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The Path of Exile 2 Steam page hasn't aged well since its early access release late last year. At the time, developer Grinding Gear Games wrote that it expected it to be finished in six months. It's almost been an entire year since then and the promised list of features isn't all here yet... Read more.View the full article

Motion Twin's new game Windblown was always going to be an early access projectView the full article

With its unsettling backdrops and detailed worldbuilding, Tormented Souls 2 may look like a contemporary horror game, but don't let that modern dressing fool you. At its core beats the blackened heart of stone-cold classics like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, with all the treats — and tricks — that both endeared me to and enraged me about these formulaic survival horror games when they first gained popularity. Fixed camera angles? Check. Tank controls? Check. Insanely complex puzzles and an even more bizarre story, complete with cheesy dialogue and a manual save system? Check, check, check, and check. It makes Tormented Souls 2 a surprisingly faithful homage, bringing back all the stuff I loved about old survival horror games… as well as many of the things I loved to hate. Tormented Souls 2 picks up right after the events of its 2021 predecessor, but you don't have to have met the Walker sisters before to make sense of this sequel. That’s partly because it tells a standalone story, and partly because it's so fantastical that nothing makes sense anyway. Sure, you may have questions about Caroline's fetching eyepatch, but all you really need to know is she’s searching for answers about her little sister Anna's terrifying visions and reality-bending drawings. For reasons that seem to exist exclusively in schlocky horror tales, that answer apparently sits somewhere in the depths of a creepy convent nestled in a far-flung location. Before Caroline even gets the chance to shrug off her (exceedingly 90s) leather jacket, though, Anna goes missing, and it's up to the older sibling to both find her sister and figure out what the hell is going on before it's too late… with an emphasis on the “hell” bit, naturally. As stories go, it's not unique, no, but the twists and turns of Tormented Souls 2's roughly 20-hour campaign are delightfully over-the-top in the same way the original Resident Evil games are. It’s packed with cheesy dialogue, curious flavor text, and some truly bizarre encounters I couldn’t help but smile at. Caroline's stay in the remote town of Villa Hess will take you to a number of wonderfully grim places, including a processing plant, spooky school, abandoned mall, bunker, and the sprawling convent you start off in, keeping the creepy environments feeling fresh. And those environments are so detailed! Stuffed with interest and plenty of lore, Villa Hess and its surroundings are such fascinating, atmospheric places to explore. You never know when a key item or a helpful tool may be secreted away in a hidden room somewhere, so it's always best to keep your curiosity piqued. While your investigation is sometimes interrupted by a bladed ****** or shambling zombie, you'll find that enemies have a tendency to stay dead in Tormented Souls 2 — once you've cleared out an area, you're usually left to explore at your leisure. With little more than a flickering candle to guide the way, though, it's a little too easy to miss things; I've been caught out a couple of times by overlooking a key clue or item, even in areas I thought I'd examined pretty closely. As is seemingly the law for old-school survival horror, the more you play, the more you'll find yourself opening up new routes to old places, providing access to rooms and entire areas that were previously blocked off. I suspect the backtracking will irk some — there's a lot of it, particularly early on — but as the levels and fetch-quests are well-designed and usually rewarding, I couldn't begrudge it. That said, there's a reason fixed camera angles and tank controls are considered relics of the past. I grew up playing the games Tormented Souls 2 pays homage to (Resident Evil, Silent Hill 3, Parasite Eve, Alone in the Dark), but moving around Villa Hess is frustrating even when there isn't a ****** on your tail, with tight corridors and dead ends that make getting from one side of a building to the other unduly long-winded. Add in Caroline's fear of the dark: she'll freeze and start to hyperventilate if plunged into darkness for even a split second, dying completely if you leave her there too long. You can’t even put away your lighter to shatter a porcelain pot or smash open a wooden crate unless there's an ambient light source nearby… which there very often isn't. The lighter sure does add to the atmosphere, though, which is almost continually tense and unnerving. As the primary source of light quite often, you'll have to proactively step into a room to illuminate what, if anything, is hiding in the shadows, which inevitably means unwittingly getting up close and personal with the denizens skulking around the place. It all falls apart a bit when there is something hiding in the dark, though. Tormented Souls 2's combat isn't clumsy as much as it is enraging. The reliance on Caroline's lighter means you're often unarmed when something lunges at you, and the fixed camera angles and stiff character movement make it harder than it should be to retreat or create a little distance. Caroline protects herself with a range of acquired and improvised weapons, from a shotgun to a nail gun. Some of them can be upgraded to improve their rate of fire or reload speed, but they're still slow to use and difficult to wield accurately in a panic. I know it's kind of a genre convention to ensure we feel weak and underpowered, but this could've been achieved through scarcer ammo or by throwing more enemies at us; inefficient weapons and fixed cameras don't ramp up the tension as much as snap the immersion entirely. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that jankiness follows you into boss fights. One of the first you'll encounter, a giant nun, stomps around the room trying to batter you with a gigantic steel cross. But in that one single room, there are at least three different fixed camera angles, which means you may find yourself inadvertently sprinting towards your foe if the camera shifts while trying to put distance between you. This wouldn't be so bad if your shotgun held more than two shots at a time or if the nun flinched with each hit, but she'll keep galloping like an aggravated rhino, which made the camera feel like the real boss I was fighting. Thankfully, for every underwhelming boss fight you're forced to endure, you'll happen across a good half-dozen puzzles which confuse and delight in equal measure. I never felt closer to an old Resident Evil or Silent Hill game than trying to figure out how to open a door, or decode a cipher, or prise open the jaws of a dead shark for reasons I still don't quite understand. Often deeply cryptic, maddeningly illogical, or completely unsolvable because I stupidly missed a clue somewhere, these puzzles were exactly what I want from a game like this, all the way down to the mini-puzzles that ask you to combine specific items in your inventory. Yes, I'll admit one or two (or five) brain teasers truly stumped me for an embarrassing amount of time, but if that isn't old-school survival horror, then what is? View the full article

