SOON Attention all Adoring Fans: an Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered reveal stream has been announced by Bethesda, and you can watch it here "All will be revealed...." Image credit: Bethesda/VG247 News by Mark Warren Senior Staff Writer Published on April 21, 2025 The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered has finally been acknowledged by Bethesda itself. The long-rumoured remaster of the Elder Scrolls game with the most loveable potato-faced weirdos looks set to be revealed and potentially arrive during a reveal stream that's now penned in for tomorrow, April 22. This was a complete surprise. None of us knew it was coming. It's not like rumours about it started to surface all the way back in 2023. Oh, and it's also not like this Oblivion remaster leaked last week or had the official Xbox support account giving out a release date. Watch on YouTube Anyway, all of that aside, Bethesda's now announced a reveal stream for the remaster that's set for April 22. You'll be able to watch it here via the video above when it kicks off at 4PM BST, which is 11AM ET, 8AM PT, and 5PM CEST. Given all the rumours, there seems a damn good chance of the game itself being shadow-dropped as part of or during this stream, which Bethesda's cheekily entitled 'All will be revealed....'. So, there you go. We'll just have to see how everyone feels about the tweaks Virtuos Games and Bethesda have made to 2006's foremost spooky door closing simulator that also happened to get the best Elder Scrolls DLC so far. Yes, that's a hill I'll die on. Shivering Isles FTW. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. It's ok though. If you don't like the remaster, the original game is still right there for you to fire back up, in all of its wonderfully weird glory. Plus, for PC folks, there's massive modding project Skyblivion, which is still on track to offer its own take on Oblivion. "Luckily this thing was all about passion from the start and it still is," the mod's project lead told us right after the official remaster leaked, "I've gotten more out of this than I ever imagined, friends, experience and it made me realize I wanted to work in the gaming industry which I ended up doing." Will you be playing the Oblivion remaster 24/7 like it's 2006 again? Let us know below!

Persistent Ds The next Battlefield will make it easy to tell which walls can be destroyed and which can be shot through - oh, and rubble will persist DICE is building the next Battlefield's destruction with several key goals intended to deliver satisfying oomph, and create gameplay opportunities . Image credit: EA News by Sherif Saed Contributing Editor Published on April 21, 2025 DICE has shared a new development update about its goals for the next Battlefield, and the feedback from players taking part in Battlefield Labs testing sessions. This latest post focuses almost entirely on destruction, and the studio’s ethos for how it’s going to work in the next game. The high-level goals with destruction haven’t changed much; it’s still designed to create new tactical and gameplay opportunities for players, and to allow different player actions to deliver a noticeable impact on the surrounding environment - with the potential to reshape it. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Though DICE’s destruction aspirations are pretty standard for a modern Battlefield, the developer wants to change how the mechanic is implemented, as well as how its quirks are communicated to players. A key goal this time around is for players to be able to easily identify which walls can be destroyed (and which cannot), as well as which parts of the environment can be affected by different tools/gameplay styles. As revealed in a new blog post, the developer is adding visual and audio language to make those aspects clear to players. This language should be consistent across the entire game, too. DICE gave the example of a random wall, which can take damage from smaller bullet impacts, explosions, as well as vehicles driving through it. The thinner the wall becomes, the more that will be reflected in the way it looks. Each “state” will create new gameplay opportunities. Holes big enough will allow bullets to pass from each side to the other, letting you hit enemies behind cover. Audio and visual VFX will play to let you know you can shoot through a wall, and whether your hits have landed. The rate at which walls and other destructible objects degrade varies depending on their surface type. Each time you chip away at something, it creates rubble and debris to match the level of inflicted damage. That debris will itself remain, creating dynamic cover that persists for the rest of the match. Battlefield Labs Early Pre-Alpha Destruction! 💣💥 byu/Dedzigs inBattlefield To see this content please enable targeting cookies. DICE also shared a brief demonstration of destruction from a pre-alpha build of the game. If you’ve been keeping up with the Battlefield Labs leaks, you’ll no doubt be familiar with that area of the map - as it’s the only one players got to play on. As Battlefield Labs continues, the developer is looking to gather feedback about the balance of environmental destructibility, and the gameplay impact caused by various forms of collateral damage that result from destruction. The developer is also looking to tweak the balance of destructible objects, how quickly they degrade, not to mention the overall impact on map flow when so much of the environment has been destroyed. It remains to be seen how successful DICE is going to be in reaching those goals with the final build. I can tell you, however, that - having been following the Battlefield franchise for nearly 20 years, that the Battlefield Labs leaks have me convinced that DICE is finally building on what came before and not starting from scratch with the next Battlefield.

