The face of Max Payne, Sam Lake, on if he regrets using his likeness in the games

Alan Wake 2 director Sam Lake has suggested that, in hindsight, he might not have been as open to the idea of lending his own mug to Max Payne had he known how successful the series would become.

With Remedy having just released the long-awaited Alan Wake 2 to a pretty stellar reception, Lake and co look to currently be taking a well earned chance to savour the achievement before getting started on any new projects. In an interview with GQ, Lake touched on his humble beginnings in game development, seemingly suggesting that he might not have gifted his likeness to Max Payne had he been aware just how many people would see it.

“If I had known how big the whole thing would become, would I have done it? I don’t know, but it would certainly have given me pause,” Lake said. He also noted that his friends, including Remedy cofounder Petri Järvilehto, once jokingly compared his appearance in the photo that eventually became part of the visual foundation of the original Max Payne’s story to that of action heroes Clint Eastwood and Bruce Willis during a flight to E3.

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Capcom has an "unannounced major title" due out before March 2024

It's not confirmed what it is yet, but Capcom still apparently has an "unannounced major title" due out before March 2024.



As spotted by a user on the GamingLeaksAndRumours subreddit, Capcom recently shared a document covering a Q&A following its latest earnings results, where it referred to said "unannounced major title." The game came up following a question of how it plans to achieve its sales goals for new titles this fiscal year, noting the upcoming Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy, as well as whatever this game might be. Capcom is certainly cutting it a bit close with announcing the thing, though, as March is barely five months away now.



Obviously the big thing here is that Capcom's fiscal year ends in March, and it will have already set out these goals, so it's likely a thing of "don't worry, you'll make your money before the year is up." Aside from hosting its own showcase, which Capcom has done in the past, the most likely place we'll hear any kind of announcement would be The Game Awards in December, though that does feel like it would be cutting it especially close.


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Wanna raise your heart rate? Watch this Ghostrunner 2 playthrough

Ghostrunner 2 came out this month, and in case you somehow missed it, it's one of the most exciting action games to land on PC and consoles in a while. Who doesn't love rushing around a series of challenging missions as a cyber ninja, throwing shuriken and dodging bullets in slow motion? It's a game that sells itself.

But maybe you're old. When you hear dystopian sci-fi future, motorbikes and action-packed battles you think Terminator, which you probably saw in the cinema. You wore shoulder pads, acid wash jeans, and a Blondie t-shirt. Ghostrunner 2, however, is the new hotness, rewarding the quick reactions of the young and energy-drink ridden, not the wizened mind of an ancient oak who still hangs onto their Woolworths gift card.

Enter Dorrani. He graciously has returned to VG247 to show Jim the ropes in one of 2023's best releases with his top-notch reactions. In the video embedded above, you can see the pair explore the world of Ghostrunner 2 and everything it has to offer. In a short but sweet highlight of some of the game's best bits, you can get a quick burst of Ghostrunner 2 goodness that should up your BPM and show you what the game is all about. It's well worth a watch, if you're sitting on the fence.

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Pokemon Fan Designs Rock-Type Eeveelution

A talented Pokemon fan artist is sharing their design for a Rock-type Eeveelution. Eevee is a unique Pokemon within the franchise as it changes its type depending on what it evolves into. The Pokemon franchise has already provided fans with a Dark, Electric, Fairy, Fire, Grass, Ice, Psychic, and Electric-type Eeveelution, but creative artists often like to imagine what Eevee would look like if it evolved into a creature with one of the remaining 10 typings.


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Cyberpunk 2077 patch 2.02 ensures Phantom Liberty’s vehicle contract missions can no longer be impossible

The latest Cyberpunk 2077 patch addresses a number of issues, including a bug that’d caused some of the vehicle delivery missions added to the game with the Phantom Liberty expansion to become physically impossible to complete.

Patch 2.02 for CD Projekt’s futuristic RPG, which is currently being rolled out across PC and consoles, comes with a pretty hefty list of changes aimed at both Phantom Liberty and the base game. Nestled among the section of these that are Phantom Liberty-specific is a bug fix that’ll definitely help lower the blood pressures of Dogtown’s mercenaries.

The change in question is a simple rebalancing of the time limits for some of the game’s vehicle contract side missions, which see V tasked by Santo Domingo fixer Muamar "El Capitán" Reyes (whose hairstyle genuinely looks like it should be illegal) to steal specific vehicles and drive them to specific locations in return for some decent rewards.

