating. But it's certainly a very good sign that Embark is willing to take drastic measures to revamp the game, especially ahead of Frozen Trail.

"Video game cheating is a multi-billion dollar industry, and it will never fully go away," Grøndal adds. "What we can do is make cheating as difficult, costly, and short-lived as possible.

"We built Arc Raiders with love and dedication to the craft, and seeing it exploited by cheaters makes us as angry as it makes you. We are making progress, and we’re continuing to work to identify cheating more effectively, act on it more quickly, make it harder for repeat offenders to return, and improve the experience for Raiders who are playing fairly."

The final expedition skin—at least for now, as Embark works out what it wants to do with the system—looks decent enough. It even has a cape, though I wouldn't say no to a couple more colour schemes. We won't see the new character prestige system until 2027, but even as someone who's taken part in every expedition, I'm glad it's getting some much-needed changes.

Why do all five expeditions? I genuinely enjoy the process. Using your in-game smarts and knowledge of item locations to prep optimally is a fun puzzle, especially if you're also starting from scratch (due to having done the previous expedition) so you have minimal resources to work with.

A part of me thinks that a mandatory character reset might be best for the health of the game at this point, but players aren't going to be happy if they're forced to part with the item hoards they've spent over a year accumulating. I'll be curious to see how Embark handles it, but for now at least, this is the last expedition outfit. Here's to more exciting stuff arriving with the Frozen Trail update next week.

I have a lot of fond memories about Arc Raiders' release. The world was beautiful, terrifying, and expansive. It provided some of the best community interactions I've had in a game to date, and it was just a refreshingly good time to share with friends. But that didn't last as long as I and many others would have hoped, with executive producer Aleksander Grøndal admitting that Embark overestimated its capacity for work.

"Transitioning to live service is going to be fucking hard. Everyone said that to me. I've even said that to other people. I was mentally prepared for it to be hard—but I wasn't completely prepared for how hard it was," Grøndal says in an interview with Game Developer. "When you build a game up until launch, you build and you test and you build and you test and you fix things and measure results. So the way that we've been building video games was based on that idea—but now the demands of the players are really high, we feel like we really can't go much faster."

Arc Raiders is sadly a very good example of suffering from success. Sure, the devs had an inkling of how big this game could get, but I don't think anyone could've predicted the heights Arc Raiders would reach. Embark also made no secret of the fact that it simply wasn't as big or well-equipped as other live-service competitors like Activision Blizzard or Riot, but the team still tried to keep up the pace that was expected of them.

This is a recipe for disaster, with Grøndal explaining how "the team [was] super tired" but that they still tried to put "out content as fast as we can but it's not enough, and perhaps it wasn't necessarily interesting enough as well." Trying to keep pace with players that were completing events, sussing out arcs, and exploring maps faster than Embark could add them led to a very long and very stale period, which then saw a huge drop-off in players.

"I'm proud of what we achieved during the first four months of this year," Grøndal adds. "But at the same time, I think we have to be honest at looking at some of the impacts of that. We didn't have the time. You also have a lot of the cost of just maintaining the game—implementing bug fixes, exploits, and other constraints. We were constantly overshooting our capacity and so it was hard to plan when there's so much to do. There's a lot of maintenance and cleanup [that takes up so much of your time]."

It didn't just have a negative impact on the game, as the devs also began to feel the pains of overextending. "The team were super unhappy. To be fair, they were running really hard milestones and that wasn't fun and challenging, so we had to do something. The players were also complaining and I don't think the consistency was high enough."

The cycle only stopped when the team asked themselves "why are we doing this?" and re-evaluated their long-term plan for Arc Raiders. "Everything pointed towards the fact that we were doing it better before shipping, so we need to play to our strengths [...] and what we produce will be better, more interesting, and higher-quality across the board. It also gives us time to work things out instead of just shipping, shipping, shipping. We can actually iterate."

Grøndal also stresses that they needed to put an end to the ongoing burnout. "It's super important [to protect people]," he says. "I can tell you a personal story. I was burned out. We'd just shipped a Battlefield game [when I was at EA] and I kept pushing so hard that I had to take a break for five months and go on sick leave because I was completely broken. We talk about burnout and it's obviously bad, but being burned out feels super shitty to be honest. It's terrible. I don't recommend it to anyone. Also, it means we lose good people who might be out [of work] for a very long time."

There's always going to be more to do in a live service game like Arc Raiders. And while there are some very serious reworks needed and problems to address—like its anticheat—I'd never want anyone to prioritise content over their health. It's just a game, after all, and more often than not well-rested and happy people create better things. It may take longer to get new content, but a more relaxed and committed approach to Arc Raiders will make for a better game in the longrun—we're already seeing the fruits of that tack with Frozen Trail.

"It's very important for us to create a framework that allows us to be creative while having a good work-life balance," Grøndal adds. "If we think long-term about this product—not just in small increments but big-picture stuff—we need all of these great people. Those are the people who built Arc Raiders in the first place." I couldn't agree more.

I am very excited at the prospect of an Arc Raiders PvE-only mode. I have been ever since I got a tiny taste of what it could be like in Shared Watch, and even before that while playing in friendly lobbies. I know some aren't happy at the prospect of a mode with no PvP, but the only thing I can't believe is that Embark hasn't made this change sooner.

I've always thought that Arc Raiders was at its best in its early stages when players had to work together to take down high-value arcs. This kind of cooperation led to some genuinely hilarious scenarios or just nice encounters with strangers; something I hadn't experienced in an online multiplayer game for quite some time.

At one point I remember being huddled in a bunker with another trio while trying to take down a Rocketeer on Spaceport. While we did manage to kill it, we were then caught out when a second Rocketeer turned up and we had almost no ammo left. It was a slightly bizarre situation to be found in with strangers. But it led to some very impressive strategy and coordination, and certainly a memorable experience, as we broke off into duos and ran in opposite directions, taking it in turns to distract the Rocketeer so we could all make a successful break for the extraction point.

I think this novelty is what brought a lot of players into Arc Raiders; it's certainly what kept me around for so long even after I'd completed expeditions and all the quests. But as more people left the number of fun encounters dropped and soon most of my interactions in Arc Raiders were just with liars, assholes, or cheaters. And that's not a great way to spend your free time.

If there had been a PvE mode this is when I would've transferred over to that. I probably would have even played Arc Raiders relatively frequently in said mode from there on, as I'm sure others who enjoy the simplicity of fun social interactions and taking down arcs would have as well. But with no other option than increasingly sour PvP lobbies I decided to retire my raider for the time being.

That's not to say PvP is absolutely no fun. Again, early on I had an absolute blast playing in trio PvP lobbies. The tension and strategic play was fantastic and felt really unique to Arc Raiders' ecosystem. Having to be cautious of both arcs and fellow players made games more hectic but that meant there was a better payoff when you all managed to extract in one piece with some hefty loot.

