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If you're a fan of sci-fi horror, roguelikes or both, Redacted needs to be on your radar and, thanks to today's Epic Games Store giveaway, you can get it absolutely free. But you'll need to be fast; you've got less than a day to claim it, after which it'll be replaced by another free game. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: New Callisto Protocol roguelike has some of the best ideas the genre's ever seen Callisto Protocol dev is suddenly back with a brutal roguelike shooter View the full article

The last competitive season in League of Legends was arguably the fiercest and most exciting we could follow. With the addition of Esports World Cup to the international circuit, best players and teams from all around the world got the chance to prove themselves. Like always with League, picking the best players throughout the years is tough. Teams are slightly easier though. You can just take a glimpse at their achievements, compare them to the expectations, and you have a pretty good idea of who was the greatest squad in 2024. It’s often the winner of Worlds, usually. View the full article

Team Asano, the division of Square Enix responsible for titles like Bravely Default and Octopath Traveler, is planning various releases for 2025. This information came directly from studio head Tomoya Asano during a discussion about developers' goals for the upcoming year. The team is also known for creating the HD-2D graphics engine, which has been used in several Square Enix remakes like Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake. This opens the possibility that Team Asano's 2025 releases could include either brand-new titles or classic game remakes. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

***** has dashed the hopes of retro enthusiasts by confirming they have no plans for more mini or retro consoles in the future. The news that ***** is shelving plans for any future mini retro consoles like a ***** Saturn Mini or a ***** Dreamcast Mini comes from the current CEO of ***** America and […] Source View the full article

Marvel Rivals leakers recently revealed gameplay footage of three new skins for Scarlet Witch that are expected to come to the hero shooter in the near future. While NetEase Games has only released one skin bundle for the character so far, it seems as if it has plans to add a wide variety of cosmetics for her in the future. These items could all come to Marvel Rivals' shop, but it's also possible one or all of them may appear in a battle pass or as rewards for special events. View the full article

In Starfield, if players commit crimes like stealing, attacking someone, or destroying ships, they get a bounty placed on them by the factions that control the area. The more serious the crime, the higher the bounty. This bounty is known across that faction's territory, so if players enter a system where they've committed a crime, they'll immediately be recognized as a criminal. While interesting, this system needs to be overhauled by the upcoming Starborn DLC. View the full article

Some heroes excel at taking objectives solo in Marvel Rivals. This mostly comes from avoiding the enemy entirely, such as using stealth, moving incredibly fast, or full on warping to the goal. To achieve this, the opposition has to already be careless and leave the objective open for the taking. This mostly occurs on Convergence and Domination maps where the enemy might get agitated or bored waiting for you to advance. However, it is sometimes also possible to steal the Convoy from under their noses. View the full article

Do real-time strategy games need a serious shake-up? Developer Dave Pottinger, who worked on Halo Wars and Age of Empires thinks so, and that the RTS genre has barely changed in 20 years. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Best RTS games on PC 2024 All Age of Empires 4 cheats - the best AoE4 cheat codes New Age of Empires 4 DLC is actually happening, launch window confirmed View the full article

We’ve learned the As a Reincarnated Aristocrat, I’ll Use My Appraisal Skill to Rise in the World anime is getting a third season, news confirmed not long after its latest episode. Right after the anime’s final episode from the second season premiered recently, Studio Mother announced the reincarnation and isekai anime adaptation of the popular […] Source View the full article

Majima Goro. If any character from the sprawling Like a Dragon series could believably suddenly wake up as a pirate, it’s him. The Mad Dog of Shimano is the antihero’s antihero, a sadomasochistic lunatic heel turned ally of series protagonist Kazuma Kiryu. He also wears an eye patch. So when Majima awakens with amnesia after washing ashore on an island near Honolulu, fights a group of cutlass-wielding thugs and wins the spot as captain of a galleon, he quickly finds himself Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii’s titular pirate yakuza in Hawaii. [Hidden Content] Read More... View the full article

