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When nightmarish sci-fi extraction shooter The Forever Winter launched into early access in September it was somewhat messy. Bugs and maddening ****** spawns diminished the tension of being a fleshy human scavenger in a mech battlefield. But one feature annoyed some players much more - fresh water. See, you need to keep your headquarters stocked with water, as it gets steadily used by your settlement's inhabitants. The catch being that this water diminishes even while you're not playing the game. If it runs out completely, then everything you've collected gets wiped. The developers have listened to complaints about this most Farmville of mechanics, and they've answered in an interesting way. Water thieves! Now, on top of the usual downward trickle, burglars will come to steal your H2O as well. It's not as bad as it sounds. Read more View the full article

Project Borealis is finally coming to Steam, to give you a taste of what Half-Life 3 or Half-Life 2: Episode 3 could have been. A good time to do so, since we're coming up on the 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

Silent Hill 2 Remake is a game filled with mysteries and puzzles but one player went above and beyond by cracking the code to a conundrum that most fans didn't even notice. As James makes his way through the titular town, he'll be able to collect various photographs of enigmatic scenes with even more bizarre captions. It's easy to assume that these collectibles are just a means of adding some flavor to the overall atmosphere of Silent Hill, but in reality, they confirm a horrifying fact about James' story. View the full article

Pokemon TCG Pocket appears to be rocking the mobile world right now, but while folks are having a blast opening packs, collecting rare variants, and looking up the best decks to use, a significant number aren't super keen on playing matches against other players. Read more View the full article

Warning: Spoilers for Dragon Age: The Veilguard lie ahead. Read more View the full article

The Magic: The Gathering card Blade of the Bloodchief has shot up in price, boosted by synergy with the new Jumpstart reveals and a Modern combo deck that's filled with Eldrazi. Two weeks ago, on October 21, the card cost just $4.80, but now it's risen by 208% to $14.83, according to MTG Goldfish's price tracker. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: The best Commanders from MTG Foundations and Jumpstart 2025 Magic the Gathering's IP is weak and it will not survive the winter Rare MTG cards - the most expensive Magic cards View the full article

What is the best ****** Ops 6 KSV loadout? SMGs continue to run rampant on ****** Ops 6's smaller maps, tearing through enemies with ease as players zip about the place at Mach 10. SMGs also make fantastic companions to long-range weapons, and the best ****** Ops 6 KSV loadout excels in both roles. Though the C9 currently sits on our best ****** Ops 6 loadouts list, the KSV is quickly becoming a popular meta pick. Thanks to its fast ***** rate, reload quickness, and swap speed, the ****** Ops 6 KSV innately excels over the C9 in a few key metrics in the FPS game. These stats also lend themselves nicely to a snappy Overkill-based class setup such as the one we lay out below. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Call of Duty ****** Ops 6 director confirms the most annoying perk will be nerfed How to get BO6 double XP tokens and ******* tokens ****** Ops 6's weirdest level is the reason I want to play Call of Duty View the full article

It's finally happened, folks: the last surviving online Nintendo 3DS player has lost connection, meaning it's done for good. Read more View the full article

