Free Astrobot DLC coming this fall, featuring Stellar Blade and Helldivers 2

Good news Astro Bot lovers! In fall this year, the game is getting a new free update featuring new levels for you to complete, and some additional cameos from both Helldivers 2 and Stellar Blade.


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Whoops, Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver 1-2 Remastered appears to have leaked via the PlayStation Store ahead of today's State of Play

Ahead of the PlayStation State of Play that's set to take place later today (September 24), Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver 1-2 Remastered appears to have peskily leaked via a PlayStation Store listing that popped in, said hello, and then returned to its home planet.

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Stellar Blade developer Shift Up and Sony are being sued by Stellarblade, in a Spiderman meme-style name trademark battle

Shift Up and Sony, the developer of one of this year's about 15 million games that came with weird or problematic social media discourses, are reportedly facing a lawsuit over the use of the name Stellar Blade for said game. A film company called - you guessed it - Stellarblade, is the one doing the suing.

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Netflix has won over film and television, and now that it's picked up The Amazing Digital Circus, it looks to be coming for YouTube

In a slightly unusual move, Netflix has picked up the streaming rights for the viral web series The Amazing Digital Circus.


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Thunderbolts* first teaser trailer is finally here to remind you of a bunch of Marvel B-listers you probably forgot about

Marvel has finally released the first trailer for Thunderbolts*, offering you a chance to play "Wait, Which MCU Movie Were They In?"


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A Baldur's Gate 3 modder has managed to swap turn-based combat for real-time battles, but it currently comes with the risk of getting slaughtered mid-chat

Not long after Larian released its official modding toolkit for Baldur's Gate 3, it took next to no time for modders to find out how to unlock a developer mode in it that gives folks the chance to try a bunch of advanced stuff. Now, one modder's busy swapping out the game's turn-based fights for real-time ones, and they're making some decent progress so far.

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Great news, Stardew Valley console players, the 1.6 update finally has a release date, but you'll have to wait a tiny bit longer

A good number of you Stardew Valley console players have been waiting for the 1.6 update to come to consoles, and thankfully, your time is nearing.


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You might have been waiting for years for an Assassin's Creed set in Japan, but Ubisoft thinks right now is "great timing"

Assassin's Creed Shadows will fulfil a long-running wish from fans for Japan as a setting, but Ubisoft thinks that there hasn't been a better time than now to make it.


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You'll have to wait an entire year if you want to play the Silent Hill 2 remake on a console that isn't a PS5

If you're a Silent Hill 2 fan, but you've moved onto Xbox since the PS2 days, you're going to have to wait a whole year before it releases on the PS5 rival.


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Arcane season 2 finally has a release date, or more specifically, it has three

After a long wait, Arcane season 2 is almost here, and Netflix finally confirmed when you'll be able to watch the final season.


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God of War Ragnarok is being review bombed on Steam because, you guessed it, you need a PSN account to play it

God of War Ragnarok is finally out on Steam, except it has launched to a Mixed rating on Steam, and yes, it is (mostly) because of that PSN requirement.


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Star Citizen vs Elite Dangerous in 2024: the games that outlived their biggest rivals

There's now a premium, extended version of this podcast that you can get as a VG247 paid subscriber - check out our Support Us page for more info. Doing so helps ensure that we can keep making the show! But don't worry if that's not for you, the main show will always be free.

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Caravan SandWitch is a frictionless off-road jaunt which would've been better off as a linear experience

Caravan SandWitch prides itself in being a "narrative-driven exploration adventure," but what happens when the world that I should be dying to explore only gets in the way of the narration and overall pace?

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I sense that Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket is going to take over my life - hands-on

I have fond memories of those early, obsessive days of Pokemon Go. When it was shiny, new, and exciting. I do get why some people are still into it, but I don’t regret the fact that I slowly weaned myself off the game. There’s something about Pokemon’s never-ending treadmill of collecting and improving that lends itself perfectly to the brutally compelling loop of mobile gaming - but I was glad to be out.

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This may very well be your last chance to make up your mind about Diablo 4 before the big Vessel of Hatred expansion

Diablo 4’s next big moment is almost upon us. The game is currently in the final days of its fifth season, and while everyone is definitely looking forward to Season 6, the big thing on everyone's radar is the release of the Vessel of Hatred expansion.

