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Xbox launched its massive Last Chance ***** with up to 90% on select Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC games for a limited time this January. Backwards-compatible titles from the Xbox 360 are also discounted during the Xbox Last Chance *****, so Xbox gamers have the opportunity to save big on games from four different platforms. View the full article

At last, it's time for the most exciting live competitive event of the year. No, I don't mean the Super Bowl - it's time for Awesome Games Done Quick, the annual charity speedrunning marathon that features a week of talented gamers showing off the wildest things they can do with video games. Games Done Quick (GDQ) has been running for 15 years now, since 2010. The event is a live broadcast speedrunning marathon, during which speedrunners take turns showing off beating video games as fast as possible, and often in wacky and especially impressive ways. In recent years, the events have shown off increasingly ambitious performances, including blindfolded or one-handed runs, two players using a single controller, showcases of tricky arcade games, and even speedruns performed by dogs. The annual event is held to raise money for the Prevent ******* foundation, having previously raised a record high of $3,442,033 in 2022, and $2,539,832 just last year. And this year's marathon has some pretty ridiculous runs on the docket. There's a run of Crazy Taxi backed by a live band, someone playing Elden Ring with a saxophone, new Super Mario Bros. Wii run while simultaneously playing piano, a two-players-one-controller run of Breath of the Wild, loads of randomizer races, and it all wraps up with a Map Randomizer Race between some of the best Super Metroid runners out there. If you've never watched GDQ before, it's really worth tuning in. AGDQ 2025 kicks off at 9:00 AM PT on Sunday, January 5 with a run of Pikmin on Nintendo Switch, followed by Portal 2. In fact, Sunday's full of bangers: Kirby's Air Ride follows, there's an Astro Bot run, then The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, a run infamous for appearing at GDQ every years and getting shorter each time as the community discovers new, run-changing skips. If I keep going I'll just list every single run in the entire event, so here's a quick list of highlights you should definitely check out. Definitely peak at the official website for a look at the full schedule, because there's tons of great runs I didn't list here, and the timing will be subject to change constantly throughout the week. Sunday9:00 AM PT: Pikmin - All Parts10:24 AM: Portal 2 - Single player No SLA1:56 PM: Ori and the Blind Forest - Randomizer World Tour 113:30 PM: Astro Bot - Any%6:19 PM: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker - Any%9:14 PM: Alan Wake 2: Night Springs - All Episodes10:01 PM: Alan Wake 2: The lake House - Any%Monday9:54 AM PT: UFO 50 - Various Games Showcase10:51 AM: Super Meat Boy - Any%11:37 AM: Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS - SMC Any% No Auto3:00 PM: Metroid Prime - Any% Inbounds Race4:42 PM: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Any% 2 Players 1 Controller6:45 PM: Horizon: Forbidden Rest - NG+ StoryTuesday7:47 AM PT: Unicorn Overlord - Any% Story8:26 AM: Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana - All Story Bosses10:18 AM: Spyro: Reignited Trilogy - Spyro 1, Any% NBS1:25 PM: Super Mario Bros. - Any% STA6:20 PM: The Last of Us: Left Behind - Remake - Grounded8:05 PM: Silent Hill 2 (2024) - New Game Light RestrictedWednesday8:51 AM PT: Sonic X Shadow Generations - Any%10:23 AM: Pokemon Let's Go, Pikachu!/Eevee! - Any% Pikachu/Eevee1:43 PM: New Super Mario Bros. Wii - Any% While Playing Piano3:30 PM: Donkey Kong Counry: Tropical Freeze - Any% Original Mode5:07 PM: Fallout: New Vegas - All Romances5:52 PM: Super Mario 64 - A-Button Challenge TAS Showcase6:27 PM: Rocket League - Workshop Map Speedrun Showcase7:24 PM: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Main Quest At 8:24 PM PT, GDQ will kick off a block of games that have been affectionally referred to in past years as "Awful Games Done Quick" or the "Awful Block." These are games that are silly, janky, broken, or otherwise of questionable quality, and always make for some hilarious speedruns. The first run, Superman 64, you've probably heard of before, but the rest you may have not. The Awful Block runs throughout the night on Wednesday into very early Thursday morning. Speaking from experience, I highly recommend having insomnia and staying up all night to watch it. The block concludes with Kevin Costner's Waterworld at 3:11 AM on Thursday. Thursday10:55 AM PT: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - All Dungeons3:00 PM: Lies of P - Any% Glitchless5:02 PM: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - Any%6:55 PM: CHUNITHM LUMINOUS PLUS - Arcade ShowcaseFriday2:36 AM PT: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth - Any% Easy9:21 AM: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - Tightened Vice3:00 PM: Tetris: The Grand Master - Multi Game Showcase4:00 PM: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - 48 Tracks (DLC) 200cc, No Items5:45 PM: Kaizo Mario World 3 - 100%6:52 PM: jubeat copious APPEND - Showcase8:07 PM: Super Mario World - 96 Exit RaceSaturday Seriously, just stop sleeping and watch the entire day Saturday. I want to list every game here. It starts with Peggle Extreme and Metal Gear Solid, for pete's sake! There's not a bad thing on the schedule! Fine, fine, my editor said I have to narrow it down: 6:57 AM PT: Pokemon Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire - Any% Race10:32 AM: Elden Ring - DLC Lockout Bingo12:52 PM: Elden Ring - Saxophone Controlled Boss Showcase1:27 PM: Crazy Taxi with Live Backing Band - Crazy Box2:30 PM: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - No Logic Randomizer6:35 PM: The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom - Any%7:55 PM: Super Metroid - Map Randomizer Race Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected]. View the full article

