Steam

In a rather decisive statement made shortly after the launch of Valve's handheld in Australia, Steam Deck product designer Lawrence Yang outright condemned the release of yearly products that are only "incrementally better" than the previous design. While the Steam Deck is still the best handheld gaming PC all-around, it's aging AMD APU is starting to fall behind competitors in terms of power. Despite this, Valve isn't going to turn to annual releases and will instead wait for the right technology to come along before releasing an all new handheld. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: It's official, the AMD Ryzen 9000X3D release date is soon, 7800X3D beater on way Fractal Design Refine review: elegance and comfort combined in a gaming chair Save 19% on this pink Sakura wireless gaming mouse, if you're quick View the full article

Call of Duty: ****** Ops 6 has revealed that the controversial Riot Shield will not be in the game at launch. While there's no guarantee that the Riot Shield won't be added to Call of Duty: ****** Ops 6 further down the line, launch players can be safe in the knowledge that it won't be there to frustrate them on day one. View the full article

Image: Poncle The world of Dracula and the Belmont family is coming to Vampire Survivors. The newly announced downloadable content for the auto-shooter survival game, Ode to Castlevania, promises a bunch of new stuff: 20 characters, 40 weapons, an extra-large stage, and over 30 music tracks. Developer Poncle said in its announcement post on X that the $3.99 expansion should contain more than 10 hours worth of gameplay — though it’s not clear if there will actually be any vampires in the game (I’m still ******** there won’t be). The new Vampire Survivors DLC is set to launch on October 31st on the PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, PlayStation, Android, and iOS. You can also track its release with a cheesy, ‘90s-era countdown timer site set up by the developer.... Continue reading… View the full article

Xbox Game Pass has been a dominant force as a subscription service since it first launched, giving players unlimited access to the vast catalog of games it offers. With hundreds of choices and every genre from rougelike to relaxed farming-simulator, it never fails to offer something to players of all preferences. With new games continually added to the platform, though, players may have a tough time keeping up with all the incredible hidden gems that have slipped them by. View the full article

All Magic the Gathering players own a fair number of duplicate commons, particularly draft staples from the sets we most enjoyed drafting, but few of us aspire to build a collection around them. And then there's CEO-TendiesTrading (his Reddit handle), a long time player who owns over eight hundred copies of the red common creature 'Kird Ape'. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: MTG Marvel crossover reveals Wolverine, Iron Man, and Storm cards Magic: The Gathering release schedule 2024 Cheap Duskmourn MTG card sees 450% price spike View the full article

Recent reports have claimed Twitch prevented users in ******* from creating accounts on the livestreaming platform, but Twitch is now denying these accusations. Instead, the platform said the issue stemmed from the email verification process, a problem it has since fixed. Twitch released a statement yesterday on X (formerly Twitter) denying it had prevented users from signing up to the streaming platform. It admitted, however, to temporarily disabling signups with email verification in both ******* and Palestine following the Oct. 7, 2023 ******-led ********** ******* on ******* where approximately 1,200 people were *******. View the full article

All Magic the Gathering players own a fair number of duplicate commons, particularly draft staples from the sets we most enjoyed drafting, but few of us aspire to build a collection around them. And then there's CEO-TendiesTrading (his Reddit handle), a long time player who owns over eight hundred copies of the red common creature 'Kird Ape'. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: MTG Marvel crossover reveals Wolverine, Iron Man, and Storm cards Magic: The Gathering release schedule 2024 Cheap Duskmourn MTG card sees 450% price spike View the full article