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Good news, Cyberpunk Edgerunners fans, Netflix and CD Projekt are bringing us a new animated project set in Night City

Following the runaway success of Cyberpunk Edgerunners, Netflix and CD Projekt have now teased as part of Nextflix's Geeked week that another Cyberpunk 2077 animated project is on the way.

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Like A Dragon fans: Watch the RGG Summit for September 2024 here

An RGG Summit that'll likely offer an inkling of what's coming next for the Like A Dragon series is set to air today, September 20, and you can watch it here.

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PlayStation reveals 30th Anniversary Collection, giving you the chance to own a PS5 Pro that reminds you of a time when you were actually happy

Surprise, people who remember the late 1990s, or are somehow really passionate about a time during which they were just a glint in their father's eye or an actual foetus. PlayStation's revealed the PlayStation 30th Anniversary Collection. This is your chance to try and own a retro-liveried version of either the base PS5 or PS5 Pro everyone thinks is a bit pricey, plus some cool accessories/bits for it.

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Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 may lead with new mission modes, but its astonishing scope is broad enough to fly an A380 through - Hands-On

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 has a marketing line that sounds like the usual bluster you get around any publisher’s big tentpole game. It is, the publisher and its developers claim, "the most ambitious sim ever undertaken". I see marketing taglines like that all the time, obviously. I usually filter them out. But this one… it just might be true.

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You know that 'This is Fine' dog meme? The original cartoonist is launching a Kickstarter to fund a "charming platformer" based on it

You know that one meme? The one with the dog, surrounded by fire, stating "this is fine" despite all the non-ideal stuff going on around him? It's a popular little comic, one that has cemented itself on the internet as an all-timer reaction image. For most memes, that's where it ends. But the original creator of the comic the meme comes from, in partnership with Numskull Games, is now making a video game called This Is Fine: Maximum Cope, based on the dog Question Hound and his battle against various nasty creatures.


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Despite being a box office flop, it seems like film bros have yapped on enough about how Fight Club is really reflective of society, actually, to make it Letterboxd's most watched movie

Fight Club has long been known as a bit of a cult classic, but as it turns out, it's actually the top watched film on Letterboxd.


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Baldur's Gate 3 modders are delivering a "Wyll Cinematic Universe" to remedy "Larian's mistreatment" of the Blade of Frontiers

Warning: Spoilers for Baldur's Gate 3, specifically the bits Wyll is involved in or can be present for, lie ahead.

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Aloy there matey, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered looks to have been rated, giving you the chance to re-enjoy another not at all old game

Stop me if you've heard this before. There's a game that's so not old even dickheads in their early to mid twenties like me clearly remember it coming out and being able to buy it without necessarily having to beg our parents, and it's seemingly getting a remaster.

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The first trailer for Bong Joon-ho's Mickey 17 is filled with lots of dead clones, a stacked cast, and Robert Pattinson doing another funky accent

More than five years after the release of Parasite, the first trailer for Bong Joon-ho's next film Mickey 17 is here, and it's looking like a very strong return.


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The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep's latest clip comes with some classic Geralt x Jaskier banter, and a delayed release date to boot

Netflix dropped a new clip from the upcoming animated film The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep, though it does unfortunately come with a delay.


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Team Asobi wanted Astro Bot's cameos to encourage kids to go back and play the classics, so when is Sony going to let that happen?

Astro Bot is two things at once: in the first instance, it's a delightful little platform with some really good "damn the PS5 actually is a powerful console" moments and level design that makes you feel smart. In the second, and slightly more depressing instance, it's a reminder of everything that PlayStation isn't anymore thanks to its bounty of cameos from across the platform's 30 year history.


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Turns out nostalgia couldn't save Time Bandits from an untimely demise, as the Apple TV+ series has been cancelled after one season

Welp, not everything from the '80s can make a comeback, as Apple's Time Bandits series has already been cancelled.


