The idea that "SNES consoles seem to be getting faster as they age" was posited back on February 26 via TASBot – the speedrunning robot operated by community figure Alan "dwangoAC" Cecil – alongside a call for data detailing exactly how quickly everyone's Super Nintendo is running. After well over 100 responses, the hypothesis is starting to seem pretty definitive. A SNES in 2025 is going to run faster than it did when it was originally manufactured.

The SNES has a pair of audio chips that work together to produce audio, including the SCP700 coprocessor designed by Kutaragi. As 404 Media reports based on an interview with Cecil, Nintendo's original developer documentation reported that the SCP700 ran with a digital signal processing, or DSP, rate of 32,000hz. By 2007, emulator developers had clocked the real-world DSP rate at 32,040Hz. In 2025, the data suggests the average is now 32,076Hz, with some units clocked as fast as 32,182Hz.

If audio data gets processed through the SNES faster, that speeds up one potential bottleneck on how fast the console can run a game. Depending on how the game is programmed, this could have a variety of effects, such as speeding up the loads between rooms in a game like Super Metroid. You might think this would have a big effect for speedrunners, but Cecil doesn't expect it to be profound.

"We don't yet know how much of an impact it will have on a long speedrun," Cecil tells 404 Media. “We only know it has at least some impact on how quickly data can be transferred between the CPU and the APU." He believes even the fastest SNES units would likely only benefit a speedrun by a few frames – likely far less than a second – and the margins in most human speedrunning communities are typically larger than that. And, well... it's not like any speedrunner is suffering the disadvantage of a newly manufactured SNES in 2025.

But why are these chips faster now? That's the detail that hasn't been fully nailed down. Computer parts are obviously made up of physical materials, and those materials degrade and change over time. The SCP700's DSP rate is governed by a ceramic resonator, and ceramic is sensitive enough for these types of chips to fluctuate in performance based on temperature, similar to silicon producing minor differences in modern CPUs.

For now, it's probably safest to attribute all this to the simple entropy of the universe. Folks like Cecil will certainly be continuing in the research even as, day by day, our SNESes all get that tiny fraction faster.

Think of it this way: the best SNES games are now all that tiny bit better.

Speaking in a recent video message on Monster Hunter Wilds, producer Ryozo Tsujimoto, art director Kaname Fujioka, and director Yuya Tokuda teased new content and announcements to come. Looking to the future of Wilds, Tsujimoto tells fans to "keep an eye out" for news on title updates – the first of which drops in April, with another timed for summer. "It's only been a few weeks since Wilds launched, but we're already working on title updates, so keep an eye out for news about those," he said.

Tokuda says the developers have been taking fan feedback into consideration, telling players to "please look forward" to more than just the unveiled title updates that the community already knows are in the works: "We've been gathering player feedback, including via a number of surveys, and will continue making adjustments through not only the planned title updates but in updates released at other times."

Fujioka echoes Tokuda's words, reiterating that more is coming to Wilds than just the "already announced updates" players are anticipating. "We have lots in store, both already announced updates and some we're still working on, and we're doing our best to make the game as enjoyable as possible for everyone," he added. "We'll be sharing more announcements in the future." That's not all fans have to be excited for, either.

According to Tsujimoto, "There is so much more in store, not just for Wilds but for the series as a whole." These are certainly wonderful times to be a Monster Hunter stan, it seems, with what our own Monster Hunter Wilds review calls "the new peak of the series" being out and with more where that came from. I personally can't wait for the first title update to launch early next month, either, with hopes for some dual blade-shaped additions and perhaps some balance changes for the best Monster Hunter Wilds weapons.

After you finish playing one of the best Monster Hunter games to date, here are some of the other most exciting new games this year and beyond to keep an eye on.

Last year, the company recruited fans themselves to test a "mystery" Nintendo Switch Online feature with a Playtest Program that filled up within seven minutes. The publisher was then quickly reminded of why it doesn't usually let anyone peek behind the curtain as leaks started flooding the internet almost immediately, describing what sounds like a playtest for a Minecraft-esque game about building entire planets with a much heavier emphasis on social elements.

Posted on Reddit, a new Nintendo patent now seems to be related to the sandbox-building game. Players who allege they've seen and entered the Playtest Program project say the patent, "specifically the process of setting an area to restrict player actions" to stop griefers, is "pretty much exactly" describing mechanics from Nintendo's mystery game.

What's more interesting is that the patent lists some Splatoon veterans as the creators. Splatoon 1 directors Yusuke Amano and Tsubasa Sakaguchi are both named, which would make sense as Amano hasn't been credited since 2020's Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Sakaguchi's last project was Labo. Masaki Wada and Shinya Yano, two other names attached to the patent, were also programmers on fitness RPG Ring Fit Adventure.

With so much veteran talent who seem like they've been attached to the game for years, this galactic-building game might be further along than anyone expects. The Nintendo Switch 2 is also right around the corner, and there's a Nintendo Direct incoming next month, so we might even find out about the project then. Since the playtest announcement first referred to the game as a Nintendo Online "feature," I'm most curious to find out how Nintendo's going to price this damn thing or whether it'll be a subscription add-on.

See what else is officially coming down the pipeline with our new games of 2025 guide.

"Here's the thing: there was always a big, big risk in the beginning," Fares says in an interview with the Edge newsletter. "But I have extreme confidence in what we do. I trust in the core [of the idea]. Brothers, A Way Out, It Takes Two – all the numbers looked really, really bad. Now it's different, because we've kind of become this big developer, but still, with those early games, I just felt like, 'The core is great, I just know it.' So, trust in your vision, and go with it fully. Don't back away from that."

It's unclear exactly what "numbers" he means, though, because It Takes Two reportedly sold over 20 million copies by the end of 2024 – but it took a month to get to one million. By contrast, Split Fiction sold one million in just two days, so clearly Hazelight is on the up.

Fares may have been referring to wishlists, pre-orders, some sort of market research to do with how much people wanted co-op games.

In our Split Fiction review, we wrote that the title "cements Hazelight as the master of co-op games." I've loved Fares' games since his first, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, and I'm glad he's had the support and investment from publishers to keep making the kind of co-op games he loves, too.

Fares also praises EA in his Edge interview, saying: "I'm gonna give EA props for actually believing in, and backing up, the vision. They never interfere. Sometimes, I think they get so much s**t they don't deserve. I don't know how they work with others, but with us, it's super good."

If you want to read more interviews like this, be sure to sign up to GamesRadar+'s newsletters – we have ones for GamesRadar+, SFX, and GTA 6 O'clock, so there's something for everyone.

In an interview published in Knowledge, the new newsletter from Edge magazine, Fares talks about how much pushback he got at the beginning of his game dev career, but adds "EA definitely never interferes with any of development. And I mean zero."

Fares has been working with EA since A Way Out, his second game and the first under his own Hazelight Studios. "I'm gonna give EA props for actually believing in, and backing up, the vision," Fares says. "They never interfere. Sometimes, I think they get so much s**t they don't deserve. I don't know how they work with others, but with us it's super good."

Considering It Takes Two won game of the year and Split Fiction sold more than one million copies in just two days, I'm not surprised EA just lets Fares and his team do their thing. But it also sounds like Fares is good at standing his ground and sticking up for his creative vision.

"Developers can sometimes struggle with leadership and clear vision," he says. "Sometimes, I hear a lot of blame [placed] on the publisher, but I think it's a responsibility for us both… The perfect combination is when the publisher respects the developer and the developer has a clear vision of what they want to do. If that doesn't exist, then there's a risk the publisher will take over more and more. You know, there needs to be a perfect symbiosis between them.

"Publishers sometimes fuck up and [make] stupid decisions – 'we need to do this for the money.' That's why I say clearly: no microtransactions, no lootboxes. I think it's very important to understand that we're working with creativity. We have to push the medium forward. We can't implement that shit and, at Hazelight, it will never happen."

It sounds like Fares has the ideal indie dev/publisher relationship, but those seem rare these days. Hopefully his words help other developers ensure they're making the most out of their time with big companies.

If you want more interviews like this one delivered to your inbox each Friday, sign-up to the Knowledge newsletter – along with weekly offerings from GamesRadar+, SFX, and our friends at GTA 6 O'clock.

Final Fantasy 9's fingerprints are pretty much all over the MMO's latest expansion – locations like Alexandria Castle are central to both, you can draw clear parallels between certain characters, FF9's iconic sword-fighting minigame is definitely referenced in Dawntrail, and the expansion includes wind-up cameo minions of the classic's leading pair, Princess Dagger (Garnet) and monkeyman Zidane.

Speaking to Game Watch in an interview translated by Automaton, Yoshi-P made some incredibly based comments about feeling "rather torn" about referencing Final Fantasy 9 so much because it's "a masterpiece and everyone has a strong emotional attachment to it, so I wanted to avoid consciously pulling the story too much in that direction."

As Dawntrail's narrative and general structure started to become more concrete during development, those nods just seemed natural, though.

"When we first decided on the main storyline, Alexandria Castle was not so important. But once we decided to incorporate more FFIX elements, we made sure to create them with proper meaning and intent," Yoshi-P explains.

"I thought it might be best to distance ourselves a little from homages to FFIX and was going to go with that approach," he continues, but with patch 7.2 coming in two weeks and 7.3 heading towards the expansion's big conclusion, Yoshi-P seems to me more comfortable with callbacks to the best Final Fantasy of them all (fight me).

Despite what some fans might hope for, all the references don't seem to be part of some shadowy plan to tease a Final Fantasy 9 remake under our noses, if Yoshi-P is to be believed. Last summer, he said he wasn't working on such a project and didn't know if the game was even being remade.

More recently, Yoshi-P expressed wariness about a potential Final Fantasy 9 project since it would probably balloon into another multi-game saga, like the Final Fantasy 7 remakes.

Regardless, Final Fantasy 9's remake was part of those prophetic Nvidia leaks from years ago and rumors about its existence have continued to swirl online since then.

The Final Fantasy series has sold a whopping 200 million copies, while the Pixel Remaster reportedly outsells FF16 with 5 million copies

Over on Twitter, Fox says that for "anyone who's ever had any interest in playing this game on PC... now is the best time to pick it up." And he's not wrong – this is the lowest price the RPG has ever seen on Steam since its release in 2015. It's the kind of deal that's so good it kinda makes you want to buy the game again even if you already own it – and if you don't already own it, then you know what to do.

Seriously though, if you've not already played Undertale, it's an RPG experience that's not quite like any other. Between its endearing characters, touching story, fantastic sense of humor, and soundtrack packed with some all-time gaming greats, there's no denying that its current $1 price tag is a steal.

Obviously, the sale price is only temporary – it's tied to Steam's Spring Sale 2025, with the deal set to disappear on March 20. So if you're interested, be sure to grab it before then. It's such a good price, in fact, that you'd actually be able to earn the money for it relatively quickly if you have a few Steam trading cards lying around, which one PC gamer, determined to buy a Steam Deck with pennies earned from the collectibles, recently proved can be very lucrative.

Deltarune is Fox's next game, and yes it is an anagram. Its first part has been playable since 2018, while chapter two was released in 2021. There are seven chapters planned in total, and the third and fourth are set to arrive at some point this year – hopefully sooner rather than later. Console tests are now underway – a few weeks ago, PS5 testing began, so fingers crossed that means we don't have too much longer to wait.

For more games like Undertale and Deltarune, be sure to check out our roundup of the best RPGs you can play now.

As reported by Automaton, Silent Hill f has been rated CERO:Z, Japan's equivalent of an 18+ rating. All of the other mainline games have been rated CERO:C in Japan, or 15+. I'm quite surprised, because I've always known the games to be absolutely terrifying so I assumed they'd also be rated for adults in Japan.

Horror movies and games from Japan are very popular all over the world, from games like Silent Hill and Resident Evil to movies like Ring and The Grudge, so maybe Japan's ratings board just has a higher tolerance for scares. Or maybe they aren't gory enough to warrant the adults-only rating. It could be that Silent Hill f is just more violent, not necessarily scarier.

That being said, Silent Hill f looks especially scary to me. I'm terrified of human-like monsters that move in contorted ways, and that's the first kind of creature that shows up in the game's trailer. Original series monster designer Masahiro Ito, the man who created Pyramid Head, didn't work on this game at all though. He says, "I don't know anything abt Silent Hill f because I didn't work on it."

Silent hill f is also unique in its setting. It takes place in the '60s and even comes with a warning. "This game is set in Japan in the 1960s and contains depictions based on the customs and culture of that time," Konami's disclaimer reads. "These depictions do not reflect the opinions or values of the developers or any individuals involved." It also warns of "depictions of gender discrimination, child abuse, bullying, drug-induced hallucinations, torture, and graphic violence." That 18+ rating doesn't seem so surprising anymore.