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Win a Jackbox Party Pack 10 code for Nintendo Switch, Steam, Xbox or PlayStation with VG247

Do you remember, during the Covid-19 shutdown of 2020, that everyone slightly lost their minds? We all started making sourdough starters, took up knitting, or dedicated our entire being to making sure some weird little island full of Animal Crossing weirdos looked like a pumpkin farm, or something. We all became obsessed with turnips.

Amidst the lockdowns, the maker of Jackbox reported that it saw an increase of sales by roughly 1000% in March to May 2020. By the end of 2020, the developers recorded over 200 million players of its games (by this point, there were only seven Jackbox Games in existence, too).

This spike further secured the series' status as one of the most important party game offerings in the video game market – standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of Among Us and Fall Guys.

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Starfield Player Discovers ‘Special Dialogue’ Connected to Monster Costume

Dressing up as a tardigrade monster and chasing off tourists on Titan is one of the most memorable experiences in Starfield, but it turns out the costume's reactivity also extends to the First Contact quest as well. Though Akila City, Neon, and New Atlantis in Starfield represent the game's primary hubs, a few smaller locations are also scattered across the Settled Systems for players to come across. New Homestead is one such location, and for being a remote "museum" nestled upon the surface of Saturn's moon, it has a surprisingly decent amount of side quests to solve.


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Uh oh, that King Kong game everyone's dunking on was only in development for a year

Oh boy, it turns out that the recent King Kong game everyone has been dunking on was developed in just over a year.



If I had nickel for every time a game based on a beloved IP that was incredibly broken upon release this year, I'd only have two nickels, and it honestly wouldn't be that weird. The Lord of the Rings: Gollum was the first of the two to take the heat for coming out far less than perfect, but it doesn't exactly sound like development was a smooth ride. Last week saw the arrival of Skull Island: Rise of Kong, and yeah, it certainly looks like that. Unsurprisingly, a recent report from The Verge has shed some light on why the game was released in such bad shape, and found that the game only started development in June of last year.



"The development process of this game was started in June of last year and it was aimed to end on June 2nd this year," said an anonymous staff member at developer IguanaBee. "So one year development process." IguanaBee is an indie studio based in Chile, having worked on both original and licensed titles in the past. It's also worked with GameMill as a publisher on numerous titles, who also served as publisher for Skull Island: Rise of Kong.


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Yes, I think Blizzard giving away a Diablo 4 themed PC infused with real human blood is weird too

Want a custom built, Diablo 4 themed PC infused with actual human blood? Yeah, no, me neither, but you have the chance to win one all the same.



Look, obviously blood is a big part of Diablo 4's whole thing; the game's second season is literally called the Season of Blood. And it appears that Blizzard is taking that title quite literally, as it's offering up a whole entire custom liquid-cooled PC as a giveaway that, for I guess obvious reasons, will have real human blood in it. Whose human blood, I hear you asking? No idea, someone's, but the blog post announcing the giveaway didn't really go into all that much detail on that side of things. The thing is, to get some blood, you'll have to give some blood.



This isn't just a normal giveaway, you see (as if the whole blood computer wasn't abnormal enough anyway). In order to unlock the potential to win this prize, you'll have to donate blood first. A precise 666 quarts of it, in fact, though thankfully that's just a collective total, you won't need to donate all of that yourself. Don't worry though, it is worth it technically, as there are a number of goals along the way to the 666 quarts that will net you in-game rewards.


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Final Fantasy 14's bizarre, charming crossover with Fall Guys kicks off this month

This year's weirdest crossover can probably be handed to Final Fantasy 14 and Fall Guys, and you'll be able to try it out pretty soon.



Earlier this year, Square Enix and Mediatonic announced that Final Fantasy 14 and Fall Guys would be appearing in one another's games, with the latter getting some cute costumes, and the former getting some zany obstacle courses. As announced yesterday during the Final Fantasy Fan Festival in London, the Fall Guys-themed minigame is set to appear in Eorzea when the 6.51 update arrives October 31. You can check out the trailer for the collaboration below, and it truly does just look like they put Fall Guys straight into Final Fantasy 14.



Of course, some Final Fantasy flare has been added to the courses, so you may spot some familiar iconography like Moogles, Cactuar, and Chocobo. For the most part though, just like in Fall Guys you'll be competing against other players for that coveted crown, and obviously there are some unique challenges along the way. Completing the courses also appears to net you some rewards, like pink and purple outfits that feature Fall Guys' iconic beans, and what even looks like a Fall Guys bean minion.