It could also lead to equally hilarious scenarios. I still remember when my trio spotted another team from a mile off in Dam Battlegrounds who were clearly trying to flank us and just acting really suspicious. The only problem was they had absolutely no cover but also didn't seem to realise that if they could see us it meant we could also see them. Their surprise attack was quickly felled and then we had to explain to them how line of sight worked as we guided them to extract so they could go home to Speranza.

The weird and funny social moments that Arc Raiders did so well isn't exclusive to PvE or PvP lobbies. But PvE offers a guarantee that PvP can't: your games won't get ruined by assholes who lie or extract camp. And with no sign of the huge anticheat overhaul PvP would need to get fixed I can't see things changing anytime soon, so with that in mind I'd prefer something rather than nothing, because the world of Arc Raiders is simply too cool to watch waste away.

Embark has even admitted that a large chunk of Arc Raiders playerbase is PvE orientated, so I'd hardly be surprised if fair chunk of players came back just out of curiosity about what PvE lobbies could look like.

Unfortunately, there's no guarantee that this PvE test will even lead to a permanent addition. But I'll still be checking in to get a taste of what it could be like because a low-intensity Arc Raiders interlude sounds like great fun right about now.

Gears of War: E-Day is almost here, but that doesn't mean its developers have been spared in Microsoft's latest wave of layoffs as part of the Xbox "reset." While The Coalition, the studio currently working on the Gears of War series, was not mentioned by name in Matt Booty's "Continuing Our Reset" blog post, story director Juan Vaca announced on LinkedIn that he is now looking for work.

"I am part of this round of Microsoft layoffs and am open to new opportunities in games/film/tv," he wrote. "If your team needs a director/storyteller please reach out." It is perhaps especially galling given that Gears of War: E-Day went gold just days before the layoffs were announced, with a full release planned for Oct. 6.

It has felt increasingly like there is simply no amount of success, sales, acclaim, or back-breaking work you can demonstrate in the games industry to avoid some pencil pusher's job cut scythe. It's not just Microsoft's massive rounds of layoffs—take a studio like Star Wars Zero Company developer Bit Reactor, which furloughed most of its staff despite glowing reviews and over a million copies sold. This situation with Vaca echoes when, last year, a writer on Apex Legends was laid off just one day after a character she spent a year writing was unveiled.

For a primer on all the most reliable ways you can get laid off in the games industry, check out our guide on that very phenomenon. It is a sobering time to wish you could cheer on the medium's every step forward, given that the reward for doing the work seems to be a kick out the door.

Arc Raiders players are gearing up for what is set to be one hell of an update in Frozen Trails. It has already been promised as the answer to a lot of Arc Raiders' current issues, but now we also know it's way bigger than any of us expected it to be, with new weapons, gadgets, and arcs. But I'm less concerned with all of those and more interested in its update to raider outposts.

"Celeste is offering Raiders who heed her call to explore Pendola Pass a home away from home: the Outpost," an official blog post explains. "Nestled between the Rust Belt and the perilous mountain range, the Outpost is the first step to reclaiming parts of the surface."

Players will now have the chance to expand their base of operations with the outpost. Until now, we've only had one room to call our own, which is very small and has very limited customisable options—sadly, you can only fit so many ducks inside. But the outpost provides way more space.

Here we'll be able to customise this new base with different modules, furniture, and other changes to the interior. These new modules will also come in handy for the new weapon amplification which gives gear unique abilities like flammable ammo or rapid-fire in preparation for the new map Pendola Pass, which is set to be the most punishing area to date:

But honestly I'm less bothered about the outpost's end game benefits as these'll be modules that you'll also be able to build down in Speranza. I'm just hyped to have more space and an actual chance to customise a base, and it's a feature Embark'll expand in future patches: "The Outpost is the start of a feature we hope to develop much further, eventually giving players a deeply personal space that allows them to become the Raider they want to be." That's certainly a good incentive to get me to start playing again.

Here are some reasons to try the Gravhounds open playtest on Steam:

• It's free for the next few days and seems well put-together for a playtest of an unreleased early access game
• It's a co-op wave shooter and those are basically always fun to muck around in with friends, at least for a bit
• The movement feels good, especially gliding across networks of buildable cables
• There's a light resource mining and tower defense element that has potential
• You collect resources by hucking them across the map with a gravity gun, which is satisfying (just don't do it with explosive materials, I learned)
• It doesn't really play like Helldivers 2, it just replicates the home base spaceship setup, but it's a good format, and the shooting is fun

Also, you may have noticed that the characters are dogs with people bodies.

Is that also a reason to try it? It did catch my attention, mainly because I find these particular dog people a bit unsettling. I felt the same way about Fox in the Star Fox remake.

But you've got to stand out, right? Would I have tried Gravhouds if the characters looked like Helldivers 2 soldiers? I'm not sure. And I do like that when you respawn, you come back wearing a cone of shame.

Maybe a worn-down, dissociating blue collar dog guy is just what you need to get people in the door.

Do you think he has regular human hands under those gloves, or are they like paws that have morphed into hand shapes?

The open Gravhounds playtest runs through Monday. All you have to do is click the 'join playtest' button on its Steam page and you, too, can be a dog who thinks he's people and also is people.

Despite hesitation, Embark is finally giving a purely PvE version of Arc Raiders a try. It's interesting how they're approaching it as a toggle: Essentially all else about the match will be the same, except that players can't damage each other. Loot will be slightly less valuable than PvPvE sessions to account for the lower risk taken.

Embark has been open about its belief that Arc Raiders' PvP is integral to the experience, but this PvE test exists to "respect that our players have different needs than what we first envisioned." There is no guarantee that anything permanent will come of the test, or that future PvE modes will resemble this toggle.

"We have to respect that some players want to enjoy the game in their own way, and we can’t ignore what the data is telling us," the blog says.

The data Embark is referring to is pretty fascinating if you've followed Arc Raiders' unique community split between friendly and hostile players.

The Arc Raiders population split, according to Embark:

• 37% Friendly co-op players (this player group has grown consistently since launch).
• 27% Mixed players.
• 34% Pure PvP players (this player group has remained stable since launch).
• Over 70% of Friendly players and even 40% of PvP players express a desire for fewer hostile encounters and 51% of the surveyed playerbase has expressed an interest in a dedicated PvE option.
• There are clear friction points, with friendly players often attempting to avoid PvP entirely, and we hear frustration from certain groups of players around ratting and camping.

