Terminator's T-1000 is coming to Mortal Kombat 1 next month. Read more

Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza has found its sea legs on Steam, where it launched to the series' second-biggest concurrent player haul to date. Read more

You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games here Contents hide Destiny 2 Episode Heresy Act 1 has been great so far. Players have been getting unreleased weapons, and Bungie has also recently confirmed that they are not going to fix a game-changing bug thanks to its popularity amongst the D2 community. While Act 1 has been very good, acts 2 and 3 are imminent, and a Destiny 2 Heresy leak has revealed details about a fun new mode very similar to D1.Destiny 2 Heresy leak reveals new boss rush modeWe previously reported about a leak that suggested a boss rush mode was coming to Destiny 2 Episode Heresy, but this has now been reaffirmed with a lot of details provided by BungieLeaks. This boss rush mode is said to be very similar to Court of Oryx from D1, if not the exact same.Per BungieLeaks, it is a boss rush mode with preparation phases in between encounters, and the Combatant difficulty increases after every other preparation phase. It begins with players spawning at the Hall of Souls, and there is a Taken Altar [that] allows us to change our Taken Path (Resolve or Ambition), and allows us to increase our rune empowerment with Sigil Stones. Save Up to $1,200 on the Samsung Galaxy S25! Pre-order now and save big with trade-in and Samsung credit. Limited time only! *Includes trade-in value + $300 Samsung credit. There are said to be Tier I, II, and III for Runes, and you will be able to buy the following with Runes:Boons (Minor, Major, and Corrupted)Buffs/Perks (most are all new, heres one: Refills ability energy and ammo reserves. Triggers before every second encounter.)Tactical Advantages (Vanguard Turrets, Taken Portals, Transcendent Pools, Rally Buffs, etc.)Relic Weapons (Hive Sword, Solar Scythe, Synaptic Spear, and a Void Coalescence)Image credit: @BungieLeaks on XBungieLeaks has also shared a list of augments with educated guesses about their abilities: Must-Listen: Publishing Manor Lords w/ Joe Robinson VideoGamer Podcast Listen Now Adapt: Counter a challengers regenerating shield by matching its elemental type.Banish: Defeat Casters quickly to prevent banishment. . . or fight your way back to reality.Bound: Challengers gain immunity when together. Entering a ceremonial ring will draw one away.Bulwark: Avoid standing on Taken stains, which cloak challengers in immunity.Burst: Eruptions of Taken energy burst from surfaces.Descend: Damage falling blights before they descend fully. . . or suffer consequences.Miasma: Rifts periodically emit flares of blinding Darkness.Might: Destroy small blights to reveal a Protector whose Taken Essence can damage the main blight.Ritual: Being near allies will initiate a Taken Purge. Find safety in separation.Rune Charge: Locate the matching Rune symbol to pierce a challengers immunity.Sharpen: Confront immune Bladebearers to obtain Swords that strip a challengers protection.Swarm: Defend against swarming foes.Wrath: Confront mighty Wrathborn soldiers.Image credit: @BungieLeaks on XLastly, although BungieLeaks assumes the boss rush mode will arrive in Act 2, there is the possibility it will arrive in Act 3 instead. This is because theres 3 variants (Blood of Oryx, Lucent Brood, and Wrathborn) and Act II is only 3 weeks long.As of writing, Episode Heresy Act 2 is currently scheduled for March 11th with Act 3 on April 1st. Heresy is currently scheduled to end completely on July 15th.For more Destiny 2, leaks have revealed a weapon thats so good it feels like youre cheating, and Sony has responded to a$200 million dollar lawsuitfrom former D2 director.Destiny 2Platform(s):Google Stadia, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Web, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/XGenre(s):Action, Adventure, First Person, Massively Multiplayer, Shooter8VideoGamerRelated TopicsDestiny 2 Subscribe to our newsletters!By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime.Share

