News and Reviews

You've got to admit, the post-launch support for Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2 has been stellar. The crunchy action shooter has received numerous, significant updates since its release in September of 2024 — and rather miraculously, it's showing no signs of slowing down. The game's latest patch — officially deemed version 11.0 — is yet another beefy addition. It's available to download now on PS5, weighing in at 9GB. A new co-op mission has arrived, along with new equipment, over 40 new gameplay modifiers, and even a bunch of fresh cosmetic items. Gameplay balance tweaks are also part of the update. Again, it's an especially meaty patch for a title that's now 14 months ol…

Much has already been written about Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 and its desperately troubled development, but it's still interesting to hear about the project from someone who was actually there, on the inside. In a rather revealing interview with Cat Burton on YouTube, Dan Pinchbeck, the game's creative director, basically admits that significant doubts surrounded the title from the start — especially when it came to taking up the 'Bloodlines' name. "We used to sit there and go and have these planning sessions of, ‘how do we get [the producers] to not call it Bloodlines 2?," Pinchbeck explains. He continues, in particularly damning fashion: "That feels like th…

It's no secret that Microsoft wants the ROG Xbox Ally to feel as comfortable for console users as possible, but that can be difficult when you're wielding a Windows 11 PC in your hands. One of the problems is that games require tinkering in terms of power settings, frame rates, graphics and various other things that can affect the likes of performance and battery life. To counter this, Xbox has unveiled a new feature called "Default Game Profiles" that will support over 40 games at launch (it's starting in preview today). The idea is that when you load up these games and you've got Default Game Profiles turned on, the Xbox Ally will automatically do all the hard work in t…

Xbox developer Treyarch has fully detailed Black Ops 7 Season 01, and there's a lot of content coming to the game next week. A big batch of multiplayer maps, Zombies survival maps, weapons, operators and more are arriving for the Xbox Game Pass title on December 4th - alongside "significant improvements" to the game's battle pass system. First off, let's take a look at that Season 01 content roadmap. Although the team shared a bunch of this information before the game launched, we now have the full S1 rundown - alongside new Warzone content and the addition of that release date of course. Here's the Black Ops 7 Season 01 roadmap: Adding onto this, Treyarch says that it's…

Just three weeks after its release, Nintendo is already bringing more goodies to Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment later this week in the form of a free update. Available on 27th November 2025, the update will add new weapons, a brand new Sync Strike for Zelda and fan-favourite Korok Calamo, and other goodies. Being typically coy there, Nintendo! The game already has a ton to unlock, including maxing out characters and finding all of those pesky Koroks, even if it's a little brisker than Age of Calamity. Well, head over to the Japanese website and you'll see exactly what else we'll be getting — along with some extra challenges, new enemies, and more powerful materials,…

Nintendo released its latest firmware update for Switch 2 last night, ushering in a handful of general improvements for the console. Alongside these tweaks, the update also appears to have coincided with some compatibility fixes, including one title we've been waiting to see up and running for a while: NieR:Automata The End of YoRHa Edition (thanks for the heads up, My Nintendo News). Square Enix and PlatinumGames' sci-fi ARPG has long been sitting in a pretty bad way on Switch 2, with many users reporting frequent crashes when trying to get it up and running on the new hardware. A glance at Nintendo's compatibility information site before today listed NieR: Automata as "…

If you've been paying attention to the recent trailers for Pokémon Legends: Z-A's Mega Dimension DLC, you'll no doubt know that doughnuts have a pretty big role to play in the dimension-hopping — what did you expect, it's Pokémon! The Pokémon Cafe's new menu looks set to bring these sweet treats into the real world, but it also might be teasing that a pair of legendary 'mon will make their return in the DLC. Yep, we live in a world where Pokémon spoilers can come from anywhere, even doughnuts. But come on, take a look at the above two baked goods — currently appearing under the tentative titles of "Red Doughnut" and "Blue Doughnut" on the Pokémon Café's Pikachu Sweets web…

The Duskbloods, being that it's a FromSoftware joint and all that good stuff, is certainly high on our list of things we're very excited about arriving on Switch 2 in the near future. However, given that it's a multiplayer-typed deal in the same vein as the studio's divisive Elden Ring: Nightreign, we understand that there's a little more trepidation surrounding it, or at least that's how it's felt. Solo FromSoftware efforts get a big thumbs up very quickly, it seems, but words like 'multiplayer' or even 'online' might make you feel it's not a full-fat adventure from the Dark Souls studio, perhaps. It's understandable. And yet, according to a new leak surrounding the game…