Here's the big stuff

• Pendola Pass: A snowy mountain region north of the Rust Belt flanked on all sides by a gigantic Emperor corpse. Embark says Pendola is its "most ambitious map to date" and has a unique "Flash Freeze" condition that punishes those who stay outside too long.
• New ARC types: The Frigate is a "massive airborne carrier" that apparently can't be totally destroyed. Embark framed this as a "high-stakes challenge for experienced Raiders." The Bully is a cousin of the Leaper—a four-legged belligerent that uses "hit-and-run tactics" to whittle away at raiders. The Skulker is a small, ground-level pest that keeps its distance and "takes pot shots" at players. The Hydra is a stationary turret that can target three players simultaneously.
• Outposts: Personal spaces outside of Speranza that players can build up and expand with decor, furniture, trinkets, and upgrade benches. You can't walk around your outpost, at least for now. "That is something we're thinking about as we look to evolve this feature," added executive producer Aleksander Grøndal in a press Q&A.
• Weapon Amplification: Using the new research bench, guns can be upgraded to a new "amplifaction" tier that grants them unique abilities, like flammable ammo or rapid-fire. Fifteen guns will have amplifications at first.
• Guns: The Stiletto is a light ammo battle rifle designed as an "early game alternative to the Renegade," and the Bantum is a quickfire revolver meant to compete with the Anvil.
• Reworked skill tree: Embark says it has reworked skills to be more impactful and force players to make choices about their playstyle. Not every skill can be acquired on a single raider, apparently.
• Gun skins: Raiders can now find "stencils" that serve as multi-use skins you can apply to guns. If you lose that gun, you'll need to reapply the stencil. Blueprints for stencils can also be found or unlocked through the new research station.
• Gadgets: A grapple hook, banjo, and camera tool will bring nonviolent flair to an Arc Raiders lobby near you.

Let 'em cook

Embark said "let us cook" back in May and has reappeared with a three course meal. Frozen Trail is the first fruits of Arc Raiders' new six-month gap between major updates. The 2.0 patch gives a comprehensive pass on nearly every facet of the extraction shooter, reworking skills, introducing customizable homes, and delivering core add-ons like a new map, guns, and ARC enemies.

Having not played much Arc Raiders in 2026, this is getting me jazzed to get back to paramedic duty. As a casual raider with zero expeditions or accolades, I found it hard to keep up with all of Arc Raiders' happenings back when things were changing every month. This new schedule, where major updates are rarer but allowed to be larger, is already more my speed.

It wasn't the flashiest announcement of the day, but I'm really eager to try out that grapple hook. Judging by the reveal video, that's a proper mobility tool—the kind that can anchor to a point and swing you in any direction! You can even hook Arc bots with it and go for a ride. Sounds like a beautiful disaster waiting to happen.

Frozen Trail is out October 8 as a free update. Grøndal also went into more detail about the reworked skill tree during a press Q&A.

Marvel Rivals' massive hero roster and regular character additions are some of its defining features. So it comes as a huge surprise that NetEase has decided to forgo tradition for the sake of focusing on improving its foundations.

For the first time in eight seasons—that's 17 months—Marvel Rivals will just be getting one hero, Gorr the God Butcher, in a season. "We're locking our crosshairs on just Gorr the God Butcher," creative designer Guangyun Chen says in a dev diary. "In the first half of the season we'll be rolling out one new hero and one new map. In the second half our focus will shift to phase 3 and phase 4 of the Path to Doomsday events. These will feature two brand-new game modes, with specific details dropping closer to the start of season 10.5."

Marvel Rivals doesn't have a creative block when it comes to inventign new heroes—it's got a huge backlog of characters at its disposal. But two new heroes per season does put considerable strain on the game's balance. Traditionally, new heroes are completely busted when they're first added to Marvel Rivals. This is due to NetEase's "fun first" approach, but also because of the serious backlog of fixes that preoccupies the devs.

Only adding one new hero in season 10 will hopefully ease this strain a bit so the team can focus on polishing existing heroes, without worrying about anyone new for at least half a season. It also gives the devs a chance to focus on improving other areas of the game like adding more game modes for variation's sake.

It's a good move from NetEase, but Chen stresses that this isn't a permanent change: "We want to reassure the community that a single-hero season isn't the new normal." In fact, they've already decided what two new heroes will be coming to Marvel Rivals in season 11.

The devs are not waiting until the second half of season 10 to get stuck into the balance, however. Marvel Rival's lead combat director, Zhiyong, runs through the list of hero changes for this season, which is so vast it involves "about 70% of the roster". The current changes aren't groundbreaking, with Strategists still getting their ults faster than everyone else, and many heroes only getting minor tweaks, but it's a start.

There's also a significant change coming to Marvel Rivals' competitive ban system. "The opposing teams will now take turns banning and revealing heroes in the following order," Zhiyong explains. Bans in competitive Gold 3 lobbies and above will now take the following structure:

The first team bans a hero, it is revealed. The second team bans two heroes which are revealed. The first team bans two heroes which are revealed. The second team bans one hero which is revealed.

Double banning heroes will also no longer come into play as "regardless of which team bans them, that hero will become unplayable for both sides for the rest of the match." This means players will get six hero bans for each game. "We hope this adjustment adds more strategic depth to the banning phase," Zhiyong adds.

Hopefully, this small pause on new heroes will give the devs a little bit of breathing room to get stuck into some of the more complicated pain points like power creep and the Strategist's massive healing output. If Marvel Rivals could get its balance under control, then it could actually stop what has been a muddled few seasons.

We're just a month away from Arc Raiders' major update Frozen Trails which promises new arcs, maps, and a movement overhaul. It sounds pretty impressive, and I'm excited to have a new reason to head Topside. But before we can enjoy the tundra Embark has one more small update for players, and it's live right now.

"Update 1.45.0 is going live right now and with it a number of fixes, a new Raider Project, the start of the fifth Expedition, the Hornet Hunter Set and changes coming to Cred," a blog post reads. "This will be our last Live Update before October 8, but we won't be going quiet in the meantime, a smaller update is still planned before then."

The new Raider Project sees players help Apollo continue work on an experiment which will let us follow the mystery phantom arc signals over the mountain range and beyond the perimeter for the tube system. Completing the required tasks will allow Apollo to finish his work.

This slots into the following Frozen Trails update as the new map is actually located over the mountains just beyond any raiders' current reach. When players get there they'll be able to track down the exact location of the arc signals and find out if Shani's concern was warranted or not. It's probably going to be warranted.

Other than a new project players will also be able to enjoy all the new community-made rubber ducks. There's a colourful confetti duck, one dressed as a very smart penguin with a bowtie, and an X-ray duck. You can grab these in the usual places in Bird City and display them in your den.

The most important part of this update, however, isn't the new project or ducks (debatable), it's actually the heads up about Arc Raiders' changing Cred system.