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Final Fantasy 16 producer is begging, pleading with fans not to get freaky with mods in lead-up to PC release

Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida has asked fans to not create any "offensive or inappropriate" mods for the game prior to its PC release later today. That means you, yes you reading this right now, have been asked not to create anything vulgar or naughty. It doesn't matter how handsome Clive is!


This plea stems from a PC Gamer interview, in which Yoshida refused to name any specifics as to avoid goading cheeky modders into creating exactly what he and Square Enix wouldn't want to see. However, it doesn't take a mind reader to know the kind of stuff he's talking about. No cocks, fellas. It'll probably make Yoshida very sad to see a naked Clive pop up on his Twitter feed.


This may seem like an odd thing to specifically ask for, but the Final Fantasy PC community has a rich and storied history of taking their creative skills and horniness to the lab to conduct various sexy experiments. Like all games, these are typically among the more popular mods, however it's also worth noting that more composed creators have a history of making some pretty nice stuff. Just look at Nexusmods for a variety of cosmetic changes and so on.


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Intel lost PlayStation 6 chip contract over profit margins and backwards compatibility concerns, according to report

Intel may have missed out on a signficiant PlayStation 6 contract, which would have seen the company's chips be used in Sony's next-gen console. This comes from a new report from Reuters, which claims that Intel may have ultimately lost out on the deal due to a disagreement on profit margins and concerns around backwards compatability.


The report, published late yesterday, cites sources which state that AMD has picked up the PS6 bag after Intel was no longer the frontrunner. This deal, if locked in by Intel and Sony, would have amounted to billions of dollars in revenue according to two of Reuters' sources.


The Reuters report states: "A dispute over how much profit Intel stood to take from each chip sold to the Japanese electronics giant blocked Intel from settling on the price with Sony, according to two of the sources. Instead, rival AMD landed the contract through a competitive bidding process that eliminated others such as Broadcom (AVGO.O), until only Intel and AMD remained".


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Assassin’s Creed Shadows has got one massive, gorgeous, secret weapon up its sleeve to make it more immersive than ever: clouds

In an open world game, clouds take up a quarter of the screen at all times. They’re massive, important, and - all too often - completely overlooked. I can list a few of my all-time favourite in-game worlds (Destiny, The Witcher 3, Bloodborne, to name a few), and you know what they all have in common? Gorgeous skyboxes that do so much to help fold you into the fiction you’re playing; god rays and weather systems and a sense of scale that firmly roots you in whatever make-believe setting you’re playing in today.

But Assassin’s Creed Shadows isn’t make-believe. Not fully, anyway. As is now tradition for the series, Ubisoft is transporting you back in time, to a real historical location and time period, rooting this fantasy, very much, in reality. This time, we’re off to late-Sengoku period Japan, exploring the central regions of Kobe, Kyoto, and Osaka in 1579 as civil war threatens to choke the life out of this blossoming empire.

Like Mirage, Valhalla, Odyssey and Origins before it, Shadows is keen to project an idealised version of its setting to us - it’s not going to be a perfect, to-scale version of Japan, no. That would be a ludicrous undertaking. Instead, Ubisoft will be cherry-picking the most aesthetically- and mechanically-rewarding elements of the region, crunching them down to a scale that isn’t too overwhelming for your average Open World Enjoyer, and serving them up in a mouth-watering digital package that we can spent 100s of hours gawking at (that’s roughly the size of Origins, by the way).

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Alan Wake 2's composer says the Lake House DLC has left him "crying constantly", a "damn ugly snot cry" at that, which can only be good news, right?

Alan Wake 2 has one more piece of DLC due out this October, and working on the soundtrack has left the game's composer a bit moist.



When Remedy announced that it would be releasing a couple of pieces of DLC for Alan Wake 2, I was ecstatic considering just how good that game was. The first piece, which was a mini-anthology type thing about a couple of characters from the base game (and one not so much from the base game that I won't spoil for those that haven't got to it yet). The second and final piece of DLC, titled The Lake House, is due out next month sometime, and the game's composer Petri Alanko has shared that working on it has left him "crying constantly", though of course didn't spill any beans on what the DLC will be like.



