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Wuthering Waves has revealed six upcoming characters expected to become playable during the 2.0 cycle. One of the teased units is Phrolova, the fan-favorite antagonist that players met during Wuthering Waves' early days. View the full article

Blizzard announced the upcoming addition of a new anti-air item in Overwatch 2’s Stadium mode that should help players better deal with aerial heroes like Freja. While the exact details surrounding this anti-air item are still under wraps, Blizzard plans to release this new tool with the launch of Overwatch 2 Season 17 on June 24, 2025. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Fans have had a lot to complain about with Call of Duty: ****** Ops 6, from its use of AI art ... Read more View the full article

Almost a decade after its release, players are still discovering the best ways to tackle the most difficult mini-games in Stardew Valley. Journey of the Prairie King and Junimo Kart, the two arcade games located in the Stardrop Saloon, are infamously difficult challenges, though completing them is thankfully not necessary for reaching Perfection. Any strategy that can help reach the end game is a welcome one, and more are being discussed every day. View the full article

On Monday, June 30, EA is shutting down Madden NFL 21. A wide variety of EA titles have shut down in 2025 already, with some titles becoming completely inaccessible and other games losing their online multiplayer functionality. Unfortunately for fans of EA-published games, some of the shutdowns this year have caused genuine heartache. View the full article

A notable Assassin's Creed leaker has revealed several interesting details about the upcoming title in the series, Codename Hexe. Although Assassin's Creed Hexeisn't expected to release for a long time yet, fans may have their first idea of what to expect thanks to one individual. View the full article

Bloober Team ведёт работу обновлением ремейка Silent Hill 2, призванным улучшить производительность на PlayStation 5 Pro. Переиздание хоррора на выживание вышло в прошлом году и на мощной консоли от Sony запускалось не совсем корректно. View the full article

Переговоры между корейской студией Shift Up и компанией Sony по вопросу распространения ПК-версии Stellar Blade в странах без PlayStation Network прошли успешно — команда PlayStation одобрила продажу экшена на 250 территориях. Платформодержатель не делал об этом публичных заявлений, но база данных Steam показывает, что бан был снят. Сами разработчики сообщили, что демоверсию Stellar Blade на ПК уже можно загрузить на большинстве рынков. View the full article

Phantom Liberty's sound designer paid KFC to cut the musicView the full article

Pompeii: The Legacy is easily one of my most anticipated games of 2025. It combines my love for ancient history and city builders into something new, where you take control of the once-doomed Roman town of Pompeii and give it entirely new life. While Cities Skylines 2 and Civilization 7 keep being improved, Pompeii: The Legacy is shaping up to be a true contender to the strategy throne. With a temporary playtest earlier this year, you can finally dive into Pompeii's all-new demo, which developer Siscia Games has plans to keep improving. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Roman city builder Pompeii The Legacy is available to try now, but not for long Pompeii The Legacy is a Roman Cities Skylines 2, and you can try it soon Upcoming Roman city builder Pompeii The Legacy gets realistic logistics right View the full article

Xbox Game Pass is losing five titles later today, including the widely beloved Pokemon-like game Cassette Beasts. While these departures will push the May 2025 Xbox Game Pass removals into double digits, this month has still been an overall net positive for the service by an uncharacteristically large margin. View the full article

Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 4 developer CD Projekt RED has revealed what players can expect to see from the studio's future titles. CD Projekt RED is among the most prolific RPG developers in the industry right now, with two massive franchises under its wing. View the full article

Now that Elden Ring Nightreign is finally available and players are getting acquainted with all of its features, it's worth taking a look at all the unique costumes that can be unlocked for each of the Nightfarers. Each playable character in Nightreign has six different unlockable outfits, or "costumes," that can be purchased or equipped at the dresser in the Roundtable Hold. Collecting all of these costumes will require defeating Nightlord bosses and completing each Nightfarer's individual Remembrance quests. View the full article

Short of The Elder Scrolls 6 actually coming out, there's never been a better time to be an Elder Scrolls fan. Oblivion Remastered is rekindling the love for Bethesda's most lovably janky Elder Scrolls game, while mod projects like Tamriel Rebuilt and Skyblivion are either releasing massive new updates or are rapidly approaching completion. Now, there's a chance to pick up any bits of Elder Scrolls history you've missed for a discount, as Bethesda has put the whole dang series on *****... Read more.View the full article

