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If I had to pick the five greatest and most PC influential games, at least during that transformative decade between 1990 and the end of 2000, then I think Fallout would make the list, probably Civilization, and maybe Doom. There are a lot of contenders for the fourth spot. Command and Conquer comes to mind. So do Half-Life, Counter-Strike, The Sims, and StarCraft. But the ultimate crown goes to Deus Ex. Visionary, original, and the perfect intermediary between player and developer, they should give out Deus Ex to everyone who owns a PC. It's required reading. We're not quite there yet - but if you're signed up to Prime Gaming, or want to give it a try, Deus Ex is free to keep. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: The best old games and PC classics to play 2025 Deus Ex writer reveals canceled sequel that linked Mankind Divided to DX1 Grab every Deus Ex game for less than $10 with this massive Steam collection View the full article

For some reason, the Xbox version of the trailer for NINJA GAIDEN II ****** has cut out all the fanservice… by removing all the women from the trailer. Ayane, Rachel, Momiji, and Irene all have a few seconds to shine in the PlayStation version of the NINJA GAIDEN II ****** trailer, but are noticeably missing from […] Source View the full article

The 2025 Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual is going to significantly weaken the well-known spell Hold Person - along with Charm Person, Dominate Person, and any other magic that only targets humanoids. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: DnD stats explained DnD meets Arc Survival Evolved in new dino-hunting expansion All DnD 2024 backgrounds explained View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is having an open beta between February 20 and February 24, and fans can check out eight different characters during the process. It will be live on PC (via Steam), PS4, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S systems, and thankfully you won't need a PlayStation Plus or Xbox Game Pass subscription to play the beta. View the full article

Just before the end of last year, No Rest for the Wicked developer Moon Studios apologied for the extended ******* of radio silence that followed the game’s early access launch, and promised to communicate more regularly with players throughout 2025. Read more View the full article

Dragon Age: The Veilguard's latest patch sounds like it could be the game's last major update, based on the wording BioWare's used in the notes for it. Read more View the full article

As Warhammer 40K starts to look for a worthy successor to its surprise hit Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, one faction has the perfect units that provide unique gameplay options for potential players. Millions of new players are delving into the world of Warhammer 40K for the first time thanks to the success of Space Marine 2. The new game not only includes an amazing narrative storyline that is set in Warhammer 40K's present day, it also has a robust PvP mode showcasing different kinds of Space Marine chapters and units. View the full article

Cyberpunk 2077 is already one of the best-looking games available, despite its advancing age, but the neon-lit game's latest update makes it look even better, thanks to its new support for DLSS 4. The new Cyberpunk 2.21 patch is being rolled out right now, ready for the new RTX 5000 launch, but you can actually enable the new upscaling tech on any Nvidia GeForce RTX GPU, including the 2000 series. I had the chance to test a pre-build of Cyberpunk 2077 with DLSS 4 support before the launch, ready for my Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 review, and I was really impressed with the results. You will need an RTX 5000 graphics card to run Multi Frame Gen, which provides a massive boost to frame rates, but the new DLSS Super Resolution tech will work on any Nvidia RTX card, and it makes a big difference to image quality compared to previous versions of DLSS. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: The best Cyberpunk 2077 mods The best cyberpunk games on PC 2025 This stunning Cyberpunk 2077 gaming PC with Nvidia RTX 4080 is a showstopper View the full article

How do you use the Monster Hunter Wilds Light Bowgun? The Light Bowgun is one of the best beginner friendly weapons in the game, and though it comes with a few tweaks and changes from previous iterations of the weapon, it largely plays the same. The Monster Hunter Wilds Light Bowgun is, as you guessed it, a lighter version of the Heavy Bowgun, and unlike the normal MHW Bow, you'll need to craft elemental ammo to use it, though normal, piercing, and spread ammo are unlimited. It's a much nimbler alternative to the Heavy Bowgun and has a few moves that allow you to move around while shooting and quickly dodge out of the way, but keep the pressure on enemies. Here's why it's one of the best Monster Hunter Wilds weapons. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Monster Hunter Wilds Lance overview - moveset and how to use Monster Hunter Wilds Charge Blade - moveset and how to use Monster Hunter Wilds release date, trailers, and latest news View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Butcher's Creek, a melee-based first-person horror game from the creator of Dusk, is going down a storm on Steam. After one day and more than 170 player reviews, it's already earned a 94% positive rating. Be warned, however. David Szymanski's latest is not for the faint of heart. Vicious, brutal, and nihilistic, this could be one of the nastiest games of 2025. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: New, seriously brutal FPS game from the maker of Dusk is finally coming to Steam If you want Manhunt 3, this brutal Steam horror is made for you View the full article