Silent Hill f writer Ryukishi07 said, "I don't think I would mind if it was the last thing I ever wrote," so this really is shaping up to be a messed-up game.

It's important to note that games can and do have their ratings changed before realease, and even after – it happened with Balatro. So, there's a chance this rating drops if Konami appeals the decision or makes some changes to make it more suitable for a younger audience.

If that doesn't sound scary enough for you, check out our list of the best horror games you can get spooky with right now.

Yes, even in Cat Detective Albert Wilde, the titular feline has his flaws. But when you've got the added pressure of an empty wallet and an angry moose demanding reimbursement, you have all the more incentive to solve a case you come across to score yourself the reward money. The point-and-click-style adventure from developer beyondthosehills clocks in at around six hours, and it's absolutely dripping with humor, weird antics, and an aesthetic look and feel that's heavily inspired by 1930's noir. The case it takes me on really lives up to Albert's name by going to some wild(e) places, and I'm curious to see how it'll come to a close. But if you're in need of a good laugh and some investigative goodness, it's well worth checking out.

Feline findings

The '30s noire inspirations are obvious right away, with Cat Detective Albert Wilde greeting me into the story with credits that play in an old-timey frame you'd normally see in movies of that decade. There's also a constant grainy film visual that lends it that gritty gumshoe feel and brings to mind the likes of Angels with Dirty Faces and the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I'm immediately taken with Albert's monologuing, which is constantly filled with lines that wouldn't be out of place in any noir detective romp, if only for the fact that he often says humorous cat-related versions. "I'm always on the prowl… for the truth, for criminal scum, for a nice bowlful of milk when I get the chance" is just one line of many that comes to mind.

Pretty much right away you learn that Albert is down-on-his-luck, with no money to his name after a spot of gambling. With no coin and no case, my first objective is simple: find a job. After failing to smooth talk my way to a copy of a newspaper from a salesman who has a bird's head (every character has an animal head imposed onto a human body which gives it a weird uncanny look), I have to talk to a moose called Rudy who it turns out I owe money to. Fortunately against his better judgement, he loans me just one more dollar so I can snap up a paper and search for job listings.. aka any news about local crimes to enquire about.

When I'm in control, it switches to a first person view in an entirely black and white setting. Anytime I can interact with something, it's highlighted by a little yellow dot, such a can lying in the street. When I go over and click on the discarded can near the newsstand as I search for work, Albert questions why he's even bothering to look at it, and I'm reminded of the many times I've picked up a piece of garbage in LA Noire and inspect it, which would lead protagonist Cole to say aloud "it's just junk". But you never know what a clue might be, and I'm nothing if not a thorough investigator.

Once I find a newspaper clipping about a mysterious dead body, I'm on the phone to the police chief to ask about the investigation, but as is ever the case for Albert, I've apparently wronged them in some way, too. Practically everyone I meet is either pretty reluctant to help, or not especially pleased to see me, but such is the life of a flawed feline PI who has to do a lot of snooping. Once the chief eventually gives up the information I need and lets me in on the case– thanks to my incessant calling from an old fashioned boxed telephone hanging in my office – I can open up a map and travel to the crime scene.

Each time I change location on the map, be it to a point of interest, or my office, it will switch to a brief cutscene of Albert driving his era appropriate car, and I love the way he'll continue narrating throughout the journey. It really is so very noir. At the scene, I get stuck into classic investigative work, which is quite simple: talk to people (or in this instance a flamingo) of interest nearby, and look at objects that might serve as clues. First off, though, I need to look at the body, which is where things start getting weird… because the body has Albert's face, but the cat on the ground appears to have been walking on four legs instead of two… what is the world coming to?

The flamingo witness is the next port of call, but the pink feathered fellow refuses to give up any pertinent information unless I agree to impress them by dancing. I may have seven lives, but I don't have the moves I need, so it's off to the dance studio to learn a new routine. At this point I fully accept that you'll never be able to predict what will happen next in this particular crime caper, but it's all the better for it.

Because of that, I don't want to spoil any more – it's the kind of experience worth going into without too much knowledge. All I'll say is that from my foray into the world of dance, you can venture into some sewers, meet a praying mantis, and maybe even come across some quantum physics-based escapades. Yes, really. If that doesn't pique your interest, I don't know what will. If you're in need of a good chuckle and something silly, surprising, and a bit strange, here's a clue: don't miss this one.

Cat Detective Albert Wilde is out now on PC. For more recommendations, check out our Indie Spotlight series or see what's ahead with our roundup of upcoming indie games.

According to Steam's 2024 year in review which was just published, the company is now generating ten-times more revenue than it was in 2014 on new releases alone. The way it calculates new release revenue is by looking at the total figure in the 30 days after a game is launched on the platform, plus pre-order cash.

An important caveat to note is that only the first date a game is made available counts. So, when something launches into early access, the new release revenue is calculated in the following 30 days; the 1.0 release doesn't count as a new data point.

This is certainly good news for developers, but 18,908 games were released on Steam last year according to SteamDB, which means just 2.6% of them made more than $250,000 in their first month, and around 200 games made more than $1 million in their first 30 days, which is just 1%.

Obviously, many games have a long tail and keep generating income after their initial releases, but for studios with tight margins, it's a tough market. However, if you're a solo developer and you manage to make it into that top 500, you should consider yourself very successful.

Insomniac's retiring CEO says games are riskier to make these days due to how much time and money they cost to make, and Steam's figures seem to corroborate that. Still, every now and then, you get a breakout hit like Balatro selling over $600,000 worth of copies in its first few hours on Steam.

While you're here, check out our list of the best games on Steam and see if there's any you want to play.

Speaking in a recent interview with the BBC, Baszucki responds to viral circulating claims regarding Roblox and its safety, as well as the possibility it presents for children to encounter harmful content. The CEO insists, despite such claims, that the Roblox Corporation maintains high standards when it comes to protecting its users, stating that "tens of millions" of players have "amazing experiences" while engaging with the platform.

As for parents' concerns, Baszucki advises that any worried families simply don't allow their children to use Roblox. "My first message would be, if you're not comfortable, don't let your kids be on Roblox," says the CEO. "That sounds a little counter-intuitive," he admits, "but I would always trust parents to make their own decisions." According to Baszucki, this doesn't mean the Roblox Corporation doesn't take safety seriously, though.

"We do in the company take the attitude that any bad, even one bad incident, is one too many," he assures. "We watch for bullying, we watch for harassment, we filter all of those kinds of things, and I would say behind the scenes, the analysis goes on all the way to, if necessary, reaching out to law enforcement." Any user not displaying "civility," as the CEO puts it, faces temporary time-outs or lengthier account bans.

Roblox uses advanced AI to analyze all communication between players, working to flag any potentially inappropriate contact. As for the games on the platform and how they're rated, Baszucki, who calls himself "less of a gamer and more of an engineer," insists the Roblox Corporation has a "consistent policy" with rigorous guidelines to ensure proper ratings are applied to each one so that they're recommend to appropriate audiences.

An undeniable majority of the Roblox community consists of users under 18, but Baszucki seemingly expects as much. Before he worked on Roblox, he led an education software company dubbed Knowledge Revolution – only to quickly notice that children weren't just interested in learning, but were rather into creativity, too. "They wanted to play and build stuff," he recounts, and witnessing that fact is part of how Roblox came to fruition.

"They were making houses, or ships, or scenery, and they wanted to jump in, and all of that learning was the germination of Roblox," states Baszucki, who compares his experience of building Roblox with how Walt Disney might have felt about his own creations – "a little like having the opportunity he had a long time ago when he was designing the Magic Kingdom," to be precise. Baszucki now sees Roblox as "the future of communication."

Enjoying the virtual platform yourself? Here are some up-to-date Roblox promo codes to use.

Konami gave its upcoming Japan-set horror game the full blowout yesterday with a full trailer, some of the spookiest monsters in series history, a character reveal, a deliciously scary disclaimer, and more.

Alongside a ton of other information, the publisher also revealed that Yamaoka is back after having written music for every single numbered Silent Hill game, a bunch of spin-offs, and countless other horror projects like Slitterhead, the funky horror-action game from Silent Hill's OG creator. (Plus, the likes of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners... this man's resume is extensive.)

"In terms of music, the focus was not on using classical instruments to complement the depiction of the setting or to express the 'old time' of Japan, but rather on capturing the uncanny 'humidity' and 'scent' of Japan itself," Yamaoka writes on social media. "That, to me, is what Silent Hill truly embodies."

"A story set not in modern Japan, but in ancient Japan," he notes. "While its world may feel unfamiliar, it strangely resonates with me as a Japanese person. Within that world, my own soul was nurtured, and I strongly felt how it continues to influence my creative work today."

Yamaoka joins an A-list team that also happens to include famed writer Ryukishi07, who proved he can do spooky and depressing in his beloved horror manga series When They Cry, alongside Dynasty Warriors composer Kensuke Inage and Silent Hill 2 Remake producer Motoi Okamoto.

See what else is coming down the pipeline with our new games of 2025 guide.

Mega Voltage, the next chapter in the Pokemon Horizons branch of the ongoing new anime series, will involve a timeskip for Liko, Roy, and Captain Pikachu (H/T Screen Rant).

As you can see below, the show is reportedly dropping in Japan on April 11 and the new poster shows off the fresh designs of its main characters – and even some (spoilery) evolutions for their parties.

It's been a longstanding complaint among the Poke-fandom that Ash remained a 10-year-old boy through the entirety of his saga from Pallet Town prodigy to Pokemon Master. That remained right up until his farewell in 2023, despite switching voice actors from Veronica Taylor to Sarah Natochenny in 2006.

Since then, new protagonist Liko has picked up the baton in the Paldea region with her own Pokemon, Sprigatito.

Now, we're going to get a mega – pun intended – Pokemon first. Finally, Pokemon is accelerating through the years to bring us a timeskip instead of encasing its leads in temporal amber, forced to be the same age for eternity.

Pokemon Horizons' first season aired across 2023 and 2024, with its second season, Search for Laqua, currently ongoing on Netflix in the US and on BBC in the UK. Remarkably, we're hitting the 28th season of the Pokemon anime, with new episodes of Netflix's Pokemon Concierge also planned for this year.

For more, you'll need our complete guide on how to watch Pokemon in order. Then, dive into the best anime and best Pokemon games to experience right now.

Ahead of the PC port's release in June, Nvidia has confirmed that Stellar Blade will immediately support DLSS 4. For anyone with compatible hardware (specifically, the pricey GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs), the game will also boast Nvidia's new Multi Frame Generation tech that can generate "up to three additional frames per traditionally rendered frame."

Basically, it'll look extra smooth, and in the comparison trailer below, you can see the frame rate triple up to the high 300s at times, allowing the action to flow better than ever. This staggering fps isn't entirely consistent, but you can rely on it being significantly higher than the native frame rate (which, for what it's worth, also looks great in the video, falling around the 100-130fps range).

Beyond the Multi Frame Generation, Nvidia confirms in a blog post that Stellar Blade's DLSS 4 support means you can use Super Resolution to "further enhance image quality," while you can expect responsiveness to be improved by Nvidia Reflex (which reduces latency).

Unrelated to all the tech details, Stellar Blade's crossover DLC with Goddess of Victory – Nikke (also developed by Shift Up) is arriving in June, too. Although it's not clear exactly what that'll contain at this point, you can certainly look forward to some new outfits for Eve, like the 2B costume added in the NieR: Automata collab DLC.

It'll be interesting to see where Stellar Blade goes beyond this. Last May, it was revealed that Shift Up was already considering a sequel, and considering how popular the game has been, it'd really be no surprise if this happened. Kicking off this year, all of Shift Up's employees were reportedly given a $3,400 bonus and a PS5 Pro, so clearly, they were very happy with how things went last year.

You can find even more great games to play in our list of the best action games.

Silent Hill f takes the series' foggy setting and contorted-limb monsters to a rural 1960s Japanese village this time, putting us in the shoes of teenager Shimizu Hinako, and the game's website goes to great lengths to remind us that some things were very different back then.

"This game is set in Japan in the 1960s and contains depictions based on the customs and culture of that time," Konami's disclaimer says. "These depictions do not reflect the opinions or values of the developers or any individuals involved." Of course, some things in the world haven't simply gone away as the disclaimer also warns of "depictions of gender discrimination, child abuse, bullying, drug-induced hallucinations, torture, and graphic violence."

Things might get so grim, in fact, that Konami even says that it's really really okay if you need to take a break now and then. Turning on all the lights and running to the kitchen for some emergency coffee wouldn't make you a wimp, honest, the publisher implies. "If you feel uncomfortable at any point while playing, please take a break from playing or speak to someone you trust," are the disclaimer's exact words.