Following Embracer Group's and Free Radical Design's failed attempt at a TimeSplitters revival, things have been looking pretty bleak for the future of the beloved first-person shooter series, originally made famous on the PS2. Not only has Free Radical Design once again been put to rest, but the studio's co-founder, Steve Ellis, has also commented publicly that he may now be done with the series for good, calling the recent revival attempt a "big letdown" and expressing sympathy for the younger members of the team who didn't get to "see through their first game." Because of this, it doesn't look likely that an official continuation will happen anytime soon, but what we d…

We have some exciting news for N64 fans. Another build of Sammy Corporation and Racdym's cancelled Star Fox-style shoot 'em up Viewpoint 2064 has been dumped and preserved online. This time by the YouTuber and video game preservationist Hard4Games. Viewpoint 2064, as the name indicates, was a 3D follow-up to the Neo Geo top-down isometric shooter from Aicom and Sammy, which was also subsequently ported to the Sega Genesis, FM Towns, Sharp X68000, Sony PlayStation, and Windows computers. It was in development in the late '90s and is believed to have been shown off at Nintendo SpaceWorld in 1999, as well as Tokyo Game Show, with the original plan being to release the title …

Mario Kart: Super Circuit is one of the games I remember most fondly when thinking about the Game Boy Advance. The console was still fresh and new back in 2001, and soon after launch it was playing host to a portable version of one of my favourite SNES games of all time. It felt too good to be true. I still enjoy Super Circuit, even after almost a quarter of a century, so it amazes me now to hear that the game has been "fixed" by fans to make it even better. As reported by Video Game Esoterica, Super Circuit is, in fact, hiding a dirty secret. While the game runs at 60fps, the track itself is rendering at half that frame rate. Thankfully, a new patch created by antimattur…

If you thought seeing Super Mario 64 on PlayStation was weird, well, we're not through yet. That's because Frogbull, the homebrew maverick behind demos of Metal Gear Solid and Crash Bandicoot on Sega Saturn and Metal Gear Solid 2 on Dreamcast, has just shared some incredible new footage of an "old project" he was once working on — a proof of concept of Insomniac's 1998 platformer Spyro the Dragon running on the N64. According to Frogbull, the project has been around for quite some time and represented the first-ever steps he took into the world of N64 homebrew. However, it is now abandoned, with the developer stating in the video description that he has "learned that a ve…

Nintendo dropped a major Switch 2 and Switch firmware update earlier this month, and it's now followed this up with a much smaller patch. Although this firmware update isn't a big one, it does appear to address some important issues. This includes an issue where a few Error Codes would repeatedly occur when attempting to perform a transfer between the Switch and Switch 2. There are also some fixes for connection issues. Apart from this, is some general system improvements on both platforms. They're focused on making both devices super stable. Here's the full rundown, courtesy of Nintendo's official support pages: Switch 2 Update Version 21.0.1 (Released November 24, 2025)…

If you've enjoyed the beats in Super Mario Party Jamboree and want to be able to listen to them wherever you go, the game's soundtrack has now been added to the Nintendo Music app. This one is an absolutely huge soundtrack, featuring a whopping 296 tracks with a runtime of 6 hours and 30 minutes in total. Nintendo also notes how this includes music from the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Jamboree TV. In case you missed it, Super Mario Party Jamboree got a major update in July for the Switch 2, adding Jamboree TV. This includes new minigames supporting the camera, Joy-Con mouse controls and more. You can find out more about this new content in our review: View full articl…

Assassin's Creed Shadows is on its way to the Switch 2 this December, and ahead of the big release, Ubisoft has announced a new collab with the popular manga and anime series Attack on Titan. Assassin's Creed Shadows x Attack on Titan event begins on 25th November 2025 and runs until 22nd December 2025, so it will still be live when the Switch 2 version is released. Here are the details via Ubisoft's official website: Images: Ubisoft Ubisoft has also announced its free-to-play title Brawlhalla will be getting an Attack on Titan crossover on 3rd December 2025. Assassin's Creed Shadows launches for Switch 2 on 2nd December 2025. Will you be checking it out on Nintendo's…

A week out from the release of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond on the Switch 2 and Switch, the Entertainment Software Rating Board has shared its official rating summary of the game. It once again highlights the title's 'T' for "Teen" rating, as the game features "animated blood and violence". Here's the official rundown. This same rating was originally spotted on Nintendo's US website in September. Here's the summary in full: As previously mentioned, this age rating is consistent with the main Metroid Prime games before the fourth entry. And once again, here's ESRB's basic summary of this particular age rating, describing what a game under this classification may contain: "In…

It's a very interesting time for Japanese RPGs — and not just because Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has sparked all sorts of arguments amongst genre enthusiasts. Indeed, it feels like we've been hitting some serious highs with JRPGs of late, with critically acclaimed titles like Metaphor: ReFantazio and Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter making big waves recently. It goes without saying that Metaphor developer Atlus remains at the forefront of this modern JRPG push — and that makes director Katsura Hashino's new comments all the more interesting. Hashino, who's spearheaded the Persona series and the aforementioned Metaphor, believes that the genre is now on the cusp of evolution…