"I’m editing vocals for [The Lake House] DLC and this is by far the hardest thing I’ve ever run into, ‘cos the feels - I’m crying constantly, and it’s a damn ugly snot cry, not some posing-in-a-pic glycerin prop tear," wrote Alanko on Twitter. "Absolutely amazing stuff coming. I wish I could say more." Alan Wake 2 co-writer and co-director Sam Lake cheekily responded to Alanko saying "I might have written some lyrics to sum up the whole journey leading to and through Alan Wake 2," finishing with a shrugging emoji.


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Is GTA 6 going to be delayed? A former Rockstar dev thinks we won't know until May 2025 at the earliest

There are constant questions over whether GTA 6 will be delayed, but one former Rockstar dev thinks any announcement of a delay won't come until next year.



Earlier this month, some rumours started to spread that GTA 6 had been delayed, but Bloomberg's Jason Schreier (known for his strong reputation when it comes to insider information) says that that doesn't seem to be the case after speaking with six employees at Rockstar - though he did also make it clear that these devs haven't been informed of a delay, meaning one could still be coming, but right now it doesn't seem to be happening. Of course, with all this talk of delays, it's still on the minds of a lot of players eager to jump into what is probably the most anticipated sequel of the decade.



In turn, former Rockstar North technical director Obbe Vermeij, who worked on several GTA titles including GTA 3, 4, Vice City, and San Andreas, offered his perspective on when news of a delay might come. "The decision to delay GTA 4 was made 4 months or so before the original release date," Vermeij explains of the beloved fourth game in the series. "Any further and it's hard to make the call. [Rockstar] is probably not in a position to determine whether they will hit 2025 until May-ish."


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Warhammer 40K: Darktide may be coming to PlayStation 5, according to a Taiwanese game rating

Warhammer 40K: Darktide - one of the best Warhammer games in recent years and a very good co-op shooter - may be popping up on the PS5 according to a Taiwanese game rating.


This rating, spotted by Gematsu, has seemingly listed the game as incoming to the Sony platform, though there hasn't been any official announcement by Fatshark or Sony for that matter as of writing. Whether this is a canary in the coal mine for a larger announcement in the near future, or a fumbled entry on a national rating platform historically fumble-averse will surely be revealed in the coming weeks or months.


Darktide has been trucking along rather nicely since its release. Originally let out into the wild in a peculiar state, with some genuine flaws tied to progression and performance, time has only made the game more inticing. These days, being blessed with notable major content updates, it's one of the better co-op PvE shooters out there. It's been doing rather well on both the PC and Xbox up until now, so PS5 players will surely be keen to hop into a game at its best.


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Be careful of spoilers, Zelda fans, Echoes of Wisdom appears to have leaked online

Those of you hoping to go into The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom might want to be careful, as the ROM appears to have been leaked.



It seems like you just can't spend any amount of time on the internet without being wary of spoilers these days, and as leak culture just continues to dominate, it's getting harder and harder to avoid them. Now, it seems like the ROM for Nintendo's next entry in The Legend of Zelda series, Echoes of Wisdom, has been leaked online (via Eurogamer). Earlier this week, YouTuber Nintendo Prime posted a video claiming that they had seen a link to a ROM that contains the entire game online, and that they "have confirmed" it's real. Nintendo Prime hasn't shared any footage from the leak online, noting that they just confirmed it "as part of my job," telling fans to "stop asking" for it because piracy is "illegal and career ending to do so."



Others verified the ROM leak was real too, with Zelda content creator Zelda Lore writing on their own Twitter, "WARNING! Echoes of Wisdom has LEAKED. People already have it on emulators. Be careful if you want to remain spoiler free." So far a quick look around the internet doesn't seem to show too much of the game, though I have seen elsewhere that the game's opening title screen has been shared (no I won't leak it, I'm not getting got by the Nintendo snipers today, thank you very much). A similar thing happened last year with Tears of the Kingdom, which eventually led to Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu's development being ceased and its lead dev having to pay Nintendo $2.4 million.


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They're taking the Hobbits to 2025 - cosy life-sim Tales Of The Shire: A Lord of the Rings Game catches a delay

Apologies to those of you hoping to escape to a cosy Hobbit life, but Tales of the Shire has been delayed into 2025.