Since this is a Sonic review I’ll go fast and cut to the chase: Sonic X Shadow Generations is a fantastic combination of one of the Blue Blur's classics and a new helping of smartly designed Shadow levels built around his own abilities, and after spending some time with it has become one of my favorite Sonic games I've ever played. ***** and Sonic Team have learned from their recent attempts, Frontiers and Superstars, and have found clever ways to weave the best ideas of those games into a major refresh of a fan favorite. And certainly, when it comes to Shadow the Hedgehog, this is his definitive game. Half of the content of Sonic X Shadow Generations is remastered from 2011’s Sonic Generations, which we gave an 8.5 In our review back then. It does have a few new bells and whistles, like the adorable Chao hidden in each 2D and 3D stages, but other than their level designs are mostly unchanged because they hold up just fine. I'd like to imagine that the Chao are a hint that we’ll see the return of the Chao Garden from Sonic Adventure 2 in a future Sonic game, but for now they’re just a nice homage. If you never played the original, it’s definitely worth experiencing it for the first time here: Sonic Generations is a stellar combination of 2D and 3D gameplay that celebrated what was at the time a 20-year history by curating and recreating some of the best and most iconic Sonic levels that had come before. Shadow Generations wastes no time showcasing its creativity with multiple stand-out moments. The very first stage, or instance, transforms into fractals and looks like the alternate dimensions we've seen in Dr. Strange or Spider-Man: No Way Home. The levels from Sonic Generations also get a slight but noticeable graphical boost thanks to the current generation of consoles: environments look more polished and the colors are more vibrant, making enemies, hazards, and springs just a bit more noticeable when you’re moving at high speed. So by default this is the best way to play it, even if the difference isn’t night and day. This is the best way to play Generations, even if the difference isn’t night and day. However, the real reason you’d want to play Sonic X Shadow Generations is the all-new campaign filled with creative reimaginings of Shadow’s stages from his past appearances throughout the Sonic series. Shadow's five-hour campaign is separate from the Generations storyline but plays out in a similar way, in that each stage has one part in 2D and another in 3D. Shadow’s stages have all the fast-paced appeal you’d expect to get when playing as Sonic, similar to when new paths open up when replaying a stage after Sonic has gained the light dash ability. Shadow starts with a similar skill called the Chaos Dash, and then goes on to open up even more pathways when returning to stages with abilities like the ***** Wings that let you fly short distances and skip whole sections of levels, making them play very differently. Shadow’s Chaos Control ability also creates fantastic moments where he does things like freeze time to ******** a missile flying at him in a flashy mini cutscene. And, unlike in the 2D Sonic stages that play like classic Sonic with no homing ******* or boost gauge, Shadow keeps all his abilities for his 2D sections so they feel just as fast as his 3D stages. Besides the main stages there are various challenge stages with objectives like requiring you to ******** enough targets before reaching the goal, or finish a hazard-filled level with a single ring to unlock bosses and the next set of stages. It’s similar to Sonic Generations, with the main difference being that you need to complete all of the challenges to acquire the keys you need, instead of just one. I do miss the collecting of the Chaos Emeralds you get in Sonic Generations, because some of them had fun rival boss battles against characters like Metal Sonic and Silver, but since Sonic is collecting them in his portion of the story it wouldn’t make much sense for Shadow to be collecting them at the same time in his. With both campaigns combined, the total number of stages is now over 150. With both campaigns combined, the total number of stages is now over 150, including traditional, challenge, and boss stages. That would take even an avid Sonic fan about 15 to 20 hours to ***** through. And for those looking for even more challenges, completing the Shadow campaign will unlock a new option that increases the difficulty of bosses and challenge levels when replaying them. Though minimal, there are some new storylines that creatively weave between games where Shadow has appeared, tying them into big moments we've seen in past games, like Sonic and Shadow's duel in Sonic Adventure 2. There is also a healthy dose of new scenes filling in Shadow's past that reunite him with friends and foes, and offer more context to his storylines in games like Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic Adventure 2. These moments ranged from fascinating to kickass, and they always left me wanting more. Like Sonic’s, Shadow's is made up of fun reimaginations of some of his best stages across past Sonic games. We’ve got new versions of levels like ******** Highway, Rail Canyon, and the Space Colony Ark, and each stage is packed to the brim with creative routes that make good use of Shadow's old and new abilities. What We Said About Sonic Generations (2011) It feels refreshing to be able to say that Sonic is good again. His upward trajectory over the last year continues and he’s only gaining momentum. Sonic Generations is largely a game for the most ********* of Sonic fans, but for the millions who have fond memories of narrowly dodging spikes, grinding on rails, or even that time he was a pinball, Sonic Generations is a game made for you. – Jack DeVries & Brian Altano, October 28, 2011 Score: 8.5 Read the full Sonic Generations review [/url] He begins with his iconic Chaos Control ability, which stops time (including the stage timer) and allows you to outrun hazards like a runaway train, stop groups of enemies in their tracks so you can dispatch them with ease, or use the new Chaos Dash to reach strategically placed shortcuts. From there, you unlock ***** abilities that give you new options for movement and combat. Without going into spoiler territory, one of my favorites that you get about midway through his story is ***** Surf. This power makes water levels a lot more fun by giving you a shadowy manta ray that can spin-******* through enemies and objects. These abilities are handed out after finishing a group of stages or an area’s boss, and they come at a fast enough pace to keep things consistently interesting and different from what came before. ***** Surf makes water levels a lot more fun. There are also some creative and enjoyable new versions of boss fights, like a metallic dragon that has you chasing him on the water, knocking trash into him, and charging up so you can unleash Chaos Control and land some real damage with a homing *******. I wish there were more of those, but those that are here make excellent use of the most recent ***** abilities and are all fantastic additions to the collection of egg robots and various other bosses from Sonic history. In fact, the only stage that broke my momentum and reminded me of the missteps of modern Sonic games was the Sonic Frontiers 3D stage. It feels empty compared to most of Sonic X Shadow Generations and had an overreliance on a new sludge-based upgrade for Shadow that reminded me of one of my least favorite Wisp powers from Sonic Colors. Other than that, though, I enjoyed replaying every stage to find optimal paths, gather collectible keys to unlock secrets in the hub world, and improve my runs until I earned the coveted S-rankings. Sonic X Shadow Generations also evolves the all-white hub world of Sonic Generations by taking it from a 2D plane to a three-dimensional one that expands outwards as you complete all the stages in a section and its accompanying boss. In between stages, I'd spend some time exploring the hub world to see what chests I could open using the keys I'd collected, as well as completing various optional activities like collecting 100 rings in a short amount of time to unlock multiple rewards like artwork, music, or journal entries about characters and the events of Shadow's life. Similar to his blue counterpart, Shadow also has stages that are entirely locked to the old-school 2D perspective, and they feel right at home as he races his way to the goal. Besides a McDonalds toy called the Shadow Grinder from 2003 and a DLC stage in Sonic Forces: Episode Shadow, this is the first time we've gotten multiple full-2D Shadow levels, and it was interesting to see how his expanded move set impacted their designs. Abilities like Chaos Spears allowed me to hit switches from a distance to open up alternate paths, while ***** Surf meant no longer having to deal with those underwater sections of Sonic games that a lot of people don’t enjoy – you can just surf right on top of the water until reaching land. Finally, I have to call out that the music accompanying our favorite hedgehogs as they race to the goal line is excellent, the guitar riffs for stages like ******** Highway and Space Colony Ark return, and are joined by some fantastic tracks like Crush 40's All Hail Shadow and Sonic Heroes Rail Canyon theme. One of my favorite elements of the Generations games is the selectable background music for every stage and challenge, so if you only want to hear Live & Learn across every stage like the Crush 40 sicko you are, you can do that! The only catch is that you have to find some music tracks in chests scattered across the Shadow’s hub world or by collecting the musical notes and Red rings in Sonics to unlock them, but that’s a price I’m willing to pay. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

