Thank your own personal deity—possibly Kratos—it's Friday! All things considered, though, we could just as well have called it Freeday. Across the Epic Store and the Prime Gaming rewards page are scattered four games worth paying for (and therefore also very much worth making a free account to score, too). Check the PC section below to get started!
In retro news, I'm celebrating the 22nd birthday of Knockout Kings 2002, the penultimate entry in a series that would morph into the Fight Night franchise. Featuring Ali, Frazier, Duran, Leonard, De La Hoya, Vargas, Lewis, and Hopkins, this was the first entry to include a stick-based evasion system and the use of said real boxers in the career mode. Man, I miss purebred boxing games. Bring...
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
Gaming News
Everyone can post news here.
The news posted here could be anything from gaming to world news.
This section will be monitored fairly heavily.
Filters
Show only:
Loading…
In a recent interview with Ruliweb translated by Genji and confirmed by IGN, director Kim Hyeong-tae talked about what players can expect on launch day. One feature Stellar Blade fans shouldn't expect is microtransactions... at least not initially.
"We want to make it clear at this point that Stellar Blade will not require any additional expenses that gamers are not aware of beyond what they paid for the package," Kim told Ruliweb.
Although Kim assured fans that Stellar Blade won't have any microtransactions, Shift Up hasn't entirely ruled out selling them in the future.
"The only exception is if we create collaboration costumes with another company's IP, those may be sold for a fee," Kim said. "Also, there is no New Game+ in the...
Roblox boss Stefano Corazza has opened up about accusations of young developer exploitation on its platform, saying that the opportunity Roblox gives its teenage creators is “a gift."
Roblox has had in-game development tools via its Studio feature for a while, offering users the chance to create entire games that can then be published for other players and monetized. It all takes place within Roblox itself, streamlining the experience for creators and giving Roblox a cut of the profits.
The Roblox creator website encourages users to “make anything you can imagine,” enticing would-be developers with the promise that experiences can be published instantly to more than 66.1 million other users across the globe. It adds that there are...
Dragon's Dogma 2's pesky Dragonsplague illness turns pawns murderous but only exhibits a few subtle symptoms up to that point, so one modder has made things really obvious for PC players by sticking a big number on the follower's forehead.
As reported by VG247, NexusMods user rthomasv3 uploaded the "Dragonsplague Counter", which doesn't change non-infected pawns but brands those who are with a red number ranging from one to 10.
This tracks the severity of the infection in a more stark way than its normal symptoms, which include slight changes in behaviour like acting independently of the player and not obeying direct orders (you can find these explained further in IGN's Dragon's Dogma 2 guide).
If the disease gets out of hand, a...
Helldivers 2’s next Premium Warbond launches April 11, Sony has announced.
Democratic Detonation, as detailed on the PlayStation Blog, includes a number of new weapons, boosters, and armor pieces, as well as new cosmetics. Highlights include an Exploding Crossbow, a Grenade Pistol, and the Expert Extraction Pilot Booster, which lowers the time it takes for the extraction shuttle to reach the extraction beacon.
As with previous Premium Warbonds, expect Democratic Detonation to cost 1,000 Super Credits. While you can earn Super Credits from gameplay and the Warbond itself, you can also buy them for real-world money. Via the in-game shop, 1,000 Super Credits costs $9.99. Premium Warbonds do not expire, so you can work your way through...
When I was a kid, I removed the ladder from my Sims' pool while they were blissfully doing their morning laps. They drowned, as expected, and drama ensued. I didn't do this to be mean, but to tug on my Sims' attachments to develop a tragic story. Though those stories are easier to manufacture in today's iterations of The Sims, few other games allow you to put personalities together and shake them up to see what happens. Enter The Crush House. Like The Sims, The Crush House allows players to engineer drama by casting four people with defined strengths and flaws to star in a 1999 reality TV show. Unlike The Sims, The Crush House's gameplay is more passive in how you directly impact the character's interactions as you take the role of the...
