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Dragon Age: Inquisition lead writer and former BioWare veteran David Gaider has spoken on how EA approached RPG design during his time with the company. As lead writer on the original Dragon Age: Origins, its 2011 sequel, and Dragon Age: Inquisition, Gaider worked on the franchise for a long time, but didn't always agree with EA's approach. View the full article

Touted as "a tribute to the golden age of 3D platformers," the upcoming action-adventure game Scratch The Cat blends old-school game mechanics with a unique musical twist. Scratch The Cat is set to launch for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox consoles in the second half of 2026, and players can get an early look at the familiar elements and surprising twists that await in this fresh take on retro classics. View the full article

Squadron 42, Cloud Imperium Games' planned episodic single-player game set in the Star Citizen universe, has some fans expecting a release on platforms other than just PC. A current job listing posted by the Star Citizen developer seeks out talented people with experience developing games on consoles, which could point to Squadron 42 as a potential third-party game for PlayStation, Xbox, or Nintendo. View the full article

As a way to expand a game past its base parameters, modding can quickly become a compelling way to play. Most games, like Stardew Valley, have a variety of mods you can utilize, such as quality of life, cosmetics, and even an expansion of the story. While this all seems fun and innocent, there's one thing people don't warn you about before modding: it can ruin a game for you. View the full article

A former Bethesda developer who worked on Starfield has given their take on why the game failed to resonate with many gamers. While the critical reception of Starfieldwas largely very positive, the consensus of gamers was a little more mixed all around. View the full article

For the longest time, I really did love Assassin's Creed Shadows. It delivered on the promise of Assassin's Creed in Feudal Japan in a way I felt Ghost of Tsushima never did, while also offering the series' best narrative in quite some time. There is a lot to love about Assassin's Creed Shadows, and that's largely why I spent a long time defending it and praising it to friends, family, and the internet. Of course, as with a lot of Ubisoft games, the fondness wears off over time, and I quickly began to realize Shadows' biggest flaws. View the full article

Codemasters, the developer behind F1 25, seems to be tossing around the idea of bringing the racing series to the Nintendo Switch 2. The concept still seems to be in its early phase, so it's unclear whether F1 25 even has a chance of a later launch on the new console, but future games in the series may find a home there if Codemasters determines it to be a good fit. View the full article

A new report has revealed some very impressive player engagement numbers for FromSoftware's 2022 hit, Elden Ring. Ever since its release a few years back, Elden Ringhas captivated gamers with its classic blend of RPG mechanics and classic Soulslike elements, and it seems that players are sticking around for the long haul. View the full article

Season 2.5 of Marvel Rivals introduces a ton of changes, including the removal and inclusion of Team-Up abilities for different character combinations. Some Team-Ups are leaving the game entirely, while brand-new ones are being added at the same time. Some adjustments to existing Team-Ups aim to change even those that stay, creating a huge impact on how team comps might be structured going forward. View the full article