While there's a seemingly infinite number of cosy games to play at any given moment, Lord of the Rings fans were unsurprisingly particularly excited by Tales of the Shire. You get to be a Hobbit and do things like fish, farm, cook, and explore the world of Lord of the Rings in a low-stakes manner, what's not to love? It was originally due out sometime this year, but as the year gets closer and closer towards its end, Wētā Workshop Game Studio has some bad news: the game has been delayed into 2025. It's obviously not the news you'd want to hear, especially when one of the most recent video game entries in the world of Middle-earth was The Lord of the Rings: Gollum.



"All of us here at Wētā Workshop are excited to have you join us in the Shire, a peaceful corner of J.R.R. Tolkien's world", wrote Wētā Workshop in a statement. "When a new Hobbit steps into Bywater for the very first time, we want that moment to be everything you're hoping for. To ensure that we deliver that vision, Tales of the Shire will now be launching early 2025. Thank you for your patience and continued support. Be sure to tune into our A Hobbit Day Showcase on September 22nd to learn more about Tales of the Shire and Our new release date.


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In a time of uncertainty for live-service games, Pocketpair makes it clear that Palworld is staying as a premium title

Those of you worried that Palworld will go the full live-service route likely don't need to be, as developer Pocketpair has no plans to make it free-to-play.



Palworld is the kind of game that's pretty perfectly poised to go free-to-play if it wanted to, as all those sales certainly put it in a strong position for a good long while. Many games of its ilk typically are free-to-play these days, opting for microtransactions and DLC as the main form of revenue, but in a recent interview with ASCII Japan (as translated by Automaton), Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe was asked about whether Palworld will switch to the live-service model in its lifetime.



"When you think about it from a business perspective, making [Palworld] a live-service game would extend its lifespan and make it more stable in terms of profitability," Mizobe said. "However, the game was not initially designed with that approach in mind, so there would be many challenges involved in taking it down the live-service path." He also pointed out how games like PUBG and Fall Guys managed to successfully switch to a free-to-play model, but noted that both of them "took several years to make the shift. While I understand that the live-service model is good for business, it’s not that easy."


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The best games that bricked consoles

There's now a premium, extended version of this podcast that you can get as a VG247 paid subscriber - check out our Support Us page for more info. Doing so helps ensure that we can keep making the show! But don't worry if that's not for you, the main show will always be free.

If you were lucky enough to have lived through the 7th console generation as a young adult with enough disposable income to buy a couple of games per month, you ate damn well. You probably have countless fond memories of each big new watercooler game that the studios of the day were firing out with alarming regularity, and you had no idea what the hell "games as a service" meant. Bliss.

What wasn't blissful, though, was how unreliable the machines were. The Xbox 360 of course was blighted by the Red Ring of Death scandal, a vast and expensive tech design and consumer rights blunder that cost Microsoft billions to put right. The PS3 similarly had the Yellow Light of Death, which wasn't as bad or as widespread as Microsoft's issue, but still affected a lot of people and is pretty much a guaranteed certainty if you're still lucky enough to have a working PS3 Fat: clean that thing religiously and change the thermal paste. Honestly. Do it. It will die eventually whatever you do, but don't tempt fate.

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The best Sims game turns 20 today, calling forth a wave of warm nostalgia in the face of the franchise's uncertain future

Like many children, I grew up playing whatever video games I could get my hands on, my early choices dictated largely by parental preference and what the owner of the sole computer shop in my rural hometown chose to stock. The original Sims was the first game I ever successfully lobbied to own: actively seeking it out — and my subsequent fascination upon actually getting to play it — was, with hindsight, a fairly significant early expression of my emerging personality as a 10-year-old. As you can probably imagine, therefore, four years and countless mercifully-untracked in-game hours later, I was about as hype for The Sims' first-ever sequel as a geeky 14-year-old can get. Read: extremely. And because life is nice sometimes, I was destined not to be disappointed.

All of which is to say that there's no denying the nostalgia factor at play here; but I still maintain that The Sims 2 was the high point of the franchise. And, while this isn't an uncontested view, it's not exactly a niche opinion either: it's a stronger candidate for the title than The Sims or The Sims 4, certainly; and while The Sims 3 has a lot of fans these days, the room temperature read seems to suggest it's an even split at best.