The XMG is a light machine gun in Call of Duty: ****** Ops 6. It's a powerful choice for players who like heavy weapons with big magazines. This weapon is effective in medium to long-range fights, providing a lot of firepower and letting players shoot for a long time without reloading. However, it can be difficult to handle in tight spaces because it's slower and bulkier. Many players choose the XMG to hold down areas and provide cover fire. View the full article

Many Overwatch 2 players have voiced their displeasure with the live service game after Marvel Rivals announced more characters joining its roster. Although Marvel Rivals has only been out since December, it's already introducing heroes at a faster rate than Overwatch 2. View the full article

With more players having finished their globe-trotting journey through Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, there's more demand than ever for another Indiana adventure. It's no wonder that after The Great Circle's relative success as one of the best-selling games of the season, there's already been talk about a potential sequel in the future. While nothing is in development or even confirmed just yet, a recent update has confirmed any hopes for a sequel to continue where The Great Circle left off. View the full article

In the vast majority of base-building strategy games, things are pretty static. Sure, you can usually expand your reach far and wide or build multiple settlements, but everything tends to stay exactly where you left it. In the upcoming RTS game Dark Moon, however, you, your crew, and your lunar research facility are always on the move as you navigate the surface of the Moon in deadly circumstances. You can now get a taste of what that feels like in action, as playtests for Dark Moon have just got underway. Read the rest of the story... View the full article

The Marvel Rivals subreddit has once again given us a gem of a discussion. This time, it’s all about an item from the Season 0 battle pass that has players scratching their heads. In a Redd thread posted earlier this week, user Kyvix2020 sparked a conversation about why certain collectibles exist at all. View the full article

Publisher Hooded Horse has announced that Manor Lords has sold over 2.5 million copies, which makes PC Gamer's best city builder of 2024 an undeniable smash hit. Speaking in a recent interview with the BBC, Hooded Horse co-founder Snow Rui says that, even though the publisher realised there was interest in the game's pre-release trailers and marketing, the sheer scale of the game's popularity was a surprise: "It would almost be arrogant not to be taken aback by how successful it turned out to be.".. Read more.View the full article

BioShock director Ken Levine wants to encourage player exploration in Judas, and because of elements like this, he seems to view it as significantly more complex than his earlier works. Judas, by Take-Two subsidiary Ghost Story Games, is set to release by March 2025, and now that the year has started, people hope to see more details about the video game and its release window soon. View the full article

In Marvel Rivals, players can change their controller settings on both Xbox and PlayStation to fit their personal gameplay styles. These settings let you adjust things like sensitivity, aim assist, response curves, and dead zones to make aiming and movement feel better. You can change how fast your aim moves both horizontally and vertically, and there are options to customize aim assist, like its strength and size, which can vary depending on the character you’re using. View the full article

Fans have several exciting features to look forward to in Tekken 8's upcoming 1.11 patch, including major changes to the game's main menu and customization options. The game's official Twitter account teased the new update further, giving players more to look forward to as both they and Tekken 8 enter the new year. View the full article

