Steam

It’s that time of the year again! The latest edition of the Steam Next Fest is finally here, bringing many demos for exciting upcoming games. It’s easy to get lost when the are so many games currently available, especially considering how some quality stuff sometimes gets swept under the rug, which is why we’ve personally […] Source View the full article

The mass hit Balatrojust shadow-dropped on Xbox Game Pass for all players to enjoy, alongside a smashing free DLC to match. This deck-building roguelike quickly caught the attention of players when it was released last year, redefining how poker plays entirely. In this chaotic and addictive indie treat, it's impossible not to be sucked in for hours on end wanting just one more run. View the full article

Marvel Rivals has revealed punk-themed costumes for both Magik and Hulk. NetEase Games recently released its major mid-season update for Marvel Rivals, which added Human Torch and The Thing to the hero shooter's roster. Since both of them received skins when they made their debut, it seems other heroes are primed to get some attention. View the full article

Three new day-one games have been announced for Xbox Game Pass in April 2025: Descenders Next, Blue Prince, and Tempopo. These indie games will likely make April an even more exciting month for Xbox Game Pass subscribers, together with previously announced titles such as Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. View the full article

The highly addictive card game Balatro took the world by storm – and it’s now available on Xbox Game Pass! Starting ... Read more View the full article

A new Dark Souls 3 mod adds seamless co-op, allowing players to experience the game from the tutorial to the final boss with up to five other players. This Dark Souls 3mod is already available for players, though the creator has warned about potential bugs and issues, as the mod is still in its alpha version. View the full article

Amid the discussions about the use of generative AI (Gen AI) in video games, a game developer released an image that can be used on Steam pages to clearly state that generative AI was not used in a project. The creator said that the "No Gen AI" seal can be used at a game dev's own risk, and included instructions on how to use it on Steam and other storefronts. View the full article

Disney Dreamlight Valley has finally unveiled all the new features that will be coming to the game as part of the Tales of Agrabah update and while Aladdin and Jasmine are exciting additions, there is so much more about this update to be excited about. Most notably, some major quality-of-life changes are coming that will completely change the way you play. View the full article

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown now offers a playable demo on PC. However, the trial version of the upcoming TMNT game is only available for a limited time. View the full article

Rebel Wolves, a studio formed by former The Witcher 3 developers, is partially owned by NetEase, a ******** gaming conglomerate. As NetEase has been cutting a ton lately, many worried that Rebel Wolves would be affected, though that seems not to be the case. Tomasz Tinc, one of the co-owners of Rebel Wolves, said in a Feb. 24 LinkedIn post that the studio is “facing no financial issues,” and that it is “fully funded.” He further stated that the stake NetEase has in the studio is a ********* one, meaning that it cannot significantly influence how the studio functions, nor shut it down as it had with some others. View the full article

IGN is teaming up with Xfinity for the Kick It With Xfinity Flyaway Sweepstakes, with prizes that include $5,000 cash, an expenses-paid trip to visit the EA Studio in Vancouver, free copies of EA SPORTS FC™ 26, gaming accessories, custom jerseys, and more. Wondering how to enter? All you need to do is follow these simple steps: Equip the Xfinity Connections Kit, which is available for free for all North American accounts via the EA SPORTS FC™ 25 Store.Clip your best plays in EA SPORTS FC™ 25 with the Xfinity Kit equipped. Here are some tips for capturing your highlights and getting the best videos possible.Fill out the entry form at the bottom of this page between 12:00 a.m. PT on February 24th and 11:59 p.m. PT on March 24th, with your best clip included. As long as you’re a United States resident who is 18 or older, you’re eligible to fill out the form. On March 19, we’ll randomly select 16 winners in all, with the prize packs detailed below. If you win, we’ll notify you at the email address you provide in the entry form. You’ll need to respond (as directed in the email) within five days to confirm your victory, so make sure to use an email address you check regularly. If you don’t reply in time, your victory will be voided and we’ll choose someone else. If you win the grand prize, make sure your passport is up to date so you can visit Vancouver. 1 grand prize winner will receive: - $5,000 cash - Flyaway trip for 2 guests to the EA Studio in Vancouver, Canada - Xfinity will cover travel and expenses - Copy of EA SPORTS FC™ 26 (upon release) 5 first runners-up will receive: - A signed Sophia Smith Xfinity jersey - Xfinity branded gaming set with headphones and controller - 18,500 FC25 FC Points (for use in Clubs and Ultimate Team) - Copy of EA SPORTS FC™ 26 (upon release) 10 second runners-up will receive: - Xfinity jersey - Copy of EA SPORTS FC™ 26 (upon release) NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A PURCHASE WILL NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING. Open to residents of the 50 States in the United States of America or the District of Columbia, 18+ years of age. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED. The Kick It With Xfinity Flyaway Sweepstakes (the “Sweepstakes”) is governed by these official rules (the “Sweepstakes Rules”). The Sweepstakes begins at 12:00 a.m. PT on February 24th and ends at 11:59 p.m. PT on March 24th (the “Sweepstakes *******”). View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Get ready to rise against divine judgement with 33 Immortals. Promising large-scale battles, relentless bosses, and a quest for redemption, the new title from Thunder Lotus studio adds a sinfully fresh take to multiplayer action. First announced during the Xbox Games Showcase in June 2023, 33 Immortals offers a fun blend of action and roguelike elements, drawing inspiration from Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy. Players assume the role of a damned soul, battling through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven in a quest against the almighty. The game will be accessible in early access starting March 18 on Windows PC and Xbox Series X|S, with availability on Xbox Game Pass for console and PC. View the full article