The walls are magnetic, the roads are too narrow, and the keyboard just isn't made for this thing. Such are the woes of the incompetent arcade racer, I suppose. Racing games have been an on-again-off-again thing for me in my adult years, mainly because a genre shift I saw in my teens really ******* me off. But now I went back on a whim to a golden oldie, and I finally saw the appeal. Running in the '90s We'd have to go back all the way to MS-DOS prompts to find my first racing game experiences (Screamer Rally at the tender age of three if you want to know), but we don't have that kind of time, so let's get into a quick car and rush straight to the next stage of the story. The Need for Speed games around the turn of the millennium—High Stakes and Porsche Unleashed—set the blueprint for what I'm still looking for in a racing game experience: fun cars, fun locales, and most importantly of all, a focus on tournaments. Tournaments come with their built-in stories, after all. Who's doing well, how many points do I need, will I have to ****** out that specific guy so I still have a chance to clinch the trophy? It requires multiple races, many laps, returning characters. And it's super fun. For some reason, my windshield always looks like this. Screenshot by Destructoid Which is why I never really got the hang of the odd shift a few years down the line, where everything seemed to have been chewed apart into individual races and super-short sprints —for the NFS franchise, this began with Underground—with throwaway AI personas, very short events, little to no continuity between the competitions, and, most annoyingly, always starting from the back and having to work your way through a pack. Sue me for expecting a bit of realism from the racing part of an arcade racer, but always starting at the back is stupid, or at least that's what it felt like to teenager me. Hello? Qualification, earlier tournament results, prestige, anything? Or even if it were random, at least sometimes it should shuffle me higher up the order? It was somewhere between ludonarrative dissonance and "let me run over the designers with my virtual car." And that was before they tried to tell terrible stories in these games. Oh, don't get me started on those. Pulling away, then getting reeled back in again All this was a big part of why I slowly drifted away from racing games, at least after the well of marathon Skype calls and late-night rally binges (and TrackMania sessions) dried up. (The only way I could stomach anything more simulation-y was to play it with friends.) Oddly enough, I did pick up the habit of watching Gran Turismo YouTubers, and they gave me a new appreciation for actual racecraft. Not that I'd ever try to replicate it, no, sir, those walls are still magnetic, and the roads are still too narrow, after all—but sometimes, I do get a hankering for a quick race or two nowadays, and I boot up something random like Grid Autosport from 2014. And then, one night, I thought I'd go back to the original Race Driver: Grid from 2006, one of our jolly multiplayer haunts. I never played too much of the solo campaign—the design choices discussed above made it quite boring for me, after all—but hey, maybe it would be a bit of fun? Turns out, it was a lot of fun, at least for a while. Now, as a boring adult with no designs for "doing well" in racing games, I can see the appeal of this approach. A breakneck rush through the pack, desperate divebombs and terrifying turns, new cars and new surroundings over and over again. Ian Livingstone's excellent soundtrack also adds a lot to the experience, even if it only plays on very special occasions, and the radio chatter of the engineer and my teammate, however bland, sort of actually makes things feel more alive. [Hidden Content] It also helps that the game eschewed a bit of realism for style, with exaggerated golden sun rays and a yellow tint over the whole world that evokes Deus Ex: Human Revolution somewhat, meaning it hasn't been ravaged by time as much as it could have been graphics-wise. Don't get me wrong, there are definite shortcomings—like, hello, I can see that the car in my peripheral vision doesn't have its wheelspin animated—but am I going to care, having grown up with MS-DOS prompts and crunchy pixel graphics? I was there when this game was on the cutting edge. Going back from a later GRID game, the handling is quite forgiving but still not as much as some of the absolute arcade classics, making for a good mix for someone as incompetent as myself. But even if it were just nostalgia goggles, others are looking through them, too, saying that the original entry was the best the series has ever got, that it is a bona fide Codemasters classic from an era gone by. Here's the kicker, though: you can't buy it on digital storefronts anymore. It was delisted at the end of 2016 from most major platforms, and while the series still lives on, it never again hit this blend that seemed to work so well all along and one that I only just now got to appreciate to the fullest. So I, for one, will be sure to hold on to my Steam copy if I ever want to go back to a gold-tinted morning in Le Mans, preferably at 400 kilometers an hour. The post I went back to a classic racing game, and I finally realized what made it so good appeared first on Destructoid. 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We all need to relax sometimes. Whether you're days away from a school exam, recently got married, or got into an argument that ruined your day, there are limitless reasons for sitting back, playing some fun games for a night, and returning to life's usual grind. Thankfully, there are hundreds of games out there that you can start and play in one night. Here are ten of our top picks for the most chill, relaxing games you can finish in one night to end your day on a high note. Untitled Goose Gamehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LL2AtHo1gk I'll just say it now: Untitled Goose Game is one of the funniest games I've ever played. Few things are more entertaining than playing as a goose who wants nothing more than to cause chaos in a small town. From honking at random pedestrians to stealing their sandwiches, there's nothing you can't do during its six-hour story. It's even multiplayer if you want a friend to tag along for the ride and double your playtime. Journeyhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU3nNT4rcFg It's time to go from a goofy, cute game to one of the most stunningly beautiful options on this list with Journey. The game has you, a mysterious and unknown being, exploring the ruins of an abandoned civilization in hopes of reaching a mountain's summit. There are secrets and twists to be found along the way, with the main storyline taking around two to three hours to complete. Townframehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BErnExF0V2I Townframe is an adorably simplistic puzzle game that lets you recreate scenes using people's memories. As folks around town explain their thoughts and memories to you, you'll use various tools you unlock during your playthrough to recreate a scene of buildings and forests to satisfy their requirements. This one is one of the shortest on this list, clocking in at around an hour and a half to finish, making this a perfect choice if you only have a couple of hours to game and want something short and sweet to play on your PC. Unpackinghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8veArgF8rw Unpacking is a puzzle game in which you, well, unpack things. Starting in one room, you'll initially unpack a couple of boxes before traveling around your house and beyond to decorate the rest of your living space. With a runtime of about four hours, Unpacking's story is both inspiring and heartwarming, tugging at your heartstrings as you progress. Minami Lanehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhAfQuJJUNM Let's get into some strategy, shall we? Minami Lane is a shop management game where you create food recipes, flower bouquets, and more to make money and fill your villagers with joy. Although some management games are complicated when managing your expenses and staff, Minami Lane makes the entire process simple and easy to follow while remaining fun and exciting during its three to four-hour storyline. Alba: A Wildlife Adventurehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCWidTG_6to If there's one thing I truly love, it's helping wildlife. Alba: A Wildlife Adventure follows the tale of Alba, a young girl who arrives on an island in hopes of helping its local wildlife before a rich business owner comes in to transform the island into a resort. It has a short and sweet story, taking around four hours to complete. As a bonus, ustwo games, in collaboration with Ecologi, is planting one tree for every download of Alba: A Wildlife Adventure, letting you make a positive, real-world impact on the environment by playing. Donut Countyhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWt1GPkfzkM We've got a couple more goofy games on this list, with Donut County being one of the strangest and cutest I've ever played. Donut County is a short but entertaining experience involving you, a hole in the ground, swallowing up everything in sight for, well, reasons. There's no grandiose plot or gameplay mechanics at play here, making this an odd yet clever game you can complete in about two hours. Duck Detectivehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4s-Pu0HXMo Speaking of clever games, let's become a detective. Duck Detective is a game series where you, a recently divorced duck who's a little too tired of life, are investigating the disappearance of some salami. Why salami? Who stole it? Why is everyone so tired in this office? These are just a few questions you'll answer as you dive into this short but hilarious story. The best part? There are two of these games. Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is your introduction to the series, with The Ghost of Glamping acting as a direct sequel. That way, if you finish one in one night and feel like you need more, you have another opportunity to solve some puzzles and see Duck Detective in action. Loddlenauthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFMUBGfn33k Let's jump back to wildlife preservation for a moment with Loddlenaut. In Loddlenaut, you play as an interstellar custodian who quickly discovers that the ocean is full of trash, oil, and other substances that threaten the lives of local sea life. Your job is to clean it up while saving local axolotl-like creatures from getting swept up in the mess. This is one of the longer entries on this list, with playthroughs taking anywhere between four and ten hours, depending on how much time you spend looking at your surroundings and interacting with the little fish that swim around. Nonetheless, if you don't mind a longer experience or want something you can finish at night but have some extra replayability, Loddlenaut is a solid choice. Gris / Nevahttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRiKQIVo7ao Last but certainly not least, we have another of the most visually and musically stunning games on this list. Gris explores a young girl's trauma through adventures into a painted world within her mind, with a ton of symbolism both in her mind's environments and her character design. It's beautiful in every way, with a short but fascinating story that'll immerse you within its first few minutes. Another worth mentioning is Nomada Studio's most recent entry, Neva. Although the two games follow separate stories, their narrative styles, gameplay lengths, and aesthetics are similar. Neva focuses more on puzzle elements and combat than Gris' music and story depth. What are your favorite short and sweet games you've played recently? Let us know in the comments below! The post Feeling stressed? Here are some short, relaxing games you can finish in one night appeared first on Destructoid. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