SILENT HILL 2 from Bloober Team SA and KONAMI just got a fresh update today, pulling in lots of fixes and some technical improvements. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

Surgent Studios was founded by actor Abubakar Salim, best known for roles as Bayek in *********'s Creed Origins and Alyn of Hull in House of the Dragon. It went on to make Tales of Kenzera: Zau, but times have been tough since the game's release, and now the studio is taking a temporary hiatus... Read more.View the full article

Image: AMD AMD is officially announcing its first next-generation X3D desktop processors today, based on its latest Zen 5 architecture. I’d love to tell you which Ryzen 9000-series X3D chips are arriving next month, but AMD is strangely only teasing a release date of November 7th and providing no pricing or further details. AMD has only provided a single slide about this X3D announcement, ahead of Intel’s Core Ultra 200-series launch on October 24th. Rumors had suggested AMD would announce its highly anticipated Zen 5 X3D chips a day after Intel’s performance embargo for the Ultra 9 285K, but AMD has decided to tease the existence of next-gen X3D processors a little earlier than expected. Thanks to other leaks, we’re expecting to hear more about... Continue reading… View the full article

Back in the protean stink of 2013, the ****** we call Factorio sprouted in lowercase early access form and began its meticulous, ravenous conquest of the emerging factory sim genre. Some say that Factorio gave that genre life, though I'd point at Dwarf Fortress as one among many notable forebears. Today, the terrain of factory simming is hotly contested by rival piles of conveyor belt spaghetti. I'm not just talking about Satisfactory or Shapez - they're even making philosophical factory sims these days. They have cosy factory sims now. Accordingly, the immense, smoke-rimmed cyborg eye of Factorio has turned from the exhausted soil to the relatively untapped heavens. Somewhere up there, there is unspoilt territory. Somewhere, there is land that has never known the roar of a smelter - and in Factorio's behemothic Space Age DLC, out today, you will find it. Read more View the full article

World bosses in Throne and Liberty are events that take place all across the world and offer a chance for you to earn epic endgame gear for your builds. Here’s everything you need to know about world bosses and their loot in Throne and Liberty. upcoming world bosses: This list is based on early access servers that are ahead of launch servers when it comes to Milestones. As the servers complete Milestones, new world bosses will become available, and we’ll update the article accordingly. View the full article

The junction between the old and the new is the common haunt of indie horror games, but few are positioned at the crossroads as perfectly as ***** the Spotlight is. First released in 2023 by Cozy Game Pals, ***** the Spotlight's 2024 relaunch adds an extra layer to the experience while serving as the debut of film production juggernaut Blumhouse's dip into game publishing. The game mixes a modern approach to storytelling and presentation with a gratuitous serving of analogue fuzz, calling horror titles from the original PlayStation to mind while never quite mimicking them. View the full article