In true Silent Hill form, it seems the real horrors aren't just coming from abject designs and spooky liminal spaces. Shimizu herself is apparently a "girl struggling under the pressure of expectations from her friends, family, and society" who "now hardly smiles." Taken together with the content warnings up above, Silent Hill f will likely take a sterner look at some real-world issues, though hopefully they're tackled with the same finesse as Silent Hill 2 and not Silent Hill: The Short Message.

There's no release date for Silent Hill f, but it'll come to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S when it's ready.

Famed Higurashi When They Cry creator Ryukishi07 says he worked so hard on the Silent Hill f story that "I don't think I would mind if it was the last thing I ever wrote"

The lawsuit alleges that NetEase's defamation and unfair trade practices led to the demise of Prytania and its subsidiaries, including Crop Circle Games – which NetEase owned approximately 25% of.

As reported by Polygon, the couple filed a lawsuit in January before NetEase pushed for the case to be moved to federal court earlier this month. A letter from Steven Griffith Jr., who is representing Prytania Media and the Strains in court, sent to NetEase CEO Ding Lei, outlines their claims against the Marvel Rivals developer. In it, Griffith alleges that NetEase "spread false and defamatory statements that caused the demise of Prytania Media."

The lawsuit, according to Griffith, sees the Strains seeking $900 million in damages – triple a previous $300 valuation of the company. He also claims that NetEase, particularly employee Han, circulated "defamatory rumors" that implied Prytania Media had committed financial fraud. As alleged by the couple, NetEase is to blame for any problems they encountered – and also didn't comply with United States Department of the Treasury regulations.

"I can share details in our next call, but the high level message is we want to keep away from the radar of [the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States] which can be quite tricky," Griffith attributes to a NetEase representative in his letter. "Geopolitical stuff is already causing trouble to our business efforts in North America." The Strains allegedly tried to ensure that NetEase was compliant with U.S. law with its Crop Circle Games investment.

However, NetEase representatives "became increasingly hostile and aggressive," according to the couple. The Strains state that NetEase "dodged confirming its compliance" with U.S. law because it'd have to "identify owners and board members that are Members of the [Chinese Communist Party] and their position within the CCP, as well as the existence of its CCP party organizations, it [sic] members, and the control it exerts over NetEase."

In response, NetEase tells Polygon that the Strains' allegations "are wholly without merit." The company is prepared to "vigorously defend ourselves against them," too. "Our record as a global gaming company speaks for itself, and we remain committed to conducting business with integrity. We are confident that the legal process will vindicate our position and shed light on the real reasons behind the demise of the Strains' studios."

New Marvel Rivals balance patch only tweaks "a handful of heroes" to maintain the "rich diversity" of the shooter's current strategies.

While the two adventures that came our way in February are more than sating my appetite in the RPG department, they really are only just the beginning. Whenever I catch myself looking ahead to the future, the sense of anticipation is almost overpowering, because 2025 is positively stacked to the rafters with new games calling my name. Many promise to make my aforementioned heart practically burst with joy as a longtime fan of the genre, and alongside exciting announcements for big launches still to come, it sure is a damn good time to be an RPG sicko like me.

New roles to play

Of course, Avowed and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 aren't the only examples we've already seen this year. Monster Hunter Wilds made a big impression with its own distinctive fashion-hunting loop, Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector brought us a stellar sequel to developer Jump Over the Age's 2022 RPG, and Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii put fan-favorite Goro Majima into the spotlight. But the good news is that there's plenty more on the way, and the lineup speaks to how much variety is in store.

In fact, some are right around the corner – and may finally pull me away from the Living Lands and Bohemia… I'm looking at you, Assassin's Creed Shadows. Yes, the adventure set in Feudal Japan is officially on the horizon, with its March release date inching ever closer. It's been quite some time since we had another entry in the Assassin's Creed series really dial into the RPG direction that was first introduced in Assassin's Creed Origins. But Shadows promises do exactly that in all the ways that speak to me - from pursuing romance to making choices in questlines, and customizing your style alongside your very own base. I can't wait to discover all it has to offer in terms of role-playing features, with Ubisoft dropping deep dive updates that are only making me more excited for what's to come.

After our jaunt in Japan, Atomfall then promises to bring us some survival action RPG goodness that is already calling to the Fallout fan in me (and will hopefully stave off the yearning for the very distant Fallout 5). Set in post-apocalyptic Northern England, with shades of BioShock and Dying Light, it already sounds very promising –- just reading about our very own staff writer Jasmine Gould-Wilson's hands-on experience is enough to convince me this is one to watch out for in the near future.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 will then keep the good times rolling in April with its own take on turn-based combat that lets you react in real-time. It also has an intriguing – if convoluted-sounding – concept shaped around a figure known as the "Paintress", who is said to awaken and determine at what age everyone should die (pretty dark). We'll follow the story of Expedition 33, a group of people with only one year left to live who set out to stop the Paintress' cycle of death. While it is a little outside of my usual wheelhouse in the genre, its world has piqued my interest and it certainly looks set to give us our fill of action.

Along with the likes of Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition in March, Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time, Lost Souls Aside, and Elden Ring: Nighthreign in May, there are also so many big RPGs with a 2025 launch window that have me chomping at the bit. From The Outer Worlds 2 that will bring more Obsidian magic to the fold with some sci-fi flavor, to Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 (which has been on my radar for years) and the return of some double-life role-play in Moonlighter 2, my wishlist is only growing.

Not to mention the start of 2025 brought us some exciting showcases and announcements that have only given me more reasons to look forward to the future. With Pokemon Presents giving us our first proper look at my most anticipated upcoming switch game, Pokemon Legends Z-A, I cannot wait to venture to Lumiose and see what the single-city setting holds for us. And as a mega fan of The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, there's no holding back my excitement any time we learn more about Ciri's upcoming adventure in the Witcher 4 - even if it's still a ways off right now.

But perhaps one of the biggest reveals to kick off 2025 came with vampire RPG The Dawn of Bloodwalker. Being developed by a team that includes former CD Projekt Red devs, it still doesn't have a set release date and won't likely come our way this year, but it sounds like just the kind of adventure I'm always looking for. Choices that matter? Dark fantasy vibes? Its own unique lore? Yes please. Who would have thought I'd have not one but two vampire RPGs to look forward to? What a time to be alive.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of everything that's coming our way – our most anticipated games of the year speak to that – but just thinking about this small selection makes my RPG-loving heart soar. This year has already been off to such a strong start, and while I'm sure I'll still be playing Avowed and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 throughout the year, it really does look like I'll be spoiled for choice in 2025.

Look ahead to more exciting releases coming our way in our roundup of upcoming PS5 games and upcoming Xbox Series X games.

Ito has been working on Silent Hill games for his entire career, so it stands to reason people would expect him to be involved with Silent Hill f, which has a new trailer out now. It was first announced two years ago and is the next mainline entry in the iconic horror series, but Ito tweets, "I don't know anything abt Silent Hill f because I didn't work on it." When asked if Sakura Head that he created would be in the game, he replied, "I don't know."

Ito worked on the monster design in the early Silent Hill games, and while his work will be sorely missed, the creatures in Silent Hill f are still terrifying. There's nothing I find scarier than the contortionist brand of horror movement, so imagine my fear when I saw that creepy ghost thing shambling down the stairs in the new trailer.

Ito left Konami back in 2004 following the disbanding of Team Silent, the group that worked on the games, but he's frequently been hired to work on follow up games and the remakes. He actually originally planned to turn down the opportunity to work on the Silent Hill 2 remake, but had a change of heart to "make sure that the core of what made Silent Hill 2, Silent Hill 2, was preserved in the best way possible."

Ito also said while working on the first three games in the series, "I never had any girlfriends. Coz I had no time for it." True dedication to the art.

As for Silent Hill f, writer Ryukishi07 says, "I don't think I would mind if it was the last thing I ever wrote," so prepare for a harrowing experience.

If you want to dive into some more scary stories to prepare yourself for Silent Hill f, check out our list of the best horror games you can play right now.

"Our team is committed to ongoing support, and we're always looking for ways to improve," senior community manager Aarik Dorobiala wrote on the studio's forum. "Your input is key to help us refine and expand Avowed, and we are excited to keep rolling out updates. Within the next few weeks, we are going to be releasing a roadmap that will go over some of the plans we have that will be coming to the game over the upcoming year, so keep your eyes peeled!"

Avowed director Carrie Patel previously said she would "love to see" the team do more with the game and its world, though she didn't elaborate whether that would come in the form of updates, expansions, or even a sequel. DLC still hasn't been confirmed for Avowed, but the fact that we're getting a full roadmap probably means whatever updates we do get will probably be meatier than your common bug-fixing, stat-adjusting patches.

"We want to take a moment to thank you for your continued reports, feedback, and suggestions," Dorobiala continued. "Your insights are valuable to us, and we appreciate the time and effort you put into sharing your experiences with us."

The news coincides with an Avowed patch that includes options to make documents more readable, a 'walk' toggle for PC players, a third-person field-of-view slider, HUD customization options, additional talent points given to players every five levels, and more.

Avowed director says Xbox and Microsoft are "very happy" with the reception to its new Obsidian RPG

That comes from the latest Letter from the Producer live stream, which features a new trailer and announces that one of the MMO's largest patch runs yet will begin in just over 10 days.

Final Fantasy 14 patch 7.2 will follow the usual tradition of advancing the story as we deal with the aftermath of the Dawntrail expansion before eventually moving toward what's going down in the next expansion.

You've also got the second section of the The Arcadion raid series that includes three new encounters, and will release before a Savage version comes thereafter to really test you.

What's got most fans excited, though, is the extra content that's due to come as part of the 7.2x series of updates. While we'll get some of the content spoken about on March 25, a lot of it will come in the weeks and months following.

Getting into that, there's the crafting-oriented Cosmic Exploration and, for those who have been missing Eureka and Bozjan Southern Front-like content, the Occult Crescent, which promises big boss battles, Phantom Jobs, and 48-player raids. The longer stretch of time between patches means we've had to wait a bit longer for the sort of goodness many of the community missed from Endwalker and beyond, but it's nice to say it's nearly here.

That's not it, either. You've also got the Dawntrail weapon enhancement quests, another Trial and Unreal Trial, and other bits like balancing updates. There's also a new dungeon called The Underkeep. It's no wonder that director and producer Naoki 'Yoshi-P' Yoshida reportedly called Final Fantasy 14's 7.2 update the MMO's largest ever.

As Final Fantasy 14 raiders tear through the MMO's hardest duty with no healers and then no tanks, the community can only see this going one way: "Now it's time to clear without DPS."

Look, it might not be a shocking M rating, but it's still an unprecedented deal within the Pokemon series. Looking through all of the series' ESRB ratings, every single main game has been given an E for everyone – the only exceptions at all are the Pokemon Rumble spin-offs (apart from Pokemon Rumble U, for some reason).

Legends: Z-A's rating isn't actually on the ESRB website yet – it's currently viewable on the official Nintendo site. As such, we don't have a full explanation as to why this one is higher than usual, but we know it'll include "fantasy violence," which is a step up from the "mild fantasy violence" included in the likes of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, as well as Legends: Arceus.

We'll just have to stay tuned to see why this is the case, but I think it's worth keeping in mind the ratings of those aforementioned Pokemon Rumble games. The spin-offs feature real-time combat, allowing you to run around as toy Pokemon, firing attacks and charging into hordes of other toy Pokemon – the rating descriptions mention the "melee-style fighting that includes punching, kicking, slashing, biting, and scratching." In a very basic form, it's comparable to Pokemon Legends: Z-A's real-time battles in the way that Pokemon run around sending out attacks. Could this perhaps be a contributing factor to the upcoming RPG's higher rating?

It's also worth noting that the situation is slightly different outside of the United States, Canada, and Mexico. In the UK, for example, where the PEGI ratings board is used, Legends: Z-A has a provisional rating of 7, which is actually very common for the series, and matches up with the likes of Legends: Arceus and Scarlet and Violet (and, for what it's worth, the Pokemon Rumble games). Being a provisional rating, this could change between now and release, but it doesn't appear that The Pokemon Company thinks anything is included in the RPG that'll increase its rating as far as PEGI is concerned.

Be sure to check out our list of the best Pokemon games to find your next adventure.

"The Final Fantasy series has now sold over 200 million copies across the globe," the publisher announced today, "Wherever you joined us on our adventures, thank you." Those sales account for a whopping 16 mainline games (22 if you include numbered sequels and the recent FF7 remakes), alongside countless mobile spin-offs, strategy pivots, orchestral rhythm tappers, fighting game experiments, and much more.

Squeenix's recent Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster "series" has also moved more than five million copies after receiving staggered multiplatform ports across PC, mobile, PS4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox. The Pixel Remaster bundle includes the series' first six classic outings with a much shinier coat of pixels slapped on top, though each game is also available to buy individually, so I'd be curious to see how those sales were split. I'd guess some (FF4 and FF6) probably fared better than others (sorry, FF2).