Max Hunter Capcom is coming for those of you who modded their Monster Hunter Wilds to allow for more hunters and more monsters per quest Some Monster Hunter Wilds players have been modifying their games to allow quests to go beyond their intended parameters, and Capcom is warning you not to join them. Image credit: Capcom. News by Sherif Saed Contributing Editor Published on April 21, 2025 Since its first arrival on PC with Monster Hunter World, series fans have been introduced to the magic of PC modding. Pretty much everything you could change, some intrepid modder managed to. This continued with the recent release of Monster Hunter Wilds, of course, but some mods are taking things too far, and Capcom has put those players on notice. The problem is, not everyone playing realises that they’re playing a modded quest. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Capcom doesn’t appear to have an issue with mods like the ones that change the game’s visuals, swap character models, tweak outfits and so on. The developer, however, is very concerned about mods that change the way quests work to allow for things not supported by the game. More specifically, players have been able to mod High Rank quests, Investigations, and Field Surveys to not only increase the number of possible monsters within each, some mods can also increase the number of players who can participate in each one, too. This massively affects the game’s balance, not to mention change the reward structure of a core component of Monster Hunter. The idea of modding a game to create a more rewarding environment obviously isn’t exclusive to Monster Hunter, but because of the way the co-op hunting game is structured, going beyond the designed parameters completely destroys the experience. What’s more frustrating here is that new players, who may not be familiar with how many monsters/players are allowed per quest - or even those not paying attention - could end up in games where the host has modified the quest to allow for more rewards or more hunters. Without knowing what’s standard for each, you may not be able to detect that something looks off. Quests with three or more monsters in them are most certainly modded. | Image credit: Capcom. This is why Capcom published a list of the standard parameters of quests that you should look at so that it’s harder for you to join modded games. “We have confirmed the unauthorized modification of game data in Monster Hunter Wilds for High Rank environment Investigations, Field Surveys, and more,” said Capcom. “Modified data can interfere with normal gameplay and even render the game unplayable. If you suspect a quest has been modified, please do not play it, or stop playing it immediately.” Unfortunately, Capcom is currently unable to determine whether a specific quest had been modified, but the developer is working on implementing "additional countermeasures” in future updates to detect players who modified their games, and hopefully warn other players not to join them and get themselves implicated. While Capcom has previously deleted unrealistic times from Wilds’ Challenge Quest leaderboards, the developer hasn’t said whether the players responsible for them had been banned. From the looks of things, the process of identifying cheaters may not be as straightforward as it is in other games. In case you missed it, the next batch of Monster Hunter Wilds Event Quests and Challenge Quests has been published. Many of them are currently live, available through the end of the week of April 28.

Something's going up Nintendo waited until everyone went away for Easter before announcing when Switch 2 pre-orders would return in the US and Canada - and there’s no price hike Nintendo fans in the United States and Canada will soon be able to pre-order the Switch 2, and though the console's price hasn't changed, there is some bad news. Image credit: Nintendo News by Sherif Saed Contributing Editor Published on April 21, 2025 Nintendo has announced that Switch 2 pre-orders will once again go live in the United States and Canada, after the platform holder pulled them just two days after the console’s official unveiling. Nintendo initially stopped taking pre-orders in the US earlier this month as it “assess the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions.” Shortly thereafter, the company stopped taking pre-orders in Canada, too. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Anyone in the United States and Canada will be able to pre-order the Switch 2 starting April 24, which is about when pundits and industry analysts expected them to return. The good news is that the console’s price remains $450 in the US, and CAD$630 in Canada. The price of the Mario Kart World bundle will also not change. The Switch 2 launch date will remain the same, arriving June 5 as initially planned. However, Nintendo is raising the prices of Switch 2 accessories. The Switch 2 Joy-Con will now cost $95 (up from $90), and the Pro Controller has gone up to $85 (from $80). The Switch 2 Camera has also had its price increased to $55 (from $50). Samus is not impressed. Nintendo was likely comfortable bringing back pre-orders as a result of the Trump administration’s decision to pause the President’s wide-reaching tariffs on imported goods for 90 days. The pause does not affect China, but Nintendo has been assembling its consoles in Vietnam and other countries for a while, so that shouldn’t affect the cost of goods - at least for now. It is also understood that Nintendo has been stockpiling Switch 2 consoles for months in North America in anticipation of the launch, so that initial batch won’t be affected by tariffs. Considering how volatile and uncertain the situation is right now, there’s every chance that future developments may cause Nintendo to raise the price of future Switch 2 batches, depending on which countries they’re going to be shipped from, and how much those are going to be hit by Trump’s tariffs.