The Outer Worlds 2 is one step forward, one step back, and sometimes one step to the side in an enjoyable RPG whose commentary on consumerism bleeds into the game's own position. View the full article

Our new feature covers The Outer Worlds 2 on Steam Deck with recommended settings, ROG Ally impressions, and more. View the full article

Shizuka, the Maid of Purgatory, will fight over 20 bosses with customizable actions via the Skill Board system. View the full article

Developer Treyarch Studios and publisher Activision have confirmed that Nuketown, one of the series' most iconic multiplayer maps, will be available to play in Call of Duty: ****** Ops 7 from November 20. The next entry in the series is set to launch on November 14 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, but it looks like Call of Duty: ****** Ops 7players won't be waiting long to jump back into one of the franchise's most beloved maps. View the full article

While the star of Ball x Pit is its wacky Brick Breaker roguelite gameplay, its equally important other half involves a lot of town management. After the destruction of Ballbylon in the game's opening cutscene, you are tasked with constructing its successor, New Ballbylon. You have to build a residence for each new character, buildings that provide a variety of passive buffs, and resource tiles for harvesting. View the full article

"As a reminder, our primary goal with balance adjustments is to provide you the greatest number of viable builds"View the full article

Bethesda has confirmed when we'll be heading to Fallout 76 Burning Springs to take on the Rust King and get buddy-buddy with Walton Goggins as The Ghoul. Creative director Jon Rush and lead Producer Bill LaCost call the Ohio-set expansion F76's "biggest update ever," and one "in complete tonal tandem" with the second season of the Fallout show on Amazon Prime. Dust off your boots, grab your Stimpacks and RadAway, and oil up your Fixer, because it's time to claim some bounties. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: New Fallout 76 update goes to Ohio, "in total tonal tandem" with the Amazon show New Fallout 76 update lets you build the sky-high condo you've always dreamed of Fallout 76 Camp Revamp finally fixes the survival game's agonizing build tools View the full article

I can't believe we're coming towards the end of Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 already. After a huge launch in February, developer Warhorse has galloped through its lineup of post-launch content and has just unveiled a November release date for Mysteria Ecclesiae, the game's third and final story DLC. In what will be Henry's last adventure in KCD2, the Sedletz Monastery will open its doors as a new explorable area, and the expansion's story will see him assist a prominent healer to find the cure to a mystery disease. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is my favorite RPG this year, and it's over 40% off Best Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 settings for optimized PC performance Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 system requirements View the full article

The console ports of the original mobile game have finally been released. View the full article