As we rang in the new year earlier this week, thousands of people seemed to be celebrating in an admittedly unusual way: by playing Valve's 2018 TCG Artifact. Then, as quickly as they started, the 12,000-ish individuals all stopped playing at once on January 3, leaving the game as empty as it had been at the end of 2024. Who were these people? No one seems to know. The Artifact community isn't reporting any sudden spikes in interest, and no one's really talking about the game on social media apart from marveling at the sudden jump in player numbers. So why, then, is SteamDB suggesting that a free-to-play card game that is, by all accounts, close to dead, seeing wild spikes in users over very specific two-day periods? As spotted by Forbes, Artifact Classic's (the original, now free-to-play version of Artifact) player count suddenly spiked on December 31, jumping from a measly ~200 concurrent players up to the 5,000s, before spiking to a height of over 12,000. Artifact remained at around 11,000 concurrents through the second, before its playercount absolutely tanked back down to ~150 at midnight on January 3rd. What's strange is that something almost exactly like this happened earlier this month, too: on December 14, player counts shot up to around 14,000, hung out there for about two days, and dive bombed again into the hundreds on the 17th. So what's really going on here? The actual answer is that no one really knows. The most prevalent community theory seems to be that it's bots, though why someone would train bots to play Artifact isn't exactly clear. One person suggested someone was training an AI to play the game "for ****** and giggles" which is perhaps as good an explanation as any. Another person suggested the spikes were due to scam bots increasing playtime in random games in order to make their Steam accounts look legitimate for other purposes. Another theory pointed out by multiple members of the Artifact subreddit is that the spike in players is due to pirates. Because certain video games require Steam authentication, in order to pirate those games, pirates will use the AppID/SDK of a different, free-to-play game to fool Steam into thinking they have a real copy. In this case, it's being suggested they're using Artifact. That said, this theory doesn't entirely hold up, due to the extremely sudden spikes and then drops in activity at very precise times. So the actual answer behind Artifact's mysterious player numbers remains a mystery for now. We did reach out to Valve for comment, but did not hear back in time for publication. What is clear at least is that despite the numbers, Artifact itself doesn't seem to be garnering any meaningful, real-world interest eight years after launch and four years after Valve effectively called it quits, even though the game itself was pretty fun at first. At least the bots, if they are indeed bots, in Artifact don't seem to be bothering legitimate players, unlike the on-and-off situation over in Team Fortress 2. Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected]. View the full article

Gather your limited-edition foil jokers and reach high scores in Balatro, 2024’s most popular indie game. Balatro is a roguelike card game in which players try to reach an increasingly higher score requirement by playing different poker hands with the help of different modifiers and Joker cards. So, is it really GOTY material? Aren’t roguelike […] Source View the full article

Although it seemingly dropped out of nowhere at The Game Awards, Elden Ring Nightreign is causing quite a stir with the new take on the Soulsborne formula. Of course, anything with the Elden Ring name is going to turn heads, especially after the records broken by the base game and the expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree, but Nightreign is also causing some confusion with the direction it is taking. Rather than being a more typical Soulsborne title, Nightreign is a rougelite, although that hasn't stopped it from continuing to learn from other past FromSoftware titles. View the full article

What are the best WW2 games in 2025? Just as in film and TV, WW2 videogames have proven consistently popular, becoming a whole genre of their own - catering to casual gamers, competitive multiplayer fans, and historical wargamers alike. This guide tracks Wargamer's all time favorite World War 2 games to recommend your next play. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: 10 Best RTS games on PC 2024 Company of Heroes 3 review - more and more World War Company of Heroes 3 release guide View the full article

The Overflowing Palettes are one of the colorful new puzzles added in Wuthering Waves 2.0. These require you to solve painting grids by painting a single color across the board within a few turns. We’re going to go over all the Overflowing Palette puzzle locations and solutions in Wuthering Waves. Table of contentsHow to solve Overflowing Palettes in Wuthering WavesAll Overflowing Palettes in Whisperwind Haven and solutionsAll Overflowing Palettes in Nimbus Sanctum and solutionsAll Overflowing Palettes in Thassaleo Fells and solutionsAll Overflowing Palettes in Averardo Vault and solutionsAll Overflowing Palettes in Fagaceae Peninsula and solutionsAll Overflowing Palettes in Penitent’s End and solutionsAll Overflowing Palettes in Hallowed Reach and solutions How to solve Overflowing Palettes in Wuthering Waves The Overflowing Palette puzzle requires you to change all colors on the palette to a specified color within a set number of turns. Completing Overflowing Palettes contributes to your exploration progress and unlocks more items for you to purchase at the unique Egla Town merchant, as you get 20 Resonant Calcite for each puzzle. If you reset the Overflowing Palette enough times, the game will lower the difficulty and give you more turns to solve it. View the full article