While you can play Elden Ring Nightreign solo, Fromsoftware designed it as a three-player co-op experience. You're supposed to squad up with friends or randoms online and drop into the land of Limveld, working together to get stronger before taking on one of the eight Nightlords and coming out victorious. If you were hoping to play as a duo, however, you can't. That is, until now, as one of the most prolific Elden Ring and Dark Souls modders around has dropped an alpha version of a Nightreign two-player co-op mod, meaning you don't have to wait for a third wheel to join your game. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: How to change Elden Ring Nightreign skins All Elden Ring Nightreign bosses and how to beat them Best Elden Ring Nightreign Duchess build and how to unlock View the full article

Infinite Alliance is pulling characters from different indie J-inspired RPGs together for one single rompView the full article

Late last month, mega publisher EA fired 300 workers, including around 100 at developer Respawn. The studio, founded by ex-Call of Duty developers, is responsible for Apex Legends and the Star Wars Jedi games, and was reportedly working on a third game in its beloved Titanfall series before its staff roster was cut. Now cancelled, the rumours suggest that this Titanfall project was an extraction shooter – a difficult-by-design PvPvE genre that currently only enjoys niche popularity. But an extraction shooter set in the world of Titanfall and Apex Legends could have been the genre’s ticket to the big leagues. So if not EA, who will take the “Tarkov-like” beyond its enthusiastic niche and into the mainstream? The answer may be just months away. "As part of our continued focus on our long-term strategic priorities, we’ve made select changes within our organization that more effectively aligns teams and allocates resources in service of driving future growth," an EA spokesperson said of the layoffs that cut away at Respawn. It’s a sentiment EA employees have heard before. This move follows a rash of downsizing in other segments of EA’s portfolio, including at developers Codemasters and BioWare, and a more general 670 company-wide employees back in March of last year. This trend has many decrying the state of the games industry as unsustainable and calling for unionization. But what of that rumored Titanfall extraction shooter? Naturally, its apparent cancellation has many fans disappointed; the existence (and lack of public appearance) of a new Titanfall game has become something of an in-joke in recent years. Further, rumors of a new extraction shooter from a triple-A studio has shone a spotlight on a style of game that has struggled to garner a significant audience thus far. And whether or not the cancelled Respawn title was indeed an extraction shooter, more people are discussing the potential of a genre that is in its infancy. “This is an enthusiast genre which has, thus far, not significantly broken out to the mass market player,” Mat Piscatella, Video Games Industry Advisor at Circana, tells IGN. Last month, developer Bungie finally revealed gameplay footage for Marathon, the upcoming extraction shooter that some predict will launch the genre into the mainstream. It's a game that's already found itself in hot water, accused of plagarising art assets. But while there are ethical questions around Marathon's production, the response to the game itself after press went hands-on with it seems largely positive. Perhaps this is to be expected from the studio with a reputation for stellar first-person shooter experiences like Halo and Destiny. But, come September, Marathon will be launching into a very different market, and the extraction shooter is a relatively untested genre. Will pedigree and tight FPS design be enough to carry the game to success? Analysts say: perhaps. “If I were to bet on any developer being able to bring this genre to the mass market it would be Bungie,” Piscatella says. For those unfamiliar, extraction shooters tend to be made up of a combination of player-versus-player and player-versus-environment gameplay loops. Small squads of players are dropped into a world, where they fight AI enemies and sometimes other player-controlled squads, to complete goals and gather resources, then escape the map. The genre was popularized by Escape From Tarkov, an incredibly unforgiving take on the formula characterized by its high-risk, high-reward firefights, which garnered a respectable audience during the COVID-19 lockdowns. If I were to bet on any developer being able to bring this genre to the mass market it would be Bungie. Since then, a number of other developers have tried their hand at the genre with varying degrees of success. One of the most prominent is last year’s Helldivers 2, developed by Arrowhead Game Studios and published by Sony. It leans heavily on a campy schtick, community engagement, and in-game events, which has made it a standout among extraction shooters. Also, and perhaps most importantly, it’s a co-op only affair, with none of the tense PvP encounters that make games like Escape from Tarkov so challenging. According to Piscatella’s data, Helldivers 2 was the eighth most-played game on Steam in April, and ranked 34 on PlayStation. “Helldivers 2 is the outlier success among this group,” Piscatella explains. “In April, approximately 9% of US active Steam users played Helldivers 2, while around 3% of PS5 players engaged with the game at least once. No other [extraction shooter] reached more than 2.3% of active players on any platform on which that particular game was played.” It’s immediately obvious that these stats are small when compared to more popular genres like battle royale or multiplayer FPS games. As hugely popular as Helldivers 2 seems to dedicated PlayStation owners, the