The highly anticipated Skyrim mod Skywind has released a brand-new gameplay demo, offering fans a look at 20 minutes of gameplay footage. Skywind is an upcoming mod aiming to remake Morrowind in the Skyrimengine, and progress seems to be going steadily. View the full article

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 director Guillaume Broche has heaped praise on Persona 5's user interface design, calling it "the best game in the world" in that regard. His comments were offered along with some additional insights into how Atlus's iconic JRPG influenced Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. View the full article

The free-to-play Game of Thrones: Kingsroad has just recently been released, and its middling reviews once again bring up the question of whether we'll ever see a truly incredible video game set in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire universe. Netmarble's adaptation was released on PC and mobile platforms on May 21 after its Steam early access began in March, and while mobile gaming is an understandably attractive market, it typically doesn't bode well for an action-adventure RPG like Kingsroad. View the full article

Star Citizen is a game that feels, at times, difficult to approach. The colossal space MMO is vast and filled with players who in many cases have been invested since the first Kickstarter campaign more than a decade ago. Indeed, even the playable game has now been in early access for seven and a half years, and that's a lot to catch up on. Squadron 42 is designed as the more approachable counterpart, offering a cinematic campaign that boasts a list of names including Gary Oldman, Gillian Anderson, and Mark Hamill. It's currently penciled in for a 2026 launch, but new job listings have thrown up a fresh wrinkle. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Star Citizen dev vows microtransaction changes after flight blade controversy New Star Citizen flight blades spark major backlash against Cloud Imperium New Star Citizen free event is the perfect chance to play big MMO and space game View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

