Microsoft is shaking things up of late by bringing more of its first-party games to rival platforms like PS5 and Nintendo Switch. This multiplatform release strategy is good for people who like games and helps Microsoft's own studios by extending any given game's reach, according to Head of Xbox Game Studios Craig Duncan."I think it's good for gamers, I think it's good for our studios," Duncan said on the official Xbox podcast. "Our studios make amazing games, and we want to give those games the chance to reach the broadest audience possible."This lines up with what Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said recently when asked about Microsoft's new approach of launching its own games on rival platforms. "It doesn't really benefit people to gatekeep games. Restricting where games can be played is not helping the games themselves," he said.Continue Reading at GameSpot

Fires fade, but From Software's Dark Souls 3 remains popular among the franchise's fans nearly a decade after it was originally released. And while Dark Souls 3 does include co-op, it's limited in scope in the base game. That's why a modder going by Yui has been working on a Dark Souls 3 seamless co-op mod, which is now out in its alpha form.The Dark Souls 3 seamless co-op mod can be found on Nexus Mods, but Yuri warns, "If you are looking for a bug free experience, you won't find it in this version." What you will find is the ability to play through the entire game with your friends without having to deal with the restrictions that were placed in Dark Souls 3's original release.In this mod, the session won't be ended when a player dies. Instead, they will respawn in the same world at the last bonfire where they rested. Additionally, players are no longer banished back to their own worlds once bosses or areas have been dealt with. The mod will also bring the players' worlds together by allowing progression from online sessions to count in all players' worlds, and by syncing up NPC dialogue scenes. Up to six players can take part in a joint campaign, and they can play all the way to the end of the game together.Continue Reading at GameSpot

Loot is an undeniably important part of any good RPG. While a good story provides a narrative driving force, and good gameplay mechanics are needed to keep players invested in the moment-to-moment loop, the hunt for shiny new pieces of gear plays a pivotal role in an RPG's progression, with it encouraging players to explore the map thoroughly and engage in side quests in the hope that they might find the perfect weapon or armor for their build. Avowed puts its hunt for gear front and center.

Dragon Ball Daima really picked up the pace and dialed up the action in the second half of the show, largely making fans forget about the relatively slow pacing that the series started with. In the span of just a few episodes, some of the most important and groundbreaking reveals regarding the power hierarchy of the franchise going forward were made.

This week, I began work on designing some enemies for our game. I watched and followed various tutorials on YouTube to help me learn and develop these enemies.I started with an attempt to create a basic enemy type that could follow the player and deal damage to them once they were within a certain range. I used a bird asset from one of the tutorials for the player sprite and a spider asset from a website offering free assets. I implemented the code for the enemy to follow the player wi

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Were roughly two months into 2025 now, and were already spoiled by the plethora of great new video games to choose from. Even still, there have been more than a few titles released late last year that slipped off our radar and nevertheless merit attention. TankHead, a roguelike vehicular combat adventure that stealth-dropped on Epic Games Store back in December, is one such game.Created by Toronto-based indie studio Alpha Channel, TankHead centers around Whitaker, a digitized human consciousness housed within a drone body. Set several years in the wake of a cataclysmic event, TankHead has players controlling Whitaker as he ventures into the Event Containment Area an irradiated region where ordinary humans can no longer survive on a mission to return to the site of his former home, the fabled floating city of Highpoint.To do so, youll have to take command of a modular light-armored tank and hunt the TankHeads drone weapons haunted by the errant ghosts of their former operators in order to pierce deeper into the ECA and reach Highpoint. Naturally, this is easier said than done.After linking up with a smuggler operating out of a derelict landship, youre tasked with recovering the cores of three extremely powerful TankHeads. Once you find and repair your own tank, youre deployed to the outer rim of the ECA in search of abandoned transfer stations housing the remnants of each TankHeads persona shadows. After recovering these, youll be able to activate a lure designed to summon the Tankhead, triggering a boss battle. Youre not alone in the ECA, however, as each of the games three open-world areas is littered with roving battalions of heavily armed drone tanks and other threats thatll stop at nothing to eliminate you on sight.When you start out in TankHead, youre relatively underpowered compared to the enemies you encounter in the field, to say nothing of the techno-organic beasts youre tasked with slaying. Luckily for you, there are various depots of weapons, vehicle parts, and resources scattered throughout the world you can loot and recover to upgrade your own tank and abilities until youre strong enough to hold your own against anything the ECA can throw at you. The three resource types you collect throughout the game include scrap, which can be used to repair your tank in the field; chips, which can be recovered from dead androids and terminal stations to be spent to upgrade your perks and abilities at your base; and E-115, a miraculous energy source that can be used to purchase new weapons and armor to outfit your own tank.The combat in TankHead is exhilarating, with placid countryside and rust-colored expanses exploding into a cacophony of bullets and laserfire at the drop of a pin. You can damage enemies by either targeting their glowing red weak points or chipping away at their individual components, which can subsequently be scavenged to either outfit your own tank or converted into scrap to repair yourself. You can detach yourself from your tank at will, allowing you to hover across the world to recover resources or navigate areas rendered otherwise inaccessible. The art direction is terrific, with vehicles and environments that feel spectacular and futuristic while at the same time plausibly anchored in a sense of place and history.Creative director Daniel Ebanks has spoken at length about the creative inspirations behind the game, specifically citing the industrial designs of Katsuhiro Otomo and physical model kits as direct influences on TankHeads visual style. That is especially apparent in the design of the TankHeads themselves. The first boss encounter, The Diver, is a massive hexapedal weapon that resembles the eponymous sentient house from 2004s Howls Moving Castle, albeit outfitted with shoulder-mounted gun turrets and spider-like drones that spill out from underneath its belly when injured. While the latter two boss designs might pale in comparison, they nonetheless amount to some thoroughly challenging and creative boss battles.If I had one quibble with my overall experience with TankHead, it would be with the games story specifically its ending. While arguably an extension of the games roguelike design, the climax of Whitakers story feels more like an anticlimax, if anything. I loved the world-building overall, though, with various collectibles and notes scattered throughout the ECA that, when put together, construct a fascinating backstory about a nation-state that undergoes a radical reinvention after unearthing E-115 and its subsequent fallout with a coalition of neighboring countries. Id have loved it even more if there was a way to easily refer back to these collectibles in the games menu so I could more readily appreciate them.Taking all that into account, I really enjoyed my time playing TankHead. With a campaign that runs approximately between 10 to 15 hours, give or take the extent to which one chooses to explore all the nooks and crannies the ECA has to offer, Alpha Channels first game is a solid roguelike shooter with enough variability and personality to keep players coming back for more. I wouldnt scoff at the opportunity to return to this universe at some point in the future, but if this is all we see of the Event Containment Area, it was one hell of a ride.TankHead was released Dec. 11, 2024, on Windows PC. The game was reviewed on PC using a code provided by Alpha Channel. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygons ethics policy here.

