We have all known the profound sorrow of getting two hours into an RPG and deciding that actually, Mum, I don't want to be an elven druid anymore. Being an elven druid sucks ass. There's barely any plantlife in the opening dungeon, so half my support skills are useless, and the only animal companion I'm qualified to conjure right now is a cranky squirrel. I'd much rather be a rogue. Look at all these elevated paths and pickable locks hereabouts! Look at all these shadows I could be skulking in, these precarious chandeliers directly opposite crawlspaces with rusty grills! Ugh, if only I weren't a stupid diluted floral wizard!

Read more

Avast, fellow salty sea-dogs. Some legally-minded landlubbers may have had words with Edward Kenway, captain of The Jackdaw and protagonist of Assassin's Creed: Black Flag. Well, Kenway's voice actor Matt Ryan at any rate, who's been filmed at a convention saying that Ubisoft threatened to sue him over a previous video from another convention in which he teased a remake of the game.

If you're out of the loop, this is the Black Flag remake the publisher haven't confirmed is coming, but has been reported to be in development several times over the past couple of years.

Read more

Between fifty game releases a day, and among them official successors and open source remakes, most 90s games your grandma bangs on about have some> modern equivalent that somewhat fills the gap.

But not The Settlers. There hasn't been a Settlers game since 1996. Whether they were good or not, its many sequels, as early as 3, started missing the point of the design. It's the roads>, man. The roads!

This isn't about iconography for its own sake. It's a design thing, an ethos. The heart of The Settlers was that your towns lived or died based largely on how well you designed your transport logistics. It was all about the roads. It doesn't even fit into a genre really, let alone the lopsided RTS the sequels collapsed into. It sounds like a typical town builder, especially today when there's a wealth of games about placing a woodcutter and a farm, but I'm tempted to say it's not even about gathering resources.

Read more

Right, so. It's supposed to go as follows: Yakuza 0, Yakuza Kiwami, Yakuza Kiwami 2, Yakuza 3 Remastered, Yakuza 4 Remastered, Yakuza 5 Remastered, Yakuza 6: The Song Of Life, Yakuza: Like A Dragon, then off into full-blown Like A Dragon land, and on to Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza. Easy. Except right now in my Steam library, it's not. The Kiwamis are cheekily lurking behind Yakuza 6, and the LADs are before all of their more Japanese gangsterly-named siblings.

It's chaos and anarchy. I can't live like this. The good news is that thanks to the update Steam's Client Beta has just gotten, it looks like I'll no longer have to.

Read more

EA have given us our first proper look at Battlefield 6's multiplayer, after revealing the game with a single player trailer last week. They've also confirmed the new shooter's release date - 10th October 2025 - and announced dates for a series of beta weekends in August.

The game they're pitching is a return to the contemporary warring of Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4, after the mildly futuristic disappointments of Battlefield 2042. It's got four familiar classes, the old Battlefield mode trinity of conquest, breakthrough and rush, and maps that incline towards close quarters combat or wide-open vehicular blasting or some blasphemous hybrid of the twain. It seems fine. And loud.

Read more

$2,099.99 (was $2,499.99)

Read more

Punishing my tendency to never bother watching Nintendo Directs, Bandai Namco used today's Switch 2-focused showcase to announce Once Upon a Katamari: the first mainline, non-remake Katamari game since 2011. It’ll be out on PC as well, come October 24th 2025, and while you’ll once again be rolling up entire societies around a swelling sticky ball, this one will span a range of time periods - so you’ll be able to knead whole new planets out of feudal Japan or ancient Greece.

Read more

Yesterday, we shared how you could save on additional storage for your Steam Deck with some microSD deals, but if you’re looking for more of a project, today’s deal is for you.

Read more

Square Enix have announced Octopath Traveler 0, a prequel to the genteel 2019 RPG Katharine Castle hailed as... "a bit of a slog"?? "A big old anticlimax"??? I thought it was quite good!

This is an outrage! I'm going to tell Katharine she sucks at writing and is terrible at video games. What do you mean, she doesn't work here any more? Well in that case, I'm going to tell Graham he should never have hired her. What do you mean, he doesn't work here any more? Who does> work here any more? Oh screw it, just roll the trailer.

Read more