Valor Mortis, the first-person soulslike action game set in an alt-history Napoleonic era, is out next year. And with developer One More Level especially pushing the “Soulslike”-ness of the whole thing, it seems only natural that at some point before or after launch there’s going to be a discussion about the game’s difficulty - is it too hard? Is it hard enough? Should it have an easy mode, or something else?
The difficulty discussion, of course, is one that crops up every time a new Souls game is released. What makes difficulty fun, and what makes it obnoxious? Should games have easy modes? What sorts of accessibility features are helpful to ensure everyone can play the game and experience its design friction as intended, without...
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Epic Games has celebrated the launch of Fortnite's new The Simpsons mini-season, which it says has welcomed "the biggest number of new and returning Fortnite players since last holiday season."
Public player data tracked by Fortnite.gg shows that a peak of 2.6 million players logged on both Saturday and Sunday, firstly to watch the live event that introduced The Simpsons aliens Kang and Kodos to Fortnite's battle royale Island, and secondly to then play on the game's new Springfield map when it came online.
The live event saw Fortnite's heroes scooped up in a UFO and transported to Springfield Island, a mash-up of Fortnite and The Simpsons filled with familiar locations and Easter eggs from the long-running animated series. Fan...
With Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 just around the corner, Activision has laid out exactly when players will be able to jump into the action, and has confirmed everything players need to know about the official PC system requirements and pre-load times.
While pre-load goes live at the same time across all platforms on November 10 — 9am PT (scroll down to see when that'll be in your part of the world), launch times vary depending upon where you are, and what platform you're playing on. It's a bit confusing, so we've outlined the release times across key territories below.
We also have confirmed PC specs for Black Ops 7, so you can check to see if your PC is up to the task.
Confirmed Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 PC specs:
System Requirements...
Bethesda has outlined the patch notes for Fallout 4 ahead of the release of the Creations Menu update and Anniversary Edition.
During the recent Fallout Day broadcast, Bethesda announced Fallout 4 Anniversary Edition, due out across PC, PlayStation, and Xbox on November 10, 2025.
Fallout 4 Anniversary Edition — designed to coincide with the post-apocalyptic role-playing game’s 10th anniversary — contains the six official add-ons and over 150 pieces of Creation Club content. Creations (user created content) arrive in Fallout 4 via a brand new in-game Creations menu, which will make it easy for players to find and download the new content on PC and console.
Now, Bethesda has detailed Fallout 4’s Creation Menu update, due out on...
It’s been 6,496 days since the original release of Burnout Paradise, not that I’m counting. With the Burnout series clearly consigned to the same storage cupboard EA has been hiding the corpses of Westwood, Black Box, Pandemic, and all the other studios it shut down over the years, I completely understand the motivation for developer Three Fields Entertainment to craft Wreckreation. It’s an unapologetic Burnout Paradise clone in a stack of very clear ways, built for a ravenous audience that's been starved of one of arcade racing’s heaviest hitters for too long. After all, if you want something done, sometimes you need to do it yourself. Unfortunately, the one core component of its spiritual ancestor that Wreckreation couldn’t recapture...
If you're looking for a power bank that can handle the demands of even the latest and most power hungry gaming handhelds at a great price, check out this early Black Friday deal. Amazon is offering the Baseus 20,800mAh Power Bank with 145W of Power Delivery for just $45 shipped after applying coupon code "GHNNKVYZ". You don't need to be a Prime member. Baseus makes good power banks and I recommend them as a less expensive alternative to Anker.
Baseus 20,800mAh 145W Power Bank for $45
The Baseus power bank has a 20,800mAh or 77Whr battery capacity. Factoring in a roughly 80% power efficiency rating (which is about standard for power banks), this power bank will charge a Steam Deck (40Whr) or Asus ROG Ally (40Whr) from empty to...