The Monster Hunter Wilds beta gave fans a first chance to play the game before its release in 2025, and while it proved enormously popular it also sparked a debate about combat. Some fans have complained that Wilds’ combat feels floaty, or not as impactful as it is in other Monster Hunter games. This feeling, according to one player who has analyzed frame data for Wilds and compared it to that of prior Monster Hunter games, has to do with hitstop — or, in this case, the lack of. Hitstop in action games pauses an ******* animation on hit for dramatic effect, usually to emphasize the weight of an ******* landing. Accompanied by various visual and sound effects, hitstop helps to give attacks a sense of power, as opposed to waving around a virtual ******* that feels like it fails to connect. Increasing the number of frames (and thus time) devoted to a *******’s hitstop is traditionally used to increase the feeling of its power, as it leaves the player character in this paused state. Monster Hunter has used this to great effect over the years with many of its oversized weapons, and it’s this comparison to Wilds that YouTuber Blue Stigma has made to suggest a significantly reduced hitstop in Wilds is making the combat feel different. “If you felt like the combat in the MHWilds beta felt ‘off,’ it's not just you!” Blue Stigma tweeted. “As this short comparison video shows, Capcom seems to have reduced hitstop on most (if not all) ******* types in Wilds, leading to some weapons 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 worse than they did in prior games.” If you felt like the combat in the MHWilds beta felt "off," it's not just you! As this short comparison video shows, Capcom seems to have reduced hitstop on most (if not all) ******* types in Wilds, leading to some weapons 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 worse than they did in prior games. [Hidden Content] — Blue Stigma (@Axelayer) November 3, 2024 In the video we see this effect in action, with combat in Wilds perhaps less impactful than in other Monster Hunter games. “It's worth noting there are other factors to general combat potentially feeling worse in Wilds; stuff like SFX, ******* FX, and screenshake all play a part in making attacks FEEL good,” Blue Stigma continued. “Hitstop is just one part of the formula and I'm not sure why there's less of it in Wilds overall.” The issue of hitstop in Wilds was picked up on by players ahead of the release of this video, with various threads on Reddit questioning Capcom’s decision here. “The removal of hitstop on some attacks completely ruins the impact,” redditor Cyrisaurus said last week. “I'm loving almost everything about the beta, but one thing I just cannot wrap my head around is why Capcom neutered the hitstop on almost all of the attacks in the game. “One of the best feelings in World was sliding down a slope with the Great Sword and plunging it into a monster, where you would really feel the brutality of it piercing through them thanks to hitstop. In Wilds, it's completely gone, and when you do the sliding ******* it feels like you didn't even hit the monster. If not for damage numbers, I would be left thinking my ******* missed, it just feels... like nothing. Obviously this isn't the only ******* that feels anemic now, but it was the most jarring to me “Please Capcom, bring back the hitstop.” With Monster Hunter Wilds’ release date set for February 28, there are now just shy of four months until launch. Whether the hitstop issue is something Capcom plans to address ******** to be seen. It may not be something the developer can meaningfully tweak this close to launch without a significant rework of combat, but fans are calling for changes nonetheless. In our most recent preview of Monster Hunter Wilds back in August, we were pretty pleased with what we saw. We called it "a Monster Hunter that embraces the parts of Rise that made it so much more inviting, but also doesn’t shy away from the larger scale and spectacle that helped make World the more enduring entry." 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

'Life-Size DnD' is a roleplaying experience that lives somewhere between the worlds of LARP and tabletop Dungeons and Dragons. You can physically act out your fantasy adventures as in LARP, but you must obey the movement rules and dice rolls of a D&D-inspired system. I had a chance to try Life-Size DnD at this year's MCM London Comic ****, and if you thought regular D&D was chaotic, you haven't seen anything yet. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: DnD quietly axed a stack of optional rules from its DM's Guide The best D&D games to play on PC DnD slipped up and made most of the DM's guide free online for a day View the full article

Atari have announced they've now acquired Chris Sawyer's Transport Tycoon, as Atari continue building themselves back up. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

Be quick and you can grab a pair of true wireless Bluetooth earbuds for under $60, thanks to this massive Samsung buds discount. The Samsung Galaxy Buds FE are the buds in question and they include loads of features for their incredibly low price. While we normally recommend one of the best gaming headsets for peak gaming audio, if you're on the move or space is limited, a much more compact option is what you want. Plus, with built in microphones, these Samsung Galaxy Buds FE ensure you can still chat while you play. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Monster Hunter Wilds beta performance is terrible but one setting offers hope This new Minecraft controller is clearly a must-have for the holiday season Play Dragon Age: The Veilguard without a graphics card, thanks to Nvidia View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

The Raspberry Pi team have released a brand new version of the Raspberry Pi OS that brings with it Wayland support to all models. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

Certain factors kept Electronic Arts from greenlighting a sequel to 2015's Battlefield Hardline, a developer for the game has revealed. Battlefield Hardline was the last title to be released by the now-defunct Visceral Games, the studio behind ***** Space. View the full article

Work continues as always on the next version of the popular KDE Plasma desktop environment. My favourite desktop, and the one used for the Steam Deck Desktop Mode. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

I didn't sleep last night for entirely self-inflicted reasons and my brain feels like that one accursed hoover bag you refuse to empty, because there is no way of doing so that won't turn the neighbourhood into Silent Hill. I need to avoid any complicated write-ups, or my brain will detonate similarly and paint north London grey. Ah, a minigolf game! I think I can just about hack the concept of minigolf, on this most desperate of Mondays. It is golf but mini. Bonzai golf. Digestible! Intuitive! Why, I've managed to write 100 words without even looking at the Steam page. Let's do so now. Wait a minute, this isn't minigolf. It's Mini Mini Golf Golf. What is Mini Mini Golf Golf? "Destabilize the present and plunge into a neon psychohistory of a bizarre entity in distress," the Steam page explains. "This is not a game about minigolf." It is too late to flee. Read more View the full article