mainstream is Fortnite, Call of Duty, and EA’s FC – games that garner much, much larger audiences. But Piscatella is quick to point out that the extraction shooter is a burgeoning genre with a great deal of potential, and it faces the same challenges as any other genre does in its early days. “Small or developing genres often only get big after one game makes it so,” he says. “The dance/music genre was a pretty small niche until Guitar Hero showed up. Console FPS games didn't usually sell all that well at all until Halo. MMOs comprised a relatively small portion of the market until World of Warcraft became the biggest thing in the world. Maybe Marathon does that for extraction shooters. Maybe it doesn't. Nothing is guaranteed for any new game in today's market.” Other popular games in the extraction shooter genre include Deep Rock Galactic, Hunt: Showdown 1896, and Delta Force. The latter is a free-to-play title launched late last year and has been enjoying a steady rise in popularity in recent months: as of this writing, it ranks 15th in daily players on Steam, with somewhere around 135,000 players at peak. This is a respectable number, but nowhere near the numbers consistently put up by the battle royale genre and its titans. And let’s face it: executives have exhibited a certain amount of tunnel vision chasing the high monetization bars set by the Fortnites, Warzones, and PUBGs of the world. There’s an argument that this sort of fixation has led to a certain amount of creative stagnation in the development space, and studio heads are less willing to take a chance on an unproven genre such as extraction shooters (it’s perhaps telling that Call of Duty’s attempt at it was an under-supported, now abandoned mode added to Warzone, rather than its own flagship release). In that way, Marathon represents the first significant triple-A effort to bring the genre to the masses. And it’s going to need all the help it can get along the way. “Bungie being the developer certainly does not guarantee Marathon success,” Piscatella says. “In order for [it] to break through it would certainly help if the game could win over dedicated fans of the genre so they could advocate for the game among family and friends.” The biggest challenge facing Marathon is the untested nature of the extraction shooter genre as a whole. Beyond word of mouth, Bungie will need to ensure smooth onboarding for prospective players. In particular, converting core players familiar with first-person shooters will likely figure into Bungie’s rollout strategy, but long-term retention will all boil down to the gameplay. “It would…be helpful if Marathon were to have a ramping path for people that are more familiar with the big FPS titles like Call of Duty to help initiate trial and conversion,” Piscatella explains. “It would also have to nail the whole ‘easy to pick up, difficult to master’ trick that many mass market hits are able to pull off.” The reality is that these are all the same problems faced by any new title, and the one true decider of success or failure is the market, which, as Piscatella points out, is extremely unwelcoming. “It is a very fickle market at the moment. People have their favorite long-running games that are constantly being updated, are familiar, have significant social and monetary hooks, and many of these titles are free-to-play or easily accessible without an upfront purchase price. So, the challenges facing Bungie and Marathon are not dissimilar to those facing any new game.” Fickle market notwithstanding, the biggest challenge facing Marathon is the untested nature of the extraction shooter genre as a whole. Escape From Tarkov has enjoyed its accolades, but that game benefitted from an audience inflated by pandemic lockdowns, as well as a gameplay loop that appealed to the core gamer segment. Subsequent titles have only seen middling performances (with Helldivers 2 being the outlier), so it’s easy to understand why studios have been reticent to devote significant resources to such a project, especially when the battle royale genre has proven its dominance. In that way, Marathon should prove to be a useful litmus test for the rest of the industry. It’s surprising to see a studio like Bungie going all-in on an extraction shooter in this environment, and if it receives a strong reception you can expect other developers and publishers to take its lead. Of course there are dozens of factors to account for - things like monetization and market trends - and nobody can predict how things will unfold. But Bungie certainly has the clout and design chops to make something special. And it’s going to take something special to take the extraction shooter genre from niche to mainstream. You can be sure that, come September, the industry will be eagerly watching the launch of Marathon. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

The genre is the studio's "niche"View the full article

FromSoftware wanted to "reform the gameplay loop" of Elden RingView the full article

Shift Up has announced a livestream dedicated to its crossover between Stellar Blade and Goddess of Victory: Nikke. The June 7 event promises to detail the upcoming Stellar Blade collaboration months following its initial announcement. View the full article

Have you played The Swapper? If not, you should swap whatever you're doing right now for playing The Swapper. Originally released back in 2013, it's a sci-fi puzzler that hinges on your ability to create clones of yourself, which then mimic your every movement. From this simple concept, The Swapper produces some delightfully brain-tangling puzzles, and a story that probes the question of personal identity with discomforting acuity. Oh, and it's all wrapped in eerie, Claymation-based art that still looks beautiful today... Read more.View the full article