We’re in a golden age of portable gaming. Nintendo is still the king of the mountain with the Switch 2, but the market is also just lousy with handheld gaming PCs that you can play wherever you want. The fact that there are so many to pick from is a good problem to have, but once you’ve committed and freed yourself from the shackles of your TV, you’ll find you’re still bound by storage limits.
How you deal with those limits depends on what you’re after. If it’s more space for the likes of Battlefield 6, you’re better off cracking open your console – if you’re comfortable doing so – and upgrading your internal storage to a higher capacity M.2 NVMe SSD than you are popping in a MicroSD card. Proper SSDs are simply better at loading games...
A new Humble Choice lineup becomes available on the first Tuesday of each month. That means November’s Humble Choice is now available for $14.99. This month, members get eight PC games with a total MSRP of $254, including Total War: Warhammer 3, Etrian Odyssey HD, and more. Read on for the full list and all the details.
Humble Choice November 2025 Game Lineup
All eight PC games are delivered in the form of Steam codes. It’s a solid lineup of titles, representing a wide variety of genres. That means there’s something for everyone, and some off-the-beaten-path games you might not normally buy, but now you get them without having to pay anywhere near full price. Here’s the full list of games included in the November 2025 Humble Choice...
What if the 1980's became the jumping off point for the future? Like how this year's Fantastic Four movie was a '50's version of the future? Enter ROUTINE, an upcoming first-person sci-fi horror game set on a lunar base. Like all good horror games, silence and loneliness are your worst enemies, and that's true in ROUTINE – except for the part where you discover a foe who thinks the primary threat is, in fact, you. Piece together the events that took place prior to your arrival, and try to survive.
ROUTINE is our IGN First "cover story" game for November, ahead of its December 4 release for PC (Steam and Xbox on PC) and Xbox (Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Xbox Cloud) – including Xbox Game Pass on day one. This first exclusive video...
Ball X Pit is the latest obsession to grip gamers, a chaotic roguelite that mashes together the mechanics of games like Peggle, Diablo and Vampire Survivors to make something that's impossible to characterize, but is dangerously playable. Somehow it's the work of one man, Kenny Sun, a game developer from Brooklyn, NY who loves games like Vampire Survivors, Deep Rock Galactic Survivor and Blotch Arrow. We spoke to Sun to first of all, confirm how the hell we say the Ball x Pit out loud, and then to talk about how he created this moreish Frankenstein's monster of a game.
"It’s Ball Pit. Just Ball Pit. There’s no X," explains Sun. "It’s mostly a tribute to anime like Phantom Hunter. Also, X can mean fusion, which ties into the game’s...
Fortnite developer Epic Games has issued a fresh user survey polling players over its pet-like Sidekicks — and in particular, the need to rebuy each creature to get another version, after your basic design choices are made permanent.
Currently, Fortnite forces fans to lock in their Sidekick's body color, shape and style upon first use, and warns players that their decision cannot be changed again.
For now, just one Sidekick animal is available — banana dog hybrid Peels, which you get two of within Fortnite's current The Simpsons battle pass. Upon first equipping the pooch, you must decide from three banana skin colors (yellow, yellow-green, or mottled), an ear shape (pointy, less pointy, flat) and a body style (slender, or thicc)...
Microsoft has announced the Xbox Game Pass November 2025 Wave 1 lineup of games, headlined by Call of Duty: Black Ops 7.
As a Microsoft-owned video game, Black Ops 7 launches straight into Game Pass day one when it comes out on November 14. That’s across cloud, console, and PC for Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscribers only.
But there are a number of games hitting Game Pass before Treyarch and Raven’s first-person shooter arrives. On November 5, Dead Static Drive (Cloud, Console, and PC) arrives on Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass as another day one release.
As per Xbox Wire, Dead Static Drive is “Grand Theft Cthulhu.” "An indie survival-horror game following a nightmarish road trip across a 1980s Americana, Dead Static...