The Sims 2 wasn't criticism proof on launch, of course, even if it came in for less flack overall than its eventual sequels. For players of the original game, this was their first experience of going back to a base game without the add-ons they'd spent the previous four years (and a significant chunk of money) collecting to expand their experience. The conspicuous absence of features like pet ownership, vacations, fame, magical powers, and urban nightlife — all of which had been added through the original game's seven expansion packs — came in for a measure of criticism, especially once it became obvious that EA and Maxis fully intended to sell almost all of those features again for The Sims 2 in what amounted on a basic level to remakes of said EPs.

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Hollowbody review - A thrilling PSX-style experience that remixes the classic survival horror formula

Forget all about the upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake, for now at least. Hollowbody is the latest survival horror game on the scene, and when VG247 previously described it as one of our most anticipated horror games, we had good reason to do so. Hollowbody is an exceptional experience that pays homage to many cult classics, while forging a unique legacy of its very own.

Playing as Mica, you are an unlicensed black market shipper in a dystopian British city. And while Mica’s home in Hollowbody’s world looks futuristic, with flying cars and neon hues, it’s the exclusion zone where you’ll be spending most of your time as she strives to find her missing partner, Sasha. As newspaper clippings, posters, and the array of corpses slowly reveal, this exclusion zone was one struck with disaster; a disaster that killed off many civilians and stripped them of their homes, and this disaster was far from natural. In fact, it appears to have been manufactured in a lab, so before you know it, Hollowbody is already providing you with a stark reminder of Resident Evil’s biological terrors.

This isn’t all that there is to Hollowbody’s story, however. The intricate and provocative world-building available allows you, as Mica, to really sink your teeth into these crumbling apartments and desolate streets, and the stories of the people who once walked them. The discoveries you make and radio signals you tune into are so moving at times that it’s hard not to compare the experiences of these characters to the very real experiences of real people in 2024. Hollowbody may seem dystopian and futuristic, but ultimately, it tells an incredibly pertinent tale.

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Wild Bastards has got killer style and ideas, but feels like a scattered shotgun blast instead of a bullseye

Blue Manchu's Void Bastards, published back in the day by Humble Games, was a 'strategy-shooter' roguelike I enjoyed enough to grab twice, one DRM-free and another on Steam. More than five years later after its launch, Wild Bastards is taking things in a new direction I haven't been vibing with.

I was really excited to jump into this one. It looked remarkably stylish and breezy, the sort of perfect indie release for the pre-autumn AAA madness period. Unfortunately, my first few hours with it have been middling, and I was wondering whether I wasn't in the right headspace for it, yet some reviews are echoing many of my feelings.

From the get-go, it becomes abundantly clear Wild Bastards is a huge love letter to westerns. "Of course, it basically says so on the cover!" Well, yeah, but you might have the looks and lack the right voice. That ain't an issue here, as Blue Manchu has nailed the banter between characters (as annoying as it can often be) and the atmosphere of a sci-fi setting that borrows all of its skeleton from cowboy and bandits movies. There's even a team of 13 legendary outlaws and enough cliches to stop a train. It wears its influences proudly on its sleeve.

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Helldivers 2 players seem pretty cool with Arrowhead sticking stratagems in a Warbond for the first time, provided plenty of free firepower keeps coming

Yesterday, Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead revealed the next Warbond that'll be arriving in the game, Chemical Agents, which is set to kick up a stink when it drops on September 19.

Part of this latest Warbond are a couple of stratagem variants - the TX-41 Sterilizer and the AX/TX-13 'Guard Dog' Dog Breath - with this being the first time Arrowhead's elected to include some in a Warbond, rather than offering the usual couple of new primary weapons. How are players feeling about it? Well, pretty ok, it seems.

As we reported yesterday, Arrowhead acknowledged this change in the blog detailing Chemical Agents by writing: "Adding stratagem variants to Warbonds is new with Chemical Agents, but our designers felt that since gas is a crowd control tool, it made more sense to release stratagems and let Helldivers choose the primary weapons they love the most. Not only that, but this is bringing some serious variety to Chemical Agents that we hope players will enjoy."