You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games here Contents hide One of the best parts of Arrowheads Helldivers 2 is the unbridled stress of slamming in stratagems while running for your life. However, for those who dont enjoy the heart palpitations caused by thumbing in the wrong button, one awesome fan has created a new way of easily imputing the best stratagems.Early input Stratagems in Helldivers 2Via Polygon, Elgatos popular-but-pricey Stream Deck accessory allows players to easily map macros to the hardware. However, theres also a way of doing this completely for free mobile app.Helldivers 2 player CrashKoeck has created a sweeping stratagems plugin for all versions of the Stream Deck. With a clever drag-and-drop feature for all available stratagems in the game, the mapping tool allows players to build their own stratagem pages regardless of how many buttons your Stream Deck has. Save Up to $1,200 on the Samsung Galaxy S25! Pre-order now and save big with trade-in and Samsung credit. Limited time only! *Includes trade-in value + $300 Samsung credit. For players who want it, the tool allows you to map every stratagem onto a single button. With the free version of the mobile app, youll have six stratagems available at the tap of your phone screen. However, using the pages feature, you can quickly nab any stratagem you like.With Helldivers 2 getting even more difficult as the game introduces terrifying new enemies for Automatons, Terminids and even Illuminate, some players may want to make use of these easy macro buttons. (If you have a physical Stream Deck, itll feel a lot cooler thats for sure). Must-Listen: Publishing Manor Lords w/ Joe Robinson VideoGamer Podcast Listen Now For our money, manually inputting stratagemseven the longer onesadds a layer of stress and fear to HD2 that shouldnt be replaced. However, if you just dont vibe with stratagem inputting anymore, there are always options for you.For more Helldivers 2 coverage, read about the games next crossover event thats in the works. Additionally, remember the fear we all felt when the Meridian Singularity devastated Angels Venture. Oh yeah, and its on its way to Super Earth. Helldivers 2Platform(s):PC, PlayStation 5Genre(s):Action, Shooter, Third Person8VideoGamerSubscribe to our newsletters!By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime.Share

In this video Spencer Magnusson looks at Blender optimization . He goes over visibility settings for objects and collections, and the WHY you would (and should) use all of them.Source

Assassin's Creed Shadows might just be a bit cursed, because some players are seemingly already playing a month ahead of its launch. Read more

Suit up"It's a mecha fan's dream" Over 300,000 players have suited up for Mecha Breaks Steam demoThe demo has absolutely surged up the Steam charts, with an open beta.Image credit: Seasun Games News by Connor Makar Staff Writer Published on Feb. 24, 2025 A demo for the upcoming mecha PvP shooter, Mecha Break, has soared up the Steam charts, and it's not even out yet. An open beta / demo, which was released last night, has already hit a peak of 317,522 players. That's a lot of mecha fans!Mecha Break developed by Amazing Seasun Games and first revealed at The Game Awards back in 2023 has gradually been building up steam over the past year or so. There were some earlier closed preview events held; I even went to one back in April 2024 and came away thoroguhly impressed. All this plus an earlier open beta seems to have built towards this explosive drop.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. The demo currently has mixed reviews on Steam for a variety of reasons. The positive reviews are there and vast, with one player, Arshaiden, describing it as "a mecha fan's dream" and various others falling in love with the feel of piloting each mech and the fast paced PvP gameplay. It seems like a breath of fresh air for many, which is a good sign for the game's longevity.As for negative reviews, they come in various forms. Some are unhappy with the state of the beta, the peeks at microtransactions present and pay-to-win implications it creates, and others are perturbed with the kernel-level anti-cheat that the game requires. Of course, there are some who just don't like the game either, but it's looking like a war on 3-main fronts when it comes to the Mecha Break dislikers.There's no stated open beta end date as of yet, which is peculiar, but nonetheless it should act as further fuel to fire your eagerness to try out Mecha Break if it sounds like something you'd be in to. Give it a download and let us know what you think of it down below!

Say hello to Gaussian Splatting (GS) a game-changing 3D rendering technique that's been turning heads for its jaw-dropping realism and lightning-fast performance! Unlike the old-school methods that rely on polygons or complicated neural networks, GS takes a fresh approach by using millions of tiny, translucent ellipsoids known as Gaussian splats to create a scene. Think of each splat as a little pixel with its own personalitypacked with info like position, color, size, and transparency. When all these splats come together, they blend so smoothly youd swear theyre one seamless masterpiece, perfectly capturing the essence of the scene.How does Gaussian Splatting work?Creating a Gaussian Splat (GS) model is a bit like a high-tech version of photogrammetry. It all starts by capturing multiple photos or videos of an object or scene from different angles. These images are then analyzed to figure out the camera positions and generate a preliminary 3D point cloud of the scene, a process known as Structure from Motion (SfM). But here's where it gets interesting instead of sticking with basic points, each one in the cloud gets upgraded into a Gaussian splat. Think of these splats not as simple points, but as tiny ellipsoids, each with its own unique properties, ready to form part of the stunning 3D scene:Position: Determines where the splat is located in 3D space.Shape and Size: Dictates how the splat stretches or scales, allowing it to represent fine details.Color: Stores the splat's color information, which may vary depending on the viewing angle.Transparency: Defines how transparent the splat is, essential for blending multiple splats.