To coincide with the major milestone, the Pixel Remasters got a new patch addressing minor bugs across all platforms. Final Fantasy 3 now also has a handy accessibility feature allowing you to adjust the "rate that character job level increases" if you'd like to cut down on the grinding.

Pixel Remaster's success is so nice to see because turn-based, non-Pokemon JRPGs were almost an endangered subgenre two console generations ago. Now, the collection is seemingly a bigger hit than the spectacle-stuffed Final Fantasy 16, which reportedly has only managed to sell 3.5 million copies. Maybe that multiplatform strategy is finally bearing fruit.

Either way, Final Fantasy's updated numbers puts it in very exclusive company, as only the likes of Mario, Pokemon, FIFA, Call of Duty, and a few others can boast of such success.

For now, why not reminisce with the very best Final Fantasy games of all time?

Whether or not that's a good or bad thing is entirely subjective of course, but for me there is a limit to how dark a horror story can be before it becomes unpleasant to experience. It's a forgiving limit, with deeply upsetting games like The Last of Us 2 and Silent Hill 2 being some of my favorite ever, but it's there. As for Ryukishi07's work, let's just say the When They Cry series approaches that limit very closely.

Anyway, Ryukishi07 had this to say about writing the story for Silent Hill f: "To this day, I remember the feeling of my first encounter with the strangling and oppressive atmosphere of Silent Hill. It still deeply haunts me, and it still utterly fascinates me. It's an honor to find myself involved with a series I have so many memories with. I've poured all my efforts into this story, so much so that I don't think I would mind if it was the last thing I ever wrote."

Ryukishi07 is an acclaimed horror writer no doubt, but his body of work is a little inconsistent, so despite my fear that I'm going to leave Silent Hill f severely depressed, it is definitely encouraging to hear him speak so passionately about the game.

Speaking of which, check out Silent Hill f's new trailer, which sadly doesn't include any gameplay but does boast some of the freakiest monsters I've ever seen.

I'll be honest, I was fully expecting to see just a little bit of gameplay since it's been more than two years since the Silent Hill f announcement, and at first, I was a little disappointed, but after seeing some of the monsters that our new and unfortunate protagonist Hinako will have to contend with, I'm overall pretty satisfied with today's trailer. It's also cool seeing more of Ebisugaoka, the fictional 1960s-era Japanese town that's the main setting of the game.

You can see the new trailer for yourself right here:

Silent Hill f is the next mainline installment in the beloved survival horror series. It's been a little more than two years since it was announced, and until now, we hadn't seen or heard anything about it since that announcement. The game tells a completely new story seemingly unconnected to the other games in the series, and starring brand new characters. The story's being written by Ryukishi07, the acclaimed horror artist and writing savant behind the When They Cry manga and anime series, which includes Higurashi When They Cry, Umineko When They Cry, and Ciconia When They Cry.

You can Wishlist Silent Hill f on Steam now. It's also coming to PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and the Epic Games Store. There's still no release date.

While we wait for more info on Silent Hill f, it's never a bad time to play something from our round-up of the best horror games available now.

You can browse the new Vampire Survivors wiki here. "Yes, it's completely free of ads, banners, and all of the junk that gets in your way when trying to find what you need," the devs explain in a Reddit post. "It's also fully functional on mobile too. You can expect info on every new VS update to appear here first before anywhere else, thanks to our Wiki helpers. It will be open to contributions and we will help to confirm and provide any technical information, but wont interfere with things like trivia and speculations because that's something for all of you to have fun with!"

The wiki most Vampire Survivors fans would have previously been checking would likely have been the unofficial one hosted by Fandom. Fandom, of course, hosts more wikis than we could possibly begin to count, but those wikis are increasingly reviled by players for their intrusive ads and abysmal performance on the mobile browsers where most of us are looking up game tips.

The Vampire Survivors devs are in good company in working with the community on an official wiki. Back in 2022, Terraria developer Re-Logic distanced itself from the game's Fandom, launching a new official option with minimal ad intrusions. The Stardew Valley wiki, meanwhile, is ad-free and hosted directly by ConcernedApe. Even without developer support, the Zelda Wiki and Hollow Knight Wiki have similarly ditched Fandom in favor of more user-friendly site designs.

Dev-led wiki change announcements like those for Vampire Survivors and Terraria have obviously been a bit more diplomatic about the decision to move away from Fandom, but fans responding to those changes have never been afraid to speak their minds. "More communities need to get away from that site," as one Vampire Survivors fan puts it on Reddit. "It's a shining beacon of what enshitification is."

Before selling millions of copies, Vampire Survivors creator says he'd "given up on the idea of success," and he's not interested in making something just to be successful.

WalkScape views game-ified exercise through an old-school MMO lens. Walking in real life progresses skills in-game, strengthening your character and propelling you toward new unlocks.

It started as a college hobby for Schamppu in 2022 but has developed into a two-man job with two added freelancers rounding out a team of four for Finnish studio Not A Cult. Schamppu wanted something exercise-related that felt motivational or aspirational and would click with his ADHD, but he wasn't thrilled with the selection of apps and games he saw.

"All the games I tried had some key flaws, like requiring a constant GPS connection, draining the phone battery or requiring constant attention while actually trying to exercise," he says. "Being an old RuneScape fan, I thought, how hard could it be to make a game that's just RuneScape hooked up to a pedometer?"

Simplicity is part of the pitch. "What gets a person up and moving is always dependent on the person themselves," Schamppu reckons. "Some don't need external motivators, many others do. WalkScape is just one way to motivate someone to walk more and it works for some, and doesn't for others. Players who find WalkScape helpful usually appreciate the fact that it doesn't get in the way of their 'normal' lives."

The obvious challenge here is that MMO gaming is a pretty sedentary hobby. To be fair, there are actually quite a few fitness buffs among the Old School RuneScape community, as well as other MMO communities. (Schamppu says the support and feedback from OSRS players has been great so far). But the question remains: how do you get gamers to get up and move? Or really, is this a game for MMO fans to begin with, or more for fans of GPS games like Pokemon Go?

"Currently we have players from both demographics," Schamppu says. "Our target audience is mostly working age people who care about their physical well-being and screentime. For Pokémon Go players we offer a more hands-off experience, which doesn't require as much of your personal time, while rewarding you for just walking around anywhere. In fact, WalkScape works perfectly well in combination with Pokémon Go!

"For MMO players we offer that fix of traveling in a fantasy world, hunting for legendary gear and leveling up your character in a package that actually increases your health and wellness. It's the perfect game for those who no longer have the time to spend grinding away in traditional MMOs, since in WalkScape you can play more by spending less time on the phone."

Beyond moving away from GPS data – which can be battery-intensive, highly sensitive, and prone to huge swings in content based on your location, as Schamppu puts it – WalkScape streamlines the experience further by actively avoiding any intrusive monetization – or, really, any monetization at all.

"Staying MTX and advertisement free is absolutely key for WalkScape," Schamppu says. "MTX and advertisement revenue correlates heavily with how much time the player spends actively engaged with the game. That's why so many other fitness games want to hog as much of the player's attention as possible. We consider this type of design to be contradictory to the goal of actually enhancing the players' physical well-being."

Instead, WalkScape is "100% community funded" via Patreon or Buy Me a Coffee: "Players can skip the waiting list and ensure access during the next invite wave, although many players decide to keep contributing even after gaining access."

WalkScape is still in development, but it's already in a "fully playable state" with "tens of thousands of players" providing feedback that informs updates. Features like combat, trading, quests, and device support will be added and expanded in future patches.

"Once those are done, we will transition into open beta and keep adding content to fill out the game world until the game is ready for full launch," Schamppu says. "We are aiming to transition into the open beta early 2026 and full launch during 2027."

"The main goal is to encourage people to use their legs more," he adds. "Whether this means buying a standing desk and treadmill for your work from home office or just walking two blocks instead of going by car or bus – it all counts. If you're already active, we don't require you to change anything about your daily life. Instead, we just reward you for the good work you do!"

Pokemon Go developer Niantic is being bought for $3.5 billion, CEO says it'll help its games be "'forever games' that will endure for future generations."

"The Magellan Man statue was designed by Ryu-san (Entei Ryu), CG modeled, 3D printed, and produced under the full supervision of Shin-chan (Yoji Shinkawa)," Kojima says in a tweet. "It is a product of KJP’s spirit and soul, going as far as visiting the factory to check the quality for mass production. The first photo shows the final mass production product. These show our process of trial and error. The bottom right photo is the version before final one (weight balance is different)."

Ryu is lead concept artist at Kojima Productions, and her ArtStation page certainly suggests she's got plenty of experience creating sculptures equal parts beautiful and macabre. Shinkawa will need no introduction to Kojima fans, as he's served as art director on every Metal Gear Solid title and both Death Strandings.

Kojima previously mentioned that both artists toured the factory at the Death Stranding 2 SXSW panel this past weekend, but his tweet offers a tiny bit more insight into what the production process entailed. In another tweet, Kojima shows off Ryu's first concept sketch for the statue, which featured a tiny Sam riding on the Magellan Man's finger, like a bird embracing the digit of a Disney princess. "It was removed because it was too small to be made into a statue," Kojima says. Maybe another time, Sam.

Hideo Kojima left "a number of clues" in the new Death Stranding 2 trailer, including hints of a day/night cycle.

The game has since accrued 177 user reviews with a 77% positive score. That's modest success compared to some games – especially mega-hits like Supermarket Simulator, arguably the game best encapsulating the genre boom in this moment – but for solo developer Simon of studio SOGA, it's been a life-changing shot in the arm after two games that ended with "bitter failure."

In a March 9 Reddit post which included Steam dashboard data, Simon said Cabin Crew Life Simulator had generated $104,768 in revenue – "success beyond expectations," as he put it. The game is $13 at full price, but a chunk of sales came during a discount period, so the total sales were just over 9,500 units at the time. That revenue gets split up in a few ways, so it isn't straight cash, but it's still a great launch for a game that took "about 12 months" to make, as Simon tells GamesRadar+.

I'm always fascinated by explosive, unexpected success stories in the indie gaming space, from a $6 Metroidvania that took over the charts to a roguelike city builder that consumed an Italian developer's life. But it's equally interesting to unpack the workaday games that are performing just plain well, like this crafting sim reversing fortunes after an EA-stunted launch or this turn-based RPG recovering largely through word of mouth. The indie market is kind of like the Twitch streamer market: for every success story, there are countless flops that go unseen, so getting anywhere is relatively rare. And $100,000 for a year of work seems pretty darn good to me.

I reached out to Simon to talk through his game dev journey and Cabin Crew Life Simulator's launch. He says the idea for this game came long before its year-long development process began, and in his Reddit post, he explained that after dabbling in horror with no luck, he deliberately "analyzed trending game genres and untapped themes" for his next project.

"I completely understand why some players might feel conflicted about my approach," he says of this balance of art and business. "As a solo developer, my first two games were made purely based on my own interests – but they didn’t succeed. That forced me to rethink my approach. At the core, my passion is creating games that people love, and seeing players enjoy my work brings me the most happiness, no matter the genre." Finding a way to make his passion click with players was the hard part, but he feels that "balancing creativity and business isn’t as difficult as it seems."

"This game has completely changed my life, but the journey wasn’t easy," he continues. "During development, I was financially drained and under a lot of pressure not just as a developer, but as the main provider for my family. I had invested my own savings and even borrowed money from friends and relatives to make this project happen. The risk was huge; if the game didn’t succeed, I could have lost everything."

After this launch, Simon says he can comfortably focus on game development full-time rather than side-eyeing a more stable but less fulfilling career. Cabin Crew Life Simulator is "only 50%" complete by his reckoning, so plenty of work remains. "It’s a milestone that reassures me that, despite the struggles, I made the right choice," he says.

Simon's top game dev tips, or his "lessons from failure," include starting your marketing early, using a demo for visibility, considering both publisher and solo-published options, and tapping into Steam Deck for a potential "second wave of players."

"If anything, I’d say that making games is both an art and a science," he tells me. "It’s not about sacrificing creativity but about channeling it in a way that resonates with players. That’s what makes a game truly successful."

Balatro creator says it's "useless" for him to give advice to other devs because "I only have one data point" and it was a 5 million-sale success story.

And yes, of course that means we'll finally get an answer to whether Sonic can outrun the Flash (though I suspect it'll be an outcome that flatters them both somehow). But that's not all, as writer Ian Flynn and artist Adam Bryce Thomas will go on to pit the Justice League, Sonic, and the hedgehog's friends against Darkseid as he apparently gains the power of the notorious Chaos Emeralds.