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Stray publisher Annapurna Interactive's "entire" gaming staff reportedly resigns after independence negotiations break down

All 25 members of staff on the gaming team at Annapurna Interactive - publisher of acclaimed indies like Outer Wilds, Stray and Neon White - have reportedly resigned after talks to spin-off the division as an "independent entity" broke down.

According to a report from Bloomberg, corroborated by IGN, Annapurna president of interactive and new media Hector Sanchez has reassured partner developers that the company will continue its existing contracts.

The report states that Annapurna Interactive President Nathan Gary and his team had been negotiating with Annapurna Pictures owner Megan Ellison over spinning off the gaming division into "independent entity", with Ellison pulling out of these negotiations at some juncture. The resignation of Gary and the other staff followed this development.

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Skateboard man Tony Hawk teases that he's working with Activision on "something the fans will truly appreciate"

Remember Tony Hawk, skateboarder and star of a bunch of video games that served as foundational experiences for you and your mates - assuming you grew up with dreams of competing at the X Games and having Rage Against The Machine play at your medal winning afterparty? Well, he's just teased plans to commemorate the original Pro Skater's 25th birthday, apparently with help from Activision.

"I wish I could tell you more, but I can tell you that I’ve been talking to Activision again, which is insanely exciting. We’re working on something,” Hawk said, over a plate of Chinese chicken salad and the spaghetti bolognese that you get at LA's Chateau Marmont hotel.

“This is the first time I've said that publicly," he added, "I think it will be something the fans will truly appreciate.” Hawk did also rule out the idea of it being contact lenses that make you skate like him, so there you go.

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Helldivers 2's next Warbond, Chemical Agents, will let you douse bugs in noxious gas as "galactic pest control" and comes with a fart emote

Helldivers 2 developer Arrwhead has revealed the next Warbond that'll be arriving in the game. It's called Chemical Agents, and will live up to that name by letting you douse enemies in horrible gas and unleash some similarly toxic odours on your teammates through a fart emote.

The news of this Warbond comes as studio is building to the deployment of Patch 01.001.007 on September 17, which thus far looks to be bringing a heap of buffs in an attempt to get the game's community back into their happy zone, following recent criticism over nerfs. Here's hoping the follow-up to the Freedom's Flame Warbond passes that same smell test.

As outlined in the PS blog post announcing it, Chemical Agents is set to drop on September 19, and offers a bunch of gear themed around the kind of stuff you might don if you were trying to rid the entire galaxy of bacteria using everything you keep in the cupboard under your kitchen sink.

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Venom: The Last Dance's second trailer has a bittersweet vibe and a surprise Knull appearance

The highlight of the first Venom: The Last Dance trailer was the symbiote taking over a horse, which... isn't exactly high praise. In the just-released second preview, however, things are looking more intriguing and unexpectedly high-stakes.

We already knew that the third Venom movie was meant to be the 'end of the line' for Tom Hardy's Eddie Brock and the chatty Venom symbiote unless some sort of very half-assed crossover event movie happens with Morbius, Kraven, and whatnot. The first trailer also introduced Chiwetel Ejiofor as a military-type and Juno Temple as a scientist both trying to hunt down and understand the symbiote just as a major invasion hits Earth. Now, the plot is getting a bit more complicated.

One major complaint about the two Venom movies released so far, which have done really well at the box office despite the middling critical receptions, was that they lacked compelling-enough villains or threats that went beyond just another guy wearing a symbiote in a different colour. Sure, Carnage is a big villain from the comic books, but he was wasted alongside Woody Harrelson's Cletus Kassady. Now, in the final stretch, the creatives and producers behind the saga are raising the stakes by bringing Knull, the god and creator of all the hungry symbiotes, into the fold.

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The Penguin will return in The Batman 2, but Colin Farrell was just happy to be done with him after shooting his spinoff show

The Penguin finally premieres on Max in exactly one week, on September 19. We're now learning more and more about the process of shooting the long-anticipated series, and it appears that Colin Farrell didn't have a super great time under all the prosthetics and makeup.

As part of Total Film's new issue, the actor explained the highs and lows of returning to Gotham as Oswald Cobblepot, and while he praises the character that's been created by Matt Reeves and showrunner Lauren LeFranc, he also was happy to leave him behind.