Burning The Candle Still bummed out about 2XKO's 10 character launch roster? Riot has heard you, and have tuned the development team to get "as many champs out as possible" 2XKO executive producer Tom Cannon has revealed the team has shifted to get champs out quickly, and the personal roster number that he'd be happy with. Image credit: Riot Games News by Connor Makar Staff Writer Published on April 19, 2025 Following the reveal that 2XKO will have only 10 playable champions at launch, and the negative reception to what is undoubtedly a smaller initial roster than expect, 2XKO's executive producer Tom Cannon has stated that the development team has shifted to further prioritise champion output and stated his own personal target character count: 24. Speaking to press, professional fighting game players and commentators, and content creators at the 2XKO community tour preview in France earlier this month, Tom Cannon said the following when asked by VG247 about the 10 character launch roster, what cadence of post-launch champ releases, and how many teams they currently having working on new champions at this time. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. "I can say that we have champions that we're working on that you haven't seen yet. I'll tell you for me a number that would feel better than 10, just as my personal opinion, is around 24. I think at 24 you're like, okay now there's enough to keep me going, and then we can add more and more. But as for what would be enough for me? Or rather, a good starting point? 24." "We're not close to that now, so we're going to work quickly to get to that point, and then we're going to keep going. The reason why I'm being a little cagey at this stuff is because honestly we're still getting better at this stuff. This is a new fighting game team, even though we've been at this for a little while, we're not on like version five of a franchise right? We're building this team as we go and we're learning how to do things. You're seeing the game get better, look better visually, and the character kits get more dialled in as, frankly, we're getting more familiar with the game and better at our jobs." "We do have multiple champions pods going at once, and have heard the feedback we got regarding the 10 champion launch roster. We know you want more and we're tuning the game team to make sure we can optimise for getting as many champs out as possible, while keeping the quality level high. Like, one of the reasons why we only have 10 champs is because we do have that high bar on quality. We don't want half the roster to be just the assist that you use. Every character is going to be someone's favourite character, and you should be able to play that character and feel like you have something that is legit." "But yeah, one of the top things we're talking about now as a team is the roster, because we know 10 is small, we know that we want more, we know that League is adding new champions. The discussions around who is next is also really fun, and it's something we're really passionate about, and it's a real priority for us." Cannon would not further elaborate on the planned cadence of champion releases post-launch, nor how many releases the team are hoping to get out to players once the game finally comes out, but the response he did provide does offer some insight into the team's reception to the 10 champion figure. Riot Games, a company that has built itself around live service game development, has experience in supporting games like 2XKO for long periods of time, even if the 2XKO team itself is relatively fresh to the ordeal. For now, as players in the Americas jump back into the game via 2XKO's second Alpha Lab test, the focus of the community is squarely on the game following wide-spread gameplay updates. With the game set to launch some time in 2025, we're still due three more character reveals before the 1.0 version of 2XKO is finally out there. Who do you think they'll be, and when do you think we'll see them? Let us know below!

For The Locals 2XKO will have an offline mode with all champions unlocked, intended to support tournament organizers How this will work with Vanguard anti-cheat remains a mystery Image credit: Riot Games News by Connor Makar Staff Writer Published on April 19, 2025 2XKO will have an offline mode with all playable champions unlocked, it has been revealed. This is in order to support grassroots tournament organizers eager to run events around the game, but aren't exactly thrilled about the idea of having to grind out all the champions on multiple accounts. Revealed during a 2XKO community tour in France earlier this month in a group Q&A, 2XKO executive producer Tom Cannon initially ruminated on how much he should say on the matter, before exclaiming "yeah, why not" and spilling the beans on the mode. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. "I know it can be a pain to set up a whole bunch of set-ups during a tournament. We don't want that to be really hard. We want you to be able to run a tournament without the internet, without having to jump through a bunch of hoops to unlock a bunch of champions." "So here's what we're going to do. You're going to be able to play this game offline, I hope that's not a spoiler (laughs). There's going to be a way for you, as a tournament organizer, to have all the champs unlocked without having to grind them out yourself. Now, you won't get all the content! It's hard for us to have skins enabled and stuff like that, but at least you'll be able to play the game in-tournament offline. That's our selling point." "We do want to keep supporting grassroots tournaments, so we want to hear how that goes and what features will help." This, for the select few who host fighting game events focused on competition, is potentially a massive win. An always-online fighting game would inevitably run into significant hurdles in such a space. Tournament organizers would not only have to make sure the venue has a stable internet, but would likely have to pay substantial fees to use this internet over several days. In addition, not having to grind out a new character on dozens of separate 2XKO accounts is a life saver for tournament organizers, who otherwise would have