Gaming News

Time is running out to play Anthem, BioWare's live-service game that originally launched in early 2019. In just one week, EA will take the online-multiplayer game offline, meaning it won't be playable starting January 12. EA officially announced that Anthem would be shut down in July 2025. This gave players roughly half-a-year to return to the RPG and to spend any leftover currency they had for the title. Eurogamer is looking at whether any sort of in-game event is planned to make the...
Over two years after its release, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is enjoying an all-time peak on Steam, likely in large part due to the game's new DLC that ties in directly to the film franchise's latest installment. Data from SteamDB showed that the Ubisoft-published open-world game hit a record number of 15,283 players this week--a gain from its previous peak of 12,496 players last month when Avatar: Fire and Ash hit cinemas on December 19. With the release of the movie came a DLC...
The souls-like genre has exploded in popularity since the dawn of From Software's Souls franchise, with multiple companies taking a stab at the format--and some companies taking multiple stabs. Bandai Namco, who publishes FromSoft's Souls games as well as Elden Ring, dropped an anime-style version of the genre in 2019's Code Vein, and now it's back for more in Code Vein II. We spent a few hours with the next Code Vein adventure during The Game Awards week, and we came away impressed with...
To say Sandfall Interactive has gained a few fans after releasing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 would be a wild understatement. In fact, the RPG wasn't just GameSpot's Game of the Year, but also made history at The Game Awards. This all means expectations will be sky high for the developer's next project. However, Sandfall wants to avoid appealing to the masses and continue focusing on "what we think is cool." Speaking with Edge magazine, Sandfall lead writer Jennifer Svedberg-Yen noted that...
The upcoming third season of HBO's The Last of Us will feature a different actor playing Manny. It's been confirmed by Variety that Danny Ramirez, who joined the show in Season 2, will not return for Season 3 due to scheduling conflicts, with the role to be recast. It remains to be seen what actor may take over the role, however. Spoilers for The Last of Us follow below. Manny is a supporting character in the overall story of The Last of Us. He is a former member of the Fireflies who...
Through most of last year, IO Interactive assured players that its upcoming James Bond title, 007 First Light, was set for an early 2026 debut. The game had been scheduled to debut on March 27, but the release date has now been pushed back to May 27. In a statement posted online late last month, IO Interactive's Hakan Abrak called 007 First Light the company's "most ambitious project to date" while mentioning the Bond staples included in the game like car chases, gadgets, and wild...
Twitch Hype Train world records are a rare thing. The ultimate show of dedication from a creator's fanbase, these accumulative trains rely on a streamer's viewers donating subscriptions or Bits to the channel. Neuro-sama beat her own world record at the end of December 2024 and now, well, she's only gone and done it again. The hat trick of Hype Train world records belongs to the AI VTuber, her sister Evil Neuro, and their creator Vedal987. For the uninitiated, or those outside of the...
Quick-time events, despite everyone's best efforts to spice them up, remain pretty meh. When you first begin Dispatch, the new episodic superhero adventure game from AdHoc Studio, you're asked if you want to enable quick-time event prompts as an optional game mechanic. It says something that these QTE prompts only really appear in the first and last episode of Dispatch's eight-episode run. But if you're worried the only input you'll have in Dispatch is pressing a button at the right time...
Note: MASSIVE spoilers for the final section of Donkey Kong Bananza. Read on at your own risk! All throughout Donkey Kong Bananza, DK and Pauline are battling Void Company and its leader Void Kong. However, with each new level, there's a reptilian presence permeating the experience. Some enemies bear a striking resemblance to the Kremlings of DK adventures past, hidden treasure chests are green and bear what look like crocodile teeth, even the Banandium Root--Void Company's main goal in...
Lego's latest batch of 3-in-1 Creator sets includes a pretty cool gaming-themed kit. The 268-piece Lego Retro Gaming Console retails for $20 and can be built as a handheld game system, miniature arcade machine, or desktop computer. Recommended for builders ages eight and up, the Lego Creator 3-in-1 Retro Gaming Console launched January 1 and is in stock at Amazon, Best Buy, and the Lego Store. New Lego Creator 3-in-1 Building Sets (January 2026) The Retro Gaming Console is one of nine new...