Everyone’s favorite pixelized indie clown keeps getting more and more friends to join it’s one-of-a-kind game of cards. Jimbo’s Friends (Pack 4) is now live in Balatro, along with the game’s surprise arrival on Game Pass, it was announced today during a new Xbox indie showcase. Eight new titles have joined the card game’s ranks as special card art, as seemingly everyone wants a piece of Jimbo. View the full article

World of Warcraft has officially revealed the full patch notes for Patch 11.1, Undermine(d), which include a huge amount of class balance adjustments, quality-of-life improvements, and new content. These patch notes ensure that players know exactly what they’re getting into once the next update for World of Warcraft releases on February 25. View the full article

Upon its release, Tribe Nine‘s gacha system, Synchro, can be used only 12 times before you exhaust all premium currency. Its restrictive rewards means you’re off to a slow start accumulating the team you’re wanting. Here’s our Tribe Nine reroll guide to ensure you’re making the most of what it currently has to offer. View the full article

A recent leak from Honkai: Star Rail provides a detailed explanation of the stats and unique abilities of new character Anaxa's signature Light Cone. The HoYoverse sci-fi RPG features plenty of ways for players to enhance and optimize their characters, both on an individual level and through new equipment options. Relics serve as generic options that can be utilized by a wide range of different characters, while Traces and Eidolons improve a character's own abilities and provide special buffs. However, Light Cones are often seen as one of the most paramount pieces of character building. View the full article

In the mountain of copycats released since From Software's titanic Dark Souls series, Lies of P is a cut above. It impressed even those bewildered by its peculiar premise: a tragic, steampunk run at the classic *********** story Pinocchio. Impressively made and shockingly deep, Lies of P struck a place of its own in a crowded field. Now, in just a few months, we'll be getting more of it, in a snowy prequel DLC called Overture. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: New Lies of P DLC acts as a chilling prequel to the brilliant soulslike New Lies of P DLC may be here very soon, as dev moves onto survival horror game Lies of P creator reveals new Red Dead Redemption style western RPG View the full article

The hit indie gem Balatrojust won its appeal to reclassify the game's age rating, turning it from PEGI 18 to 12. As a deck-building roguelike, this unique entry completely reshapes the way that players look at how to play poker, upgrading their hands and utilizing a wide array of joker cards with individual effects. While relatively simple in what it offers, this addictive game has quickly become a fan favorite for many. View the full article

As you start the 'Forged of Star-Stuff' quest, one of Avowed's many side missions, you need to find a Starmetal smithy. Although the side quest is triggered as soon as you pick up the first piece you find in the Living Lands, you're given no direction whatsoever. There is only one place in the game: a blacksmith capable of working with such a metal. View the full article

Balatro, widely considered one of the best new game releases of 2024, has been added to Xbox Game Pass in a surprise update for the subscription service. Microsoft typically announces new Xbox Game Pass additions well in advance, but the company has been known to shadow drop games on the service from time to time as well. View the full article