There are a lot of promising upcoming Warhammer video games, but this is one I did not expect to add to my list: Warhammer Survivors.
It’s a Warhammer twist on indie smash hit, Vampire Survivors, and was developed in partnership with poncle (Luca Galante), the creator of the much-loved fast-paced rogue-like. Indeed, Warhammer Survivors uses poncle’s Vampire Survivors engine.
Warhammer Survivors lets you play as characters from both Warhammer 40,000 (the grimdark far future one) and Warhammer: Age of Sigmar (the fantasy one), and, this being a Survivors game, tasks you with destroying endless swarms of enemies in ‘pixel-vomit’ gameplay. It’s due out in 2026, developed and published by Auroch Digital (Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun)...
Fortnite is already teasing what's next for the game, even as it enjoys a positive response to its just-launched The Simpsons-themed mini-season.
Following its current foray into Springfield, which is set to conclude on November 29, Fortnite is expected to fully transition to its seventh Island home — an era that Epic Games is already teasing as "Chapter Seven."
An official "Chapter Seven" teaser shared by Fortnite content creator NickEh30 includes real-world coordinates for the Hollywood sign, and the following text: "Now Playing / Zero Hour / Chapter Seven / Fortnite After Dark With Q&U."
"Q&U" was quickly linked by fans to the acronym used by Hollywood's Quentin Tarantino and Uma Thurman for their work as director and lead actor...
In the autumn honors list, the Japanese government has given Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii the Order of the Rising Sun. This is one of the highest awards the government of Japan can bestow on citizens. It is awarded to those who have made significant contributions in their field, and Horii is the first game creator to receive it.
"I think it's a great honor, I'm surprised." Horii responded in a video interview with TBS. “I’ve been making games for quite a long time now, about 40 years, but I didn’t do it alone. It's all thanks to the staff who helped create the games alongside me, and to all the players who have continuously supported us."
Yuji Horii’s first game was 1983’s Love Match Tennis, which he entered into a game contest...
Grand Theft Auto fans have known for some time that Rockstar Games worked on a single-player DLC for GTA 5 that would have seen Trevor assume the role of a secret agent.
Last year, voice actor Steven Ogg said Rockstar originally planned to make a story expansion focused on his character, Trevor, with it thought to have fallen by the wayside as the developer focused on the cash cow that was GTA Online.
Ogg was joined by Michael actor Ned Luke and Franklin actor Shawn Fonteno in a Questions and Answers session with Streamily. The trio shed light on what they claimed was scrapped downloadable content for GTA 5 that starred Trevor as a Federal Investigation Bureau agent.
"Originally they were gonna do continuing stories of Michael...
Where Winds Meet is an unusual entry in the MMO genre. Developed by Chinese studio Everstone, it stands apart in several ways. This ambitious project combines single-player storytelling with MMO features and a richly realised Wuxia setting. Here’s why it’s unlike anything else you’ve played.
A Surprising Single-Player MMORPG Hybrid
One of the biggest surprises about Where Winds Meet is that you can play it entirely solo. Despite being an MMO, it offers a full single-player campaign. The game is free-to-play, yet it feels substantial. Players can enjoy hours of story content without spending a penny.
You take on the role of a mysterious sword master in 10th-century China. The story-driven campaign unfolds across an expansive open...
The director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office has ordered a reexamination of Nintendo's controversial 'summon character and let it fight' Pokémon patent after it was heavily criticized by IP lawyers.
In September, IP lawyers criticized the U.S. patent system and the USPTO after Nintendo was awarded a Pokémon patent that revolves around summoning a character and letting it fight.
Games Fray reported that Patent No. 12,403,397, dubbed the '397 patent, was granted by the USPTO "without any objection” to Nintendo, which is embroiled in ongoing litigation with Pocketpair's Palworld.
While the patent sums up how Pokémon games work in that you summon Pokémon to battle other Pokémon in the hope of adding them to your...