Four scouts on an end-of-year trip, flying across the world for what should be a life-changing experience. What could go wrong? An engine malfunction. The squad crash-lands somewhere in the Pacific. They’re the only survivors on a mysterious island that only grows stranger the deeper they venture and the longer they stay. This is Peak. Sound familiar? The stories of Lost, the Emmy-winning 2004 mystery-laden drama series, and Peak feel like two parallel tracks that move in an eerily similar...
At the beginning of 2025, I fully believed I had grown tired of stories about multiple timelines. During the past decade, the Marvel Cinematic Universe pushed the classic comic book narrative device into the mainstream, fueling a film conglomerate with legally approved cameos, flashy visuals on the silver screen, and loose plots that, eventually, came together for one final pay-off. While the concept of the multiverse has been explored in film and TV even before Marvel's takeover, it...
Obsidian's Avowed is one of the better action-RPGs released in 2025. While it doesn't reinvent any particular wheel, it benefits from an engaging campaign, fun combat systems, and charming characters. Aside from the occasional bug--a common element of Obsidian's open-world games--and an overabundance of homicidal bears, I liked nearly everything about the game. That includes Avowed's most controversial game mechanic: enemy respawns, or the lack thereof. When it comes to RPGs, players often...
Pokemon Go's new Precious Paths season is officially underway, and the mobile game is ushering it in with a variety of events and activities in December. On top of new Raid bosses and Spotlight Pokemon, this month will see the arrival of a few new Pokemon like Nacli and Clobbopus, while every featured Pokemon from the past year is coming back for December's two-day Community Day event. Pokemon Go is also getting into the festive spirit this month with a big two-part Winter Holiday...
My favorite moment in Skin Deep, an immersive sim and stealth game about rescuing cats and fighting your evil clone in deep space, was always the one immediately after a thoroughly developed plan inevitably went sideways. The skittish way that I was forced to sprint and crawl under a table or into a vent. The manner in which my strategy devolved into simply batting things off of shelves in order to incapacitate a roaming guard or noisily distract them from looking in my direction. The way...
PlayStation has revealed this month's batch of free games for PlayStation Plus subscribers. All PS Plus members will be able to claim Need For Speed Unbound, Epic Mickey: Rebrushed, and Core Keeper starting January 6 and they will remain available until Monday, February 2. NFS Unbound promo art. The most recent Need for Speed game, NFS Unbound, has single-player and multiplayer campaigns set in Lakeshore City, which greatly resembles Chicago. Street racing is a key part of the experience...
Throughout the events of Promise Mascot Agency, I was Pinky's ride. Anywhere that she needed to go, I had to ferry her in my crappy little truck. As a matter of fact, I was responsible for the transport of any and every mascot that stumbled through the doors of the Promise Mascot Agency and came under my employ. When Kofun needed to go to a nearby graveyard, I was the guy for the job. When Trororo needed a lift to the local adult store, I begrudgingly told him to hop in. Be it by land, air...
What do you think of when you think of a woman in pain? There are no tidy universalisms here, but for many of us, even most of us, pain is private and domestic. You could think of a mother shouldering burdens alone while her husband is at work. The father in the waiting room while the mother screams with strangers. A woman going to the doctor about an ache, only for him to tell her to lose weight and deny the problem is even happening. All these things are simple clichés--tropes stolen from...
In the cavernous convention halls of Gamescom 2025, conference attendees gawk at towering installations of fabricated castle sets and pirate ships. The massive movie set-esque booths inspire awe, but off center and to the side of these constructions rests another installation--one that has managed to draw an equally impressive crowd without a flashy monument. Wrapped around this booth are chattering fans--many who appear to be women and femmes in their 20s and 30s--all queued in a line long...
Epic has spent the past few years trying as hard as it can to will the Fortnite metaverse into being--and now, at the end of 2025, it's actually starting to look like it's getting there. Things are still very messy, but Epic's moves in that direction--which frequently seem to involve trying random things just to see what happens--may have finally borne fruit. Back at the end of 2023, Fortnite attempted to usher in its metaverse in earnest by launching Fortnite Festival, Rocket Racing, and...