It's a good time to be a fan of The Elder Scrolls. Oblivion Remastered has brought the classic Bethesda RPG back into the mainstream, and we've recently seen a major update for the Tamriel Rebuilt mod. Now comes another big reveal - a new 20-minute gameplay demo for giant fan project Skywind, which aims to recreate Morrowind in the Skyrim engine. It's been two years since we last got a full showcase of this nature, and it's looking very impressive, demonstrating the likes of underwater combat and new spells. In even better news, the team tells PCGamesN it's seen a "significant" rise in interest lately as more people offer their support. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Enormous Morrowind mod Tamriel Rebuilt just got even ******* with new expansion Huge Morrowind mod project Tamriel Rebuilt dates new expansion with 270 quests New Morrowind mod adds a DLC-sized portion of Oblivion with over 160 quests View the full article

The Splitgate 2 open beta is finally live again, but with some important caveats. Developer 1047 Games faced major difficulties with Splitgate 2's highly anticipated open beta launch earlier this week and took it offline for a few days to address the issues. Now, players should be able to log on and start finding matches, albeit in smaller numbers than expected. View the full article

Russia's official customs data suggests the country's once-thriving market for US-made processors has nearly disappeared. Figures from the Federal Customs Service (FCS), reported by Russian publication Kommersant, show Intel CPU imports fell by 95 percent last year compared to the previous year. By comparison, AMD shipments dropped by 81 percent.... Read Entire Article View the full article

As far as massive, open-world RPGs go, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a masterclass in storytelling, aging extremely well for a game that has just celebrated its tenth anniversary. The title elevated the popularity of both developer CD Projekt Red and The Witcher as an IP to the next level, despite it being the third entry in the series, which has iconic, lovable characters, strong dialogue, and a narrative that seems to improve as the game progresses. In my opinion, CD Projekt Red really found its footing with The Witcher's expansions, where the writing is at its most intriguing. View the full article

The team behind Skywind, the massive project to remake/reimagine The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind in The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, has just unveiled 20 minutes of new gameplay on YouTube, as well as a development progress update... Read more.View the full article

A recent leak from Honkai: Star Rail is hinting at two characters set to make their playable debut in the Version 3.5 update, including the long-rumored Hysilens. The sci-fi RPG from HoYoverse has introduced a plethora of new characters to the game's roster since the newest playable world of Amphoreus debuted earlier this year, with more on the way. The developer has already revealed three new characters coming to the game in Version 3.4, including major Amphoreus character Phainon and Archer and Saber with the Fate/Stay Night collaboration. Now, even more new cast members are being teased. View the full article

A prominent Fortnite leaker has revealed that a redesigned version of the classic character The Visitor could be coming to Epic Games' popular battle royale on June 7. Fortnite recently launched its first Star Wars-themed mini-season called Galactic Battle, which has added iconic characters like General Grievous, Emperor Palpatine, and Mace Windu to the game. View the full article

After going through over 180 hours of Elden Ring, I’m replaying Bloodborne, and there is one particular flaw in FromSoftware’s 2015 PlayStation 4 game that is getting hard for me to ignore. Even with the magnificence that is Elden Ring, Bloodborne is still my favorite souls game, 10 years after its release. Its unique setting that blends a gothic-era crisis with cosmic horror leads to a singular story that captivates me and keeps me going. Seeing how immersed it is in the theme of horror, Bloodborne isn’t a game I’d normally play, as I tend to avoid horror games. View the full article

We’re a few days away from Marvel Rivals Season 2.5, a mid-season revamp that will see the addition of Ultron along with ... Read more View the full article

If the Minecraft movie has you craving some open-world survival crafting, but you fancy a little less digging through the dirt and more scope to expand up into the atmosphere and beyond, new sandbox game Cubic Odyssey has just arrived on Steam to deliver exactly that. With the style of Mojang's blocky environments but a spacefaring structure that feels closer to No Man's Sky, it sets you on a task to fight a spreading galactic plague that's sweeping across planets and warping all life beyond recognition. It's out now, and there's even a free demo you can try. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: New space sandbox game Cubic Odyssey is a Minecraft infused No Man's Sky rival View the full article