"We are retiring Cred as a currency, as we’ll be introducing a more expansive reward system launching with the Frozen Trail Update," the post explains. "All existing Raider Deck rewards will also be available in the new system. You will keep any rewards you have already claimed at the time of the update."

Cred will remain usable up until October 8, though, so if you have any spare lying around Embark encourages you to "use any remaining Cred before then". Come October 8 any remaining Cred on your account will expire and will become unusable. So the message is: use it or lose it.

Everyone has a price. Maybe it's $100, maybe it's $1,000, maybe it's for someone to see your innate value as a human being, or maybe it's $1,000,000. Popular streamer TimTheTatman recently revealed what it would take to get him to go back to Arc Raiders, and spoilers, it's not the third option.

There was apparently an ad deal floating around for the Arc Raiders and Subway collab, which TimTheTatman was approached for, but did not entertain. "I did say no to six-figures with Arc Raiders, I did," he revealed in a stream earlier this week. "I said 'No thank you'. And it was the Subway Arc Raiders ad. I said I just can't do it, I'm sorry."

This was met with the exact response you'd expect with people being baffled that he'd ever think of turning down such a lucrative offer. "That's kind of the funny part of being in a streamer position," TimTheTatman continued. "People say 'you're a fucking sellout' but then in the same breath I said I passed on six-figures from Arc Raiders and people are like 'you're fucking stupid'."

He revealed that he does actually have a price to play Arc Raiders again: they'd just have had to add another zero onto the offer. "If that Arc Raiders deal was seven-figures—hey boys welcome back to Arc Raiders and Subway, right, you see what I'm saying? 100% we're going back. But it's just for me, the game frustrated me so much—I got frustrated so much with that game, I just don't want to play it ever again. Even to a point where six-figures isn't going to get me back on it."

I can't say I'm surprised. Arc Raiders is in a bit of a rough spot right now, especially for streamers, what with all the cheating and stream sniping. Embark Studios' executive producer Aleksander Grøndal recently admitted the shortcomings of Arc Raiders and promised that its upcoming major update Frozen Trails will reset the game and provide enough incentive to get players to come back, though—even if they don't get a six-figure deal to do it.

If there's one thing you should never underestimate, it's a gamer's love for completing little tasks. Whether it's battle passes, meaningless fetch quests, or in Arc Raiders' case, its expeditions. There's just the right amount of dopamine involved for a neuron activation, so you best bet that they'll rip through them at an unthinkable speed.

I'll concede that Embark Studios probably couldn't have foreseen the full extent of this love prior to Arc Raiders release, but still, the outcome is the same: gamers out-growing their once-beloved game because they managed to complete all their tasks way too fast.

"We didn’t really expect that amount of players to show up and play ARC Raiders," executive producer Aleksander Grøndal explains in an interview with GamesBeat. "That surprised us. We were a bit unprepared. That’s one of the hard lessons we had to learn. When January came and some of the problems started with the game."

January saw the first crack in Arc Raiders' armour, as the novelty began to wear off and players became more keenly aware of how limited its content was alongside growing concerns about cheating and stream sniping. Unfortunately, despite some hard work from the team, the latter two points still remain contentious.

"We have very dedicated people playing the game," Grøndal adds. "We had some challenges around how much content there is in the game, how much progression there is in the game. We had some, but the players wanted more.

"We bet on trying to update it fast and giving players more things to do over time. That was our strategy, to try to meet those demands from players. The issue with that was the team just couldn’t keep pace with the players. The players grew frustrated, because some of the things we shipped were perhaps not as good or as meaningful as they were hoping. That was another awakening for us."

Embark has been very upfront about how its dev team errs on the smaller side for a live service game, which means it just couldn't keep pace with competitors like Call of Duty, Overwatch, or even Valorant, all of which have enough employees to keep the content mills constantly churning.

As live service games have become more common, each one is competing with others for the industry's gold dust: player attention. But Grøndal concedes that "this is the challenge with running a live service" and that Embark can't "beat anyone on quantity". Instead, the goal has always been to provide players with higher quality stuff that "has the Embark finesse to it."

The issue with quality over quantity is that players actually really like quantity. Many will say that they prefer for stuff to look good, but that's not really a live service game's draw, instead its draw is to provide something for players to do whenever they want. Players were promised a 10-year plan, and they haven't seen that manifest in Arc Raiders yet.

So what's the solution? A better anti-cheat would be a good start, but really, Arc Raiders just needs to find its footing and get back to a good live service cadence if it wants to bring players back. As for when this could happen, it seems like Embark is gearing up for something of a comeback in October with its upcoming Frozen Trails major update.

Grøndal has said it will bring a rank redesign, more arcs, updates to storage, and a new map as it tries "to answer a lot of those questions that have been posed to us from a mechanical and content perspective."

But until then, all players can do is wait and have some hope that better things are to come.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

City planning

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

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

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

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

Arc Raiders' upcoming fifth Expedition will be its last for a good while, as developer Embark Studios is going to "pause" them until early 2027 so it can rework the whole thing.

Expeditions in Arc Raiders are a pretty big deal. Functionally, they're similar to prestiging in Call of Duty, giving high-level players a way to reset much of their character's progress in exchange for unique benefits. It's no small undertaking, and the Arc Raiders community hasn't been entirely happy with how it all works, particularly with regard to the grind.

Embark's been fiddling with Expeditions systems pretty much since they began, and following changes to the fourth Expedition announced in June, PC Gamer's Morgan Park predicted that a bigger overhaul was on the way. As usual, he was right on the money,

"We have been carefully reviewing your feedback on Expeditions," Embark wrote in today's update, "and while we've made ongoing improvements along the way, we've come to realize that some of the issues you've raised, like the tight departure windows, the reward structure, and accessibility for new players, need more than incremental fixes. They call for bigger changes.

"In order to address those concerns, we need to pause the Expeditions for a while. The fifth Expedition will be the last one until early 2027, when Expeditions will return with major improvements, tackling some of the biggest player pain points. So, if you’ve been on the fence about departing—now is the time! We will share more details on what those changes will look like in September."

Any consecutive buffs already earned will persist through the pause period so no progress is lost, while any partially completed Caravans will be replaced with Ermal Vouchers of equal value.

Reaction to the pause seems mixed: It's a bit more hostile on X than in the Arc Raiders subreddit, but nowhere is there what I would call a widespread sense of relief that big changes are coming. Instead, many players are taking a wait-and-see approach, acknowledging that Expeditions needs work while still harboring reservations about Embark's ability to actually get it right—a challenge complicated by the fact that some players are quite happy with the system as it is, and don't want it changed. Such is the way of things, alas.

Today's update also lays out the details on the fifth Expedition, including when the window opens (4 am PT/7 am ET on September 8), how to get in, and what you'll get for your troubles.

Stealth has changed.