In Eternal Strands, a major part of your adventure will be doing battle with the nine massive bosses that wander freely throughout parts of the world. In my time exploring the magical land of The Enclave, I encountered a handful of these formidable monstrosities, which ranged from a robotic bipedal summoner who used his magical staff to cover the world in fire to a flying dragon who persistently hunted me from the skies above. Continuing our month-long coverage of Eternal Strands as part of IGN First, today we’ll be taking a look at one such oversized baddie: The Ark of the Forge, a hammer-wielding automaton with deep love of smelting puny Weavers into piles of ash.
The Ark of the Forge is one of the bosses you’ll encounter in the...
Even with Sea of Thieves and Skull and Bones out there, the pirate setting for video games still feels woefully underutilized. But now, another game aims to blend the big stakes and dangers on the high-seas conceit with a narrative-driven tactical RPG framework. The upcoming Flint: Treasure of Oblivion looks to bring that pirate fantasy to life in an interesting new way by leaning into the mystique and intrigue of living life on the high seas.
In this first look at the upcoming CRPG, I got to see Flint's approach to a swashbuckling tactical RPG in action. It's all about building up a trustworthy crew and exploring the port towns and dangerous waters during the rebellious golden age of pirates.
As the debut game from developer Savage...
Dragon's Dogma 2 features a sly method of ensuring even the most unemployable pawns get hired and thus don't deprive the player of valuable resources.
As reported by Eurogamer, Reddit user MrFoxer noticed the existence of "fake players" who hire pawns no one else will.
Pawns, non-player characters which join the player on their adventures, will keep themselves busy by picking up work from other players while their own is resting at an inn or house. This earns the pawn (and thus the main player) valuable resources like Rift Crystals, which are used to upgrade the NPCs or summon new, more powerful ones.
Only a close inspection reveals how employable a pawn actually is though, as players' only indication their sidekick was hired by a...
Rocksteady is running a spring-themed promotion for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League that gives free outfits for logging on every day this week.
The free outfits are available for each member of the squad during the promo, which kicked off on April 3 with a fresh outfit for Captain Boomerang, and runs until this Sunday, April 7.
The promotion comes hot on the heels of the release of Kill the Justice League Season 1, which added Joker as a playable character. Check out Joker’s cutscene and gameplay in the video below:
Season 1 launched just under two months after Rocksteady’s embattled live-service looter shooter came out, and just a month after Rocksteady parent company Warner Bros. Discovery admitted Suicide Squad: Kill the...
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 is set to receive a trippy parkour map called Get High as part of an upcoming 4/20 event.
Following this week's release of the Season 3 update, dataminer @BobNetworkUK unearthed the map and even published gameplay showing how it works. Get High is a neon-drenched parkour map made up of shifting platforms and treacherous balance beams that challenges the player to complete the increasingly high course under the clock. It’s about as far removed from your standard 6v6 Call of Duty map as we’ve seen from Modern Warfare 3.
There’s no release date for this map or its accompanying event, but we do know it starts “in-season”. April 20 feels like a safe bet!
Season 3 already added a number of 4/20-themed...
With Sea of Thieves set to launch on PlayStation 5 on April 30, developer Rare has answered a number of questions about how the soon-to-be former Xbox exclusive works on PlayStation.
The highlights here are that progress and items transfer from the Xbox version to the PS5 version, there are PlayStation-only servers with the ability to disable crossplay, and performance options match the Xbox Series X version. Elsewhere, the PS5 version has 60 base Trophies and a Platinum Trophy called Pirate Perfectionist.
In a blog post, Rare said there are some PlayStation-exclusive cosmetics, including the Ruby Viper cosmetics or Dauntless Adventurer Closed Beta rewards, which are exclusive to the PlayStation pre-order campaign. These won’t be...
Gameplay and images for the canceled ‘Nolanverse’ Batman game that was once in development at Monolith Productions have emerged online.