Duck-themed singleplayer extraction shooter Escape From Duckov is currently one of the biggest games on Steam—particularly in China, where the majority of its over 1 million sales and Overwhelmingly Positive reviews originate. While it's drawing a comparatively smaller crowd of English-speaking players, the anglophone reception has been just as positive. Duckov's got a surprising amount of depth under that parody appearance... Read more.View the full article

The first season of Stranger Things premiered on July 15, 2016, and was an instant success. In the near decade that's since passed, fans have watched the cast transform from kids into literal adults as they battle the forces of evil from the Upside Down. The show has had its... Read Entire Article View the full article

A new edition of Fallout 4 was announced for its tenth anniversary on this year's Fallout Day, but that's not the only new announcement. Fallout Day is celebrated by the franchise annually on October 23, commemorating the in-universe day that the nuclear bombs fell in the Great War of 2077. View the full article

Palworld has launched its Halloween 2025 update on all platforms, highlighted by a new mission that will give players access to Zoe's Halloween costume and a Depresso armor set. The new Palworld update also made some changes to the game's mechanics, such as a new chat notification to let players know when someone joins or leaves a multiplayer server. View the full article

Publisher DreadXP and developer MANGLEDmaw Games have announced the release date for Amanda the Adventurer 3. The final chapter in the horror trilogy will be available for Windows PC, and it'll be possible to get it through Steam on November 6. View the full article

Neither EA nor DICE has confirmed when fans will be able to jump into the highly anticipated Battle Royale mode for Battlefield 6, but new leaks seemingly reaffirm that the studios intend to shadow drop its release with Season 1 on October 28. This release date had already been leaked by an industry insider earlier in the year, but now a Battlefield 6data miner has uncovered evidence via the EA Play app that references a mysterious content drop for next week. View the full article

Gearbox has released a brand-new Borderlands 4 SHiFT code that offers five spooky in-game items. The Borderlands 4SHiFT code has arrived as part of the now ongoing Horrors of Kairos Halloween mini event. View the full article

Fallout 5 was nowhere to be seen during today's Fallout Day broadcast, but Bethesda did unveil some sort-of-newish Fallout in the form of the Fallout 4 Anniversary Edition and the Fallout: New Vegas 15 th Anniversary Bundle, a big-box package that comes complete with a big ol' Securitron statue... Read more.View the full article

Balan Wonderworld livesView the full article

After months of waiting since the summer-themed Flamefete Festival, the Monster Hunter Wilds Festival of Accord: Dreamspell is finally underway, offering a plethora of free cosmetics and other Halloween-themed gear for you to collect. Unfortunately, much like the two previous seasonal events, some of the Dreamspell Festival rewards can only be obtained once a year during this *******, making it essential to know what to start farming while you can. View the full article

Also, current-gen versions of Fallout 76 are coming next yearView the full article

I'm a simple man. If I see the Adeptus Mechanicus involved in a Warhammer project, I click buy. Whether it's my tabletop army, creating my own personal collection of IRL servo skulls, or indeed something from our list of the best Warhammer 40k games, I'm a toaster man through and through. And we're eating right now. The recent Mechanicus 2 demo was excellent (even if I was more impressed by the Necrons), my Dawn of War 4 preview features our not-so-friendly robots, and I really hope Warhammer 40k Darktide is next. Developer Fatshark has teased that a new class is on the way, and I've got a funny feeling that something robotic this way comes. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Best Warhammer 40K games on PC Warhammer 40k Darktide drops new enemies, weapons, and a hefty class rework Warhammer 40K Darktide teases explosive new enemy in teaser trailer View the full article

It's been a long time since I fought my way through the rat-infested sewers of Helmgart, and even longer since I saw the sights of Ubersreik along with my friends. I mostly find myself revelling in the grit of Hive Tertium these days, and yet I was still aghast to find that it's been a decade since we first explored the streets of Ubersreik in Vermintide. This series has produced some phenomenal games that I've spent hours embattled within, and they rightfully have a place on our list of the best Warhammer games. Developer Fatshark is also feeling nostalgic, because it is adding a classic level to Vermintide 2 as part of its anniversary celebrations. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: New Warhammer Vermintide 2 map concludes its latest saga, as final mission lands Warhammer Vermintide 2 celebrates seven years with a new map and double XP Warhammer Vermintide 2 is about to get a second free map, and it's on ***** View the full article