***** has announced that it’s bringing its long-running football management series SakaTsuku to the West for only the second time. ***** Football Club Champions 2025 is a free-to-play football management game coming to PS5, PS4, Steam, iOS and Android. According to *****, the game is “powered by Football Manager”, though to which extent is unclear. Read More... View the full article

Elden Ring Nightreign is plenty of fun when played with your friends or random strangers, but deserting your team early will result in some serious penalties. Things can quickly get pretty difficult on an Expedition, especially if you don't focus on the basics. As a result, your Expeditions can quickly propel you in a direction different from your imagination, but that doesn't mean that you can simply rage quit. You can do so if you want, but it will attract penalties. Elden Ring Nightreign leave penalty explained You'll be hit with a matchmaking penalty every time you leave an Expedition early. This penalty will prevent you from joining a new Expedition immediately, as you'll have to wait for the cooldown to be over. If you experience a technical glitch/******, you won't be hit with an immediate penalty. In fact, you'll be given a warning before heading back to the Roundtable Hold. Any items and rewards obtained on your run will be automatically forfeited. However, you'll be able to join a fresh Expedition with your friends/other players immediately. Screenshot by Destructoid Based on the community, matchmaking penalties are applied if players rage frequently. The cooldowns can start from 10 minutes and stretch further. Repeatedly repeating the offense will increase the cooldown, so it's best not to repeat the offense. The penalties are also applicable if you leave your group after someone else has left first. If your team is down by a player, you and your partner should grind it out and do as well as possible on your run. That way, you'll be able to avoid the penalty and get the applicable rewards. Once you've been banned, you can choose to continue playing solo in the offline mode, but sitting out the cooldown is the only alternative. The matchmaking penalty is pretty rigid, and you miss out on all the rewards. Hence, it's better to just stick it out against a tough boss, irrespective of whether you're closer to success or failure. The post What is the leave penalty in Elden Ring Nightreign? appeared first on Destructoid. View the full article

The Witcher 4 studio wants to add something new in every gameView the full article

Elden Ring Nightreign might not allow you to play in duos, but a user-created Seamless Co-op mod is already allowing players to bypass that trouble. This new mod is available on Nexusmods, and this guide will provide you with all the necessary information. The process of setting it up is relatively simple, so let's get to it. Table of contentsElden Ring Nightreign Sealess Co-op modHow to use the Seamless Co-op mod in Elden Ring NightreignCan the Seamless Co-op mod ban you in Elden Ring NightreignElden Ring Nightreign Sealess Co-op mod The newly-released co-op mod is in a rushed alpha state, according to creator Yui, and the features are extremely basic. Two and three-player lobbiesMod-compatibility (due to EAC not running). Yui has also stated that the mod will be constantly developed, and new features will be added to it. How to use the Seamless Co-op mod in Elden Ring Nightreign The first job is to download the required files for Elden Ring Nightreign. The Seamless Co-op mod doesn't require the use of any prior mods, which makes it easy to set up. You'll need to log in to your existing Nexusmods account or create one for free. Screenshot via Nexusmods/Yui The downloadable files are available in the 'Download' tab.Extract the downloaded files.Copy and paste the files to the 'Game' folder. This will be located within the Steamapps and Common folders, based on where you've installed the game. Open Common and you'll find subfolders for all the games installed on your system (via Steam).Open the "nrsc_settings.ini" and change the required player count to two. You can switch it back to three whenever required.Launch the game from the launcher, and the mod will be loaded up. If you don't want to run the mod, launch Elden Ring Nightreign normally. To run the mod, you'll always have to use the "nrsc_launcher.exe" (remember this step). If you no longer wish to keep the mod, just delete all the downloaded files that you have copy-pasted after extracting them. You'll need your internet connection to make this mod work, as it won't be operational in the single-player mod. Can the Seamless Co-op mod ban you in Elden Ring Nightreign While the mod requires internet connectivity, it doesn't connect to the official matchmaking servers. Instead, it uses save files that are different from the vanilla files. The only way to get banned is by trying to tamper with the vanilla files, and you should refrain from doing that at all costs. Also, both you and your friends should have the mod downloaded on your systems to play and defeat the Nightlords together. The post How to play duos in Elden Ring Nightreign – Seamless Co-op mod appeared first on Destructoid. View the full article