to manually unlock new content for the game to be competitively valid. What is still unclear following this reveal is how this mode would interact with Vanguard Anti-Cheat, Riot Game's own always-online anti-cheat. Vanguard, which runs the moment you boot your computer up with kernel-level access, cannot be disabled while Riot Games titles are running for League of Legends, Valorant, etc. As such, an offline tournament mode would in theory clash with the intended purpose of Vanguard, assuming this offline mode is booted via the Riot Games launcher like current 2XKO Alpha Lab tests are. We reached out to Riot Games for a follow-up question on this, and have yet to receive a reply as of publishing this article. Nonetheless, it's a cool feature for the inevitable hardcore community for the game, willing to travel out to events in the real world to test their mettle against other players. If I may add some personal editorialising here, I would not expect such a mode to be widely available to the average player. 2XKO, as a free-to-play game, does need to generate revenue from its community obviously. Expect this offline mode to be a rather exclusive offering, so certified tournament runners. Though, we'll have to hang back and wait for more updates on this offline mode and more. What do you think of this offline mode? let us know below!

Lilith Fans Assembly Diablo 4 will help you pretend you have way more friends than you actually do with its bold, new... WhatsApp group? Am I imagining things, or have we all just woken up to this bizarre trend of major brands now having their own WhatsApp groups? Image credit: VG247 Article by Sherif Saed Contributing Editor Published on April 19, 2025 I follow Diablo 4 and its community quite closely, and I can tell you that Blizzard certainly isn’t a stranger to some unusual announcements. Recently, however, I came across what may be its wildest one yet. Over on the game’s social channels, the developer announced that Diablo now has an official… WhatsApp group!? Yes, just like the ones you have with your friends that you definitely check on regularly, Blizzard wants to slide into your WA inbox to send you some news about the ARPG. My question is... why? To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Look, I am not trying to dunk on some poor communication manager who now needs to add WhatsApp to their list of channels they’re going to use to disperse some hot Diablo 4 updates. But is WhatsApp really the best way to get that message across? Depending on where you are in the world, you either use WhatsApp every day, or only to speak to those friends who left the country years ago. If you’re in the former camp, you’ll be quite aware of how it has turned from a simple chat app that unites everyone you know - regardless of their carrier/phone maker - into a sort of catch-all app for chatting and business. You can use it to order food, send/receive documents, and share your location with delivery people who insist on not reading the provided address. Recently, however, it has taken on something of a new form as a sort of RSS feed reader and all-around announcement (?) aggregator. The sort of seasonal sale and new collection texts you used to get on your number from your local clothes store now sit in your WhatsApp inbox; all of them most certainly muted. Shop anywhere and you're asked for your number, so that you're forever locked into a contract of always having to hear about, well, anything the shop you bought something from once wants to tell you about. Welcome to Hell, is it? | Image credit: Blizzard/VG247 That sort of unsolicited outreach has rarely been useful for me, but I can see the appeal from the businesses’ perspective; it’s a direct way of advertising to your existing customer base without having to email/call them or chase them down some other way. It’s also convenient; if there’s some place you regularly shop at - say, a grocery store - it’d be helpful to know that the expensive international treats you’ve had your eye on are 80% off because they expire in four weeks. I can’t say I quite see the point of having one for a video game. Yes, Diablo is a major franchise, and signing up likely means you’re going to get updates from Diablo 4, Immortal, Diablo 2: Resurrected, Diablo 3 and whatever other thing that happens to involve Diablo, but is that really the type of timely news you want in your inbox? The timing of this announcement is especially bizarre, too. Blizzard just revealed a roadmap of content coming to Diablo 4 over the course of 2025, and that thing might be the most sorry excuse for a roadmap I’ve seen for a live service game. Not only is it devoid of anything major worth looking forward to, it also lists barely anything we didn’t already know about. Suffice to say, it's not exactly been going down well in the game's various communities. Diablo 4 will continue getting seasons every three months or so (shocker!), leading up to the release of the next expansion sometime in 2026. I get that pushing the expansion out of 2025 - something that goes against the original plan of one expansion per year - meant that the team would more less be treading waters, but what’s the point of a roadmap if… you already know where you’re going? Lots of words, very little to say. | Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment. I can’t help but wonder if I’m looking too deep into this. The timing may be off, but Blizzard probably didn’t put that much thought into it. To a marketing person, WhatsApp is just another “social network” where a section of the Diablo audience exists, so it’s one the developer is willing to expand into in order to reach them. At the time of this writing, the channel has over 1,300 followers, which is pretty decent - though obviously nowhere near as massive as Diablo’s following on other social media platforms. I’m really curious, though, of the people who follow it: how many of them are actually clicking the WhatsApp icon on their phone to catch up with Diablo news? And are they going to get anything of value that they coulnd't otherwise get elsewhere? Let's see if this is where Blizzard ends this experiment. I can't imagine how... unholy.... an Overwatch 2 WhatsApp could end up being.