The latest Infinity Nikki update brings some exciting content including a new area to explore with extra resources to discover. Throughout the six areas within the Firework Isles, there are hundreds of Dews of Firework to collect. Check out how to find and use these special resources in Infinity Nikki right here. Where to find Dews of Firework in Infinity Nikki A Dew of Firework may look familiar to you if you have been playing Infinity Nikki for a while, as they are very similar to a Dew of Inspiration. They are tiny firework sparks held in a circle of purple corruption and, just like Dew of Inspiration, need purifying before you can collect them. There are 261 Dew of Firework to be found, thankfully not as many as the Dew of Inspiration, and they are all located only in Firework Isle. View the full article

Marvel Rivals has had even more X-Men leaks for future releases, but could this amount mean something *******? Rivals has hit the gaming world by storm and continues its massive success. After an extremely successful Season 0, Season 1 has been even better with quality-of-life updates and four new characters. However, new seasons after this will drop to two new characters. View the full article

The Multimach CCX has returned to Destiny 2 with updated perks. It’s a solid submachine gun for PvP and PvE, although you might need some luck to get the exact perks that make the Multimach CCX great. It’s a 900 RPM Kinetic submachine gun available from Iron Banner. Yes, there are already plenty of great SMGs in the game, from the reprised Adjudicator to the good old Unending Tempest. The Multimach CCX, however, does have a few perks unavailable on those weapons, and it’s also enhancable. View the full article

The massive, monstrous boss Godzilla can regularly be found on the island in Fortnite, and he’s a pretty tough foe to beat. There are lots of quests designed to help you navigate fighting him, and one of these tasks asks you to search Monarch supply drops. Completing this quest gets you a decent chunk of XP while ensuring you’re ready for the dangerous fight ahead. It’s fairly simple to tackle once you know exactly what you’re looking for, so here’s how to search Monarch supply drops in Fortnite. View the full article

It seems like the launch of yet another content update for No Man's Sky is nigh thanks to a tweet from developer and Hello Games co-founder Sean Murray, the contents of which have gotten fans excited over the possibility that part two of the game's Worlds update is finally here. While No Man's Sky has been putting out tons of content for fans to enjoy in the form of both new and returning expeditions lately, fans haven't seen a new major update for the game since the Aquarius update dropped in September last year. View the full article

Assassin's Creed Shadows has a long legacy to live up to, both in terms of matching past heights and avoiding past pitfalls, but one area that should be set for success is the art direction. With a consistent breadth of historical detail on display, even the weakest games in the series are full of eye candy. Of course, every setting brings some new challenges, and Assassin's Creed Shadows is complicating affairs by trying out some major new tech on top of everything else. View the full article

Assassin's Creed has always been defined by its thorough recreations of historical settings, and Assassin's Creed Shadows is setting a new standard among the largest games in the series. While the most recent entry, Mirage, went back to a focus on one city, Shadows follows in the tradition of the open-world maps of Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla. The landmarks in these games attempt to stay close to their actual size, but the overall lay of the land tends to be more compressed to make the scale manageable. View the full article

Throughout January, Capcom has released a lot of material from Monster Hunter Wilds in anticipation of the next open beta at the start of February, and fans like a lot of what they are seeing. The game is easily the best looking in the series and, although this might cause some issues with PC spec requirements and optimization, the latest technology is reaping many benefits. Monsters from other older games look more realistic than ever with better fur and muscle physics and help make the ecosystem of Monster Hunter feel more alive. View the full article

Genshin Impact has revealed the new content coming in Version 5.4, which will mark the debut of Yumemizuki Mizuki, and will heavily focus on the region of Inazuma. After concluding the Archon Quest in Natlan, Genshin Impact is set to return to Inazuma for the Flagship Event of Version 5.4, which will revolve around the Mikawa Festival held between yokai and humans. It will feature characters such as Yae Miko, Raiden, and Mizuki in central roles, but players can also expect to see old friends such as Thoma and Yoimiya participating in the event. View the full article

