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It is that time of year when everyone starts crafting their GOTY lists, cramming all the best RPGs, beloved indies, and surprisingly good AAAs into a top ten list. I'm prone to doing this every year, although often my lists are so long they're barely worth mentioning. 2024 was no different, as my top 10 best games of the year list ended up looking like a top 100 before I eventually gave up. View the full article

According to sources, the AMD Radeon RX 9000 series of graphics cards may have a staggered release between January and March, starting with the flagship Radeon RX 9070 XT model. AMD is expected to fully reveal its next generation of graphics cards at the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas on January 6. View the full article

There were some incredible games released this year, and we wanted to know which you thought was the best of the best. So with our partners at Truth, we picked 64 of 2024’s best games, put them in a head-to-head tournament, and gave you the power to vote for your favorites. After six rounds of voting and more than 1 million votes in all, one game reigned supreme as champion: ****** Myth: Wukong. An action game from developer Game Science, ****** Myth: Wukong is inspired by the classic ******** novel Journey to the West. You play as the Destined One, an anthropomorphic monkey based on Sun Wukong from the novel. You wield a staff with different stances, have access to several magic spells, and can transform into enemies after defeating them. In IGN’s review, we cited its fantastic combat, beautiful environments, and well-designed bosses as the areas where it shines. While it may not be a soulslike, its combat can be quite challenging and forces you to weave together quick reflexes, smart resource management, and versatile attacks to take down its many bosses. ****** Myth: Wukong’s popularity was obvious from the very start of our fan-voted tournament. It had a dominant run, culminating in a win over Marvel Rivals in the final with 59% of the vote. Before that, it had to get through Harry Potter: Quidditch Championship, Star Wars Outlaws, Mario & Luigi: Brothership, Stellar Blade, and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, beating all of them with at least 67% of the vote. Marvel Rivals’ run to the final was more contested, with it barely beating out the Silent Hill 2 remake in the semifinals and Astro Bot in the quarterfinals, which was one of the closest matchups of the whole tournament. There were more than 50,000 votes cast in that matchup, and Marvel Rivals won by only 960. Before those close calls, it had to get through some stiff competition in World of Warcraft: The War Within, Batman: Arkham Shadow, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. IGN’s pick for Best Game of 2024 went to Metaphor: ReFantazio, but it didn’t make it out of the first round of the People’s Choice Tournament. Mario & Luigi: Brothership took it down before falling to ****** Myth: Wukong in its path to the title. Indie darling Balatro, one of IGN’s runners-up for Best Game of 2024 and winner of our Best PC Game of 2024 Award, also had a surprisingly short run. After narrowly defeating Still Wakes the Deep in the first round, it got only 26% of the vote in Round 2 against Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2. Space Marine 2 had a very impressive run overall, taking down multiple big names on its way to the Final Four. In addition to its resounding win over Balatro, it also defeated Sons of the Forest, Dragon’s Dogma 2, and Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth, another of IGN’s runners-up for Best Game of 2024. The other member of the Final Four was Silent Hill 2, which won the IGN Award for Best Horror Game of 2024. It got to the semifinals by going through Life Is Strange: Double Exposure, Helldivers 2, Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD, and Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero. Thank you to the many people who logged votes in this year’s People’s Choice Tournament. Let us know in the comments below what you think of the outcome. If you disagree with the winner, which game would you have chosen? And here’s to another great year of gaming in 2025! View the full article

The more than two decades since Half-Life 2's release have been filled with plenty of rumors and hints about Half-Life 3, ranging from the official-ish to the thin to the downright misleading. As we head into 2025, though, we're approaching something close to a critical mass of rumors and leaks suggesting that Half-Life 3 is really in the works this time, and could be officially announced in the coming months. The latest tease came just before the end of 2024 via a New Year's Eve social media video from G-Man voice actor Mike Shapiro. In the voice of the mysterious in-game bureaucrat, Shapiro expresses hopes that "the next quarter century [will] deliver as many unexpected surprises as did the millennium's first (emphasis added)... See you in the new year." #Valve #Halflife #GMan #2025 [Hidden Content] — Mike Shapiro (@mikeshapiroland) December 31, 2024 The post is all the more notable because it's Shapiro's first in over four years, when he concluded a flurry of promotional posts surrounding the release of Half-Life: Alyx (many of which were in-character as G-Man). And in 2020, just after Alyx's release, Shapiro told USGamer that he had recently worked on a "blast from the past" project that he would "announce... on my Twitter feed when I'm allowed to" (no such announcement has been forthcoming for any other game). Read full article Comments View the full article