It's no longer about avoidance, visibility, or tension. It's an endless series of "stealth action" games trivializing the uncertainty of sneaking and pushing players into open conflict. The age of camouflage has become the age of tall grass: stealth is no longer treated as a genre worthy of big budgets, but an optional feature of conventional action games. [Takes a long drag from a cigarette] Stealth has changed. And when the player's visibility is under total control… espionage becomes routine.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots was at the vanguard of the stealth action shift in 2008—but playing it today, the particular way it mixes mercurial stealth and heavy weaponry is anything but routine. Snake is outfitted with a tranq pistol, non-lethal CQC training, and the latest OctoCamo sneaking suit, an ingenious invention of espionage that automatically camouflages the user to their surroundings. In his other pocket are enough guns to arm a strike force—SMGs, shotguns, ARs, RPGs, a rail gun—customizable with Create-a-Class attachments.

OId Snake skulks through active battlefields, bewildered by the growing mundanity of war, as Kojima grapples with the undeniable appeal of getting in the shit. This is a stealth game that doesn't mind if you try to play it like Call of Duty, but going loud comes at the cost of stressing Snake the fuck out.

This Master Collection port, sold alone or alongside Peace Walker, is a genuinely thrilling object: proof that MGS4 wasn't a mass hallucination we all had in 2008, but a uniquely strange meditation on existential anxiety—of warmongering doomerism, automation, desensitized violence, and back pain—trapped for 18 years on a PlayStation 3. Konami has done good work here, though at times the bare minimum: you can now play MGS4 at 4K (yay!), but at a locked 60 fps (less yay).

Still, that's a lot better than the extremely unreliable 30 fps it once struggled to maintain, and the Master Collection launcher is less cumbersome now than when Volume 1 arrived on PC in 2023. Guns of the Patriots has gone so ignored for so long that it's hard to split hairs here—this is the new best way to play one of my favorites.

Naked sun

Man does it feel great to see Guns of the Patriots cleaned up. It's a special one for me: MGS4 landed just as I reached the age to enjoy games on a deeper level. It was also my first Metal Gear, which is a little hilarious in hindsight, given how obsessed the story is with its own past.

In 2026 I'm seriously charmed by the 2008-ness of this world: from the fully functional iPod (still intact here, but lacking Konami's official Metal Gear hype podcasts) to Kojima's infatuation with the XM8 and P90 (objectively the coolest guns ever made). Hindsight hasn't done wonders for its meandering plot and sometimes dull cutscenes, but Kojima's vision for a world consumed by greed and accelerated by decision-making AIs is uncomfortably spot-on. More than anything else though, MGS4's long exile has given me a new appreciation for its extremely balanced stealth.

Acts 1 and 2—where MGS4 really flexes its sneaking muscles—are the sort of triumphant stealth sandboxes that are quite rare these days. Maps are focused and linear, but brimming with options. Guards are reactive, consistent, emotive, and learnable. The years have gifted me patience for stillness, and MGS4 is most fun at a snail's pace. Slithering between guards six inches away from their boots camouflaged as a patch of dirt is a bigger thrill than crouching through tall grass in Horizon, Ghost of Tsushima, or any modern Assassin's Creed.

I love that Kojima can't help but hand players a box of toys with hidden functions. I'm always picking up three times more gear than I'll ever use, which I've learned is a blessing, because every replay is an opportunity to get fixated on a tool. This time, I finally learned how useful Playboy magazines can be when you're trying to ghost an area. This is also the playthrough in which I remembered that the Mark 2 robot, a drivable drone with a cloak and stun prod, is very useful for covertly retrieving items in risky locations.

Tactical espionage action

Replaying Guns of the Patriots and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory in the same year is highlighting just how bland open worlds have made level design. I love MGS5, but its small Far Cry villages that have to be approachable from all angles are trounced by MGS4's busy battlefields. My favorite is the Act 2 raid on Liquid's mansion, where Snake has to bypass several active warzones either by choosing a side or concealing himself in the chaos.

In my first run through the forest, I crawled up the middle until I found a perfectly Snake-sized crevice in a berm that wrapped around the riskiest sightlines. After that I got caught, shot to death, and tried again, this time finding an alternate route by diving under a shallow river. These areas pack a lot of intentional, almost invisible routes in relatively small spaces, and they're patrolled by nuanced guards that inspire experimentation.

PMC troops can hear you but not see you, or see you but not clearly enough to investigate, or be prompted to investigate, but not be in a hurry about it. Their physical and verbal reactions communicate their alertness without today's explicit "detection meters," and Kojima's lack of restraint means there are like 12 different ways to knock one out. It's hard not to think Snake is the coolest spy in the world once you've gone the extra mile to understand MGS4's extra CQC moves—body slams, chokeholds, stun knife zap, disarms, and of course, holding a guy up at gunpoint, searching him for valuables, then squeezing his nuts until he passes out.

This is true of every Metal Gear, but it's so smart to have an "evasion" phase between "caution" and "alert" where guards frantically search the area expecting to find you. It makes stealth far less binary, and the unpredictability of search patterns in this state is a solid punishment for recklessness.

Movie mode

MGS4's enduring flaw is its second half, where it all-but abandons what it does best. Act 3 is a boring follow mission capped off by the greatest "turret sequence" ever conceived. Act 4 is a walk down memory lane that's more button pressing than sneaking, and Act 5 gets brilliant again, but ends too soon.

This sequel is famous for its long cutscenes, exposition dumps, and inscrutable proper nouns, but honestly, I love all that garbage. I'm the guy who finished MGS4 then returned to the launcher to read the MGS4 Database, a contained wikipedia for all things nanomachine. I have a high tolerance and admiration for Kojima's tastes and always find a lot to like about his characters and dramas, cringe be damned. Like how Meryl hates her dad Roy Campbell because she thought he was her uncle her entire life—forgot that bit until a database deep dive. And that weird hairless monkey that drinks cola and smokes cigs? Betcha didn't know his name is Little Gray, and that he only smokes because Snake made it look cool.

For the first half, MGS4 has a damn-near perfect balance of game and spectacle. Then the game parts get shorter and boring. From then on it only occasionally recovers its pulse with a cool boss fight, "holy shit" cinematic trick that other videogames just never even try, and a memorable finale. There is, weirdly, not enough filler. It's enough to make me wonder if MGS4 was squeezed for time and heavily cut in the same way that Phantom Pain would eventually release without a real ending.

I want more video settings in this PC port, that's for sure, but I appreciate the goodies that this Master Collection could've gotten away with skipping, like a digital art book, manual scan, and that sweet database app.