The NetEase studio founded and headed by former Control lead designer Paul Ehreth hasn’t been impacted by any restructuring of the ******** tech giant’s games business. Ehreth, the CEO and creative director of Anchor Point Studios, published a statement on Monday confirming that work on the company’s debut game is “still full steam ahead”. His statement was released following reports that numerous NetEase studios, including Quantic Dream, Nagoshi Studio, and Grasshopper, are at risk of closure after the ******** publisher decided to divest its international operations. Read More... View the full article

While Submarines in the Fisch Mariana’s Veil update only carry you to the Calm Zone, you will need to open the Calm Zone door by solving the Statue chest puzzle. Roblox’s Fisch updates often bring challenging puzzles where you need to work with another player, use your wit, or just showcase your fishing skills to solve them. This time, you’ll need to do the last one and reel in some new secret fish to solve the Statue chest puzzle. If you’re stuck and can’t solve the puzzle to open the door, we’ve got you covered. View the full article

The review scores for Monster Hunter Wilds are finally in following the end of the embargo. Wilds is the newest installment in developer Capcom’s popular monster-hunting series, preceded by titles such as Monster Hunter Rise (2021) and Monster Hunter World (2018). The upcoming entry is set in a new map area called The Forbidden Lands, composed of various biomes that extend from harsh plains to a blooming jungle, and from scorching caverns to freezing chambers. The map for Monster Hunter Wilds is expected to reflect the number of different creatures that players will be able to face. View the full article