Treyarch has confirmed plans to nerf Call of Duty: ****** Ops 6’s Recon perk after a backlash from players since the game’s launch last week. The Recon 3-perk bonus lets players see enemies through walls for a short time after respawn, as well as add a HUD edge flash when an ****** is outside your view, and you leave no ****** skulls when ******** enemies. To activate the Recon bonus, you must equip three Recon perks, for example Ghost, Engineer, and Vigilance. It’s the seeing enemies through walls bit of the Recon perk that has sparked much debate within the Call of Duty community, with some even calling it a wallhack. ****** Ops 6’s competitive multiplayer is played out on mostly small, close quarters maps with frequent dying and respawning, and being able to see enemies through walls on respawn, however briefly, provides a significant advantage. This advantage is so significant that Recon's 3-perk bonus is seen as essential to remain competitive, which means perks from the Enforcer and Strategist categories are being left behind. And with the addition of the hugely popular Nuketown map last week the power of Recon was exacerbated. This is a tight map often filled with chaotic ******, so having most players running around with Recon means it’s very difficult to stay alive for any significant amount of time. Over the weekend, with dissatisfaction at Recon reaching a head, Faze content creator Swagg called on Treyarch to nerf Recon, and associate director Matt Scronce answered the call with the simple: “Incoming.” @Treyarch NERF RECON PLZ. — FaZe Swagg (@Swagg) November 3, 2024 While we don’t have any details yet, Scronce’s message has already sparked a positive response from ****** Ops 6 players who’ve blamed Recon for having a ********** experience with Multiplayer. The hope is the change comes in sooner rather than later, with Season 1 set to launch November 14. If you’re jumping into Call of Duty: ****** Ops 6 multiplayer, check out our Essential Multiplayer Tips and Tricks to help you get started. We’ve also got a full weapons list, a guide to all multiplayer maps and game modes, and details on how to unlock all ****** Ops 6 operators. 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