I also clocked some small touches that confirm Konami didn't just boost the resolution and call it a day: There's a late-game moment where you need to shake the PS3 controller that could've been replaced by a generic controller glyph, but instead it recognized I was on a Steam Deck and showed custom art for the machine. And the Codec call where Otacon jokes about putting in "disc two?" He now has new lines about being on the "PC platform, a digital title!" Nice one, Konami.

This game rocks. It's not a bulletproof recommendation given the slog of a back half, but in exchange you get some of the strongest stealth encounters in videogames and Kojima's signature goofy, genuine storytelling with all the glitz that a PS3 could muster (and, blessedly, none of the slowdown). There's still nothing like it 18 years later, and now I can easily revisit it whenever I want.

I love a good Arc Raiders map condition. Whether it be hunting for rubber ducks in Bird City, or trying to survive frozen temperatures in Cold Snap, each one offers up a much-needed revamp on what can sometimes be a stale selection of maps. The only problem is that some conditions can be pretty inaccessible.

Initially map conditions followed the same global release for everyone. This wasn't much of an issue when the game released t as there were only a handful of conditions to tack onto maps, but as more appeared it's become increasingly difficult to play some of them. Take Bird City for example—I love it, but when it first released it was almost impossible to play because it was only live when I was at work (boo) or sleeping (yay).

Embark tried to fix this by upping the frequency of said map conditions but this only worked so well, with there still being regions which would see less of certain conditions compared to others. Luckily, it seems like this is all behind us now as Embark has pushed out a solution in its latest update which means fairer map condition distributions for all.

"We have been working to make sure that the way we schedule map conditions is aligned with your playing habits," Embark says in the new update blog post. "To that end, we’re introducing Regional Map Condition Scheduling. Starting with 1.42.0, map conditions will have their schedule offset based on regions, instead of a single, global schedule.

"This means that the schedule will shift to fit specific regions' peak hours to better match your experience. This way, it’ll be less likely to miss out on a map condition regardless of where you are."

You can check out the new schedule for yourself using the map conditions tracker. And as you'll be able to see, there's masses of conditions ticking away every hour during peak times for you to pick from now, so you won't have to stay up way past your bedtime to collect matriarch reactors or limited edition rubber ducks.

The devil works hard but cheaters in Marvel Rivals work harder, as always. Some have chosen to go to extreme lengths to avoid getting an icky loss tacked to their precious match history, using their config files to help them do so.

"People are intentionally abusing the cheating detection system to cancel games with no consequence when they are losing," streamer LytePk says in a social media post. "Fix this ASAP, this has happened to me five times on stream today."

The trick seems to involve players leaving a match temporarily, dropping config files into the game file mid match, and then loading back into the game. This causes the match to cancel. Why, you ask? Well NetEase doesn't like players messing with the config files.

At first players began tinkering with their config files to try and fix the game's poor optimisation, messing around with it so they could get better framerates or just so it would run better on their PC. Now this isn't malicious in and of itself so NetEase by and large left it alone. But it didn't stay that way.

Some players realised that by messing with the settings they could strip Marvel Rivals maps of all their complicated flourishes, visually downgrading it to just its barebones. This gave a competitive advantage as enemy heroes stood out more and there was less visual 'mess' clogging up team fights.

NetEase responded to this trend with a warning: anyone caught with modded configs which would boost performance or optimisation would be met with penalties like temporary suspension. But because some players were still using it for less nefarious reasons penalties have more or less remained benign, like just auto cancelling a game with no de-rank punishment.

Here's a clip of the config files hack in action:

Unfortunately for those who just want Marvel Rivals to run a little better, the next logical step seems to be NetEase dishing out substantial punishments for those caught using modded config files, because this loss work-around is way too easy to get away with. There may also be a more nuanced solution that NetEase could enact, but I wouldn't put money on it.

Embark has finally released some solid information on Arc Raiders' next major update, Frozen Trails. We've got details on all the big and small features players can expect to see, including a snowy map, new arcs, new weapons, and more ways in which Embark wishes to improve "the core Arc Raiders experience".

The biggest feature which Frozen Trails brings with it is the map itself which is unsurprisingly frozen. It'll take players beyond the mountains as they're tasked with investigating a strange signal emanating from the tundra. There's abandoned homes, villages, research facilities, and an observatory to explore and strip for loot. But, just as it is with any other Arc Raiders map, players will have to fight for the good stuff: "You’ll encounter threats above and below ground, and navigate environments that no Raiders have seen before."

Some of these threats will likely come in the form of the new arcs which have been teased for a while now. "Our team has been hard at work developing new ARC threats that will arrive alongside the new map, each designed to challenge the ways you’ve learned to move, fight, and adapt," executive producer Aleksander Grøndal explains in a blog post.

All we know about these arcs so far is that they'll range from "small and nifty problem-makers" (which means they'll probably be similar to the likes of Pops or Ticks), to "an enormous machine that will halt you in your tracks."

It's all relative but when I hear enormous in Arc Raiders I think of the Matriarch, which could mean we'll be getting another map-uniting threat to go up against. Perhaps we'll finally see a glimpse of the rumoured Baron or Duke. But enormous could also just mean a Bastion or Vaporizer-sized arc which would still be a lot of fun to fight and likely just as terrifying.

"Creating new ARC is one of the more involved parts of development," Grøndal continues. "From early concepts and animation to behaviour and machine learning systems that give them their distinctive 'spark of life', every enemy goes through months of iteration to get right. We think it’ll be worth the wait, and we can’t wait to see what you think."

But these new arcs aren't just here to terrify players, it's all about creating another "new high-level challenge" for long time players to sink their teeth into. As more time passes and the regulars get better and better, it's crucial that Embark ups the ante, so in enters "an enormous new Arc Operation designed for experienced raiders looking to push themselves even further."

"Without giving too much away, this new activity is built around many of the ideas that have become increasingly important to us throughout development: meaningful decisions, dynamic encounters, and moments that demand cooperation and careful judgment," Grøndal says.

"Success won’t come easily. You’ll need to balance combat, teamwork, risk, and survival in what we believe will be one of the most intense experiences ARC Raiders has offered to date – one that rewards those willing to rise to the challenge." More on this will be revealed later, closer to its release in October.

Without getting to see Frozen Trails first-hand, all players can go by right now are promises and vibes. But without getting ahead of myself, it seems like Embark is hitting the mark of what players need from this next major update. It's not enough to offer up new maps, arcs, and weapons on their own, players need variety and making small tweaks which will force players to expand upon their habitual playstyle sounds like the refresh Arc Raiders needs.

Today's Helldivers 2 update is bittersweet for the hardcore fans: The teased arrival of new Illuminate enemies did not include the anticipated Cultist unit, but it did add two other monstrosities that just kicked my teeth in for half an hour.