Perhaps it's that chaos that will lead to the mash-up between the heroes becoming literal, as Sonic is mashed-up with Flash, Shadow becomes Batman, Tails becomes Cyborg, Silver becomes Green Lantern, Amy becomes Wonder Woman, and Knuckles becomes Superman.

Here's a look at the interior pages from DC X Sonic the Hedgehog #1, along with the main cover Pablo M. Collar and a variant cover by Ethan Young, as well as the main covers for #2, #3, and #4:

"DC x Sonic the Hedgehog…features an unprecedented crossover event where the Justice League and Team Sonic must unite to save their worlds from a major threat," reads the official description of the story. "The action speeds up when the monstrous Darkseid crosses dimensions to invade the world of Sonic the Hedgehog, seeking the ultimate power. Sonic and his friends have faced everything from mad scientists to ancient spirits, but the forces of Apokolips may be too much for them! Thankfully, the full heroic might of the Justice League arrives to back them up!"

DC x Sonic the Hedgehog #1 goes on sale March 19.

Take a look back at the most unlikely comic book crossovers of all time.

Appearing on the Destin podcast (timestamped here), Mahler explained his game design philosophy, comparing it to Nintendo and FromSoftware's Hidetaka Miyazaki.

"Our approach is very similar to how Nintendo designs games, in the sense that it all has to be fun comes first," Mahler said. "Even in Ori, we had people constantly telling us, 'Hey the game is too hard,' especially more from the Microsoft side. It was a lot of, 'Oh my god, but the game looks beautiful. Wouldn't it be more fun if everyone could enjoy it?'

"But I'm on the Miyazaki side on this. That has to be really carefully tuned so that – there's this thing psychologically where you have to overcome challenge. You always have to have these moments were we present you with something and you feel like you can't do it, but then we get you to actually do it, and that is that moment of like, 'oh my god.'"

Ori and the Blind Forest and its sequel, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, are generally considered to be pretty tough games to get through, but in the context of Metroidvanias, they're middle of the pack in terms of difficulty. You'll certainly die many times playing them, especially during some notorious chase-style sequences, but it's all in the service of perfecting the precise timing needed to progress. Git gud, basically.

Mahler and the rest of the crew at Moon Studios are hard at work on their Diablo-coded early access action-RPG No Rest for the Wicked, and likely will be for many years, but they also aren't ruling out a return to Metroidvanias in the meantime.

Ori and the Blind Forest developer is now "fully independent" after "months of negotiation" with what remained of its gutted publisher.

This gaming Copilot is going out in beta first because Microsoft wants to be sure to get it right, according to corporate VP of gaming AI Fatima Kardar. "We really don't want to mess up the gaming experience," Kardar says in a new episode of the Xbox podcast. "So we have to be very cautious about it, which means we put things out there. We let people give us feedback, try it out, see what resonates, and build from that. I feel that's going to be very important. It does make us uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable. I keep getting reminded that people expect a lot from the Xbox brand and that is what keeps me up at night."

That podcast also shows a few video examples of what a gaming Copilot might be able to do, and while Xbox has slapped "proof of concept only" warnings all over these clips, noting that they're all very much work-in-progress ideas, they do offer some insight into what this all might look like in practice.

In one instance, we see a player returning to Age of Empires 4 after some time away by asking Copilot to reinstall the game from the Xbox app. Once in-game, the AI reminds the player what happened last time they were playing: they "ventured out to take the fight to the Franks, but... let's just say it didn't go as planned." Asked how best to take on a special siege tower, the AI then offers to pull up "a quick strategy guide."

In another example, an Overwatch 2 player is about to start a match when he finds somebody else has already chosen his main, Echo. "Echo's taken," the AI says, "but Cassidy would be a solid pick with this team his mid-range hit scan, and Mercy's damage boost will work great on Ilios Ruins. Plus you've done great with him on this map before."

A bit later, the Overwatch 2 map picks up with this player having deployed Cassidy's ult only to get gunned down pretty quickly afterward. "You stayed in the fight too long after your teammates were down," the AI explains. "Great picks with your ultimate, but diving straight into Ramattra was a death sentence."

Then there's a Minecraft example, where the AI guides a player new to the game to those crucial first steps: punching trees, getting to the crafting menu, and figuring out the patterns to build basic tools. Later on, the AI refuses to give an answer because the player doesn't have cheats enabled – so he goes into the menu, turns them on, and asks where to find ore. The AI then points him to a coal deposit he wandered past earlier in the sessions.

All this is designed to be unobtrusive, Kardar explains, so if you never want to see Copilot in-game you don't have to. If this all actually works beyond the proof of concept, seeing the AI directly respond to in-game activity and offer dynamic advice on the fly is genuinely pretty impressive, but there is, of course, the question of how all this info is going to be sourced. You could certainly see a situation where the AI might hit a guide like, say, our explainer on how to get the Monster Hunter Wilds Sharp Fang for armor crafting and either pull out the wrong information, plagiarize it without citing the source, or both.

"We have to really go back to the source," Kardar explains. "There's plenty of information on the Internet about games, [but] not all of that is accurate – or it was accurate and goes out of date. So for us It's very important that we have to partner with game studios as well as other content creators, when you think of guides. Not only do we want to help bring their right information to players, we want to partner with them and make sure that [if] they've put in the work, they should be able to benefit from that as well. So we're also looking at what it means to refer back to the content creators."

It's a bit distressing that the details of how the original guide material might be sourced are still so vague even as it's about to hit beta and get into players' hands. But that's always been the grand criticism of generative AI, and so far AI makers have only paid lip service to those concerns. Either way, it seems we'll be finding out what AI can do for gaming sooner rather than later.

Xbox has officially opened the generative AI floodgates, and Phil Spencer wants to use it for game preservation and save titles that "were maybe tied to unique pieces of hardware."

After unlocking modding allowing for "level editing, save editing, and more" last year, fans have been conjuring up massive custom campaigns to keep Baldur's Gate 3 alive post-Patch 8. Most of these can be found in progress via platforms like Nexus Mods, which marks them as PC-only – but that may just change, and a custom campaign dubbed DnD 5E Spelljammer proves as much with its recent appearance on the RPG's official mod manager.

Featuring loads of new backgrounds, items, monsters, and spells, the mod is impressive, to say the least. It all takes place in an entirely new area to Baldur's Gate 3, too – aboard the Space Galleon within the Astral Planes, navigating through different floating locations. As a hardened stan of Larian's base gem myself, I personally can't wait to sail the starry sea and finally experience something other than Acts 1 through 3 nearly two years later.

It's not available to play for console users just yet, though, but anything is possible now that it's up on the game's official mod manager. With custom campaigns in full swing and Patch 8 right around the corner, too, the community might even end up seeing Skyrim-level modding blossom for Baldur's Gate 3 – and I, for one, hope that's the case. As long as I can continue playing the Dungeons & Dragons RPG, I most certainly will.

If you're craving more D&D after Baldur's Gate 3, Critical Role is "hard at work" on a video game – and it'll be unveiled "any day" now

"The entire game is a warning against this kind of nonsense," writes one fan on Reddit. "The irony of this .... hits so hard," replies another. In the original Horizon Zero Dawn, you find out the world was destroyed by a rogue AI that creates self-replicating robots that feed on organic matter. Now, I'm not saying that's what Sony's AI-powered Aloy is, but it certainly seems strange that the company is investing time and money into something very few players actually seem to want.

One Redditor notes, "The point [of Horizon] is not 'AI is bad,'" it's that misusing AI is bad. I like the idea of AI ordering my shopping for me and finding me a cheaper energy or internet provider, but I think replacing artists with algorithms is not good.

"Oh cool, the main character from hit game 'don’t replace humans with AI' is now replacing the cast with AI. I love it here," writes one person on Twitter. Another Redditor claims, "The point is that billionaires are dumb." Now, I'm not calling anyone dumb, but it does seem like it's mostly rich tech CEOs who are pushing AI on everyone else.

I wonder what Aloy would think of an AI version of herself. She's already a clone, so maybe she'd find it comforting. It'd be an interesting thing to dive into in a sequel to Horizon Forbidden West.

In the meantime, check out the best sci-fi games and explore some of these themes yourself.

Warhorse Studios' latest action RPG has been a massive hit, selling over two million copies in its first two weeks and reminding owner Embracer Group that it should aim to "bring great products to the market" and give "high-quality teams" the "resources and the time to execute their visions." In an interview with YouTube creator Dan Allen Gaming (below), McKay hints that Warhorse may already be thinking about the next game in the series, even if he remains vague about what that might look like.

"I'm open to all ideas," McKay says, after Allen asks how he'd feel if Henry wasn't the playable character in a hypothetical Kingdom Come: Deliverance 3. "We do have a very good sense of what's happening next, obviously I can't talk about any of that, but I think those decisions are not in our hands, and I am open to all ideas."

Adding that he loves both his character and "the world of this game," McKay continues: "I'm happy to play this character for as long or as little as anybody wants me to. [...] Of course it's ultimately decided by Warhorse, but really, the fans kind of dictate a lot of this narrative in terms of what they're into, and what they think, and all that stuff, and I think that's a really appropriate thing.

"But yeah, I'm happy to play this character as long as anybody is bothered to listen to me doing it," he laughs.

Obviously, for now, Warhorse still has its full focus on Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, which just got a new patch today featuring over 1,000 fixes, as well as the addition of official Steam modding support. It's "the result of five months of work focused on refining and improving the game experience," so expect the RPG to be smoother than ever once you install it.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 has another secret skill, and this one is an absolute game changer - looking down makes you duck under branches while riding your horse.

"You want to retain the players who have been with you going on 20 years in some cases," Fries says in an interview with Windows Central after her first year on the job. "They have a certain set of expectations. Taking World of Warcraft as an example, you can't have every expansion being such a 'zag' that it feels totally unfamiliar to your core fanbase."

At the same time, Fries acknowledges the very tough reality that Blizzard still needs to expand the game's scope while appeasing the "core" player base that's been grinding World of Warcraft since 2004. A seemingly impossible task that World of Warcraft's very existence proves is possible, in fact.

"It's a never-ending chase to strike the right balance," Fries continues to explain. "There are different demographics that only have so much time in their day. Creators have a certain expectation too, even before we get to commercialization of the content."

Even to this day, World of Warcraft is introducing features to keep its younger, fresher competitors on their toes. The WoW team basically called out Final Fantasy 14's house lottery nightmare last month as the team detailed its own player housing system. That's without even mentioning the 38,000(!) or so quests available in-game.

WoW Hardcore streamer receives $7k donation on one condition: he has to delete everything he owns

Today, Focus announced that development on the third game in the series "has officially begun," promising more of what players loved and some new additions that will further polish the winning formula.

"Players can look forward to an immersive campaign, a multiplayer mode, and innovations that will redefine the standards of third-person action games," Focus Entertainment Publishing deputy CEO John Bert said in a press release. "Developed in close collaboration with Games Workshop, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 3 will take the genre to new heights by introducing large-scale battles that are even more spectacular."

Saber CEO Matthew Karch added: "Space Marine 2 has proven to be a transformative game for Saber. It is the culmination of everything we have learned about game development in our 25 years in the business. We are now starting to develop Space Marine 3, a game that carries with it tremendous expectations from our rapidly expanding fanbase."

In case you're worried, support for Space Marine 2 won't suddenly come to a stop. The devs are explicitly not trying to turn it into a full-blown live service game, but Space Marine 2 will continue to receive updates for a while longer as Space Marine 3 development proceeds. Just today, the game's public test server went live alongside new patch notes.

"While we will continue to support and grow the Space Marine 2 universe over the coming years, we will take all our learnings and apply them to an even bigger and more spectacular game for the third instalment," Karch said. "We view this as an opportunity to create a true love letter to the Warhammer 40.000 universe."

As expected, "more information on Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 3 will be revealed at a later date." Right now, all we have is an unsurprising title and a snippet of teaser art featuring series protagonist Demetrian Titus. I can't wait to see what horrors await him in the third game.

Games Workshop CEO Kevin Rountree said just this January that the company is hungry for another video game success like Space Marine 2. "Clearly we are looking for the next one," he said. "We remain cautious when forecasting royalty income." The next one turned out to be the most obvious choice: more Space Marine!

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 was the favorite shooter of the year, and it also made me fall even harder for my fiancé.

Patch 1.2 is "the result of five months of work focused on refining and improving the game experience." There is an astronomically long list of fixes and changes, so rather than going through them all, I'm just going to highlight some that stood out to me.

Aside from the standard performance and stability improvements, the most important change is "Mutt can no longer enter the fighting arena in the Jewish quarter." Maybe it's because he's not Jewish, or maybe it's because he's not a fighter. The dying animations and ragdoll effects for cows and bulls have been improved, and there's also been a rebalance of how quickly food can spoil, so you won't have to cook as often, and Henry has a stronger liver now, as the threshold that determines when he passes out from drunkenness has also been changed.