Before it released the much-loved Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor in 2014, Warner Bros.-owned studio Monolith worked on a game codenamed Project Apollo that was intended as a Nolanverse Batman game based on the version of the Caped Crusader played by Christian Bale. Liam Robertson of DidYouKnowGaming? has reported that director Christopher Nolan himself may have killed the game because he wanted to focus on The Dark Knight Rises, the third and final movie in his Batman movie trilogy. Project Apollo was said to feature the genesis of the Nemesis System Monolith later used with great effect in Shadow of...
Spider-Man 2, Starfield, and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom all launched in 2023 but these blockbusters didn't stop Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch players from spending most of their time with older games like Grand Theft Auto 5 and Fortnite.
As reported by Kotaku, video game market analyst Newzoo released a report which revealed 66 titles accounted for 80% of overall playtime in 2023. Of that number, a huge 60% of playtime was spent with games released six years ago or more.
Newzoo ranked games on each platform based on their monthly active users across 37 markets, with the exception of Switch which only used data from the U.S. and UK. Not one new release breached the PC list, while only EA Sports FC 24 made it...
This week, Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead released a new cape, free to all players, to mark what it’s called 'Malevelon Creek Memorial Day.' Now, a subset of the game’s community is threatening to teamkill players who wear it, seemingly because they don’t like the focus on Malevelon Creek itself.
First, some background: on April 1, Arrowhead delivered a new Major Order to Helldivers 2 players giving them a 24-hour window to finally take back Malevelon Creek, the Automaton map dubbed ‘Space Vietnam’ by fans. The planet was liberated in only about five hours.
Then, on April 2, Arrowhead launched a new Major Order to fend off the Automaton counterattack. This includes two new and terrifying Automaton enemies, dropped into the game...
Palworld developer Pocketpair has released the biggest update to the game yet, adding its first raid boss, called Bellanoir, alongside a long list of new content.
Palworld update v.0.2.0.6, out now on Steam and coming soon to Xbox, lets players summon Raid Boss Pals by using slabs at the new Summoning Altar. Pocketpair warned that Raid Boss Pals summoned by slabs are “very powerful” and cannot be captured. The developer recommended players work alongside their base Pals to take on these powerful foes.
There’s even an “extreme” version of the Raid Boss that Pocketpair described as “incredibly powerful and difficult to defeat.” Pals Eggs can drop after defeating Raid Boss Pals.
Elsewhere, a number of new items are added to the game...
Let's cut the preamble and get right to the good stuff—the discounts of the day! Cream of the crop deals include a historical low on Super Mario RPG, a decent chunk off the GOAT that is The Last of Us Part I, and No Man's Sky went half off in time for its Orbital update. Gaming's greatest comeback story, that one. You love to see it.
In retro news, I'm celebrating the 31st birthday of Final Fight CD, arguably the best home version of Capcom's touchstone beat 'em up. Way more faithful than the SNES and Mega Drive versions—or the iffy Amiga one I was raised on—this must-own was scarfed by game starved Mega-CD owners, quicker than a free oil drum chicken.
This Day in Gaming
Aussie birthdays for notable games.
- Final Fight CD (MCD)...
Season 3's update hit Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone today and there’s a lot of new content. There are new game modes, the return of Rebirth Island, new Perks, new weapons, and so much more! Here’s everything you need to know that’s new in Season 3.
Multiplayer Updates
New Game Modes
Modern Warfare 3 dropped four new game modes in Multiplayer: Capture the Flag, One in the Chamber, Minefield, and Escort. CTF and One in the Chamber are available at launch with Minefield and Escort dropping mid-season. Minefield will be a variation available in Kill Confirmed, Domination, and Hardpoint.
In Minefield, dead players will drop a Proximity Mine that will be deadly only towards their own teammates. Escort is a pretty...