Fans have been waiting for Borderlands 4 for quite a while, which has given them plenty of time to contemplate where it might innovate and what new features it may bring to the table. Borderlands 3 proved that the series still had a lot left to offer, and the spin-off Tiny Tina's Wonderlands further cemented that idea. Fortunately, it looks like Borderlands 4 is going in a new direction in a lot of ways, implementing new ideas that will surprise even series veterans. View the full article

Players are complaining about the way the AK74 handles in Call of Duty: ****** Ops 6, with some criticizing the weapon in comparison to the traditional AK47 assault rifle. There's a vast collection of weapons to choose from in ****** Ops 6, though the AK74 is likely one of the more popular given how prevalent the assault rifle is in other media as well as previous Call of Duty titles. However, some players think Treyarch missed the mark when it comes to the AK74 in Call of Duty: ****** Ops 6. View the full article

With huge battles and raids, animal taming, enjoyable survival mechanics, and some excellent kingdom building, there's already a lot going on in Myth of Empires. However, the sandbox survival game will soon get even ******* with a Persia-inspired expansion, and its developer has just given fans a first look at over a dozen gorgeous new weapons. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: DMCA'd sandbox game is huge on Steam after comeback Popular sandbox game Myth of Empires has been hit by a DMCA takedown Myth of Empires is a stunning multiplayer sandbox game that'****** Steam's bestsellers View the full article

Indie developer Digital Crafter has announced a release date for Valkyrie Squad: Siege Breakers, their new anime girl top-down shooter game. Valkyrie Squad: Siege Breakers is set to launch on February 5th/6th (pending your region) for Windows PC (via Steam). A playable demo for the game is available now. Here’s a rundown on the game, […] Source View the full article

As the fourth installment in the series, Dragon Age: The Veilguard does a fantastic job of telling an epic story as Rook and their allies battle to save Thedas. In a vast setting that's so rich with lore, it's little wonder that some small details might get missed during a first-time playthrough, as it can be tempting to plow through the main storyline to find out what happens next. But, when taking a little more time, there are many features, quests, and small pieces of lore that make repeat playthroughs more than worth it. View the full article

Balatro, the roguelike deck builder that has you play poker hands for points, includes a massive 150 Jokers to collect, each granting a unique effect that can alter your session. Of these 150, there is a special set of five Legendary Jokers that can truly send your score into the stratosphere. But Balatro doesn’t hand these Legendary Jokers out for free. You’ll need to get extremely lucky to get your hands on them, but once you do, you won’t want to look back. Here’s everything you need to know about Legendary Jokers in Balatro. View the full article

There are mentions of a new battle event in Genshin Impact 5.4 leaks and, while combat-focused events are quite frequent in the action RPG by HoYoverse, this feels like the best update in the game in quite some time. At the moment, the title is at the start of Version 5.3, an important patch that brought forth the final Natlan Archon Quests and introduced four new playable characters. The update is also going to host the annual Lantern Rite Festival, which will be somewhat accompanied by the release of the Liyue character Lan Yan in Genshin Impact. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Digital card games continue to thrive and evolve while the classics still scratch your card-casting itch. This genre of games doesn’t rank at the top of Twitch’s most-watched list, but that doesn’t stop players from enjoying a wide variety of playable options. The best digital card games are free-to-play, although some have friendlier monetization systems than others when it comes to expanding your collection. But it is the experience of playing those cards that matter for card game fans. From cracking open packs to directly purchasing the cards you want in your meta deck, here are the best digital card games players should check out. View the full article

Nvidia is reportedly gearing up to launch the first few cards in its RTX 50-series at CES next week, including an RTX 5090, RTX 5080, RTX 5070 Ti, and RTX 5070. The 5090 will be of particular interest to performance-obsessed, money-is-no-object PC gaming fanatics since it's the first new GPU in over two years that can beat the performance of 2022's RTX 4090. But boosted performance and slower advancements in chip manufacturing technology mean that the 5090's maximum power draw will far outstrip the 4090's, according to leakers. VideoCardz reports that the 5090's thermal design power (TDP) will be set at 575 W, up from 450 W for the already power-hungry RTX 4090. The RTX 5080's TDP is also increasing to 360 W, up from 320 W for the RTX 4080 Super. That also puts the RTX 5090 close to the maximum power draw available over a single 12VHPWR connector, which is capable of delivering up to 600 W of power (though once you include the 75 W available via the PCI Express slot on your motherboard, the actual maximum possible power draw for a GPU with a single 12VHPWR connector is a slightly higher 675 W). Read full article Comments View the full article