Everyone say hello to the crusher and the wretch, a pair of melee bruisers rounding out the Illuminate faction with some much-needed variety. They're the headliners of today's Devoid of Liberty update, which charges Super Earth's bravest soldiers with counteracting an imposing void that's opened up in Illuminate space.

It's at this point that I wonder if you're seeing the same resemblance making the rounds online: The wretch are dead ringers for Dead Space necromorphs, and the crushers seem directly inspired by Silent Hill's Pyramid Head (except they carry big clubs, not a big sword). If you're going to borrow, it better be from the greats.

And man, these things do feel at home in Helldivers 2. The wretches serve as a new frontline enemy alongside the basic "voteless" zombies. Similar to the mid-sized Terminid units, wretches are faster than helldivers at a full sprint unless you shoot off some of their creepy-crawly legs. Unlike the Terminids, these jerks are pretty smart: they will pivot on a dime to avoid your line of sight, preferring to attack from the rear after making you waste ammo.

They're simple to kill if you can hone in on their tiny heads or shoot off their limbs, but they overwhelm easily in groups. Unless you're extremely confident in your aim, shotguns might be the play for these guys.

Crushers are kind of the opposite: Giant, meandering brutes wielding long clubs. They have no ranged attack and only a prominent helmet for armor—so far, knocking off the helmet to reveal the head is the quickest way to put one down. These guys seemed a little underwhelming at first, but they're sneakily lethal. Keeping away isn't hard, but their health pool is huge, so they're a problem you have to deal with eventually. Watch out for the club's surprisingly far reach: if it connects, that's the ballgame.

While it's great to see the Illuminate faction get some much-needed love, this is a smaller update than I anticipated. There's no new biome (unless stormy cities with twisters count) or major piece of tech like the tank introduced earlier in the year. I do like how Super Earth has begun summoning SEAF troops of varying classes to reinforce players—could this be a test run to eventually give us direct control over troops?

Looks like this one won't match up to the memorable raid on Cyberstan, and that's fine. New weapons that aren't tied to a warbond are quite rare these days, which is a shame, but 240 hours later I'm still happy to buy the occasional $10 warbond for some new toys. The armor sets in the new Warhammer warbond look cool, but none of the weapons seem interesting enough to justify the $5 crossover upcharge.

Indeed, Helldivers 2 is in an age of refinements. Today's patch made some great quality-of-life changes to short magazines and backpack reloads (you don't need to have the backpack on to assist anymore), and after a months-long break, this was also my first time seeing the campaigns terminal on my ship. The level cap has also increased to 300 for Super Earth's truest sickos.

Ever since they were introduced back in Helldivers 2's Heart of Democracy update when the Illuminate invaded Super Earth, the SEAF troopers have held a place in the heart of every Helldiver. These NPC soldiers stand basically no chance against the hordes of bugs, bots, and space aliens who besiege Super Earth's worlds, bristling with ever-more exotic implements of murder, but they do their best and that's what counts.

Well, with the new Devoid of Liberty update, which sees us battling against a tide of void-mutated enemies the Illuminate have unleashed, the SEAF have also been buffed to better face the battle. To quote the official blog post:

"We have commissioned SEAF platoons to aid in completing operations. They’ll arrive on dropships to fight alongside you and your squad, offering medical support via stims, but also give a boost to your morale when you salute, shake hands, and–of course–hug them."

Yes, that's right, you can now hug the little troopers in blue. I hopped into the game to try it out, and, as you'll see below, SEAF troopers will pause mid shot and accept your offer of a little morale-boosting cuddle. It's only fair to show your appreciation, they do have a tough job after all.

Though, as you can also see at the end of the clip, I'd advise against hugging troopers when you're in the thick of combat, unless you want to share a casket because they couldn't untangle your remains. I've played a few missions in the new update and the SEAF actually amount to a somewhat fearsome fighting force now, with support weapons and increased numbers, and they'll periodically drop in on shuttles to help in the fight.

We'll definitely need the help, too. Those new Crusher enemies don't go down easy and they're weirdly hard to hear coming. The Necromorph-esque Wretch enemies, too, add a fast-moving component that the Illuminate didn't have before, and can really close you down quickly if you're not paying attention.

We've got a tough fight ahead of us, but don't forget to take a moment to stop every now and then to show your SEAF contingent their work is appreciated.

The new Helldivers 2 Devoid of Liberty update has arrived, alongside the Warhammer 40k warbond, but there are also a bunch of new titles you can unlock as you level up. Since the level cap has gotten a big boost, and you earn a new title every 10 levels, Arrowhead has added a bunch to fill in the gaps.

Any XP you earned above Level 150 was also banked this whole time, so you might have already unlocked a bunch of these with the new update.

All Helldivers 2 new titles

There are 15 new titles in Helldivers 2 coinciding with the level cap bump from 150 to 300. As before, you'll get a new title every 10 levels. The new ones are:

If you've been playing at Level 150 for a while, chances are you will have unlocked quite a few of these titles already thanks to our XP being banked this whole time.

The new Arc Raiders Phantom Targets project is all about helping Shani track and trace some mysterious arc that seem to be popping up across topside. During the first phase, she asks you to "upgrade antennas found on top of any Cargo Elevator," and you'll have to find three and tinker with them to complete the objective.

In case you don't recall what a Cargo Elevator is in Arc Raiders, I'll explain where to find them below so you can complete this stage.

How to upgrade the Cargo Elevator antennas in Arc Raiders

What this objective calls Cargo Elevators refers to the extraction points you can find on Dam Battlegrounds, Spaceport, or Riven Tides—the ones that look like a little bunker with four doors that lower to let you inside.

What you need to do is climb onto the roof of one of these and fix the antenna (the scaffolding with the radar dishes on), then proceed to do it at two other extraction points. This does seem slightly bugged at the moment in that the icon you interact with on top of the elevator doesn't go away after you activate it.

However, if you open your map and check the quest progress, you'll see that it still counts towards the total of three elevators that you need to upgrade. You also don't have to do all three elevators in a single run, or on the same map, so you can break it up across any of the regions mentioned above. Once that's done, complete the first step in the project to get:

• Combat Mk.3 (Aggressive)
• Heavy Shield
• Vita Spray

Not too shabby a haul for such a quick and easy quest.

Incredible news, folks: Marvel Rivals has completely repackaged its assets. No, not those assets. Last Friday, the internet's most erogenous shooter announced that it was slimming down. As part of an "Optimized texture resource compression strategy across all platforms," Marvel Rivals now comes in about 40 GB lighter on PC than it did before.

This is part of the game's bevy of season 9.5 tweaks and updates. In a chat with a stationary camera, Marvel Rivals creative director Guangyun Chen said that "our tech wizards have been hard at work forging solutions. In season 9.5, we are implementing a massive texture compression overhaul, without sacrificing a single pixel of visual fidelity."