Warner Bros. Games is making big cuts, closing three studios Monolith Productions, Player First Games, and WB Games San Diegoand cancelling its long-in-development Wonder Woman game, the publisher told employees on Tuesday. All projects from those studios have been canceled.Monolith Productions developed Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and its sequel Shadow of War, and was working on Wonder Woman. Player First Games was the developer behind the recently scrapped fighting game MultiVersus. WB Games San Diego studio was working on what it once described as an exciting new AAA, free-to-play, cross-platform game.Employees at Warner Bros. Games studios were informed of the closures and game cancellations in a communication from executive JB Perrette, the CEO and president of global streaming and games for Warner Bros. Discovery. In an email to employees obtained by Polygon, Perrette cited a disappointing 2024 for the companys games division, saying that it would focus on four franchises going forward: Harry Potter/Hogwarts Legacy, Mortal Kombat, DC (primarily Batman when it comes to single character-led games but may include select other opportunities as the new DCU gets built), and Game of Thrones.Regarding the now-scrapped Wonder Woman, which was announced in 2021, Perrette said the game no longer fell within our strategic priorities. Perrette said the company is looking to repurpose our talent where possible by reassigning employees to open roles.In addition to focusing on fewer but bigger franchises, Perrette said Warner Bros. Games aims to return to growing its mobile games revenue as well as regain our credibility and swagger at producing great games. Perrette said of recent releases from WB Games, the product-market fit and quality of too many of our new releases has really missed the mark. We need to and will do better for our fans first and foremost, and also because regaining that credibility is critical to us securing even more investment in Games in the years to come, Perrette wrote. Getting our swagger back happens one high quality game release at a time, and our financial credibility gets rebuilt one fiscal quarter at a time delivering what we said we would deliver, and no big negative surprises.Over the past year-plus, Warner Bros. Games has delivered a string of misses, including Rocksteady Studios Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, a relaunched MultiVersus, and Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions. In January, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment president David Haddad announced his exit from that role after more than a decade leading WBs games division.Polygon has reached out to Warner Bros. Discovery for comment on todays closures and will update when the company responds.