More live service games are being killed than ever before at the moment, or at least it feels that way. Lots of publishers are continuing to try and take as many swings as possible at landing a big home run online cash cow, but it's a tough market, so the ones that don't catch on in a huge way often end up being viewed as just losses to cut. Read more View the full article

There’s a level of uncertainty surrounding 100 Thieves’ League of Legends program. Rumors of the organization leaving League were only amplified by the announcement that Riot Games had bought back its permanent partnership with the formerly-named LCS and 100T was made a provisional guest. Even when the organization was starting to make the right moves on the Rift, it seemed to be heading for the exit door. Head coach Greyson “Goldenglue” Gilmer has been an integral part of 100T’s League program, but now he must prepare his inexperienced squad to fight for a championship in what could be their last dance. Ahead of the LTA Split One, Dot Esports sat down with Goldenglue to go over his second year as a tier-one head coach, dealing with the speculation and more. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

HoYoverse confirms OBOL Squad member Trigger as another new limited banner character joining the Zenless Zone Zero roster in Update 1.6. There's no slowing down for HoYoverse as the developer has already started teasing the next big Zenless Zone Zero update. View the full article

Mortal Kombat 1’s big Conan the Barbarian update launched this week and with it came the arrival of a secret fight with Floyd, the pink ninja developer Ed Boon had been teasing for years. Not only that, but if you defeat Floyd you unlock cool exclusive rewards, including a coveted new stage. But how exactly do you trigger the secret Floyd fight? Players are working together to try to crowdsource the answer. This community effort, led by Mortal Kombat modder and dataminer thethiny, has done much to unravel the mystery, but the exact process remains unknown. Here’s what fans have worked out: a number of Floyd challenges must be completed before the fight with Floyd triggers. How many, no-one knows. Which challenges must be completed, and in which order? No-one knows that either. Worse, it appears different for each player. That’s not much help, is it? What is helping is thethiny’s Google Doc that lists the various challenges players have discovered and the requirements for each. When you’ve completed a challenge the Floyd icon will pop up on the left of the screen and you’ll hear a guitar riff. Requirements include taunting four times in a match, winning without jumping, and winning using sweeps only. Some of these challenges can be completed using any character, some with certain characters only. 37 Floyd clues have been discovered so far. Maybe there are more! It appears to be the case that you do not have to complete all 37 Floyd challenges to fight Floyd. It also appears to be the case that players have different “active” challenges, so there isn’t a single process fans can rely upon. It's all a bit confusing, but the best advice right now is to do as many of these challenges as you can, and eventually, hopefully, you'll fight Floyd. Occasionally, Floyd himself will appear at the start of the match to give you a clue (klue?) to one of your active challenges. Thethiny's data suggests it can take hundreds of ladder matches to get one of these clues from Floyd to pop up. Players are working through all this right now, and some are spending a lot of time doing so. Some are trying to increase their chances by restarting matches, but that comes with the risk of missing the Floyd clue because they only appear at the end of the match. What is clear is that the Floyd fight has breathed new life into Mortal Kombat 1. The new stage, the field seen in Mortal Kombat 1’s announcement trailer, is gorgeous, so the reward for all this effort is a good one. And Floyd himself is sparking a deeper dive as modders try to work out the details of his moveset and which characters from the Mortal Kombat games have inspired it. It’s just a whole lot of fun to be a part of and watch unfold. Meanwhile, we’ve got the T-1000 guest character to look forward to, and potentially more DLC to come, although NetherRealm has yet to confirm that. Hopefully whatever happens, the developer will throw in more secret fights over time, perhaps with Mortal Kombat’s iconic Pit stage as a reward. Wesley is the *** News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at *****@*****.tld. View the full article