Sneaky players will be happy to learn pickpocketing difficulty has been rebalanced, stealth stats for all clothes have been changed, "new clothing and equipment specifically supporting stealth gameplay" has been added, and being hit will no longer stop you from drawing your weapon, so you'll always be ready to retaliate if caught. On the flip side, though, there's now a short delay after you attack an enemy while not locked on, so no more spamming attacks to win fights. Enemies also shouldn't "unreasonably" whip out ranged weapons in melee fights, so you don't need to worry about bringing a sword to a crossbow fight.

The NPCs should be more immersive overall, as their daily schedules have been improved, as well as a plethora of animations related to their day-to-day lives and chores. If you want to read the full list of changes, check out the patch notes, right here.

Henry will now have access to a barber thanks to the first of several planned free DLC. You can trim his hair and give him a beard or a shave. Whatever your choice, he'll gain a charisma boost for a time after a shearing session.

Modders will now be able to change over 300 elements of the game, from UI features to combat mechanics to RPG elements to AI behavior, so everything from tweaks to full game overhauls should now be possible.

If you want to know more, there will be a developer update stream on March 20 you can keep an eye out for. The update is live now though.

While you're here, check out our list of the best RPGs you can play right now.

While FiveM was first created in 2015, allowing players to create their own custom multiplayer servers for things like roleplay, in 2023, Rockstar Games acquired the team behind it to "further support" the creation of those dedicated servers. Although it's worth noting that recently, a whopping 73,000 words of drama surrounding FiveM and its team surfaced online, full of allegations of supposed wrongdoing, this latest announcement offers something totally unprecedented in the world of GTA modding with a Rockstar-approved modding tool.

Spotted on Twitter by Rockstar news account @videotechuk_, Cfx.re explains in a blog post that with the new PC upgrade for GTA 5, "custom assets currently used on FiveM and GTA 5 Legacy will not be natively compatible." However, it adds: "To assist the modding community in making their assets compatible with the new upgrade, we are working on a conversion tool."

The post explains that while certain file types (namely, .ycd and .ybn) won't need to be converted, the tool will make sure that "dictionaries of multiple drawables" (specifically, .ydd files), as well as "generic models, geometry, optional embedded textures and lights (.ydr)," .yft files like "complex fragmented skeletons/models used for pedestrians, vehicles, destructible objects, etc." and .ytd files in the form of "texture dictionaries" will be usable again.

All that sounds very complicated, but the main point here is that this is an official mod-supporting tool coming from within the house of GTA itself, a place that's historically not always been the friendliest towards mods. The most recent big case of this saw the GTA 5 mod that added a fully functional Liberty City map to the game hit with a "friendly takedown" after contact with Rockstar, although it's worth noting that the mod creators since expressed that they were "uncertain if this takedown request is genuine" as a result of that aforementioned FiveM drama.

That's only one case of a mod seemingly not being accepted with open arms by Rockstar and owner Take-Two Interactive, though. Back in 2022, one creator behind VR mods for GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 reportedly received a DMCA takedown from Take-Two.

Needless to say, it's nice to see some real support here. Cfx.re says it's still "finalizing a release date, but please know that we're currently focused on completing the final few tasks required to release the tool," asking fans to stay tuned.

GTA publisher is suing a GTA Online website that lets you buy hacked accounts, which "risks upending the GTA 5 player experience."

Speaking in a recent interview with Famitsu (translated into English using both Google and DeepL), Yoshi-P discusses some of the new content that's set to drop with patch 7.2 and says he's looking forward to it. The lead first describes the crafting-oriented Cosmic Exploration and then the Occult Crescent, the update's Eureka and Bozjan Southern Front-esque instance, which features large-scale boss battles, Phantom Jobs, and 48-player raids.

Yoshi-P continues, diving into a bit of a behind-the-scenes look at MMORPG development – and how it, unsurprisingly, differs from the way players experience games like Final Fantasy 14 on a day-to-day basis. Developing content post-Dawntrail isn't quite the same as working on 6.0 and onward was, either, when Square Enix had set a goal of "widening the scope" of the game. With patches post-7.0, developers' focus has shifted.

Production was no longer about players being able to enjoy the game alone, but rather with others – the core of the MMO genre. According to Yoshi-P, multiplayer content is largely what Square Enix has its sights set on now, and patches like 7.2 should reflect as much. The soon-to-release update is especially exciting as it's apparently the "largest ever" – and that means it's seriously large, considering past behemoth post-expansion patches like 6.2.

Seekers of Eternity, as patch 7.2 is titled, sounds like it'll be one of the most impressive in a while, if not the most overall. There's not long left to wait now until the update arrives later this month, bringing everything from main scenario quests and instances like the Occult Crescent to higher-end challenging content such as The Arcadion: Cruiserweight Tier, with four new Normal raids and Savage variants, and the Recollection trial.

World of Warcraft's new housing system lets you decorate without the floating hacks I've been using in Final Fantasy 14 for 11 years, and I weep

That's what scares me. Spider webs adorn the walls. There are suspiciously crimson stains around the chest. Bodies strung up in webs. It couldn't hint more of a trap if it had "this is a trap" daubed over the walls. In blood.

I approach the chest, and battle inevitably commences, with Ivory Spinner Spiderlings emerging from the ground, much like our own Trap-door Spiders. While numerous and inordinately large by real-life standards, these critters are easily dispatched in a spray of green blood. Watch out, though: here come Mom and Dad.

Eight-legged nightmares

Spiders have long been the go-to bad guys in fantasy media, from the Lord Of The Rings' monstrous Shelob to the numerous varieties encountered in the worlds of Dungeons & Dragons. I can confirm that leafing through the Fighting Fantasy book The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain as a callow nine-year-old, and being greeted with a picture of a maliciously fanged Giant Spider is not something you forget in a hurry, either.

Today, CRPGs have continued to tap into our fear of spiders. Skyrim's wilderness and underground caverns are infested with Frostbite Spiders, while Baldur's Gate 3 boasts horrific creatures such as the Phase Spider (phases in and out of the material plane, appearing right behind you) and Driders, an arcane mix of Dark Elf and Giant Spider. It's enough to send your arachnophobia into overdrive.

However, there's no eight-legged monstrosity quite like those in the Living Lands. Like most of the game, Avowed's spiders sport diverse colors. Gone are the plain and boring grey and brown spiders of yore: Dawnshore and beyond is rife with an explosion of multicolored arachnid terror, each one matching its environment with vibrant hues. There's the verdant Wood Crawler, its body echoing its forest environment, leafy sprigs sprouting from its legs and vein-like autumnal flashes of red adorning its green carapace.

You'll also meet sharp-edged Crystal Eaters and Ivory Spinner Spiders, their legs and bodies pitted with cobalt spikes, the latter pervading Paradis in particular. These have their own quest, with the player character, the Envoy, venturing below the city to eliminate the source of the invasion, a spider queen called Nacib.

Nacib is one of the biggest and meanest spiders in Avowed. Despite her size, she's also the most agile. Having spotted the Envoy, she leaps towards them, fangs bared, flinging sticky balls of web at her enemies to slow them down. Nacib's long armoured legs are light and dark green; her body a wrinkled, swollen mass of muscular magenta from which not one but two sets of pincers protrude. And there, on top of her horned head, sit eight bulbous blue eyes, blank and emotionless like all the best of nature's killers. Long after you've plunged your sword into her for the last time, this gargantuan arachnid will stay in your mind – and nightmares.

The colors, eye-catching and attractive, betray a hostile nature that makes Avowed’s spiders just as dangerous as their kin from Skyrim, Baldur's Gate 3, et al. Worse, like all the creatures of the Living Lands, you'll eventually encounter spiders infected with the Dreamscourge, the insidious disease that threatens to plunge the world of Eora into turmoil and the reason the Envoy is in the Living Lands in the first place.

Known as Dreamthralls, these creatures no longer merely inhabit the land – they are the land, a repulsive and spine-tingling bastardisation of their former selves. The likely first time you'll meet them is in the sulfur mines of Shatterscarp. A group of Dreamthrall Spiders have emerged, the eviscerated bodies of the miners betraying the demented ferociousness of this new eight-legged enemy.

But why is it always spiders? The accepted wisdom with arachnophobia is that humans have had an in-built anxiety about spiders from the earliest times of our existence. However, this study from 2021 suggests that we may have actually adopted a generalized dread of chelicerates, associating spiders with a much deadlier member of that family: the scorpion.

There are already fan-made mods for Avowed that remove all the spiders from the game so arachnophobes can rest easy, although it appears our eight-legged friends are here to stay, at least in videogame form. Yet beware, brave adventurer: next time you venture into some dark and damp cavern, there just might be a sting in the tail.

There are even more spiders (sorry) in our picks for the best RPGs

Developer FuturLab today announced PowerWash Simulator 2, which boasts of soapier tools, new jobs and locations, a customizable homebase, split-screen co-op, and a whole new campaign that hopefully follows on from the first game's surprisingly bonkers, alien-involving, Atlantis-finding tale. (No, I didn't wake up from a fever dream - PowerWash Sim actually has lore.)

Unlike the first go around, Square Enix isn't on publishing duties anymore. PowerWash Simulator managed to reached 17 million players, so the studio is now self-publishing the follow-up.

That's not really a surprise when you consider the fact that PowerWash Simulator sponged up over 44,000 Steam reviews, 97% of which give it the thumbs up. One of the best first-person squirter games ever? I wouldn't argue against it. And that's without mentioning the countless crossovers it managed to pull with juggernauts like Tomb Raider, Shrek, Wallace & Gromit, and even Warhammer.

As mentioned before, Powerwash Simulator 2 has an entire homebase for your business that you can decorate with trinkets you've collected or furniture that I assume you can buy with your job earnings. After many, many online requests, the sequel's also happily adding split-screen co-op in addition to online multiplayer options. And, borrowing a page from GTA 5's book, you can even invite your co-op pals to kick back in your, hopefully-pristinely clean, crib.

There's no release date for this one quite yet but PowerWash Simulator 2 will be jetting onto PC, Xbox Series X|S and PS5 sometime in 2025.

While we wait for a date, check out the other new games of 2025 and beyond.

During my playthrough of Disco Elysium, I questioned how one could ever hope to change a broken system that they themselves hold up, thought long and hard about my own battles with addiction, and talked with friends about how to meaningfully organize politically. This "total re-imagination" doesn't sound like it will inspire those same ideas.

Denis Havel, the head of what remains of ZA/UM, says in a press release: "We intend to captivate the TikTok user with quick hits of compelling story, art, and audio, ultimately creating an all new, deeply engaging form of entertainment." That's one of the most depressing things I've ever read in my entire life, and I studied '30s Russian film theory.

The trailer for the mobile port shows the game is nothing like the original, which isn't inherently a bad thing. I like the idea of the game now having "360-degree scenes built exclusively to place the mobile user right in the middle of Revachol," but I'm less convinced by it being "structured to fit the way people play on mobile, making it effortless to enjoy in short bursts," and the claim "It's what audiobooks wish they were." Every word is honestly worse than the last.

I don't understand the idea that mobile gamers specifically want short games. When I play Balatro on my couch, I can sit there for a good hour trying to beat a high stake with a new deck. If I open a game, it's because I want to play, not kill five minutes.

The press release does state a lot of work went into "preserving Disco Elysium’s soul and treating it with the care it deserves," but given the aim is to entice TikTok scrollers with short bursts of communism, I don't think the studio understands the game at all.

I've heard the complaint that everything is trying to be TikTok, even Twitch has changed its UI so you can scroll through streams, but I can't believe even video games are trying to be TikTok. Maybe one of the many Disco Elysium successor studios could use this as inspiration.

If you're interested in checking this game out for yourself, pre-registration for Android is currently live, you can sign up right here. It's coming out sometime in summer, and the first two chapters will be free. After that, you have to pay to unlock the full thing, and that will ensure "uninterrupted, ad-free gameplay." That's a silver-lining at least.

If you want something a bit happier, check out our list of the best games of all time and remind yourself there is some hope in this medium.

Nintendo San Francisco will celebrate its grand opening on May 15 in Union Square at 331 Powell Street. Nintendo announced plans for this location last year, but it's only now that we're getting an official opening date. In a press release, Nintendo says that store will offer "game systems and games" alongside "a unique shopping experience filled with Nintendo’s characters, worlds and exclusive products including accessories, apparel, home goods and souvenirs available only at this location."

The NYC location offers a few museum displays, and it was notably where the iconic Gulf War Game Boy was displayed for many years. The NYC store is primarily a retail location, of course, offering unique merch, but it's become something of a mecca for Nintendo fans over the decades. You may recall the viral clips of people at Nintendo NYC gathering to scream and cheer for new Super Smash Bros. reveals, for example.