Subscribe to Nintendo Life on YouTube797kOne of the most striking elements of Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection, which celebrates the 25th anniversary of the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game, is the sheer number of Yu-Gi-Oh! video games that came out between 1998 and 2004. The Early Days Collection includes 14 games just from Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance titles, some of which have never previously been released outside of Japan.Over half of the games in the collection belong to the Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters series, despite increasingly convoluted names: Duel Monsters (1998), Duel Monsters II: Dark Duel Stories (1999), Dark Duel Stories (2000), Duel Monsters 4: Battle of Great Duelists (2000), The Eternal Duelist Soul (2001), Duel Monsters 6: Expert 2 (2001), World Wide Edition: Stairway to the Destined Duel (2003), The Sacred Cards (2002), and Reshef of Destruction (2003).Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)Most follow a similar formula of beating duelists in battle to unlock new areas and cards. The first game in the series was released before the official Yu-Gi-Oh! card game, so its rules are based on the manga instead. As the Duel Monster series progresses, the in-game dueling rules begin to slowly resemble the real-life trading card game more closely, but it isnt until the fifth entry, The Eternal Duelist Soul, that we see a full alignment with the actual card game rules.Then, we revert to a simplified version of gameplay in the last two games, The Sacred Cards and Reshef of Destruction, which also added an RPG element that allowed us to walk around an actual environment as we duelled our way through town.For anyone who has played the official card game, the most baffling mechanical difference in some of the Duel Monsters games might be the alignments system, where monsters of one type are super strong against another. We were surprised when a normal summon with 300 attack points could automatically defeat our seven-star, two-sacrifice summon with 2500 attack points just because it had a thunder alignment against our own monsters water alignment.Put bluntly, the official Yu-Gi-Oh! card game is much more strategically engaging than the chimeras present in many of the Early Days Collection. Wed argue that the card game hit its full stride shortly after many of these titles were released (and then overcomplicated itself into oblivion a few years later on, but we dont have to get into that). Theres a simple joy in collecting as many cards as possible just to revel in how cool the artwork is, but as tactical gameswhich many of these titles bill themselves astheres not too much to entertain.Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)That is with the exception of two later games included in the collection: Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship Tournament 2004 and Yu-Gi-Oh! 7 Trials to Glory: World Championship Tournament 2005. These can be taken as additional titles in the Duel Monsters series, as their Japanese titles indicate, but they might also be considered members of the Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship series. Either way, they offer a strategic experience much more similar to the actual card game. Gameplay still mostly involves challenging others to duel, but collecting new cards and putting together decks is so much more engaging since we actually got to purchase and open packs.While we respect the commitment to the original gameplay, the user interface for much of the collection feels clunky and overwhelming. Getting through a single turn in many of the games was often tedious, let alone trying to change what was in our deck vs our overall collection of cards. This improved a little as the release year of the games increased, but not by much.A major criticism for many of Konamis Yu-Gi-Oh! titles when they originally released was that they didnt do much to teach series newcomers how the card game actually worked. That remains true with this collection as a whole. On the one hand, many of the ready-made target audience are probably those who either played the card game or the video games themselves previously. Yet, we cant help but feel that the collection might have been a great opportunity to introduce the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game to a new group of players.Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)Of course, not every game in the collection is duel-centered. The Yu-Gi-Oh! series has inspired numerous game variations throughout its history besides its massively popular card game. Dungeon Dice Monsters (2003) is based on a board game of the same name. Without having any previous experience with Dungeon Dice Monsters, we found this one particularly difficult to understand. It felt like a game that could be really interesting if there wasnt such a difficult learning curve.Destiny Board Traveler, seemingly Konamis take on a Mario Party-type game, was disappointingly hard to jump into, as well. The art style is really cute, but the in-game text is outrageously difficult to decipher. By the time we figured out how the mechanics worked, we werent having any fun.Meanwhile, Yu-Gi-Oh! Monster Capsule, originally only released in Japan, offers a twist on turn-based tactics in the Yu-Gi-Oh! universe thats both whimsical and easy to understand. With our friends magically transformed into dolls, were tasked with collecting and training monsters in capsules. Fights unfold on a 2D battle map where our monsters face down various opponents in a goofy, chess-like showdown. It certainly isnt the best tactical game of all time, but it marks a worthwhile addition to the collection.Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)Developer Digital Eclipse included some quality-of-life elements in the collection as a whole that tie everything together rather well. These include the ability to save at will, tweak gameplay rules like removing deck limits, and rewind time. These features help take the edge off the already mentioned interface frustrations for these older games, but not enough to remove our suffering altogether.What we did love to see was the preserved box art and original instruction manuals for each game. We opted to play each title with the lovely background border behind the game screen, but players can notably adjust the screen size, filter, and border using the collections universal pause menu.