Stop me if you've heard this pitch before: a warrior is summoned to another world to fight hordes of enemies in the name of a deity usurped by an evil force. Yeah… but while its story and its boss fights might be phoned in, Warriors: Abyss still manages to confidently put the "1v1000" spin of its Dynasty Warriors roots onto the tried and true room-to-room roguelite template of games like Hades, and that’s something I haven’t seen quite as many times before. Combined with one of the most extensive rosters of characters I’ve seen in this genre, a simple yet impactful upgrade system, and screen-filling special attacks, this new roguelite managed to get at least a fair number of those good old “just one more run” hooks in me before its story trailed off. Without a doubt, the 100-character roster is the strongest part of Abyss because they function as both playable characters and as summonable upgrades who join your hero as you go. With a selection of characters rounded up from Samurai Warriors and Warriors Orochi, that includes characters like Nobunaga Oda and Goemon Ishikawa to join forces with iconic Dynasty Warriors characters Zhao Yun, Cao Cao, Sun Jian and dozens more. After taking over a third of them for a spin, I’ve gravitated towards characters with specific abilities or ones I've favored in past games: Guan Yu, Liu Bei, and especially Lu Bu, who makes defeated enemies explode and deal damage to other enemies nearby. While each run never really felt all that different from the last, even when venturing outside my favorites, I still enjoyed the feeling of when my build came together to deal massive damage or overwhelm my enemies with multiple status effects. Unfortunately, the story never did. I often struggled to connect with it due to the way every conversation doled out after defeating a boss is limited to mostly monologues from the ousted ruler of the underworld. Despite Warriors: Abyss having a cast of 100 playable characters, or maybe rather because of that, none of them get a chance to shine. Every opportunity for dialogue gives options that either say the same thing two ways or result in a very similar response, so there are no interesting decisions to make and the characters are interchangeable. The shops and random events that occur during runs are also devoid of other characters, so even these were wasted opportunities to add a little bit of personality to the story. You don’t have to look hard to find more interesting bosses than this. After the minimal setup you are sent out to clear four stages, each consisting of eight rooms and ending with a tougher but uninspired boss battle. There’s an ogre, a skeletal griffin, and other supernatural things and while that's more creative than we typically get in a Warriors game they never managed to wow me. The main issue, though, is that even if they had wild visual designs every boss battle would still play out the same way, with telegraphed attacks and rechargeable barriers to be broken before you can damage their health bar. You don’t have to look very hard to find isometric action games with bosses that are more outside the box than this. Downing one for the first time triggers a very short conversation about the lore, but that's about it, and none of these chats were revelatory or offered any conclusion – including the final one. It essentially just ends with a “You won!” like an arcade game from the 1980s. However, the big evil is still here, and we need you to continue fighting until it's eradicated. And that's expected, since the nature of roguelites is to clear multiple runs before getting some grander resolution. But at this point I’ve played for over 40 hours and completed over 30 runs with 20 different characters, each of which taking 45 minutes to an hour, and there’s no end in sight or even any hint I’m making progress toward it. Thankfully, the large roster of characters and entertaining combat kept the repeated runs enjoyable, even if the story wasn’t there. Every time you beat a room you have the opportunity to recruit someone into one of your six slots, and they work something like boons in Hades except you can swap people in and out between rooms once they’re in your inventory. There are also 30 different unlockable formations to choose from that add depth to your options, like empowering characters placed in odd-numbered slots or improving your main hero’s stats based on how many of a certain elemental emblem you’ve collected that run. Changing who I played as and recruited kept things interesting. By changing who I played as and which warriors I was recruiting to assist me on each run, there’s enough variety to keep things interesting. While each character uses similar enough variations for basic combos that learning to play a new one is easy, they all come with a set of traits that match their backgrounds; combinations of emblems for stats or elements like Strength, Speed, Fire or Ice; a special attack they use when summoned as an ally; and finally a passive buff offering things like summoning extra characters, increasing the attack power of their special move, or buffing your main warrior’s emblems or traits. They also have unlockable unique weapons that give permanent buffs to their owner and act as something to chase beyond the story. Abyss also does a great job of converting the traditional Dynasty Warriors combat into something more flashy to fit the more fantasy-based setting. Every character has their various normal and charge attack combos, and new summoning attacks, those basic moves feed the Assemble bar that powers the new assemble attack at a quick and satisfying pace. And if you execute a musou move while it’s active, it unleashes a room-clearing explosion that never failed to get me out of a tricky situation or put a bow on top of a battle. In practice, though, the 100 warriors don’t fight all that differently. Outside of a few characters with unique special attacks, most deal one of five elemental damage types by creating zones of AoE damage, summoning tornadoes that pull enemies in, or conjure elemental blades from the ground. A select few grant buffs or inflict debuffs, and that's just a few of the options available. But even though summoning attacks and certain passives are repeated across the roster with only slight differences, there’s enough variety there that I found I could easily create some level of synergy regardless of the warriors I had available on a run. There are some creative combinations you can pull off. And, once you've recruited six heroes, you unlock the Assemble Attack, which is as powerful as it is cool looking. That said, Abyss swings its difficulty pendulum from fairly difficult to too easy depending on your progress through the meta-progression between runs. Your first few runs of any roguelite are meant to be nearly insurmountable: you deal low damage to bosses and take a lot until you build up your attack and defense stats. Looking at the progression tree for character unlocks, that’s pretty quick and easy to do as you pick a path and unlock your favorite characters or characters with the preferred permanent stat bonuses. As a Lu Bu fan, I made a beeline for him while unlocking other nearby characters that offered good bonuses and found the tide of battle quickly shifted in my favor. There are plenty of other great characters to unlock along the way. Some come with extra abilities, like Nobunaga, who gains a temporary power up enabling additional attacks after using a specific combo. And characters gain cumulative levels the more you play them; every 50 levels, they gain permanent bonuses to their attack and defense, meaning that with enough time and effort even characters without special traits can gain enough power to tackle the most difficult challenges. But, speaking of those difficult challenges, even the five challenge runs disappointed me in the end: my only reward for accomplishing this supposed great feat was alternate costumes for a couple of characters – not even the one I’d played with. I’d have even settled for unlocking some good lore to flesh the story out, but while there are some diary entries and memoirs in the collections menu, even that failed to move the needle of interest for me. I suppose there is always the chance that the story may be resolved, or at least have more revealed, after completing it with 30 different characters or more, but at this point I don't have my hopes up. I will say that this last thing for it, though: Warriors: Abyss has given me a new perspective from which to experiment with characters that I’d skipped over in the main Dynasty Warriors games. Playing with the likes of Zhang Liao and Sima Yi here has me interested in giving them more attention the next time they appear in a mainline game. So I can at least thank it for broadening my Dynasty Warriors horizons! View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Action RPG Dauntless is shutting down in a matter of months. First released in 2019 after a beta the year prior, Dauntless was a free-to-play game that borrowed quite a bit from a familiar gameplay formula. Players could choose from a variety of different weapons, each with its own unique fighting style, and fight a variety of monsters both big and small. It was often compared to a much simpler, "low-stakes" version of Monster Hunter, including in Screen Rant's review. View the full article