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Switch successor won't say goodbye to Nintendo Accounts, says Doug Bowser

Nintendo seems to be aiming to make the transition between the Switch and Switch 2 an easy one, as it plans to keep going with Nintendo Accounts.



The thing about Nintendo, is that it is simultaneously a company that is so thoughtful about what play actually means as a concept, and how it can push that concept further, while at the same time being absolutely useless when it comes to common sense about online services. Ever since the PS3 and Xbox 360, both PlayStation and Microsoft have let you retain the same account that all of your purchases are attached to, but for some reason Nintendo never did the same. According to a recent interview with Doug Bowser from Inverse, the Mario and Zelda developer looks to be changing its ways.



While Bowser denied commenting on current rumours doing the rounds about the Switch 2, or whatever it might be called, he did say, "one thing we've done with the Switch to help with that communication and transition is the formation of the Nintendo Account. In the past, every device we transitioned to had a whole new account system. Creating the Nintendo Account will allow us to communicate with our players if and when we make a transition to a new platform, to help ease that process or transition."


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The Last of Us Part 1 assist studio Visual Arts appears to have been hit by layoffs

In another hit to the industry, it looks like the PlayStation support studio Visual Arts has also been affected by layoffs.



As spotted by VGC, it appears that a number of developers at PlayStations Visual Arts studio have been laid off. Senior level designer at the developer Daniel Bellemare wrote in a LinkedIn post, " Unfortunately, following a wave of layoffs last week was my last at Playstation. While this is certainly not news I was hoping for, I'm grateful to have had a chance to work amongst extremely talented colleagues on incredible projects and I'm leaving with good memories of my time there."



Alongside Bellemare, senior technical recruiter Matt Barney also shared news of his own layoff on LinkedIn, writing, " Goodbye PlayStation it's been real! For the past few months, I knew this layoff wave was coming. I love PlayStation & I always will… I mean, I stayed when I had the chance to leave, so obviously!" Others, like rigging artist Sean Teo, also announced their time at PlayStation Visual Arts has come to an end, though in Teo's case it was noted as a case of their contract coming to an end. It's unclear if this was due to the contract being ended early or if it's just coincidence. VGC also noted that other developers had shared on social media that their contracts had also ended, but again it's unclear as to whether they're part of any layoffs or not.


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How's Starfield modding going, so far? Its most (in)famous train-obsessed creator talks life on "the frontier"

“Look at his face,” modder Kevin Brock, aka Trainwiz, says of Thomas the Tank Engine, when I ask him why he thinks the wholesome locomotive has become such a pervasive running gag within modding communities.


“How could you not laugh at that? There's no soul behind those eyes, not a smidgen of regret for the blood he's spilled,” he continues, “Frankly, if he were animated in any way, it'd take away the hilarity of the joke.”


Brock is fresh off of bringing that joke to Starfield in his own special way, by creating a mod which swaps out the default model of every single ship in the Settled Systems for Sir Topham Hat’s best train.


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Your next favourite cozy Steam game could be the nostalgic, sleepy Pine Hearts

Packed to the brim with upcoming games to try out over the weekend, EGX had a breadth of indie games to take a look at, and most of them were incredibly impressive feats from small, enthusiastic teams. One such game was the cozy Pine Hearts that managed to make everyone who witnessed its gameplay smile.

Described as an itsy-bitsy open-world puzzle game set in the sleepy scenery of Pine Hearts Caravan Park, your character roams the whimsical world exploring fond memories of growing up while solving environmental puzzles. It takes the item-based progression of the Zelda series and blends it beautifully with Souls-like level design, delivering a game that’s ideal to wind down with and simply enjoy.

During my short demo of the game, I arrived at the train station, entered the Caravan Park and began to accustom myself with navigating the area and meeting its characters. As my character runs around gleefully, one of the first that he meets is a charming pup, yapping at you from afar to show where you need to go. And of course, once you finally catch up with him, you can pet him for his help. Need I say more?

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Against all odds, Battlefield 2042 may have actually convinced players to stick around

Battlefield 2042 actually pulled it off, and made the comeback most said was impossible. It all started last weekend, when the game kicked off another free weekend across all platforms, alongside a hefty sale.