The smash-hit hero shooter Marvel Rivals has taken the gaming community by storm since its release only a few weeks ago. This game allows players to assemble a squad of various heroes and villains from across the Marvel franchise, including characters like Iron Man, Loki, and Wolverine, in order to claim victory against the other team. It is an all-around very fun and challenging experience that is partially helped thanks to its massive roster. View the full article

Helldivers 2 creative director and Arrowhead Studios’ CCO, Johan Pilestedt, recently stated that DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) is not always necessary in video games. Pilestedt gave his opinion on a controversial matter, drawing mixed reactions from Helldivers 2 fans and video game enthusiasts. View the full article

Disney Dreamlight Valley has so many characters with a vast array of personalities that players never really know what to expect from these NPC neighbors. Particularly when fulfilling quests for friendship goals, which can center on one specific animated character, some of the dialogue and story that is involved can hold a lot of references or easter eggs, or simply be funny in its delivery. Rarely do the characters truly break the fourth wall, however, such as referencing a code that players can input in their game menu to earn free items. View the full article

Look, we get it: post-show depression is very, very real. And although Arcane aired its final episode well over a month ago, many fans of the Netflix show still haven’t moved on—and neither have we. But a new Reddit post shared to the Arcane subreddit by user ComicsAreGreat2 has fans debating something a little more optimistic: a future show we’d all love to see from the Arcane creators. More specifically, fans discussed which character from the Netflix series deserves their own spin-off. The original poster makes a strong case for Ekko, and a number of fans in the replies agree. View the full article

I have good news for people who like bad superhero teams: NetEase has confirmed that the Fantastic Four is headed to the hit hero shooter Marvel Rivals... Read more.View the full article

The release of Grand Theft Auto 6 is only months away, yet Rockstar Games seems to have precious little to say about it. While that would seem like a poor move on the part of most developers, it may in fact be the smartest thing Rockstar could be doing to promote what already promises to be one of the biggest games of all time. View the full article

Domain Shards are one of the toughest items to farm for in Jujutsu Infinite, thanks to their low drop rates. But there are some workarounds that will let you get them quickly without having to rely on pure luck. Here’s how to get Domain Shards fast in Jujutsu Infinite. Table of contentsBest methods to get Domain Shards in Jujutsu InfiniteCasino Chip methodCurse Market Conversion methodTreasure Chest grinding method Best methods to get Domain Shards in Jujutsu Infinite There are three main methods to acquiring Doman Shards in Jujutsu Infinite: View the full article

Arrow Lake's debut is shaping up to be one of the most disappointing chapters in Intel's business history. The new Core Ultra CPUs have been heavily criticized for forcing customers into a significant performance downgrade compared to both AMD's latest offerings and Intel's previous processor generations. Read Entire Article View the full article

Marvel Rivals already has plenty of characters, maps, and quests sure to keep you busy, but there’s already a new season on the way to deliver even more fun. Season One is nearly here, and if you’re eager to start playing, you need to know when it’s launching. Season Zero was a short and special introductory one, so Season One is our first real look at what a season includes and it’s sure to have lots of content to explore. Here’s when Season One will begin in Marvel Rivals. View the full article

People have been complaining for a while that passing a CAPTCHA is too difficult, but developer and tech CEO Guillermo Rauch has made one of the hardest yet: a fully playable CAPTCHA based on the classic PC game Doom. It's been a long-running joke that developers will make Doom run on absolutely anything, so it's not much of a surprise that it's now running inside something that resembles a CAPTCHA. The app essentially amounts to a small Doom level that is playable with keyboard controls (arrow keys to move, space bar to shoot) within a CAPTCHA-like presentation. You must kill three enemies to pass the test. Read full article Comments View the full article

Despite the endless barrage of new store bundles, premium tracks for seasonal battle passes, and the doubly-premium BlackCell cosmetics, there's already a lot to spend your money on in ****** Ops 6 - and of course its free-to-play counterpart Warzone. With the imminent ****** Ops 6 Squid Game event, Call of Duty is adding yet another new monetization avenue thanks to a premium track of rewards themed around the Netflix hit. After pressure from community figureheads, Activision has now revealed the price of its premium Squid Game event pass, and while it's not as scary a number as many had feared, it costs the same as a seasonal battle pass which represents much better value. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: ****** Ops 6 Season 2 release date estimate, anti-cheat update, and more The best zombie games on PC 2025 The best new PC games 2025 View the full article