Pillars of Eternity is the surprise recipient of a patch to add turn-based mode, developer Obsidian has announced.
Fresh from releasing Avowed, Grounded 2, and The Outer Worlds 2 this year, the Microsoft-owned studio has gone back to its isometric, party-based fantasy RPG over a decade after it came out with a fresh update.
Obsidian announced a new public beta for Pillars of Eternity opens on November 5 for players on Steam and Xbox PC, which adds the turn-based mode. The reveal comes alongside a message from game director Josh Sawyer (last seen directing Pentiment), with his thoughts on what turn-based mode means for Pillars of Eternity.
“Fans who enjoyed experimenting with turn-based mode in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire will...
Hey. Hey you. Yes, you. The one playing Hollow Knight: Silksong. I just wanted to let you know, before you go any further, that you're missing a bench in Bilewater. Just in case that helps.
If you're not to Bilewater yet, this PSA is still for you. You will get there, and you will want to know this. I am going to spoil what's in Bilewater in this piece, so if you don't want to know that information, leave and come back when you've gotten sufficiently angry at Bilewater.
Bilewater is notorious. It is a massive, disgusting zone on the other side of the already frustrating Sinner's Road that you can stumble into fairly early on in Act 1 of Silksong, and which is required if you ever want to see the game's Act 3. There are many reasons...
FPS fans have spent months obsessing about Battlefield 6 map sizes, so some players finally took the time to measure and compare nearly every map the series has seen in the last 15 years.
The Battlefield map size breakdown is a collaborative effort organized by Reddit users ClaraTheRed and PENGUINonPC and includes multiplayer locations featured in Battlefield 3, Battlefield 4, Battlefield: Hardline, Battlefield 1, Battlefield 2042, and, of course, last month’s Battlefield 6. It comes not only with a side-by-side comparison for each game’s map, organized by game mode and player count, but also color-coded horizontal bar graphs, illustrating how EA’s approach to map sizes has changed through the years.
ClaraTheRed shared details about...
Rockstar, the developer of Grand Theft Auto VI, reportedly fired between 30 and 40 employees in a move that the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB) is claiming was "blatant" and "ruthless" union busting.
According to Bloomberg, the workers fired this past Thursday were all UK and Canadian employees who were also part of a private trade union chat group on Discord, and were either union members themselves or trying to organize Rockstar. IWGB has issued a press release in response to the firing, claiming that the employees' dismissal was explicitly due to union activities.
In response, Rockstar has issued its own statement via a Take-Two spokesperson, countering that the firings were for "gross misconduct, and for no...
Introducing Odds Chronicles, a new tactical roguelite RPG that features dice-roll battles set on diorama-like stages. You play in a fallen kingdom as Evryn, a former royal bodyguard in that kingdom in a tabletop-inspired fantasy story. It's in development for PC and due out in 2026.
Developed by eSolu and Team Mojo Games, Odds Chronicles renders its tactical diorama battlefields in Unreal Engine 5 and is doing its best to embrace its tabletop inspiriations. "Click to roll or throw the dice yourself, then use every face like a weapon," the developers said. "Generate resources - Strength, Dexterity and Magic - to fuel abilities. Charge powerful skills over time or unleash them immediately. Unused resources fill a bonus gauge, granting...
MOBAs are a blast… so long as you don’t mind a brutally steep learning curve and the inevitable barrage of messages from players with thousands of hours in the game you just decided to try. Still, the core mechanics make progress deeply satisfying, and Skygard Arena excels at adapting those systems into a turn-based format that offers a more relaxed pace and a surprisingly strong single-player mode.
Success depends on mastering your squad of champions—not just controlling them, but learning when and where to use their abilities, finding your favourite synergies, and strengthening them over time. Each champion has unique skills and traits, meaning there’s a lot of experimentation involved in crafting the perfect team composition...