Since we can only see the numbers on Steam, it looked like both worked to bring player numbers eerily close to the game's all-time high concurrent. While that was already more success than any Battlefield 2042 had ever seen with similar promotions in the past, it looks like it wasn't a fluke.

The real test of whether the promotion convinced new players to actually stick with Battlefield 2042, of course, was whether those numbers could stay as close as possible to the highs of the free weekend. Player population almost always drops following these sort of free access weekends, as a portion of players try out the game, and move on when they're not hooked.

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Pokemon Fan Art Gives Sylveon a Flying-Type Makeover

A talented Pokemon fan has recently given Sylveon a second type by redesigning this popular Eeveelution as a Fairy/Flying creature. Eevee and its evolutions are among the cutest Pokemon ever made, and that’s why the Eeveelutions appear in adorable fan art so often.


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Overwatch 2 Player Discovers New Lore Hidden in Samoa Map

A fan recently discovered some deep lore about the history of Polynesia, Samoa, and the oceans of the Overwatch 2 world. This new lore can be heard inside one of the buildings of the new Samoa map introduced in Overwatch 2 Season 7.


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Starfield’s lead quest designer has departed Bethesda to work on another RPG

Starfield lead quest designer Will Shen has left Bethesda to join Something Wicked Games and work on upcoming RPG Wyrdsong.


Much like Pete Hines, whose retirement from the company was announced yesterday afternoon, Shen was a Bethesda veteran, having amassed close to 15 years at the studio. During that time, in addition to Starfield, he worked on quests featured in Skyrim, Fallout 76 and Fallout 4, having singled out his time as lead designer on the latter’s Far Harbor DLC as a career highlight.

“Excited to announce that I've joined Something Wicked Games,” Shen wrote in a LinkedIn post about the move, which sees him take on the new role of Lead Content Designer at SWG, “I'll be working alongside an incredible group of roleplaying game developers, and it's amazing to think we have veterans from Bethesda, Obsidian, and Bioware all on one team.”


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Pokemon GO Confirms November 2023 Community Day Pokemon

Pokemon GO announced the featured Pokemon for the November 2023 Community Day event will be Generation 2 Water/Ground-type Wooper and its Paldean regional variant. Pokemon GO players will be able to encounter Wooper at a higher rate than usual during Community Day, and a number of useful bonuses will be active for a limited time.


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Elden Ring Fan Recreates Iconic Locations From the Game Inside Minecraft

The creative tools offered by Minecraft have allowed someone to touch upon another world via a recreation of the Lands Between from Elden Ring. A Redditor and Minecraft fan has meticulously put together five locations from FromSoftware's popular RPG, focusing closely on attention to detail.


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Diablo 4 is Steam Deck verified: Slay demons on the go next week

Blizzard has confirmed that Diablo 4 is Steam Deck verified.

The demon-slaying game comes to Steam next week on October 17, allowing those with a Steam Deck to take the game on the road with them.

October 17 also marks the beginning of Season 2, known as Season of Blood.For the duration, you can expect new bosses, a seasonal event, quests, characters, and some quality of life improvements.

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GTA Online Update Adds New Ghostbusters-Inspired Car

Halloween arrives in Grand Theft Auto Online as the multiplayer game's latest update delivers a variety of spooky content, including a vehicle that is suspiciously close to the Ghostbusters' Ecto-1. Included in the GTA Online Halloween update, players can expect to find three new scary modes, a mission to photograph ghosts, bonus GTA$ and RP rewards, and some free loot, too. GTA Online players may want to skip saying "Trick or Treat," though, or else they may become ghosts themselves.


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EA WRC doesn’t have driver ratings so the teams don’t get mad at them

Love them or loathe them, one of the most discussed staples of any EA Sports game is the skill ratings used to quantify the ability of athletes. However, for the first iteration at least, EA WRC won’t have driver skill ratings for the licensed teams.



Apparently, not only is it a headache for the development team to split hairs between similar racers, but reducing a person’s life’s work down to a number also tends to upset some of the most competitive people on the planet.



“[Driver ratings are] something Jon [Armstrong, Codemasters game designer and JWRC driver] and the rest of the design team have looked at, talked about, and asked ‘how can we do this as fairly as possible, how can we do this as meaningfully as possible?’ But in the first game we’re not going to have numbers on drivers,” Ross Gowing, Codemasters senior creative director, told VG247.