"Don't get me wrong – I loved it – but it got in on me a little bit. By the end of it, I was bitching and moaning to anyone who would listen to me that I f**king wanted it to be finished," he openly admitted before describing his personal attachment to previous iterations of the character. "It's not like I didn't know who I was and I was going out and burning cars and s**t, but... if you take what Matt Reeves created and then what Lauren [LeFranc, showrunner] did and what Mike [Marino, prosthetics and make-up designer] did and put them all together, it was a really powerful experience."

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As claims of Amazon pausing Good Omens production emerge over serious allegations against Neil Gaiman, the author reportedly offers to step away from the show

Neil Gaiman was accused of sexual assault earlier this year, and it's now being reported that as a result production on Good Omens season 3 is being paused.



Back in July, a report was released alleging that Nail Gaiman had committed sexual assault against multiple women, one of which allegedly had signed a non-disclosure agreement following her experience with the author, others having previously served as nannies for his child. Currently, Gaiman has denied the allegations against him, but earlier this week Deadline reported that production has been paused on the Amazon Prime and BBC adaptation of Good Omens, a popular show based on books he co-wrote with Terry Pratchett.



While a spokesperson provided no comment to Deadline, the outlet claims that it had heard there are discussions about possible production changes. However, Deadline has now reported that Gaiman himself has offered to step back from the third and final season of Good Omens. This is apparently so that production can continue on it, but according to Deadline this is not an admission from Gaiman that any of the allegations are true. Amazon is reportedly believed to be considering Gaiman's offer, but no final calls have been made just yet. The show is currently in pre-production, and was originally slated to be released in January, 2025.


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Helldivers 2's next big update is buffing the gun that's designed to be "like a sniper rifle on crack" so you can blast larger enemies to bits

Helldivers 2's upcoming patch will be bringing with it some pretty beefy buffs to the RS-422 railgun, with Arrowhead having slid the weapon's damage numbers upwards in its efforts to deliver the kind of fun that the game's community has been asking for.

The studio is offering little snippets of the notes for Patch 01.001.007 at the moment, building on what it shared in last week's blog post and building up to the update dropping on September 17.

Following up on revealing its plans in terms of buffing flamethrowers yesterday, Arrowhead's latest revceal concerns the railgun, which was a very popular weapon, especially early on in the game's lifespan when it was being used to take down armoured foes before being hit with an unpopular nerf.

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NBA 2K25 review: A 7-foot 6, 300-pound center that’s plenty skilled, but still a bit turnover-prone

If anyone’s asked me over the past few years which of the big annual sports franchises generally offered the most bang-for-your-buck on a yearly basis, I’ve probably said NBA 2K.

It’s not a hugely ringing endorsement - unless you’re interested in whichever minor tweaks to the formula are on offer, you can generally skip any at least a year or two of it or its competitors in the handegg or footsphere business without actually missing much. But, in a genre where the strength of the package, the sheer volume and depth of content aimed at letting you do a sports thing in various ways, is king, NBA 2K’s felt like LeBron. If he was constantly trying to sell you fake money.

NBA 2K25 is just as big as its notoriously girthy predecessors, clocking in at about 133GB on my PC, which is in the ballpark of Starfield and Baldur’s Gate 3, both games that are noted for their hugeness. What you get for surrendering all that hard drive space isn’t a sports game so much as it is several smaller games that’ve combined into one giant mecha-sports thing. Like if you told Shaq, Kobe, and Phil Jackson to stand on each others’ shoulders.

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Watch Diablo 4 fail to compute after one player's Barb does well beyond the highest amount of damage possible

Diablo 4 is a very competent game, so it’s certainly amusing to see it, well, sort of break as a result of the amount of damage one player managed to do. The game is currently hosting its latest Public Test Server (PTR), allowing players to get early hands on with the revamped progression system, new gear and many of the improvements coming to the game with Season 6 and the Vessel of Hatred Expansion.

PTRs are designed for players to break them, find bugs, and report… unusual occurrences. In many cases, this particular test has been rougher than previous PTRs, but it’s also been responsible for some of the funniest content.





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