I’m starting to feel like Charlie Brown from The Peanuts comics, and Microsoft is the Lucy who keeps pulling the football away right as I go to kick it. Every year I write this feature, and every year I say that this looks like The Year™ where everything comes together for Xbox. Last year, in fact, I specifically said, “Looking ahead to 2024, that positive momentum looks set to continue and, with any luck, snowball.” Microsoft arguably didn’t live up to that for the first 10.5 months of the year, with only the visually-full-but-gameplay-empty Hellblade 2 dropping in May after many years of waiting. But to the big-spending publisher’s credit, it did end the year extremely strong, dropping three exclusive bangers in a row: STALKER 2, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, and my personal vote for Game of the Year in 2024 and the game that I think is the best Xbox exclusive in years, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. So, can Microsoft keep that positive end-of-2024 momentum going into 2025? Call me Charlie Brown if you must, but yes, I genuinely believe that 2025 could be Xbox’s strongest and most bountiful year since at least 2021, when it dropped Forza Horizon 5, Halo Infinite, and Psychonauts 2. Let’s dig into why I’m optimistic… A Fountain of Fantasy and Firearms Xbox’s 2025 kicks off rather quickly and, from everything we can tell, rather impressively with Obsidian’s first-person fantasy RPG Avowed, due to be released on February 18. This “Skyrim Lite” is set in the studio’s established and well-loved Pillars of Eternity universe, it’s supposed to be around the same meaty-but-not-gargantuan 25-40 hours long as Obsidian’s most recent first-person RPG The Outer Worlds, and it’s impressed us more and more every single time we’ve played it, including quite recently. Next, while it doesn’t have a firm release date yet, id Software’s unexpected zag of a prequel, Doom: The Dark Ages, is almost a lock for 2025. In fact, I’d wager an In-N-Out Burger lunch that it drops in the first half of the year for two reasons: 1) Doom Eternal shipped in March of 2020, meaning that in just a few months, it will have been a full half-decade since the last Doom (which itself followed four years after Doom [2016]). In other words, it’s time! Particularly since the idTech engine is already firmly in place despite the jump to a new console generation. And 2) I’d bet another In-N-Out lunch that the long- and eagerly anticipated reboot of Fable being cooked up at Playground Games – which, remember, got tagged with a 2025 release window in its Xbox Showcase 2024 trailer – is going to be Xbox’s big Fall/holiday game at the end of the year. That means Doom probably ships before the holidays. But whenever it does – and remember that it’s already confirmed to be a multiplatform release on day one – it’s probably going to kick some serious **** for Xbox next year, judging by how good id Software’s last two Doom games have been. Back to Fable: in my opinion, the revival of Fable has higher potential – both critically and commercially – than almost anything else in Xbox’s portfolio short of Call of Duty, The Elder Scrolls, and Fallout. We’ve seen Playground’s take on the British-charm-tinged action-adventure-RPG a few times now, and each time it’s been crystal clear that not only does Playground “get” Fable (it’s British itself, which no doubt helps), but that the game looks absolutely incredible as well. Who knew that the ForzaTech engine could render a jaw-droppingly beautiful fantasy forest just as well as a racetrack? There’s one other huge reason to be optimistic about Fable, and that’s Playground’s track record. Simply put, this studio has not only never missed, it’s never made anything less than a consensus 9 out of 10. Its last game, the aforementioned Forza Horizon 5, was IGN’s 2021 Game of the Year. And it clearly is being given plenty of time to cook, as Fable was formally announced in 2020 with work having already been done prior to that. Microsoft knows it can’t fumble Fable a second time, and I couldn’t be more excited about what has been shown so far. Next, while it certainly isn’t nearly as big a name as Fable, we can’t forget about South of Midnight, the third-person action-adventure from We Happy Few developer Compulsion Games that’s leaning heavy into the folklore of the bayous of the Deep South. This one’s nothing like the developer’s past games, which is admittedly riskier but also more intriguing. Microsoft has tabbed this one for 2025, so consider South of Midnight as something of a wild card for next year. Another smaller-name Xbox exclusive that I think everyone will be talking about if it comes together when it finally ships in 2025 is Replaced. It’s a pixel-art, cyberpunk-styled side-scrolling action-adventure game that oozes style and, as I discovered when I played it over the summer, is much deeper than I expected. Replaced has the potential to join the long list of legendary Xbox-exclusive indies that includes games like Limbo, Braid, and Inside. Finally, don’t forget about Xbox’s actual biggest franchise (since they now own it), Call of Duty. It’ll stay on PlayStation, of course, but Xbox fans will get it day one on Game Pass. The 2025 Call of Duty is rumored to be a future-set ****** Ops 2 sequel, so perhaps Treyarch is handling the campaign on this one after Raven Software did a stellar job on this year’s ****** Ops 6 campaign. And the other, much quieter juggernaut in the Xbox portfolio, Minecraft, will probably get some kind of big in-game content, what with the Minecraft movie on the way. What About Hardware? Barring a 180 from Xbox boss Phil Spencer’s previous comments, Microsoft won’t be pushing a mid-gen upgrade to the Xbox Series X (an Xbox Series XX, if you will) in 2025, if ever. And though a handheld Xbox is in development, we’re unlikely to play it or even see it in the coming year. So should we expect any new hardware in 2025? Probably not – at least in terms of raw horsepower. The Xbox Series S got a storage upgrade in 2024, as did the Series X. And we’ll no doubt see a bevy of new special-edition controllers and maybe even that upgraded controller codenamed Sebile mentioned in the FTC leaks from over a year ago, but 2025 does not appear to be the year for Xbox to drop any new silicon. Anything Else? Rare’s Everwild appears to be in limbo and/or development hell, as we haven’t seen or heard from it in years. Might it reemerge in 2025? Maybe, but I’m not holding my breath. Meanwhile, Halo is being reset at the studio level, which in my opinion means the next Halo game is likely to either be a reboot of the franchise altogether or a remake of Halo: Combat Evolved. Either way, it’s going to be built in Unreal Engine 5, and it’s probably going to take a while. InXile’s steampunk RPG Clockwork Revolution was announced in 2023 with a release window of “coming in due time.” The Outer Worlds 2 has been revealed, and we now know it is coming in 2025, so that means Obsidian plans to ship two first-person RPGs in the same year. And speaking of first-person RPGs, will that rumored Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion remaster actually happen? How about Contraband, from Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios, which was in the 2021 Xbox Showcase and hasn’t been seen or heard from since? All we know is that it’s “a co-op smugglers' paradise set in the fictional world of 1970s Bayan.” Should it reemerge in 2025, it’s unlikely that it also ships next year as well, given the usual PR/marketing cycles on big-budget games. The wild card for 2025 is Double Fine, the endlessly creative and versatile studio headed by game design legend Tim Schafer that is coming off of 2021 Game Awards Game of the Year nominee Psychonauts 2. I’d expect Schafer and the studio to announce their new project soon, but as to whether it actually comes out in the next 12 months is anybody’s guess. Finally, anything from this year’s Xbox Showcase that didn’t have a release year at the end of the trailer can safely be assumed to be a 2026 (or later) release. That means I’m not reasonably expecting to play Gears of War: E-Day, Perfect Dark, or State of Decay 3 in the next year. And that’s OK! It finally feels like Xbox is starting to pump out not just a steady stream of first-party games, but a consistently good stream of them. This is what Xbox has been building towards since they first started acquiring studios in 2018 to try and fix their first-party games problem, and dammit I think this is the year they finally do it. Please don’t pull that football away from me again, Lucy-Microsoft. More of IGN's Look Back at 2024 and Look Forward to 2025! What to Expect From PlayStation in 2025What to Expect From Nintendo in 2025The Best Reviewed Games of 2024The Worst Reviewed Games of 2024The Worst Reviewed Movies of 2024The Best Reviewed Movies of 2024The Biggest Disappointments of 2024 [/url] View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Fans have just noticed that Stardew Valley has hit over 41 million copies sold across platforms as of December 2024. Since releasing in 2016, the game has become a very beloved staple in the farming and life-sim genre, allowing players an escape to the quaint little area of Pelican Town. Created by just one developer, ConcernedApe, the game's success has been astounding, proving that pouring a lot of love and devotion into a title can get it a long way. View the full article