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Why EA WRC uses Unreal Engine 5, not EA's Frostbite, and is current-gen only

After 16 years on its proprietary Ego engine, Codemasters is developing EA WRC using Unreal 5, and will only release the game on PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.



Despite Codesmasters’ acquisition by Electronic Arts in 2021, it will not use the Frostbite engine for EA WRC, even though many other EA studios use Frostbite exclusively.



Several considerations apparently went into the decision, but ultimately it was the ability to port over Codemasters’ lauded handling physics into the new engine that swung things in Unreal Engine’s favour.


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EA WRC is taking Rally back to its Colin McRae heyday | PREVIEW

I know precisely one person who is good at driving and got precisely one piece of advice before sliding behind the wheel in EA WRC: “You’ve got to be smooth and not stab at the controls.”



But there’s just something about the iconic Subaru Impreza - it’s probably the gold wheels, isn’t it - that makes hammering the accelerator seem like a really, really good idea.



A couple of overzealous turns later and the only smooth thing was the arc of the skid marks leading to my car, tatty and crumpled in a ditch. “Terminal damage”. Whoops.


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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Could Be Making a Big Change to One Grenade

The developers of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 are reportedly making a big flash grenade change as fans await the start of the open beta's second weekend. More changes could come in the release version this November as Activision and Sledgehammer Games gauge player feedback from the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 open beta.


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Guillermo del Toro's Star Wars movie could have been the fresh start the series needed

Acclaimed director Guillermo del Toro recently shared the simple, but still painful, reasons as to why his Jabba the Hutt Star Wars movie never happened.



Yes, yes, I know this isn't about a video game, but I only just found out that Guillermo del Toro almost made a Jabba the Hutt film, so just let me cook, OK? Now, I'm not someone who desperately needs some of the best directors around to work on one of the biggest IPs around, but man, del Toro surely would have made one heck of a Jabba film. Last month, it came to light that the Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth director was working on a script for a Jabba film "around four years ago," according to David Goyer (Man of Steel) on the Happy Sad Confused podcast.



Del Toro himself recently commented on the claim in a recent interview with Collider, where he offered a small bit of insight into the project. "We had the rise and fall of Jabba the Hutt, so I was super happy," del Toro shared. "We were doing a lot of stuff, and then it’s not my property, it’s not my money, and then it’s one of those 30 screenplays that goes away. Sometimes I'm bitter, sometimes I'm not."


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A Starfield player surveyed every single planet, and it only took 180 hours

Starfield has only been out for a month, yet one player has already managed to survey every planet it's possible to do so on.



Easily one of the biggest selling points of Starfield is just how many planets there are. There's a lot of them! More than 1000, in fact, a pretty ridiculous number, and one that very quickly made me think "yeah, I'm probably going to visit 30 of them, maybe." But other people are a bit more ambitious than me, and by a bit I mean a lot, as Reddit user DoomZero shared last week that they had in fact fully surveyed 1694 planets. Which, to be clear, is essentially every single planet in the game, with the only reason that a couple aren't fully surveyed being a bug.



It's a surprising accomplishment, especially considering that they shared in the comments that of their 200 hour playtime, 180 of that was just surveying planets, a length of time I expected to be a lot longer. In an interview with IGN, DoomZero shared how they achieved this accomplishment, as well as their reasoning behind starting the quest in the first place. "Once I started playing and learned about the surveying and fully surveying planets the idea just kind of got stuck in my head," DoomZero said. "I am a bit of a completionist and thought that it would just be a cool personal accomplishment."


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What if Five Nights at Freddy’s was real? What then? Well, we may be about to find out

If you've ever played a Five Night's at Freddy's game for even 30 minutes, you'll have picked up on the fact that the creepy animatronics are (for the most part) not your mates. However, it seems Chuck E. Cheese is willing to tempt fate ahead of the Five Nights at Freddy's film release by dusting off its own formerly wholesome cast of animal companions.

First reported by Popverse, this is part of the upcoming Five Nights of Fun event taking place in the US, in which loyalty club members can earn free stuff and Halloween-themed prizes between October 9 - 13. Why not Five Night's at Freddy's themed stuff? Well funnily enough, it appears that this isn't an official collaboration between the cheesy pizza chain and the video game IP. In a frankly hilarious twist of fate, it looks as though Chuck E. Cheese is riding the video game's coat tails.