You died. That much is obvious in the opening moments of Astra: Knights of Veda, which drops you straight into a war, clashing swords with strangers in suits of armor. Suddenly, just as it starts to seem like this will be another standard medieval hack-and-slash, the warriors around you fall to their knees and transform into grisly, undead versions of their former selves. The zombie-infested battlefield that eventually kills you does a good job of teasing the mystery about to unfold, setting the stage nicely for your resurrection into this tragedy-stricken kingdom. But while Knights of Veda’s detailed world, heart-racing drama, and challenging combat show promise, its overly aggressive grind and unnecessarily complex progression systems...
Today, Amazon is offering the powerful and high capacity Anker Prime 20,000mAh USB Power Bank for only $89.98, a hefty 31% price drop from its original $130 MSRP. This is the successor to the Anker 737 that we deemed the best Steam Deck and ASUS ROG Ally charger. It boasts an absolutely massive 200W of USB power delivery to charge all of your mobile devices simultaneously.
Anker Prime 20,000mAh Power Bank for $90
with 200W of USB Type-C Power Delivery
The Anker Prime can be used like any other power bank; it does a fine job of charging any of your standard mobile electronics. However, its main purpose is to charge more power hungry devices like laptops, portable gaming systems, and high end phones. It has two USB Type-C ports and...
If you are a fan of Rockstar Games, you probably know how secretive the publisher is about sharing behind-the-scenes looks at some of its most beloved games. Fortunately, one fan has unearthed a hidden audio file in Red Dead Redemption 2, revealing audio bloopers during the game's production.
A new video uploaded by the YouTube channel Red Dead Redemption Stories reveals that the fan found four audio clips containing bloopers and mistakes. The audio files are part of a scene that appears at the start of the Chapter 2 mission, A Quiet Time.
In one audio blooper, you can hear the voice actors walking across the stage, the creaking sounds of the floor, and an echo in some lines. Another audio blooper revealed that voice actor Benjamin...
When Homeworld 3 was first announced, I kept hoping for a VR mode announcement that never came. Wouldn’t it be great to see all of the iconic ships flying around, dogfighting and exploding all around your head? It’s a no-brainer! It turns out that the lack of VR support wasn’t because Homeworld 3’s developers at Blackbird didn’t see the potential; it was because there was another studio, FarBridge, working on a parallel Homeworld game that’s built for VR – specifically the Meta Quest 2 and 3 – from the ground up. It’s called Homeworld: Vast Reaches (see what they did there?) and, as coincidence would have it, after Homeworld 3’s delay to this coming May, both will launch very close together.
When I first put on the headset, the look...
Grand Theft Auto fans who played San Andreas might be familiar with the random glitch of sorts that occasionally caused small airplanes to crash. While many believed this was deemed a myth by the community due to Rockstar Games never explaining why this happened, a former developer who worked on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has finally offered an explanation.
In a post on X/Twitter, Obbe Vermeij, who worked at Rockstar for over 10 years before departing in 2009, said issues with the planes spawning and the code itself occasionally caused the planes to perish.
"Before creating the plane, my code looks for obstacles in its path," Vermeij explained. "It scans a number of lines in the forward direction of the plane. These scans are...
Modern Warfare Zombies developer Treyarch has confirmed it has moved on from development for the mode, leaving Sledgehammer Games to wrap up the remaining story.
Treyarch told CharlieIntel its team has shifted "focus to something exciting on the horizon", which is perhaps a nod to this year’s as-yet unannounced Call of Duty game, Black Ops Gulf War.
The confirmation is perhaps unsurprising given the lack of content Modern Warfare Zombies has received in recent months. Indeed today’s Season 3 update contains little for Zombies fans to get excited about, whereas Multiplayer and battle royale Warzone are in-line for a content-filled season.
In February, Zombies fans declared the mode “dead” just three months after Modern Warfare 3...
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 Season 3 kicks off today, April 3, and Activision has released patch notes revealing what to expect.