Seventeen years after Half-Life 2 Episode 2 was released, Valve could finally be giving us a Half-Life 3. According to one source, the game is currently being playtested, and we could see an official reveal in 2025. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Project Borealis, the closest thing you'll get to Half Life 3, now has a demo Long-awaited Half-Life 3 fan game closer than ever, as demo gets a Steam page If Half-Life 3 is coming, the original games need even more attention View the full article

There's no shortage of WW2 war games, but Foxhole really is something special. This massive sandbox MMO features persistent online wars that can last days to weeks, and it's not just about the frontlines, either. You can also adopt the crucial role of manufacturing munitions and vehicles for other players. And now Foxhole is 33% off on Steam, there's no better time to do your duty. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Huge WW2 MMO is like a more realistic Battlefield V, and it's exploding on Steam Huge WW2 MMO Foxhole deserves more love, because it's only getting better Now's the best time to try out newly updated war MMO Foxhole View the full article

Back in March, Russian President Vladimir Putin called on the government to create Russian stationary and portable game consoles, along with operating systems and cloud-based game delivery systems for the machines. Read Entire Article View the full article

Although fun is the name of the game from Marvel Rivals' design perspective, the game does feature a competitive mode that even offers rewards for climbing up the ranks through a golden Moon Knight skin. With only three sub-ranks per rank (i.e. Gold 1, 2, and 3), it might seem easy to climb the ranks, at least compared to other competitive games like Overwatch 2 and League of Legends, especially with the Chrono Shield feature. Unfortunately, the quality of players seen at even the slightly above average ranks is higher than other games. View the full article