It's been an unusually rocky ride for Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, which has been widely panned and appears to be selling below the series' usual pace. While Activision has yet to provide any official sales information itself (which is kinda telling on its own), some data has begun to emerge, including a weak UK launch and, now, a very weak Japanese launch. As shared by Zuby_Tech on X, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 has had the worst Japanese physical launch sales in the franchise's history: According to the above table, the new game has sold 12,311 copies at Japanese retail, fewer than any other entry, dating all the way back to 2007's Call of Duty 3. Now, Japan has never been …

We just had a pretty chill weekend amidst Xbox 360 celebrating 20 years of age over the last few days, and while I was personally relaxing with YouTube on Sunday evening, I came across this awesome Digital Foundry video unboxing a brand-new launch Xbox 360 from 2005. As you can see in the above video, hosts John and Rich get all nostalgic while getting stuck into an Xbox 360 Core model that had been left untouched for 20 years. Everything's here - from the original inserts and green packaging bags to the console itself and that gloriously pristine controller. As the quote above notes, this of course means that the iconic 'Blades' dashboard is present and well; looking ty…

Xbox's latest partnership has been revealed, and we've got some new shoes on the way! Yes, the Xbox-Inspired "Crocs Classic Clog" will be going on sale from this Tuesday, November 25th. Xbox is only teasing a first look right now, which you can see in the social media video below: The Xbox "Crocs Classic Clog" has already been revealed on the official Crocs website though, with lots of details being shared along with some all-important screenshots. Firstly, let's look at the description: Fixed dimensional controller joysticks and buttons Branded Xbox rivet Incredibly light and fun to wear Water-friendly and buoyant; weighs only ounces Designed to enhance breathability E…

Nintendo's weekly maintenance schedule has been released, and weirdly, the only console getting any love this week is the Nintendo 3DS. Reported on by Nintendo Everything, the Nintendo 3DS's available network services will be down between 3pm PST to 4:30pm PST today, 24th November 2025. Of course, that might sound a little confusing given that online servers for the 3DS and Wii U shut down over a year ago. But many people still play their 3DS's, and you can redownload games off of the eShop on the system. So any maintenance that takes place today is likely just to iron out a few kinks Nintendo discovered. For when this takes place in your timezone, here's a handy list (ex…

Valve is going after the living room gaming market once more, with the announcement earlier this month of the new Steam Machine. While we know that the small form factor device will aim to provide a console-like experience with SteamOS, Valve has clarified that the Steam Machine will be "a good deal" in the similarly-spec'd PC market, but not priced specifically to go up against consoles. Valve employee Pierre-Loup Griffais explained, "our goal is for it to be a good deal at that level of performance, and then, you have features that are actually really hard to build if you're making your own gaming PC from parts". He elaborated that a price is hard to lock down right now…

Well, we're not sure anyone saw this crossover coming. Just confirmed by Ubisoft, Assassin's Creed Shadows' next collaboration will be with... Attack on Titan. The super popular manga and anime property will be featured in a new quest, which seems to task Naoe and Yasuke with stopping a titan transformation. No, we're not making this up. All we've got to go on right now is the above teaser trailer, but the quest itself goes live on the 25th November. That's tomorrow at the time of writing. However, it's also worth noting that this is a limited time deal. The quest will only be available until the 15th December, 2025. What's more, the cool Attack on Titan equipment seen in…

Developer Shift Up has revealed some of its own data about Stellar Blade, the Sony-published action game that launched on PC earlier this year. The game, which features main character Eve on a quest to save the planet from monstrous forces, is reportedly the "best-selling PlayStation-exclusive launch IP in history", presumably meaning PC, and also presumably excluding Helldivers 2. The above image is taken from an investor presentation. As it highlights, the action title reached a peak concurrent player count of over 192,000, which is an impressive feat for a single-player experience. In addition, sales across both PC and PS5 put Stellar Blade at over 3 million copies. Th…

When you think of landmark western RPGs of the modern era, it's likely that two games immediately come to mind: The Witcher 3, and Baldur's Gate 3. It's obviously the latter that's had more impact in recent times, setting a new benchmark for choice-driven adventures — to the point where it's now being named as an inspiration for The Witcher 4. It's funny how these things work, isn't it? "There was a lot of inspiration in what Baldur's Gate 3 did," CD Projekt Red co-CEO Michał Nowakowski told PC Gamer. However, as you'd expect, the Polish company isn't suddenly going to pivot towards making a Larian-style RPG — despite having a clear appreciation for Baldur's Gate 3 and wh…