It's probably safe to expect a similar experience from the San Francisco location, and if you want to see it yourself, the company's running a sweepstakes for a three-night vacation in the city around the store's opening. You can head to the official site for details on that.

Nintendo NYC actually opened back in 2001 as The Pokemon Center, but was rebranded as a broader Nintendo-themed location – then called Nintendo World – in 2005. It was the only Nintendo Store in the world until 2019, when one opened in Tokyo. Two more Nintendo Stores quickly sprouted in Japan – Osaka in 2022 and Kyoto in 2023 – but it's only now that the chain is expanding in the US.

Of course, a new place to buy Nintendo stuff takes on a little extra meaning this year as we're all looking toward the launch of Switch 2. I'm not sure either Nintendo Store will be the best place to pick up a Switch 2, but I am sure you can count on a pretty unique experience at both locations when the console's finally released.

A new Nintendo Switch 2 filing suggests there are going to be plenty more Amiibo to collect.

V.A Proxy looks like an absolutely wild game and I can't wait for it to finally be out. Developer PyroLith keeps teasing us with videos showing off things like entirely missable cities and a fishing mechanic. It was already violent, as you use a sword-like fishing rod that cuts the poor little fishes into pieces, but now you can brutally combo the creatures, and doing so can improve the loot they drop.

"F**k it, you can combo le fishe now," tweets PyroLith alongside a video of an unsuspecting river creature being dragged from its home and diced into a dozen pieces with a swift flurry of slashes. 'Why would you do this?' I hear PETA ask. Well, "It's not just for show, pulling sick sushi combos increase the chances fishe drop something rare," PyroLith explains.

I'm not exactly sure how fishing will work in V.A Proxy. Will it be like Stardew Valley, where certain fish are needed for specific recipes? Will it be like Red Dead Redemption 2, where fish are needed just to complete challenges? Whatever the case, all these other games need to let me beat the crap out of fish that are hard to find. Catch these fish and catch these hands.

I love that this developer seems to just wake up and add another buck-wild combo or parry. It seems like a fantastic way to develop games. You can also use the fishing rod as a standard weapon throughout the game, so maybe there will be challenge runs where people try to use just that.

There's no release date for V.A Proxy just yet, but there is a free Steam demo you can try out if you like the look of it. I certainly do.

In the meantime, check out the best action games you can play right now if you're looking for something fast to get stuck into.

Speaking to EW as part of the Pixel Pack, a collective of video game actors organized by Astarion's Neil Newbon, Robertson explains that she hadn't grown up playing games and wasn't too familiar with the industry's nuts and bolts before stealing the show in Capcom's blockbuster. On IMDB, her only other game credits before Resident Evil Village were small voiced roles in Smite and Rogue Company.

So, she leaned on some classic work experience to really bite into players without even having to show her fangs. "Having a Shakespeare background, I pulled a lot of Shakespeare stuff into this," Robertson explains. "There was something very Shakespearean in the way that she utilizes language. It's not just the claws, it's not just her transforming into a beast at the end that does damage. It's her words. She really uses the power of her words to hurt."

Having not embedded herself with games much, the virality and fame that came with Lady D also surprised Robertson, who said she had "no concept at that time of what being in a video game could offer me in my career, in my life." The entire experience was instead "very surreal" for Robertson. "It really truly changed my life in every possible way."

Resident Evil and Witcher 3 mocap director says video game industry layoffs have made it so "nothing is guaranteed," but AI won’t be replacing real actors "anytime soon"

How do I get FC 25 Season 6 Ladder Players?

FC 25 Season 6 began on Thursday, March 13 and runs into April, under the tagline Memory Lane. To tie in with FC 25 FUT Birthday, it offers up a bunch of cards for longstanding FIFA series favourites, such as Mario Balotelli (ST, Genoa, 90) and Alessandro Florenzi (RB, Milan, 89).

You build towards them by gaining SP across Ultimate Team, Manager Career, Player Career, and Clubs. Each 1,000 SP you collect completes a level on the ladder, and there are 40 levels in total. To see some of the previous rewards, jump into our FC 25 Season 1 Ladder Players, FC 25 Season 2 Ladder Players and FC 25 Season 3 Ladder Players guides.

Who are the best FC 25 Season 5 Ladder Players?

Three Heroes cards make this campaign especially interesting. At Level 35 you get the choice of Joan Capdevila (LB, La Liga) or Hidetoshi Nakata (CAM, Serie A) – both of whom have an overall rating of 92. Saudi legend Saeed Al Owairan goes one better, offering up a 93 OVR should you unlock him at Level 40. Alternatively, you can select a 15x 87 Players Pack. The full FC 25 Season 6 Ladder Players cards list is at the foot of this guide.

What other FC 25 Season 6 Ladder Rewards are there?

There are a grand total of forty FC 25 Season 6 Ladder Rewards in all, and the maximum number of players you can claim is eight – so look forward to a big bundle of packs, too. Level 39, for instance, serves up an 87x 10 Rare Gold Players Pack, which has the potential to add some monstrous names to your club. For help unlocking all the rewards, dip into our FC 25 tips and FC 25 Player Roles guides.

Where is the full FC 25 Season 6 Ladder Players cards list?

The complete FC 25 Season 6 Ladder Players cards list is below. An asterisk means you need to choose one of the two options. Once you've unlocked them, keep these fond favourites looking their best using our FC 25 best kits guide.

On top of Shadows, we're currently awaiting updates on all the upcoming Assassin's Creed games that are in development for all sorts of devices, not just consoles and PC. Moreover, a live-action show is set to come to Netflix in the near future. Hopefully, it will make up for that disappointing movie we got in 2016. In any case, it appears that, while the mainline series is returning to a 'historical RPG' approach with Shadows and Codename Hexe as Ubisoft ushers in a new era for the franchise, the powers that be are still interested in expanding the universe beyond video games.

Before we dive into the full chronology of the entire mainline Assassin's Creed series, we'll be listing every video game that's been released so far in release order. This first list includes spinoffs and standalone DLC releases, too. For the sake of brevity (this will take a while anyway), and to focus on the central overarching storyline in an effective way, the chronological order list is sticking to the major console and PC installments only.

HOW TO PLAY THE ASSASSIN'S CREED GAMES IN RELEASE ORDER

There are a ton of Assassin's Creed games, so if you want to play all of them (spin-offs and mobile outings included), we've listed them all below, along with what platform you can find them on.

Here's a complete list of all the Assassin's Creed games in release order:

• Assassin's Creed (2007) – PC, PS3, Xbox 360
• Assassin's Creed: Altaïr's Chronicles (2008) – iOS, DS
• Assassin's Creed II (2009) – PC, PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Switch
• Assassin's Creed II: Discovery (2009) – DS, iOS
• Assassin's Creed Bloodlines (2009) – PSP
• Assassin's Creed Brotherhood (2010) – PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Switch, PC
• Assassin's Creed Revelations (2011) – PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Switch, PC
• Assassin's Creed III (2012) – PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Switch, PC
• Assassin's Creed III: Liberation (2012) – PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Switch, PC
• Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (2013) – PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Switch, PC
• Assassin's Creed: Freedom Cry (2014) – PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Switch, PC
• Assassin's Creed Rogue (2014) – PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Switch, PC
• Assassin's Creed Unity (2014) – PS4, Xbox One, PC
• Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China (2015) – PS4, Xbox One, PC, PS Vita
• Assassin's Creed Syndicate (2015) – PS4, Xbox One, PC
• Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India (2016) – PS4, Xbox One, PC, PS Vita
• Assassin's Creed Chronicles: Russia (2016) – PS4, Xbox One, PC, PS Vita
• Assassin's Creed Origins (2017) – PS4, Xbox One, PC
• Assassin's Creed Odyssey (2018) – PS4, Xbox One, PC, Switch
• Assassin's Creed Valhalla (2020) – PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PC
• Assassin's Creed Mirage (2023) – PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PC
• Assassin's Creed Shadows (2025) – PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PC

HOW TO PLAY THE ASSASSIN’S CREED GAMES IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

Below, we've listed all the main installments of the Assassin's Creed games in chronological order and broken down the timeline so you can get a complete overview of the story.

We've made sure that by the end of this page, you'll be fully caught up with the AC timeline and ready to navigate all the different periods in the franchise before you dive into Ubisoft's new Animus hub.

Here's a list of all the Assassin's Creed games in chronological order:

• Assassin's Creed Odyssey
• Assassin's Creed Origins
• Assassin's Creed Mirage
• Assassin's Creed Valhalla
• Assassin's Creed
• Assassin's Creed II
• Assassin's Creed Brotherhood
• Assassin's Creed Revelations
• Assassin's Creed Shadows
• Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag
• Assassin's Creed Rogue
• Assassin's Creed III
• Assassin's Creed Unity
• Assassin's Creed Syndicate

Assassin's Creed Odyssey (431 B.C. – 422 B.C.)

Assassin's Creed Odyssey is a massive action-adventure RPG that takes players to Ancient Greece and happens almost 400 years before the next entry in the Assassin's Creed chronology. In this entry, the Assassins and Templars, as seen in other games, don't exist yet. Instead, the Cult of Kosmos are introduced as the precursors of the series' bad guys. Players can play as either Alexios or Kassandra, grandchildren of Leonidas of Sparta.

Odyssey is actually more concerned with mythology and the conflicts of the Greek world during the times of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, but it doesn't neglect the ongoing sci-fi storyline that's mostly developed during the modern-day sections. Layla Hassan, the present-day character, continued his story arc following Origins' non-historical events and with the help of a new Animus device.

Read our Assassin's Creed Odyssey review

Assassin's Creed Origins (49 B.C. – 38 B.C.)

With Assassin's Creed Origins, Ubisoft and the franchise's creative architects aimed to tell the story of how the Assassin Brotherhood was first formed (as the Hidden Ones) and how forerunners of the Templars (the Order of the Ancients) began to expand their influence as their members tried to control the course of history across nations with the help of artifacts that predated human civilization.

The game is mostly set in Egypt during the final phase of the Ptolemaic period, and puts the focus on a Medjay named Bayek of Siwa and his wife Aya. After the murder of their son, a quest for revenge eventually leads them right into a much more important conflict that could reshape the future of Egypt, Rome, and the surrounding territories. This is the entry that introduced RPG elements in a big way and reworked the structure, which had become a bit tired after years of non-stop releases.

Read our Assassin's Creed Origins review

Assassin's Creed Mirage (861 – 870)

Originally envisioned as an expansion for Valhalla, Assassin's Creed Mirage continues the modern-day story of the three previous games (in order of release) while taking the players back to 9th-century Baghdad during the Islamic Golden Age. The story focuses on Basim Ibn Ishaq, a character first introduced in Valhalla, as he went from street thief to key member of the Hidden Ones.

The RPG elements were aggressively dialed down in this entry, with the focus put back on stealth, parkour, and assassination mechanics that tried to replicate the style of early installments. It also downplayed the modern-day sci-fi storyline despite some ominous teases about what's next. The lower price tag and overall size also translated into a far tighter narrative experience for players who thought Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla had taken things a bit too far into sprawling open-world RPG territory.

Read our Assassin's Creed Mirage review

Assassin's Creed Valhalla (872 – 878)

While Assassin's Creed Valhalla isn't entirely set in the British Isles during the Viking expansion, its main goal was to let longtime players, as well as newcomers, experience a big 'Viking fantasy' while pushing the Assassin-Templar plot forward alongside the modern-day storyline. Eivor Varinsdottir (man or woman) is the main character, with Layla Hassan still around in the present-day sections.

Needless to say, this third 'historical RPG' entry also explored Norse mythology in the same way Odyssey and Origins had done so with their respective settings. Still, clashes between the Vikings looking for a new home and the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms are front and center alongside the Assassin-Templar narrative. And, of course, a more seasoned Basim shows up to guide Eivor into a war that's been happening in the shadows.

Read our Assassin's Creed Valhalla review

Assassin's Creed (1191)

The action-adventure game that started it all was mainly set in 1191, during the times of the Third Crusade in the Holy Land. However, the modern-day storyline was also there from the very beginning and followed regular guy (as far as he knows) Desmond Miles as he's pulled into the Assassin-Templar conflict that's been raging for generations. In the 1191 story, Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad is our guy, and unlike other protagonists, he's quite good at his murderous job when we meet him.

Assassin's Creed also hit the ground running when it came to the whole 'powerful artifacts of unknown origin' plot that fed into the modern-day storyline. This was perhaps Ubisoft and the developers' master stroke when it came to the marketing campaign, as the whole 'genetic memory' and Animus layer of the game was kept mostly a secret until launch.