The patch notes, by developers Sledgehammer Games and Treyarch, include detail on the six new 6v6 multiplayer maps for Modern Warfare 3. Three of these maps are brand-new locales and layouts, while the other three are fresh yet familiar experiences. The Emergency 24/7 Playlist launches with the start of the season.
New modes include Capture the Flag and One in the Chamber, while the battle pass unlocks four base weapons, including the MORS sniper rifle and BAL-27 assault rifle from 2014’s Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. There are eight new aftermarket parts, two new equipment items, new perks, new...
Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead has given all players a new cape to celebrate what it’s called 'Malevelon Creek Memorial Day.'
"By Presidential Decree, the President of Super Earth has officially recognized this day as Malevelon Creek Memorial Day," reads an in-universe statement. "This week, in remembrance, all Helldivers will be issued a special commemorative cape, so they may carry the memory of their fallen companions into battle."
The cape, called Fallen Hero’s Vengeance, features the skull that displays on-screen when a Helldiver bites the dust (it happens a lot!). There are no additional bonuses, so this cape is all about showing respect.
The cape and accompanying message to players is all part of Helldivers 2’s Galactic...
Diablo 4 players impatiently waiting to try Season 4 can now do so thanks to Blizzard releasing the game's first Public Test Realm (PTR).
Blizzard initially announced the PTR in late March, revealing that it would run for a limited time, starting on Tuesday, April 2, and concluding on Tuesday, April 9. However, a week-long PTR is not the only thing limiting this PTR, as Blizzard already confirmed in the same announcement that it would only be available to players with a PC Battle.net account.
Nevertheless, if you are eligible for the PTR, you will gain access to test updates and features before Season 4 officially launches. Alongside allowing certain players itching to try the new season, this PTR will also allow the development team...
Sand Land will come out on April 25 on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. The RPG, from the creator of Dragon Ball, is set in a world where water is severely limited. You play as Prince Beelzebub and build vehicles to trek the desert world, with the goal of finding The Legendary Spring’s water to hydrate Sand Land. Preorders are now available (see it on Amazon).
Sand Land (Standard Version)
PS5
Get it at Amazon - $59.99
Get it at Best Buy - $59.99
Get it at GameStop - $59.99
Get it at Target - $59.99
Get it at Walmart - $59.99
Get it at PS Store (digital) - $59.99
PS4
Get it at Amazon - $59.99
Get it at Best Buy - $59.99
Get it at GameStop - $59.99
Get it at Target - $59.99
Get it at Walmart - $59.99
Get it at PS Store...
The 512GB model of the Steam Deck is back in stock via trusted retailer The Game Collection on eBay, and what's more, you can pick it up for just £360 with the code CLEARANCE20. Not only is this a tremendous discount, but it's also the best place to buy the portable PC right now, considering the 512GB model is currently out of stock directly through Steam as well. This new deal is part of a new clearance sale for retailers via eBay, which isn't as sitewide as previous promo codes, but still includes some reasonably notable offers.
This includes Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth down to just £47.96 right now, and Fallout S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Anthology (PC) preorders for £38.36. This code is the latest in a series of eBay codes, but this one only...
Atari has bought the RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 publishing rights from Frontier Developments for $7 million.
Atari, which has a long-term RollerCoaster Tycoon licensing agreement with franchise creator Chris Sawyer, said it is now the sole publisher of all major titles within the RollerCoaster Tycoon franchise, including Rollercoaster Tycoon Classic, Rollercoaster Tycoon 2, Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, Rollercoaster Tycoon Deluxe, Rollercoaster Tycoon Joyride, Rollercoaster Tycoon World, Rollercoaster Tycoon Puzzle, and Rollercoaster Tycoon Touch.
The hugely successful Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 was developed by Frontier Developments, the UK studio behind Elite: Dangerous and Zoo Tycoon, and released in 2004. It’s available now on PC, Mac, iOS...