Given its interesting body-swapping system, gnarly blood-based weaponry, creepy Lovecraftian monsters, and the fact that it’s sprung forth from the mind behind the original Silent Hill, Slitterhead certainly sounds like an action-horror game that could be razor sharp. Unfortunately, while this time-looping ******* mystery set in the neon lit streets of a fictionalized Hong Kong serves up a solid slash ‘em up combat system, its story has been hacked to the bone, its ****** variety is surprisingly sparse, and its uninspired mission objectives are repeated to a truly tiresome degree. As it turns out, Slitterhead isn’t just an adventure that’s frequently out-of-body, it’s also one that’s quickly out of ideas. It’s a real shame too, since Slitterhead’s intriguing premise certainly got its hooks into me early. After the bodies of local citizens are discovered in the back alleys of the Kowlong slums with holes in their heads where their brains used to be, we’re cast in the role of a mysterious spiritual entity known only as the ‘Night Owl’, acting as a disembodied detective in an effort to uncover a murderous menace known as the slitterheads who can disguise themselves in human form. To do so, we’re free to hop in and out of almost every person within a small radius, temporarily taking control of human hosts in order to hunt for clues through back alleys and brothels, and providing us with some interesting ways to infiltrate otherwise off-limits locations by beaming straight into another body through an open window or the bars of a locked gate, for example. These easily manipulated meat sacks are basic in appearance and wooden in their movement, which perhaps makes some sort of sense given that they’re basically just mind-controlled marionettes. Unlike the similar crowdsourcing system in Watch Dogs: Legion, there are no discernible skills or traits that distinguish one controllable citizen from another – that is, with the exception of the small cast of unique playable characters known as ‘rarities’. As the investigation progresses, the Night Owl comes across certain victims that are near ******. Once possessed, their mortal wounds transform into weapons as their mangled arms bleed into the form of Wolverine-like claws, spears, and literal plasma swords, making them vital vessels for taking on any slitterheads you expose along the way. The growing party of rarities can be separated into pairs to accompany you into each mission, and Slitterhead’s story loops several times around the same three-day sequence, pulling you back to revisit events in its timeline in an effort to unmask the perpetrators behind certain ******* and potentially prevent them from ever happening. These easily manipulated meat sacks are basic in appearance and wooden in their movement, which perhaps makes some sort of sense given that they’re basically just mind-controlled marionettes. That unfortunately sounds a lot more interesting than it actually proves to be, since it involves retracing steps through a lot of the same areas and redoing a lot of the same simple tasks, like following ghostly apparitions along a preset path to piece together a slitterhead victim’s final moments. In between each mission you get to spend a little bit of time with your expanding roster of rarities, but unfortunately these exposition-dumping conversations are so poorly presented that I struggled to find anything of substance to really latch onto. They’re delivered in static snippets of text over repeated and rudimentary character animations, and I basically just mindlessly paged through them long enough to trigger the next story chapter. Even if I’d been able to better buy into each rarity’s individual plights, I don’t think it would have been worth my while, since this roughly 13-hour time travelling tale culminates in such a deflating and futile finale that it made me wish I could have looped back around to the beginning of my playthrough and prevented myself from ever hitting the start button on the title screen. It’s not even remotely scary either, which comes as a bit of a surprise given that it’s a horror adventure that’s been developed under the watchful eye of Keiichiro Toyama, director of the original Silent Hill. Crowd Strife Combat is not without its charms, however. A simple one-button ******* combo allows you to slit a head, throat, or whichever ****** body part comes within swinging distance of your ******* blades, but there’s more to Slitterhead’s fighting than first meets the eye. For starters, you can quickly beam between bystanders gathered around each arena in order to catch an ****** off guard with an ******* from the rear, using the crowd to chip away at a target like some sort of GoFundMe for fisticuffs. Non-rarity humans have minimal amounts of health so I only ever stayed in control of them for short bursts before zipping back to my chosen rarity to unleash more damaging strikes, but hopping back and forth between them is a great way to draw ****** heat away and makes Slitterhead feel a bit like a supernatural spin on the real-time character-swapping battles of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. There are no medkits to collect and use, and instead health is replenished by hoovering up the pools of blood that form during each battle. It’s actually a pretty clever system, and it quickly becomes essential not only in terms of keeping your rarity alive, but also ensuring they’re topped up with enough hand-me-down hemoglobin to perform their unique blood-powered special abilities. Motorbike-rider Alex can create blood vortexes that drag enemies together and leave them open to attacks, cult member Tri can conjure up some blood blasting sentry turrets, while special agent Blake can unfurl a blood-powered mini-**** that rapidly whittles down both his and his opponent’s health bars in bursts of high risk and reward. A simple one-button ******* combo allows you to slit a head, throat, or whichever ****** body part comes within swinging distance of your ******* blades, It may cater to a variety of ******* methods as its roster of rarities expands, however Slitterhead’s fighting system is not without its flaws. Most attacks land with all the weight of a wet newspaper, and although its thumbstick-based parrying system is fairly easy to get the hang of during one-on-one encounters, I could never rely on it during battles with multiple enemies at a time because the onscreen indicators too often ******* to appear – even after I’d invested in the ‘6th Sense’ perk in Slitterhead’s modest skill tree system that’s supposedly meant to enable it. I also bumped up against the fact that my progress through Slitterhead’s story came to a screeching halt on occasions when I hadn’t found a specific rarity, forcing me to replay levels (some that I’d already revisited as part of the story) in order to track them down and unlock a subsequent story chapter. At one point I was stuck spinning my wheels while I was forced to search for the same elderly woman rarity in six different levels, who had no involvement in the main story whatsoever and whom I never even used after I’d acquired her. In fact, although I did try most of the rarities as I recruited them, I ultimately continued to fall back on pairing the handy healing abilities of young actress Julee with the powerful double-barrelled blood **** attacks of Alex, since Slitterhead’s combat never really evolved to the point that I felt obligated to experiment with any other combination. ******* Repetitive That’s largely because, while the developers have clearly spent a lot of time creating an expanding roster of up to eight rarities for you to choose from, it seems that not nearly enough time has been invested in crafting interesting enemies to face or scenarios for you to toss them into. ****** variety is basically limited to the same rehashed handful of breeds – the pre-slitterhead humanoids with what look like a bunch of bananas for their heads, the repulsive mess of contorted limbs that are the evolved slitterheads themselves, annoying worms that can be wiped out with one hit, and the floppy, bipedal appendages that can really only be described as walking wieners. Admittedly, there are certainly a few different slitterhead types to take on, but I struggled to really find any meaningful difference between fighting an ‘octopus’ type and the ‘warty frogfish’ kind beyond their appearance, and tackled them all using more or less the exact same strategy – hopping between bodies like a sailor on shore leave and constantly shifting the ******* from all angles until they were dispatched. There were a handful of instances where I was forced to think on my feet a little bit more, like in an early ******** against SWAT-style human soldiers – some with machine guns, others with riot shields, and a few armed with jamming devices that temporarily disarmed my rarities of their special abilities. That at least forced me to prioritise the super power-spoiling soldiers first before I mopped up the rest of them, although strangely I never had to contend with that particular ****** type ever again. Elsewhere Slitterhead occasionally tried to impose a bit of urgency into an encounter by setting a scrap against a ticking time limit, but really the only clock I ever had my eye on was the one strapped to my wrist as I impatiently fought an ongoing battle against the same small set of ****** types and my own growing sense of deja vu. It’s not just the monsters that are recycled either, but wholesale mission structures. There are a few rare exceptions, like the time I had to figure out how to enter the top floor of a nightclub by teleporting back and forth between crane operators to swing iron girder platforms into place, or infiltrate a slitterhead-worshipping cult by sneaking past dimwitted guards shuffling along the most predictable, PSone-era patrol paths imaginable. But the bulk of Slitterhead’s objectives involve tracking down a monster disguised in human form by following a blue trail and using a ‘sightjack’ ability to get a glimpse of their current surroundings, ultimately exposing them, and then getting dragged into a clunky on-foot chase that’s less of a thrilling hot pursuit and closer to a tepid game of tag. I lost count of how many times I was forced to chase after the exact same monster types along the exact same loops through the exact same handful of grimy urban settings. It’s exhausting in the first instance, let alone the umpteenth – and although in the opening hours I found it annoying that there was no in-game map for some of its larger city areas, by the end of Slitterhead’s campaign I'd revisited every street, back alley, and rooftop so frequently that I could probably chart each locale from memory. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