It’s crazy to think that a series that was once such an important string in Xbox’s bow has been allowed to sit on the sidelines for so long. Sit on the sidelines it has, however, and assuming its 2025 release window is met when Fable is released, it’ll be the first entirely new main entry in the series for 13 years (the last being Fable: The Journey, the Kinect-only Gubbins released on the Xbox 360). [Hidden Content] Read More... View the full article

An Asus ROG Ally X, running Bazzite. It looks just like SteamOS, because they share an interface. The first time I installed Bazzite on a Windows gaming handheld, I laughed. It looked like such a blatant clone of Valve’s Steam Deck interface. Its many bugs kept me at bay. Now, an Asus ROG Ally X running Bazzite has all but replaced the Steam Deck in my life. For the moment, it may be the best handheld your time and money can buy — because it brings 90 percent of the Deck’s ease of use to the Ally’s more powerful hardware, larger 80 watt-hour battery, and variable refresh rate screen. Depending on the game, it can even offer better performance and battery life than the very same handheld with Windows. I’ve been testing it for five months, and I’ve rarely looked back. This combination won’t be for everyone, because the $800 Ally X costs far more than a Steam Deck, and Bazzite still has annoying quirks. But because Bazzite can so convincingly transform a Windows handheld into a true Steam Deck rival, I believe it singlehandedly proves that handheld manufacturers are making the wrong choice if they doggedly stick with Windows, and that others should join Lenovo in hedging that bet as soon as possible. Bazzite is one way — another may come as soon as next month, when we’re... Read the full story at The Verge. View the full article

When you're playing an online shooter, you want things to be balanced. Yes, there are some clear disparities, a recent analysis found that Hulk had the highest win rate of all heroes, but generally, Marvel Rivals gets it right. That is provided everybody is on a level playing field. View the full article

The leaked rerun banners for Honkai: Star Rail 3.0 are making me somewhat concerned, especially because of the dissonance of treatment between some characters and others. The turn-based RPG by HoYoverse is set to enter its third year of content with Version 3.0 in mid-January 2025 if there are no delays with the regular six-week schedule for each patch. The next update will take players to Amphoreus, a mysterious new destination. There, players should meet the roster of new Amphoreus characters in Honkai: Star Rail and get involved in the local story arc taking place in The Eternal Land. View the full article

Half-Life, Valve's original FPS classic, isn't short on horror. This, after all, is a game where your fellow scientists get by skull-piercing headcrabs, turned into virtual zombies. But the latest iteration of the Brutal Half-Life mod takes things to the extreme, painting ****** Mesa's walls red. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: New Half-Life Opposing Force fan remake looks just as good as ****** Mesa New Half-Life Blue Shift remake is way ******* than the original and playable now The Half-Life Blue Shift remake, built using ****** Mesa, is finally back View the full article

There's no shortage of WW2 war games, but Foxhole really is something special. This massive sandbox MMO features persistent online wars that can last days to weeks, and it's not just about the frontlines, either. You can also adopt the crucial role of manufacturing munitions and vehicles for other players. And now Foxhole is 33% off on Steam, there's no better time to do your duty. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Huge WW2 MMO is like a more realistic Battlefield V, and it's exploding on Steam Huge WW2 MMO Foxhole deserves more love, because it's only getting better Now's the best time to try out newly updated war MMO Foxhole View the full article

Back in February, Eric 'ConcernedApe' Barone revealed that Stardew Valley had sold over 30 million copies. But just ten months later, it has crossed a new and incredibly impressive milestone, selling over 41 million copies across all platforms. View the full article

Disappointed that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim didn't actually let you become a Jarl? Viking Dynasty, the latest entry in Toplitz Productions' Dynasty series, is your chance to prove yourself as the leader and founder of a Viking settlement. The very survival of your village will depend on your ability to hunt, roam and rule. Read the rest of the story... View the full article

Half-Life, Valve's original FPS classic, isn't short on horror. This, after all, is a game where your fellow scientists get by skull-piercing headcrabs, turned into virtual zombies. But the latest iteration of the Brutal Half-Life mod takes things to the extreme, painting ****** Mesa's walls red. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: New Half-Life Opposing Force fan remake looks just as good as ****** Mesa New Half-Life Blue Shift remake is way ******* than the original and playable now The Half-Life Blue Shift remake, built using ****** Mesa, is finally back View the full article