Two-factor authentication (2FA) is a fantastic security measure, but not all 2FA is created equal. SMS-based 2FA is by far the least secure authentication option, and yet,far too many companies use this method as default. Hackers know this, which is why they target users' 2FA codes to commit fraud and steal access to Google accounts. All that said, any 2FA is better than no 2FA, so it's worth tolerating SMS-based authentication if it's the only 2FA option offered.Now, however, the winds are changing: Google is the latest company looking to switch from SMS codes to an alternative method. As reported by Forbes, the company is planning to shift from SMS codes to QR codes. This is a good thing, even if it changes how you sign into your Google Account.SMS 2FA isn't secure enoughIt's surprisingly easy to get hold of an SMS code. If someone steals your smartphone, for example, they'll be able to access all of the SMS codes it receives. But scammers don't need physical access to intercept your SMS codes. In fact, they can do this while sitting in another part of the globe.Scammers can trick carriers into taking over your phone's SIM card. From here, they can disable your SIM card, and transfer all the services over to their own, so they can remotely access all SMS codes sent to your number. If your bank account is protected by SMS-based 2FA, for instance, they'll receive the code on their own device, authenticate themselves, and break into your account. Some scammers are even engaging in a practice know as traffic pumping, where they fool organizations into sending a large number of SMS messages to numbers the scammers own. They make a profit from those messages, while the rest of us deal with a deluge of spam. By moving away from SMS-based 2FA, Google hopes to limit this scam.Instead of relying on SMS-based authentication, I've recommended using a dedicated authenticator app, or the password-less Passkeys system that Google itself is pushing quite a bit. When using an authenticator app, the code generates every 30 seconds on a secure service that is controlled by you, not by carriers. Authenticator apps themselves require biometric authentication, and can be password protected as well, which adds an extra layer of security. You can use a physical key for maximum authentication security, but a properly setup authenticator app will be plenty secure. If you're game to ditch passwords altogether, passkeys are even more secure. Passkeys are cryptographically generated keys for each login, and they are unique to the device or passwords app. A passkey generated for Google, on your Mac, never leaves the device. Even if someone gets their hands on the key file, it can't be hacked as it's encrypted.Google is shifting default 2FA to QR codesPasskeys are the future, but in the meantime, Google is shifting to QR codes as the default verification method for phone numbers.When users log in on a new device, they'll be prompted with a QR code that they can scan using their smartphone to authenticate. Using a QR code for verification stops phishing attacks, as there's no code to share. And because the QR code scanning is happening in person, between two devices in proximity, there are no carrier codes involved, or online servers.There's no timeline for this yet, as all that Google has said is to "look for more from us on this in the near future." As the feature rolls out, I'll detail those steps here.

Microsoft is testing a new way to make sharing files a lot easier. In a beta version of Windows 11, the company has released a temporary shelf that appears when you drag files to the top of the screen. You can use this to drop files directly to the apps you use the most, such as Outlook or WhatsApp. Additionally, the company is also testing an improved version of Windows Search on CoPilot+ PCs to help you find photos in the cloud, and two new layouts for the Start menu. All of these features are a part of the Windows Insider program, but they're available in different channels of this program. Here are some details about each new feature and how you can try it if you want to get it ahead of the release to the general public.The drag tray to make sharing easierPerhaps the most exciting among the new updates, the drag tray is a way to make sharing simpler on Windows 11. When you drag a file to the top of the screen, a hidden drag tray reveals itself and you'll see a few apps listed there. You can drag the file into any app to share it quickly. There's also a More button to send it to apps not listed in the tray. If you drag a file to the More button, it'll open the Windows share menu to help you send it to other apps. While sharing has been fairly easy on computers for a long time, this drag tray is great for dumping files into apps that you use frequently.New views for the Start menu Credit: Microsoft The Start menu is the hub for everything you want to launch on your PC and it's now getting two additional viewsname grid and category. The name grid lists all apps in an alphabetical order and groups them by alphabet, whereas the category view looks a lot like app folders on your smartphone. The category view groups apps by type and creates multiple folders to let you see more apps in one go. Both these views are available in the All page of the start menu if you're a part of the correct Windows Insider beta.An improved Windows Search Credit: Microsoft For Copilot+ PCs, Microsoft is testing a version of Windows Search that lets you find photos stored on the cloud. You can type a search term and the results will try to find the photo based on your description, even if the photo is named IMG0012.JPG. At the moment this is supported for personal OneDrive accounts, as long as you're signed in and connected to the internet. This feature is not supported for work or school OneDrive accounts. Microsoft says third-party cloud storage providers will be able to add support for this search feature, which is great if you don't use OneDrive.How to try these new Windows featuresTo try these new features, you need to sign up for the Windows Insider program and ensure that you have the right hardware and are on the correct beta version. Unfortunately, it's not as simple as jumping to the beta version and looking for the feature, but this is what you can do for now. On your Windows 11 PC, go to the Microsoft website and click the Register button to sign up for Windows Insider. Then, go to Settings > Windows Update > Windows Insider Program on your PC and follow the on-screen prompts to join the program.Be aware that this program involves installing beta software on your PC, which can lead to issues such as data loss, crashing software, or even a PC stuck at the boot screen. Ensure that you've backed up your Windows PC before you attempt to join the Windows Insider Program.Once you're on the beta, you can try the drag tray feature and the new Start menu views by selecting the beta channel and updating to Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22635.4950 (KB5052078). This isn't available to those who are receiving beta updates based on Windows 11's 24H2 build as of now, but it's expected to be on that channel soon. If you decided not to update to this cycle and opted to receive beta updates on the previous beta channel, then you'll be able to try those two features right away.As for the enhanced search, it's available to those who have a Copilot+ PC running Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.3291 (KB5052080). Microsoft currently labels this as an optional update and will change it to a recommended one later this year. Even if you're on the right update channel, you may have to wait a while to get the enhanced Windows Search working as Microsoft is rolling it out gradually. This update channel also includes improvements to Windows Recall, the controversial feature that records everything you do on your PC, and adds a new Trim tool to let you edit screen recordings using the Snipping Tool in Windows 11.