Photo and video apps targeting young adults with social hooks are a dime a dozen these days, so those that show traction with 18-twentysomethings tend to catch the attention of investors looking for the next Instagram or TikTok.In the latest example, photo-sharing app Yope, which lets you share still images to private groups, says that it has racked up 2.2 million monthly active users and 800,000 daily active users, with 30x growth in last six months. And in perhaps one of the more important metrics in what is a very fickle market, the company currently claims 40% day-seven retention that is, 40% of users are still using the app seven days after installing it.All of that is translating to a flurry of activity among VCs.TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that the startup behind Yope has now raised an initial seed round of $4.65 million on a valuation of $50 million. Goodwater Capital is leading the round, with Inovo VC and Redseed participating, alongside angels who include Jean de La Rochebrochard; Greg Tkachenko, who sold face animation company AI factory to Snapchat in 2020; Reface app co-founder (and a16z scout) Dima Shevts; and ex-Google researcher Andrei Tkachenk.Yope is driving people/VCs a bit crazy, one source told TechCrunch, who added that some have been optimistically referring to it as the new Instagram.Image Credits: YopeThe appYopes interface is pretty simple: you take a photo in the app, or you pick one from your library and send it to a group chat that youve joined or created yourself. There, you will also see images shared by other group members, where you can react to pics and chat with the rest of the group. Each group also has a wall, a feature where Yope uses machine learning to cut out and splice images, combining the aggregated pictures in an endless photo collage.To boost engagement, Yope has taken inspiration other social networks, both in good and bad ways. A lock screen widget lets you see the most recent photos from a group. A streak feature encourages users to keep posting. A feature called recap runs a slideshow of the shared images similar to Google Photos and Apples Photos app. Onboarding for the first time, the app makes opting out of any of these intentionally confusing, but it is possible. Image Credits: YopeThe company has built ambassador program to drive awareness and installs, too, with payouts to power users who post about the app on other platforms like TikTok and Instagram. Yope said that videos created by these ambassadors have had over 56 million views. The company declined to say how many installs those videos drove, but overall some 70-80% of its users are coming through others inviting them to the app.Bahram Ismailau, Yopes CEO and co-founder, said that Yope wants to reach 50 million monthly active users by next year. It is also planning further features. It has yet to launch video, but this is in the works, the company said. Another is a daily check-in trigger that will nudge users to check on their group, and see the photos they have posted, and react to them. The company also wants to make the walls more interactive by allowing users to add stickers, paint doodles, and zoom in/out to see days, months, or years, and to add new formats like vanishing photos with a lock-screen timer.Image Credits: YopeIt also wants to launch a family group format to extend usage of the app beyond its core base of Gen-Z users: currently, the average age of users on the app is 18.While the focus is on bringing on more users, Yope is also thinking about revenue ideas, starting with subscription plans.Yope, the app, may have taken off fairly recently, but Yope the startup has been around for a lot longer, and it initially did not. Founded in 2021 by Ismailau and Paul Rudkouski who had studied together at Belarusian State University in Minsk the team worked for years tinkering and looking for a hit.One app, Salo, was a social networking chat app that billed itself as the next-gen of discussing things. (Originally, the startup was called Salo after it.) The duo also built a multi-camera app (similar to BeReal). In 2023, it pivoted to a product for recording asynchronous video podcasts. Then, in September 2024, the company finally made another pivot to create Yope.The startup has a scattered team in different locations, including New York, Miami, Lisbon, and London (where they have an office). The company said it plans to open an R&D center in future and is scouting for locations. Yopes basic hook as a place to share photos and chats in private groups appears to fill a gap in the market. Yes, you can create groups in WhatsApp and Snapchat. Yes, some have created private group accounts on Instagram. But photo sharing, with a little chat around that, is not really the main use cases for any of these huge apps. Whats more, Instagram seems to have given up on really doubling down on the idea: Flipside, Instagrams own attempt to build private groups, was discontinued just five months after it launched.Instagram and Snapchat have become platforms for curated content. While Gen Z users take a lot of photos, only 1% of them are shared, said Ismailau. Yopes focus, he said, was also very different from Snapchat and Instagram. It is specifically about sharing unfiltered content, he added.There have, in fact, been dozens of others that have tried to build businesses around the idea of sharing in private groups. More recent efforts include Thrive Capital-backed Retro and Marissa Mayers Sunshine, but the efforts extend all the way back to Path in 2010. The truth is that none of them have really stuck. Is that a signal that maybe private groups cannot be a big, standalone business by default? Yope believes the time might have come to give the concept another crack.At Goodwater, we invest in category-defining consumer apps, and Yope is a prime example of an important new social behavior, Goowaters co-founder and managing partner, Chi-Hua Chien, told TechCrunch in an email. Yope is making it easy for everyone to share their daily lives with close friends. Their explosive growth speaks volumes about the strength of their product and team.Growth indeed looks good for Yope, but the proof will be in how it manages to sustain that. BeReal (another app that tried to build a private group vibe) had a hot year or two, even inspiring a clone from Meta, before growth rapidly decelerated. (That app was eventually acquired by app and games company Voodoo.)The team hopes, after a lot of misses in the category and in its own efforts to build big apps Yope will become the elusive hit.They are working hard, one VC, who is not backing the startup, told us.