This has been highlighted by Five Nights at Freddy's fans online, who have taken a gander at the event. Much discussion and chuckling has focused on a document that appears to be an internal employee guide advising staff to not make direct references to the FNAF IP during the event. It's important to note that the validity of this document has not been verified, but nonetheless has found itself at the centre of debate on the Five Nights at Freddy's Reddit page.

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Minecraft Players Build Incredible Medieval Kingdom

Some incredibly talented Minecraft players have accomplished a spectacular feat as they managed to build an immense medieval in-game kingdom. The medieval-themed Minecraft creation spans an astonishing 2000x2000 blocks and is made up of many different buildings, a snug little farm, a harbor city, several villages, castles, and taverns with each location connected by roads and bridges.


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Crypto, Poker, and Phil Collins: What we want in GTA 6

“What do you want to see in GTA 6?” That’s the very simple question I asked every member of staff at VG247 in order to gauge what the current mood is around the game. Do people want more of the same? It’d make sense – after all, Grand Theft Auto 5 is the best-selling game of all time, and by some margin. If it ain’t broke, the idiom goes, don’t fix it. But we’ve also been playing around as Trevor, Michael, and Franklin for a decade now, and maybe that whole setup is starting to get a bit rote.


Maybe the days of the chauvinistic, gun-toting maniac that has a penchant for driving a tank into an airfield are over. Maybe the more madcap days of Vice City and San Andreas are due a return. Maybe Rockstar will ignore literally everyone on the planet and march to the beat of its own indefatigable drum once again, surpassing all expectations and making a frankly obscene amount of money in the process. Who knows? The game is likely to be as ground-breaking as everything else in the series, but until it comes out, all we can do is dream idly about what we’d like to see in gaming’s most anticipated sandbox.


And I think you’ll like our suggestions. They all feel very on-brand.


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Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile delayed to 2024

Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile has been delayed to 2024, Activision announced at Call of Duty Next.

Originally slated to release in fall 2023 for Android and iOS, the mobile game is now targeting a spring 2024 release.

“We have a few more things we want to polish up before we release around the world in spring of 2024,” said co-studio head Chris Plummer (thanks, Charlie Intel).

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Steam finally gets fun cosy farm sim after long Epic Games Store exclusivity

Quirky indie farming sim slash dance battler Ooblets is offering a "hefty" 40% discount on Steam this week to celebrate its launch on the storefront, following the end of the game's Epic Games Store exclusivity on PC.

Playing like a mix of Stardew Valley, Story of Seasons, and Pokémon, Ooblets sees you grow the titular critters in your garden before siccing them on each other in battle. However, since this is the very definition of a cosy game, said battles are firmly non-violent, non-contact affairs involving friendly card-based dance-offs.

Ooblets is, frankly, a ludicrously twee game, made charming by the fact that its tongue is lodged firmly in its cheek on the subject of its own quaintness. The Steam launch coincides with the return of the game's annual Halloween event, which runs until November 15th and this year includes both new and returning seasonal content.

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Metal Gear Solid Voice Actor Reveals How Little She Was Paid for Key Role

Voice actress Jennifer Hale has disclosed the minimal compensation she received for her key role in Konami's iconic game, Metal Gear Solid. This revelation has ignited a conversation about the stark contrast between voice actor salaries in the gaming industry and the immense profits generated by AAA games like Metal Gear Solid.


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Assassin’s Creed Mirage review: Intoxicated by Ubi’s Djinn Palace

Assassin’s Creed is a helix, and it always has been. The developers at Ubisoft have deftly woven the dual strands of history and science fiction together for the better part of 15 years now, and the results of this experiment have been as varied as they are diverse. Mirage – heralded as a spiritual reset for the franchise – had an impossible task from the moment it was announced: reform the brand, but keep everything that people loved about the behemoth RPGs Creed of recent years.


Mirage not only meets those expectations, it bests them. It manages to find the balance not only of past and present, but also of RPG and action, of narrative urgency and freedom, of expression and intent. Mirage is my favourite Assassin’s Creed game of the past few years, and by some margin. It demonstrates that with focus comes finesse, and that you can achieve in 20 hours what Valhalla struggled to achieve in 200.

The most unexpected victory of Mirage is in its role-playing – and it almost feels accidental. You succeed in imbibing protagonist Basim, not because of any of the scant skill-trees or vague progression systems, but because of how you’re railroaded into acting like he would act, approaching situations like the character would. Gone is the viking power fantasy, the channelling of Greek gods, the gunslinging pirate gravemaker; this is Assassin’s Creed refined, where skulking in the shadows and peeking around corners is required on the dusty streets of Baghdad.