Keanu Reeves would love to play Johnny Silverhand again, but how can he given the events of Cyberpunk 2077? It turns out Cyberpunk creator Mike Pondsmith has worked out a way to make it make sense, and has told the much-loved actor: “contact me.”
In September, speaking with IGN while promoting his movie Good Fortune, Keanu Reeves said that he wanted to be part of the sequel to CD Projekt's 2020 game.
“Absolutely. I’d love to play Johnny Silverhand again," Reeves said when asked if he’d be interested in revisiting his legendary rockstar terrorist character in Cyberpunk 2.
Reeves's love-affair with the Cyberpunk community began with his viral "you're breathtaking" moment at E3 2019. Reeves, on-stage to announce the release date of...
Microsoft has confirmed the next batch of games set to leave Xbox Game Pass, and one in particular has caused a degree of frustration with subscribers: Stalker 2.
GSC Game World’s Stalker 2 launched as an Xbox console exclusive last year alongside backing from Microsoft. While it is not an Xbox Game Studios-published video game, Microsoft played a key role in its marketing ahead of its much-delayed release date in November 2024. It even worked with the Ukrainian studio on a 90-minute documentary that revealed the difficulty the developers faced building the game amid Russia’s full-scale invasion.
As confirmed by the Xbox app, Stalker 2 is set to leave Game Pass on November 16, 2025, alongside four other games detailed below.
Games...
This ain’t the 90s, folks. Many - if not most - games today don’t just live on a disc or a one-time download anymore. They live online as live services, delivered through patches, DLC drops, seasonal updates, ranked matches and live-service events.
Did you know your internet speed plan and home setup might be the final boss standing between you waiting to download the latest patch and actually playing it?
Now that nbn has introduced accelerated wholesale speeds on select Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) and Hybrid Fibre Coaxial (HFC) plans across Australia, eligible gamers have a chance to unlock a smoother connection that is built for the demands of today and designed to be ready for what is coming next. Here is why speed can make a...
We've rounded up the best deals for Sunday, November 2, below, so don't miss out on these limited-time offers.
Bleach Rebirth of Souls for $34.99
Bleach Rebirth of Souls was the first major Bleach game release in many years, with Bandai Namco and Tamsoft bringing the iconic series to modern platforms as a fighter. All of the most iconic Bleach characters are here, including Ichigo Kurosaki, Rukia Kuchiki, Grimmjow Jeagerjaques, and even Coyote Stark. Save $25 off the base game this weekend with this deal at Woot.
Pre-Order Resident Evil Requiem
Resident Evil Requiem officially opened pre-orders late last week ahead of its February 27 release date next year. While a standard edition is available, the more interesting edition is the...
If DOOM can be globally recognised as the godfather of the FPS genre at large, then surely Valve’s Counter-Strike must be thought of in similar statuesque terms when we come to terms with its impact on the online multiplayer FPS sphere. Nothing less than a games industry juggernaut with the global recognition to match, this is how, on its 25th anniversary, Valve’s Counter-Strike utterly redefined the online multiplayer FPS landscape and revolutionised a genre in the process.
The Origins of Counter-Strike: How a Half-Life Mod Sparked a 25-Year Legacy
Rather than being created in a vacuum, Counter-Strike was instead birthed from the design DNA of another legendary Valve shooter, Half-Life. Originally developed as a mod for Half-Life by...
I thought I was only going to play five or six hours of ARC Raiders on launch day before sitting down to write this initial review-in-progress, but after just a handful of matches, I suddenly couldn’t pull myself away – and before I realized it, I’d been playing for 10 hours. This is without question the most hooked I’ve found myself on an extraction shooter (and I’ve played a lot of them), with clean and tense gunplay, a progression system that’s been incredibly satisfying so far, and a loot game that has me sweating over what to put in my backpack and what to leave behind. I’ve still got loads more to do and see before I can draw any final conclusions, but what I have played has made an incredibly good first impression.
ARC Raiders...