The downside is that, because NetEase is rejigging everything, the actual season 9.5 update itself is meatier than usual. "The initial season 9.5 update will be larger than usual, but the final install size will be much lighter," says Chen.

It's always nice when this happens. Last year, Helldivers 2 pulled a similar trick, chopping itself down from "~154GB to ~23GB". How? Magic. Plus, the devs at Arrowhead went and de-duped a load of data across the game's installed files.

Previously, all sorts of things were in there numerous times to make them easier for people's rusty spinning hard drives, but the devs found a way around it. NetEase hasn't said if it's pulled a similar trick—but I'm in favour of anything that frees up space on my SSD in our current computer-price hellscape.

As an outside observer, I get the impression people are relatively happy with Marvel Rivals' direction. Though, again, I might be mixing up the general sentiment with the specific sentiment people have about Captain America's speedos. For a more expert take, I recommend you check out our Elie Gould on why Marvel Rivals needs to pick a lane.

Tom Clancy's The Division Resurgence originally launched on mobile before coming to PC via Ubisoft Connect (the artist formerly known as Uplay) in April. Earlier this month it arrived on Steam, where it hasn't received the warmest welcome.

Overall its review rating is currently sitting at "mixed" with just 46% of reviews leaning to the positive. Players are frustrated by login issues, mouse bugs, and the looter-shooter's combination of underwhelming rewards and overwhelming microtransactions.

"Calling it slop disrespects actual slop", says one user review. "I've seen Korean gacha games with less microtransaction than this. This is scummy even for a F2P. It has [t]he most distracting, convoluted, overcomplicated on purpose and bad thought UI and Menus design I've ever seen in a video-game. You spend more time micro-managing than playing missions!"

"Complete ass game", begins another review. "Balancing is the main issue, as well as loot progression. All the loot is locked behind daily completions, and you only get to do those maybe 4-5 times a day. Then the game scales the xp and rewards down hard! This isn't a looter-shooter, its a daily log-in simulator with Division like systems. Like what everyone else is saying, just play Division 1 or 2, this game isn't worth the time."

As with the mainline Division games, it's a third-person shooter where you play a member of the Strategic Homeland Division trying to restore order after the "Green Flu" epidemic reduces the USA to chaos. Like the first game it's set in New York, and lets you fight your way across locations like Liberty Island and the New York Stock Exchange, for which you're rewarded with loot like a selection of slightly different tactical beanies and baseball caps.

Ghost Recon WildlandsNovember 13 will mark the 25^th anniversary of Ubisoft's Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon, but Ubisoft is getting the celebration ball rolling a little early with a major update to Ghost Recon Wildlands featuring major visual and gameplay enhancements, and an all-new mission "set in a darker, more oppressive Bolivia."

Bolivia, you may recall, is where Ghost Recon Wildlands takes place, in a fictional future where the country has been taken over by a powerful drug cartel. That leads the US to send in the Ghosts, and then it's peace through superior firepower time, baby! This didn't go over very well with the actual Bolivian government, which filed a format complaint about the whole thing with the French government.

The game itself is pretty good though, if also pretty ridiculous. I put probably a couple hundred hours into it with a pair of gamer pals, and even though we never liberated Bolivia we did have a good time, mainly because Wildlands is above all else a five-alarm chaos simulator. Yes, we're an elite squad of deadly operators, but we're also launching ourselves off of dirt bikes and over cliffs at roughly 300 MPH because we forgot which button the brake is.

Speaking of forgetting, never forget the incomparable skills of PC Gamer's own tier one strike squad:

Anyway, with the 25^th anniversary more or less upon us, Wildlands is being updated on both PC and current-gen consoles for "smoother combat, improved distance rendering, enhanced lighting and shadows, and a sharper image targeting 4K resolution."

The new standalone missions, dubbed Last Rites, see the gang hunt down La Llorona, the leader of a fanatical, violent cult called Los Pentitentes, who's hiding in a region filled with "dangerous swamps and dense forests where visibility is low and danger is lurking."

Notably, the followup to Wildlands, Ghost Recon Breakpoint, is not getting a similar facelift. It's a bit newer, although probably not enough newer to make that much of a difference, but it also came out in pretty rough shape and was quite poorly received. It's been improved dramatically since then, but maybe Ubisoft had to pick one and decided to go with the winner. Breakpoint players will get a new 25th anniversary bundle for free in September, though.

In any event, this isn't the only Ghost Recon freebie in the pipe. Wildlands and Breakpoint are both free to play for the weekend on Ubisoft Connect, and on sale for 95% off on Steam—that's $2.49 for Wildlands and $3 for Breakpoint, which are both really good deals. You can also snag the classic Ghost Recon: Future Soldier for free until August 13.

And finally, Ubisoft also rolled out the new Ghost Recon Insiders Program today, giving fans "a chance to help build the next Ghost Recon." You can sign up for that at ghostrecon.com/insider.

"Face the unknown," reads the lone message of a new Helldivers 2 trailer published today.

Helldivers 2's next major update is coming August 12. The teaser is light on details, but it's certainly illustrative of what Super Earth will be up against. We see a helldiving teddy bear being consumed by the void—a tear in space that's currently eating up big chunks of the galaxy. The bear is ripped apart limb by limb by some psychic presence before the teddy reappears on a jungle planet. In the reflection of its eye, we see a tall, rounded biped alien reach to pick it up, then cut to release date.

All signs point to a new Illuminate threat. The third Helldivers 2 faction, colloquially known as the squids, have been quiet throughout 2026. Not since last year's invasion of Super Earth have the squids been a legitimate threat to democracy. While we were busy exterminating bugs in caves and taking the fight to Cyberstan, the Illuminate were shoring up their forces. Now, they're back with a new vanguard.

It's been a few months since I clocked in for helldiving duty, so I was surprised to find the lower quadrant of the galactic war map—the area where Illuminate fighting tends to go down—currently looks all kinds of messed up:

Several entire planets have been swallowed up by the void, and next, they're coming for our teddy bears. Some believe the teaser is suggesting Super Earth itself will once again be a battleground, though the bear could symbolize the human colonies of outer rim planets.

If you don't mind the possible spoiler for next week's update, many are convinced the figure in the teaser is one of the Cultists, a new faction of Illuminate with powerful magic abilities.

Anything new for the squids is exciting, because despite how far the faction has come since their surprise introduction in 2024, they've always been the army with the least variety. The addition of Leviathan ships, Stingray jets, and Fleshmobs has helped a lot, but they could really use some enemies that send a chill down a diver's spine.

Not so coincidentally, August 12 also marks the arrival of the Warhammer 40,000 crossover warbond, which includes three weapons and two armor sets from the Warhammer universe. No price announced on that one yet, but expect it to be more expensive than a standard $10 warbond.