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Starfield Player Has a Portal on Their Ship That Teleports Objects

Starfield continues to surprise its players, as one of them has now revealed a portal on their ship that can teleport objects. What appears to be a glitch in Starfield defies the laws of physics within its universe and has left players intrigued.


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Swingers rejoice! Spider-Man 2 gives you more control than ever over your web-slinging traversal

Those of you that want to be able to exercise complete control over your web-swinging will be happy to hear Spider-Man 2 has some features that let you do just that.



It's pretty obvious that one of the main appeals of a Spider-Man game is the web-swinging, because what other game lets you catapult across New York like that? When it comes to web-swinging, some might like it to be fairly automatic so you can feel like Spider-Man without having to put in all that much effort. Others might want to make things more difficult, to really lean into how difficult web-swinging likely is - good thing that there's a dedicated Swing Assist option that lets you decide how much control you have over it.



In response to a user on Twitter about Swing Steering Assist, community director at Insomniac James Stevenson noted that the setting isn't an accessibility setting, but "the opposite of that." He noted "there are 10 levels of Swing Assistance on that slider. The game starts at the default (from the previous games!) is Level 10. So it’s a feature we let players turn down to get /less/ [sic] assistance if they want." According to Insomniac's page on accessibility features (which does technically go against what Stevenson said), those "higher values allow for easier web-swinging while lower values reduce the amount of resistance and cause physics to have a greater effect on web-lines while swinging."


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EA Sports FC24 is second biggest UK (physical) launch of the year, only behind Zelda TOTK

EAFC 24 is doing pretty good for itself in terms of physical sales in the UK, though it can't quite match up to the behemoth that is Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.



We don't have precise numbers just yet for EA Sports FC 24, but GamesIndustry.biz's Christopher Dring has given an insight into what the sales have been like since the rebranded football game released last Friday. According to Dring, the game's physical launch in the UK is the second highest of the year, with only Nintendo's Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom ahead of it - unsurprising, considering that as of August the RPG had hit over 18 million sales.



While EA Sports FC 24 is doing well for itself, that doesn't quite mean it's doing as good as last year. Dring reported that physical launch sales are down 30% compared to last year's FIFA 23, but he did note that EA "had expected some short-term impact as a result of the rebrand." It's not surprising that sales are down, a rebrand like that is sure to confuse some players, but whether it matters that much considering EA no longer needs to pay the massive FIFA licensing fee is another question that's difficult to answer.


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There's a new Elder Scrolls game out right now, just not the one you want

It might not be The Elder Scrolls 6, but a new Elder Scrolls mobile game could maybe, ever so slightly scratch that itch while you wait.



We all know that The Elder Scrolls 6 is still a ways out, but as spotted by IGN, there's a new Elder Scrolls game on the block. While there seems to be fairly little ruckus about it, The Elder Scrolls: Castles is available to try out in early access right now on the Google Play store. It's a slightly surprising rollout considering there doesn't appear to be a single mention of it on any of the main Bethesda Twitter accounts, but hey, I'm not the marketing manager, what do I know about advertising video games?



Of course, it's not a full Elder Scrolls title - you could probably guess that by looking at the promotional images. What it is, though, is essentially the same game as 2015's Fallout Shelter, a 2D management sim set in the world of Fallout where you're looking after a vault and all its inhabitants. Only this time, you're looking after a castle and all its inhabitants, and it's set in the world of Elder Scrolls. It's described as "a new mobile game that puts you in control of your very own castle and dynasty. Oversee your subjects as the years come and go, families grow, and new rulers take the throne."


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Some Diablo Fans Are Not Happy About the Call of Duty Crossover

A crossover between Diablo 4 and Call of Duty isn't exactly a natural fit, both from an artistic perspective and a gameplay one, and as a result, some players from the Diablo community couldn't help but voice their displeasure over the shared content. While Diablo 4 was a major success for Blizzard at launch, its honeymoon stage wore off fast, and fans began to passionately demand the quality-of-life changes that Diablo 4 was missing. The release of the controversial Patch 1.1 and the accompanying Season of the Malignant saw a lot of players leave the game, as Diablo 4's viewership on Twitch plummeted by over 98% since release.


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