I was excited for Slitterhead, an action adventure game by Bokeh Studio, a studio founded by none other than your boy Keiichiro Toyama: the creator of Silent Hill, Gravity Rush, and the Siren series. And within that first hour, Slitterhead's body-possessing and Hong Kong-inspired streets had me thinking, "Is this it, the sleeper hit of 2024?!" No, sadly not. It's no doubt built a compelling universe filled with brain-sucking aliens that masquerade as humans, and it attempts plenty else besides: bouncing between bodies as you stealth around dingy apartment blocks, fighting with blood katanas, and gorging on pools of red plasma to refuel skills, many of which require more body-flitting. Thing is, they are ultimately just attempts, attempts that fall victim to an emptiness and jitteriness that quickly reveals Slitterhead's true, irritating form. Read more View the full article

After Keiichiro Toyama created Silent Hill on PlayStation, he left Konami and became a Sony man. His next games were Siren and its sequel. Most gamers will know him for his panache as a horror game designer, making some of the scariest and toughest examples in the genre. He also created both Gravity Rush titles […] Source View the full article

Yowza, Pokemon TCG Pocket is off to a flying start, as one report says the mobile trading card game is making three times as much as Pokemon Go. Read more View the full article

Valve's work with Proton to run Windows games on Linux / Steam Deck is amazing, but they do require you have newer GPUs so some have been a bit left behind. Proton-Sarek aims to fix that. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

The first few weeks of every Call of Duty game are filled with an ever-changing meta. The best guns, perks, and loadouts shift as things are nerfed and buffed, eventually leveling out as things, in theory, become more balanced. ****** Ops 6 is no stranger to this, as one perk has already proved so overpowered and unfair that Treyarch is about to bring it back down to Earth. I'm of course talking about Recon, a brand new perk that essentially gives you brief wallhacks every time you respawn. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: How to get BO6 double XP tokens and ******* tokens ****** Ops 6's weirdest level is the reason I want to play Call of Duty ****** Ops 6 double XP weekend extended for all thanks to a glitch View the full article

Some fun Linux distro news for you this morning as the Linux Mint team have a fresh blog post up on what they've been doing and it's quite exciting to see. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

Fortnite Remix is rolling back the years with some familiar landmarks, weapons, and vehicles. If you’re having trouble finding a helicopter, aka Choppa, we’ve got all the details you need. Aerial vehicles in Fortnite have been absent for the entirety of Chapter Five, but Fortnite Remix has opened the door to a return. Boats and lowriders are also available across the map, giving players a variety of vehicles to get behind the wheels of. View the full article