When it came to the last season's model, the Stealth 700 Gen 2s, my thoughts were very much in line with my learned US contemporary’s 8/10. They certainly weren't a perfect pair of cans right out of the box (with two medium-sized faults needing to be zapped via firmware updates), but those bugbears aside, my pair served me aural delights for ages. I’ve been keen to see (read: hear) how the envelope could be pushed further with a Gen 3. This new revision has some big memory foam cups to fill, though—the Stealth 700 Gen 2 wasn’t quite the apex of high-fidelity ear candy in 2020, but at the time it was Turtle Beach’s best headset to date by a considerable margin. Have these Gen 3s spent four years of an off-season raising the benchmark? Yes and no (but mostly yes). I’m going to dig into specifics in a sec, but I should get the impulse purchasers among you sorted with the cheapest prices available now. If you wish to skip all that window shopping in favour of raw info and unfiltered impressions instead, click here to jump right to it. Best Turtle Beach Stealth 700 Gen 3 Deals Amazon – $274 JB Hi-Fi – $399 Big W – $399 Kogan - $348 Scorptec - $399 Catch – $360 Ears On Impressions Let's roll out a basic overview of these cans for those of you who skipped Gen 1 and Gen 2. First of all, and though its packaging is big on the Xbox branding, know that the Stealth 700s are very much a wireless multiplatform affair with support for PlayStation 4 / 5, PC, Steam Deck, and mobile devices in addition to your Xbox X|S / One. The biggest feather in its cap? A CrossPlay 2.4GHz wireless system that leverages two (included) USB transmitters (plus some simultaneous Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity) to let you seamlessly and sans hassle switch your audio output from different platforms with a button tap. And, obviously, the implications of that Bluetooth double up are that you can listen to music while you're gaming, take a call while you're gaming, etc. Pretty slick stuff, though many of us have been enjoying this for ages. Additionally, the Stealth 700 boasts 80-hours worth of battery charge, and the Swarm II companion app is still on hand to tweak and get the most out of your A.I. noise-cancelling mic and the impressive 60nm Eclipse Dual Drivers. In layman's terms, that's more or less a subwoofer and a tweeter separated. The theory being: halving the workload for better results as one driver delivers the sharper high-end audio details and the other is handling the beasts below who are lurking in the low-end of your soundscape. It's also worth noting that there's a 10-band onboard EQ, and that the 60nms are indeed an upgrade from the 50nm nano clears used by the Stealth 700 Gen 2. Technically speaking, they're only "new" if you discount the fact that these 60s have been used in another Turtle Beach headset in the intervening years. Let’s indulge our shallow side and focus on the aesthetics. Firstly, while there are three variations available, the sample I received was the bog-standard ****** "Designed for Xbox" edition. If you want a splash of colour or love seeing brownish-****** fingerprint smudges accumulate over time, you can always opt for the Cobalt Blue or White (PlayStation) versions, respectively, instead. The other is handling the beasts below who are lurking in the low-end of your soundscape. Once again, the design approach here may not be from the school of Pulsing Disco RGB and Aggressive Angles, but Turtle Beach is still erring on the side of gaming (just not capital ‘G’). The fold-down-to-use / fold-up-to-mute microphone isn’t completely hidden, which (along with the prominent logo) are the main giveaways of the primary purpose of these. (If you believe the marketing pitch, that is: "to rank up" in the vidjagurms with Daredevil-level hearing.) If you plan on taking these slightly bulky beasts out on the road to complement your Steam Deck, you’ll be happy to know that the build quality feels rock solid. There’s a backbone of steel running through the band that still allows for some pretty vigorous bending and twisting to suit the most oddest-shaped and overlarge craniums imaginable. Furthermore, the head-pinching nature of the Gen 2's have been lessened noticeably this time around. Likewise, they’re quite comfy due to a mixture of mainly pleather on every surface that will be touching your hair (or scalp) and some material around the ear sections. The heat dispersal is great around the ol’ ear ******—I was forced to use these in 30C+ heat this summer and was quite surprised by how low sweat my ears were after long sessions. Better yet, and without impacting comfort, the inside padding of these ear cups have been pushed back to be about 20% more cavernous when compared to the Gen 2's, which means wider support for...well, wider ears. Let's move on too the things that matter far more for me—connection performance and the audio experience. The included dongles, I'm happy to say, worked flawlessly with every console I slapped them in (I have all of the main ones mentioned earlier on hand). Compatability-wise, I believe I got the best Stealth 700 variant to go with, as one of the specifically labeled Xbox dongles comes with the encryption chip needed to attend Microsoft's needlessly snooty and selective peripherals party. Switching between the dongles is a cinch thanks to a quick switch button on your cup and a visual system of "orange standing by" and "green in-use" represented on the two dongles you're running on separate machines. The switch is basically instantaneous, too, and if you're running Bluetooth audio at that moment, it's not disrupted in any way. When it comes to sound performance, this Gen 3 sounds a touch different to the Gen 2s, but still very much the Turtle Beach approach to audio. For me, the Gen 3s felt like their bass still envelops nicely but is a touch shallower and a smidge punchier. The mids are bright and plateau nicely for content like voices, and the highs are richly detailed without being scratchy or harsh. All in all, I think an already great-sounding headset tweaked to be slightly better right out of the box. For FPS games, at least, I wouldn't switch EQs at all. I have similar praise to heap on the mic experience as well. My teammates reported crisp and clear comms from me, despite the fans of my PC and PlayStations going more or less flat knackers (because, again, 30C+ heat). And, while you can call me antiquated for not embracing touch-to-engage and spin-to-change controls on some of TB's more recent headsets, I love that my mic and game/chat mix controls are just instantaneously changeable with sensibly located physical dials. Couple all that with the aforementioned improved comfort (and the battery quick charge that can take you from out of juice to ready to maul for another 3 hours after a mere 15 minutes), and this Gen 3 of Stealth 700s is mighty impressive. Would I ditch my Gen 2s and pony up again for the refresh? No, probably not. But if you're canless and looking for quality in this highly competitive price range, Turtle Beach puts up a shelluva good argument for a purchase here. Back to top Adam Mathew is our Aussie deals wrangler. He plays practically everything, often on YouTube. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