Assassin's Creed II (1476 – 1499)

The second Assassin's Creed game is set roughly 300 years after the original and introduces Ezio Auditore da Firenze, the most developed protagonist in the entire series. During the modern-day sections, players continued to control Desmond Miles as he uncovered more secrets of the Assassin-Templar conflict and what they were after. In the past, a young Ezio sought revenge against the killers of his father and brothers while learning about the Brotherhood and its bigger-than-life goals.

The central narrative takes place in the middle of the Renaissance period in Italy, with Florence and Venice among the many settings that were painstakingly recreated for the game. When it came to systems and mechanics, it was also far meatier than the original and established a richer open-world structure that subsequent entries would upgrade for years.

Read our Assassin's Creed 2 review

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood (1499 – 1507)

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood shocked and wowed everyone back in the day because it was a direct continuation of AC2 that no one was expecting and because it actually had lots of new ideas to add to the pile. While some locations from its predecessor returned, the main setting was Rome, where the local Assassins Guild needed a bit of help dealing with the Borgia family. At the same time, the Italian Wars raged in the background.

Meanwhile, in the present day, Desmond Miles learns of an impending apocalypse that could be stopped with the help of the knowledge left behind by an ancient race that was in contact with the first humans. By this point, the modern-day storyline kind of goes off the rails, and despite some compelling ideas, the general consensus is that it never got back on its feet.

Read our Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood review

Assassin's Creed Revelations (1511 – 1512)

After a small time jump after the ending of Brotherhood, Assassin's Creed Revelations takes place over the span of two years. An older Ezio travels to Constantinople to find the keys needed to access Altaïr's library while dealing with the pesky Byzantine Templars during the Ottoman war of succession between Ahmed and Selim, sons of Bayezid II.

Revelations' was characterized by a deeper, more emotional story that connected Ezio to both the Brotherhood's past and Desmond in the future. Not all of its plot beats land, but it was a more concise and slightly dialed-down effort after Brotherhood to wrap up this story arc in a more mature way. Since most long-time fans of the series still regard Ezio as the main protagonist of the story, we'd say Ubisoft succeeded here.

Read our Assassin's Creed Revelations review

Assassin's Creed Shadows (1579 – ????)

The latest mainline Assassin's Creed entry is set in a familiar feudal Japan scenario. More specifically, it begins during the Azuchi-Momoyama period, which marked the end of the Sengoku period. If you aren't familiar with Japanese history, let's just say this was an intensely bloody civil war time for the country. We also know Nobunaga's assault on the Iga province in 1581 factors into the plot, but we've yet to learn when the full tale ends.

Assassin's Creed Shadows lets players explore central Japan, with regions like Kyoto, Kobe, and Osaka available. It's also the first installment since Syndicate that allows players to seamlessly control two characters over the course of the same playthrough: Fujibayashi Naoe, a female shinobi, and Yasuke, the legendary African samurai who served Oda Nobunaga. Of course, expect more on the Assassin-Templar conflict.

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (1715 – 1722)

While most people refer to it as simply Black Flag, Assassin's Creed IV is a prequel to III, actually. The story takes place during the Golden Age of Piracy in the West Indies. This one was a fantastic pirate simulator first and a standard AC entry second, which may explain why it continues to be a fan favorite after more than a decade. Barely any modern-day narrative in this one, too.

The protagonist is Edward Kenway, grandfather of AC3's Connor and, of course, father of Templar antagonist Haytham Kenway. For the most part, Black Flag is the story of a Welsh man who wants to go home after getting more adventures than he bargained for. As for the main cities, you have Havana, Nassau, and Kingston to explore (plus a whole lot of open sea and small islands).

Read our Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag review

Assassin's Creed Rogue (1752 – 1776)

Assassin's Creed Rogue had something rather interesting to present with its twist on the Assassin-Templar conflict. The main character is an Irish American privateer named Shay Patrick Cormac, who goes from Assassin to Templar after rejecting some of the Brotherhood's tactics. Haytham Kenway also shows up and guides him past a certain point.

The story takes place before and during the French and Indian War which had the North American colonies of the British Empire fighting those of the French. Ship-based naval exploration – in the western North Atlantic – was kept around, but the main 'land maps' (New York City and the River Valley) are equally important locations in the game. The final twist is that, in 1776, Shay murders the Assassin Charles Dorian, father of Unity's protagonist Arno, in France.

Read our Assassin's Creed Rogue review

Assassin's Creed III (1754 – 1783)

Assassin's Creed III follows both Haytham Kenway and his son Ratonhnhaké:ton (aka Connor), though the main player character is the latter, who joins the Assassins to both protect the Native American lands and avenge his mother's death. Of course, he's soon dragged into a much larger conflict that’s also part of the big American Revolution.

The story is developed over the course of nearly three decades and is mostly told from Connor's confused perspective. While much of the story takes place in the Frontier, Boston, and New York City, as well as settlements, can be explored. Meanwhile, the present-day storyline that follows Desmond Miles comes to an abrupt end which paved the way for the series' future... but disappointed most fans in the process.

Read our Assassin's Creed III review

Assassin's Creed Unity (1776 – 1794)

Assassin's Creed Unity, an initially divisive entry that has been reevaluated in recent times, kicks off in Versailles in 1776 when Arno Dorian's father is murdered, and he's left an orphan. The funny thing is that he's adopted by François de la Serre, the French Grand Master of the Templars. No more spoilers here, but things take a turn in 1789 and Arno eventually becomes a member of the Assassin Brotherhood.

Unity allows players to explore Paris and its surroundings during the French Revolution, while the modern-day storyline was... almost nonexistent. Black Flag and Rogue kept it to a minimum after the post-AC3 backlash, but it was Unity (and Syndicate) that dialed it down until Origins came along with a new story arc.

Read our Assassin's Creed Unity review

Assassin's Creed Syndicate (1868)

Last but not least, we have Assassin's Creed Syndicate, which explores London in 1868 as the Second Industrial Revolution explodes. Like in Shadows, the player controls two canon characters, twin Assassins Evie and Jacob Frye, who unsurprisingly get into a lot of trouble and are thrown into an Assassin-Templar conflict which has a much bigger reach than what they knew at first.

The story was fairly straightforward in this one, but both the setting and the dynamics between the twins (each with a distinct playstyle) shined. There was, however, a major wrinkle in the form of 'time anomalies' that transported players (and the present-day Animus user) to the time of World War I, when Lydia Frye, Jacob's granddaughter, defended London from German spies.

Read our Assassin's Creed: Syndicate review

Want more on this iconic series? Check out our ranking of the best Assassin's Creed games, or read our guide on all the upcoming Ubisoft games heading our way.

Tokyo Xtreme Racer is a series developed by Genki that's been around since 1999, when it was known as Shutokō Battle in Japan and Tokyo Highway Challenge in PAL countries. It's not, honestly, a series that I knew about until this year – until, after an 18-year gap of major releases, the simply-titled Tokyo Xtreme Racer hit Steam Early Access.

Switching gears

On start up, you pick a car from one of three starting models, watch some extraneous if entertainingly overblown story stuff. Then you're let loose on Tokyo's Shuto Expressway, a twisting leviathan of tunnels, bridges, and fenced-in roads, bedecked on all sides by billboards and high rises.

You cruise around and, when the mood takes you, you can come up behind another car and flash your headlights to initiate a race. The races themselves are known as Spirit Battles, with the aim being to reduce your opponent's spirit by crashing them into things or by streaking ahead of them. Once you get over a certain distance ahead of them, their spirit starts to drain. This is, as far as I can tell, a unique way to do races – something like a hybrid of a racer and a fighting game.

While you can race just anyone (including, for maximum hilarity, some poor person driving a flatbed lorry just trying to do their job), you won't get much money from beating them. To get more money, you'll need to race other racers, who are usually in a team of some sort. Beat enough of a team, and you can race the team's leader. Each racer has a bizarre nickname that's usually tied to their personality outside of the race (you get a bio for each racer after beating them). Some who I've beaten include Great Finance, Indigo Helmswoman and Raging Choreographer. It's like racing against the collective crew of Mother Base.

That, I think, is the handle. Its sense of sheer joie de vivre, the immaculate silliness of everyone on the Expressway being happy to race at any time, shooting across the Rainbow Bridge as the Tokyo Tower glints lustily in the distance. It feels like I'm playing a better-looking version of something like Daytona USA or Outrun, something capable of evoking a sense of place, of wonderment, better than any other medium.

I've yet to even touch on the other kind of car game, whose spectre hangs over Tokyo Xtreme Racer like a petrol station attendant with one eye on the clock: the tuner game. Games like Need for Speed: Underground or Midnight Club, where making your car look as silly as possible is as important as actually winning races. Thankfully, the customization options run deep in Tokyo Xtreme Racer with upgradeable parts by the fistful and many options to make your car look daft. My current main car is one of the starters, a Toyota Sprinter Trueno. It was a flaming pile of garbage at first, but I've managed to extinguish at least some of the flames, while adding a zebra-pattern decal to my bonnet, coupled with the tricolour stripes from the BMW M1.

My project, however, is to take my second car, a Daihatsu Copen, and turn it from shitbox to hitbox (bear with me). You see, I've always loved the idea of sleeper cars, cars that look run-of-the-mill but can outrace a muscle car. The Daihatsu Copen, out of the box, is a terrible car. It's incredibly slow, and it's also, in my view, kind of ugly. But the game has made me love this absolutely terrible car, because I know it doesn't have to be this way.

I know it doesn't because there's a boss who drives one who absolutely smokes me whenever I've challenged them. I want to turn this car from a stain on the Expressway's carpet into a feared monster, and I think the game will genuinely let me do that. I've already made it look stupid, with a yellow and pastel blue colour scheme, it just needs the internals to match.

This game's many great aspects combine to genuinely make the old feel new again. It's a refreshing experience after years of racing games that either take themselves too seriously or feel that the setting is secondary to the driving. In developer Genki's Steam Early Access statement, the studio says that it wants the game to be in early access for around four months, which would put the full release sometime in May or June. I'm curious to see what more the team can add, aside from the expected additional story, rivals, and vehicles. For now though, you can catch me tearing up the tunnels by Haneda airport in my trusty Trueno. See you there?

Cult classic racing series returns 18 years after its once-final entry on Xbox 360 to 95% overwhelmingly positive Steam reviews

Just one month ago, World of Warcraft had Final Fantasy 14 players (it's me, I'm players) in a chokehold with its revolutionary housing system – in other words, a housing system that has no pesky lottery or high costs, and one that doesn't rip your home from you if you don't play for 45 days or unsubscribe temporarily. As a longtime superfan of Square Enix's MMO myself, it sounds like an out-of-reach dream – even more so now.

A new post from Blizzard detailing interior design for World of Warcraft's upcoming housing system highlights features I, and many other Final Fantasy 14 stans, have wanted for years – about 11, to be precise, since patch 2.1 first introduced housing. Decorating in World of Warcraft sounds accessible and fun, with an optional grid system, free object placement, a functional X-Y axis, various dye toggles for furniture, and more.

WoW Housing Bodied FFXIV Again from r/ffxivdiscussion

Customization is core to housing in World of Warcraft, it seems, and I'm not the only Final Fantasy 14 player drooling over Blizzard's fleshed-out system. A recent Reddit thread proves as much, with its original poster aptly dubbing their thoughts "WoW Housing Bodied FFXIV Again." Comments see hopeful fans expressing that Blizzard might give Square Enix "a push to add some stuff which we need built in game like the axis movement."

Other fans similarly tired of using floating hacks and mods to decorate to their heart's content in Final Fantasy 14 admit that World of Warcraft has something the former MMO doesn't – time, and the ability to look at fellow genre gems to see what players want out of a housing system: "One is being created in 2025." Meanwhile, I'm personally holding out hope that the community's reaction inspires a more user-friendly approach to housing in Final Fantasy 14.

Looking for another MMO to try? Here are some of the best MMORPGs to play right now.

Kanabo quite literally translates to metal rod (according to DeepL). It's a spiked or studded two-handed club that was actually used in feudal Japan by samurai, so it's the perfect weapon for Yasuke.

In the clip, we see Yasuke absolutely clobbering some poor fellas with the thing. He's very deft with it too. He not only delivers slow, overhead strikes, but quick jabs with both the handle and the very end of the weapon, making it much faster than you may think a two-handed club would be.

My favorite combo is when Yasuke slashes the club down, cutting across an opponent's body and causing them to double over, stunned. Before they can catch their breath, Yasuke brings the weapon up through their feet, tripping them and launching them into the air before bringing the kanabo over his head and slamming them into the ground with it. It's not as brutal as his Sparta kick, but I still would not want to fight that man.

I love this weapon because it really plays into Yasuke's more strength-oriented fighting style. He's a big, strong samurai wearing heavy armor, so he can't sneak around like Naoe. Instead, he overwhelms his opponents with force and skill.

I can't wait for the game to drop on March 20. In the meantime, here are the best RPGs you can play to pass the time.