In early 2025, a Final Fantasy 14 mod sparked "stalking" fears amid reports it was able to scrape hidden player data, including details like character information, retainer information, any alternate characters linked to a Square Enix account, and much more. The mod, named “Playerscope,” allows users to track specific player data of anyone in the vicinity of the person using it. This information is then sent to a centralized database managed by the mod author (no matter if you are looking at a specific player, or just happen to be around other players), and tracks information that players would usually not be permitted to see via in-game tools. Specifically, the mod offers information on “Content ID” and “Account ID,” which can be used to track players across characters. This was done by manipulating the Content ID system introduced in the Dawntrail expansion, which in turn let players blacklist others across their service account and multiple characters. The only way to prevent your account data being scraped by the tool is to join the private Discord channel for Playerscope and opt out. Theoretically, every single Final Fantasy 14 player who is not in the Discord channel is having their data scraped. Obviously this is a significant privacy risk, and the community has been vocal in its response: “the purpose is obvious, to stalk people” one commenter noted on Reddit. Several weeks ago the mod author posted on Discord that the plugin was found on Github, which led to an explosion in popularity. Due to terms of service violations, Playerscope has now been removed from Github, but it was allegedly mirrored on similar websites Gittea and Gitflic. IGN has verified that a Playerscope repository no longer exists on either alternative platform. Theoretically, the mod could also still be circulating in private communities. Final Fantasy 14 producer and director Naoki 'Yoshi-P' Yoshida has now issued a statement on Final Fantasy 14’s official forum regarding third-party mods, clearly referencing the emergence of Playerscope. The statement reads: “We have confirmed that there exist third-party tools that are being used to check Final Fantasy 14 character information that is not displayed during normal game play. The tool is being used to display a segment of an Final Fantasy 14 character's internal account ID, which is then used in an attempt to further correlate information on other characters on the same Final Fantasy 14 service account. "The Development and Operations teams are aware of the situation and the concerns being raised by the community and are discussing the following options: Requesting that the tool in question be removed and deleted.Pursuing legal action. "Aside from character information that can be checked in-game and on the Lodestone, we have received concerns that personal information registered on a user’s Square Enix account, such as address and payment information, could also be exposed with this tool. Please rest assured that it is not possible to access this information using these third-party tools. "We strive to offer and maintain a safe environment for our players, which is why we ask everyone to refrain from using third-party tools. We also ask that players do not share information about third-party tools such as details about their installation methods, or take any other actions to assist in their dissemination. "The use of third-party tools is prohibited by the Final Fantasy 14 User Agreement and their usage could threaten the safety of players. We will continue to take a firm stance against their usage." While the use of third-party tools is prohibited in Final Fantasy 14, the likes of Advanced Combat Tracker is regularly used by the game's raiding community and cross-referenced using websites like FFlogs. Yoshida's legal threat, however, is a significant step up in rhetoric. The FF14 community responds The Final Fantasy 14 community has responded to Yoshida’s statement in damning fashion. One user said: “fixing the game to break the mod isn’t on the list of options they’re considering I see.” Another player added: “or you could just see how not to expose the information on [the player’s] client side. Ofc this means extra work which they did not plan for, but is Final Fantasy 14 really on such a tight schedule and budget they can't deal with these things properly?” “Kind of a disappointing statement that really fails to acknowledge the root cause of the problem," another person said. The author of Playerscope has yet to respond. Photo by Olly Curtis/Future Publishing via Getty Images. Wesley is the *** News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at *****@*****.tld. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Dishonored 2 cost more to make than legendary role-playing game and fellow Bethesda title The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim and struggled for sales, but it still saved developer Arkane according to a former employee. Julien Eveillé, who worked in quality assurance on Dishonored 2 and as a designer on sequel Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, told PC Gamer that the game underperformed financially but saved Arkane by providing a "seal of quality" that "would maybe be considered the most refined games of the whole Bethesda catalogue." Bethesda questioned the series' viability in the wake of disappointing sales of Dishonored 2 and Death of the Outsider, Eveillé said. "It was a bit strange and weird. I think when Bethesda was looking at the numbers, they thought, 'Okay, Skyrim sold so much. And it cost less than Dishonored 2 to make.' So they were asking questions," he said. "From an executive spend standpoint, it makes sense to ask those questions of, 'Why should we keep going with you?' But we knew that we had a kind of seal of quality protection, making what would maybe be considered the most refined games of the whole Bethesda catalogue." This "kind of saved the studio," Eveillé added, noting that focusing on this kind of game instead of chasing trends like live service games was critical to the "future success of the studio." This pedigree continued on to Deathloop, deemed a masterpiece by IGN, and fans will surely hope the incoming Marvel's Blade will have that quality too. This is a tale of two Arkanes, however, as Arkane Austin infamously went down that path of chasing trends when it developed Redfall as a live service title, though this was reportedly at the request of upper management and not the actual developers creating it. Redfall launched without that Arkane "seal of quality" but instead with "bland missions, boneheaded enemies, and repeated technical problems," according to IGN's 4/10 review. Bethesda owner Microsoft later shut down the studio in a devastating round of lay offs. Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He'll talk about The Witcher all day. View the full article