The most recent Helldivers 2 update was a massive success for Arrowhead, resulting in a surge of players ready to fight tooth and nail against the new Illuminate threat. While the addition of the new alien faction is something players have expected for a while, the Illuminate faction still manages to offer an incredibly fun experience that stands apart from the existing Termanids and Automatons. While the latest update has brought back many returning players excited to face the challenges of a new faction, some issues are hard to ignore. View the full article

Despite having truckloads of new content to explore and enjoy, fans are wondering what's next for the studio behind Helldivers 2, with the company's CCO, Johan Pilestedt, sharing a few exciting bits of information as to what's next. Not only did Pilestedt allude to Arrowhead Game Studios' future projects, but the CCO also shared details about games that never came to fruition, giving players insight into what the company has been playing around with conceptually outside of Helldivers 2. View the full article

Rust has peaked at 248,850 concurrent players on 2 January 2025 which is 7 years after release. View charts and more statistics on our website.View the full article

In Arcane’s first season fans learned the origin and tragic meaning of Jinx’s name. In season two, they discover the story behind Violet’s name with a flashback. But there’s no official name origin story to Powder, which has sparked fans to create their own theories, some humorous and others connected to the show’s nuanced lore. Arcane delves deep into the origins of many League of Legends characters, tying the story of two cities to that of two sisters, Vi and Jinx. While fans learned Vander’s fondness for the name Violet gave the pink-haired sister her name, the same can’t be said for Powder. Her name’s origins have remained a mystery, leaving fans to come up with their own imaginative explanations on social media. View the full article

As one of the most popular new games of 2024, ****** Myth: Wukong has garnered a large fanbase that helped it win the Player's Choice award at The Game Awards 2024, multiple category wins at The 2024 Steam Awards, and more. Heading into 2025, though, there's still the question of if, or when, ****** Myth: Wukong will release on Xbox. Currently, the game is only available on PlayStation 5 and PC, but a new statement from the game's director has shed some light on the status of an Xbox release. View the full article

The titular bear of the Five Nights at Freddy’s series, Freddy Fazbear, has gone through many iterations. He’s been cute, teethy, decrepit, golden, brown, and more since his debut in 2014. However, only one game made the absolute best changes to Freddy for the health of the entire series: Five Nights at Freddy’s: Security Breach. View the full article

Eternal Strands, the new game from Dragon Age creative director Mike Laidlaw's Yellow Brick Games, is set to launch on January 28—and today Laidlaw announced that a week before that happens, a playable demo will be released to give curious gamers a taste of what it's all about... Read more.View the full article

We have just shipped an updated Steam Deck Client to the Preview/Beta channel. General Updated suspend animation when not on Steam Deck.View the full article

The Steam Client Beta has been updated with the following changes: Big Picture Updated suspend animation when not on Steam Deck.View the full article