Blizzard has confirmed changes will be made to the way Rawhide and Iron Chunks work in Diablo 4 following complaints and criticism from players. Both of these items are used to upgrade items like armor, weapons, and jewelry, making them crucial for players aiming to turn their character into a ******-slaying ****. However, the drop rates for both Rawhide and Iron Chunks are quite low, leading developer Blizzard to address this issue directly in a new Diablo 4 update. View the full article

Hey, it's the first big patch for the Silent Hill 2 Remake following its arrival in all of our lives a week and a bit ago. What's it do? Well, aims to help curb some of poor James' glitchy shenanigans, plus some other stuff. Read more View the full article

Vampire Survivors: Ode to Castlevania is the latest expansion to the smash hit survivor game that started it all, and it's coming on Halloween. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

Bandai Namco has signed up to publish the debut title from Polish studio Rebel Wolves. The Warsaw-based studio, which was co-founded in 2022 by The Witcher 3’s game and art directors, is working on the first entry in what it’s calling the Dawnwalker saga. It’s a story-driven, fantasy, action RPG set in medieval Europe, aimed at mature audiences and built with Unreal Engine 5. Read More... View the full article

Hit indie title Vampire Survivors reveals a new collaboration with Konami's Castlevania series, promising the biggest DLC release to date. Since it's release two years ago, Vampire Survivors quickly went on to become a massive success for Luca Galante and the team at Poncle. In fact, the team has continued that momentum by releasing new updates for the game, through both free and paid DLC, and by collaborating with other big franchises to add unique elements to the indie title. View the full article

The oceanic world of Subnautica 2 is set to feature a larger world than its predecessor according to developer Scott MacDonald, with the game also hinted to include environments that will take players to even greater depths than those seen in the first game. With Subnautica 2 confirmed to be taking place on an entirely different ocean planet than that seen in Subnautica and Subnautica: Below Zero, fans can look forward to exploring completely new alien vistas home to unique ecosystems of life. View the full article

While the Grand Theft Auto 6 release date feels like it's miles off, Bully, one of Rockstar's most underrated titles, is the perfect way to wile that time away. The 2006 action-adventure game sees you playing as a rebellious boy named Jimmy Hopkins as he attends Bullworth Academy and it feels just like the GTA games of its era, except instead of driving cars and using guns, Jimmy rides a bike and uses a slingshot. It's a charming game and well-worth buying - especially while 65% off at Humble. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: The most underappreciated game Rockstar ever made is just $5 right now Forget Bully 2 - this patch gets the original Bully running ******-free Bully 2 "never got off the ground," according to reports View the full article

By the time you've finished Factorio, the world is a very different place. Countless industrial units, rail networks, and manufacturing plants are strewn across your planet's surface, a far cry from the peaceful world you once knew. The minerals, trains, and myriad factories make up a painting even Jackson Pollock would envy, but you leave it all behind in the end. The spaceship you've been working towards finally sets off. Four years later, the new Factorio Space Age DLC opens the lid on what happened next. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Immersive automation sandbox game Factorio dates sequel-sized DLC Beloved, 97% rated Steam management game getting big QoL upgrades Factorio adds new feature that was considered "too *********" for years View the full article

Pokémon Go’s Gigantamax feature is getting even ******* with the debut of Gigantamax Gengar on Halloween, as the spooky season gets into full swing. Gigantamax Pokémon first arrived in Pokémon Go on Oct. 14, with Gigantamax versions of Blastoise, Charizard, and Venusaur in difficult challenges Niantic warned would be “impossible” for solo players to tackle. View the full article

Abubakar Salim, the creative director behind Tales of Kenzera: Zau has re-entered discourse surrounding his game following a renewed discussion over Sweet Baby Inc’s involvement. Released in April of this year, Tales of Kenzea: Zau is a self-described metroidvania inspired by traditional Bantu culture. The game was quickly criticized for the involvement of Sweet Baby Inc, a […] Source View the full article

I shouldn't say this out loud because it feels like I'm jinxing things, but I think Half-Life 3 might actually be getting closer. Combined with some of the hints, leaks, and rumors from the past couple of months, Valve, generally, seems a little more interested in Half-Life these days. First there was the big 25th anniversary celebration for the original game and now, investigating the Steam backend, it looks like Half-Life 2 might be getting the similar birthday treatment. Four years since Half-Life: Alyx and two decades since the last mainline outing for Gordon Freeman, G-Man, and co., we're certainly - still - very ready for Half-Life 3. But some kind of relaunch of the second game wouldn't go amiss, either. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: If Half-Life 3 is coming, the original games need even more attention Here are some of the best Steam games most own but too few have played Half-Life 2's worst level is suddenly a lot better thanks to RTX View the full article