Shot in the Dark As someone who hates extraction shooters, there's actually a very good reason I'm willing to give Marathon a shot Bungie has been through a lot, but I still trust that those developers still working at the studio can make a killer new game, extraction shooter or no. Image credit: VG247 Article by Connor Makar Staff Writer Published on April 18, 2025 If you've spent any amount of time on the internet as of late, you'll have seen the big game on everyone's mind: Marathon. It's Bungie's next big release, and last week, the whole world was able to sit down and gorge themselves on new gameplay footage. The game looks pretty darn good, if I say so myself. It looks as though we might be getting a new avenue for that Bungie quality that has kept fans loyal all these years. But, some are skeptical. There's good reason why, but after weighing up both sides, I'm still moving forward with optimism when it comes to Marathon. I was shocked to find myself excited at the gameplay trailer. I have struggled more with extraction shooters than I'd care to admit. I came too late to Escape from Tarkov, only dipping my toes in when cheating issues were at their problematic height, and what time un-murdered I did spend in the game felt largely unappealing. The Forever Winter nearly won me over, with its doomed future of a world in the midst of permanent robot holocaust, but once the aesthetics wore off I grew tired of scavenging for scraps. This happened over and over, and each time I just could feel the same hooks others had in me. It seemed to me that it wasn't meant to be. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Yet, for some reason, Marathon has caught my interest. I am not a diehard Destiny fan. I played a bit of the game for work, and have enjoyed the odd exotic quest here and there, but I've never dropped more than a month or so into the game at a time, with yearly chasms between my sessions. I have always admired the work Bungie has done from afar, though, and I think maybe it's some of that Bungie magic that could make all the difference. I should clarify straight away, I'm not referring to the magic that execs seem to believe their staff can use to put out a growing game while slashing budgets. I refer - of course - to the talent of their artists, combat designers, and countless others. What we saw from recent Marathon gameplay is exactly what I expected from Bungie. A game that's visually stunning, and not just in a "look at all that raytracing" kind of stunning. I mean like a real distinct art direction. There's no game really out there at the moment that gives off the same vibe, certainly not one with Bungie's budget. When hopping into a new genre and taking on the big hitters that've already fostered a community, you can't just push out something that'll blend into the crowd. I mean look at this. You can't say it's not unique, and intriguing to look at. | Image credit: Bungie The weapons, environments, and the characters themselves all scream out "hey look, I'm something new". It all blends together an obvious futuristic aesthetic with hints of retro tech here and there. It's set in what looks to be this far-future space dystopia, sure. But it contrasts that with a vibrancy that pops out and drowns out the sort of dreary misery you'd see from other developers looking to make a game in a similar setting. The artists at Bungie have, through the Destiny series, proven that when given freedom to push the boundaries in a new setting that they can really release some extraordinary work. From the small glimpse we have, I'm getting that same wanderlust I felt back when I saw The Hive for the first time. Then there's the action we see. Tight, fast, co-operative first person shooting that makes good use of the setting with interesting abilities and quirky takes on modern weaponry. The gameplay trailer is sure to emphasize that Bungie is bringing its "best-in-class first person multiplayer action to the forefront", and yeah while that stuck me as a little self-congratulatory for my British sensibilities this pat on the back isn't exactly undeserved. Destiny has had absolutely killer PvP for years upon years. Many players don't care for the raids and narrative Destiny is better known for (instead sticking to the Crucible), and it's hard to argue they're in the wrong for doing so. This will only help Marathon. The extraction shooters we have right now are predominantly military sims, or at least somewhat grounded in realistic gunplay. What Bungie has is decades of sci-fi FPS experience that it can use to make sure Marathon doesn't just look like something fresh, but that it feels like something fresh too. That, I feel, will be the bigger reason folks will stick around rather than hop back into more senior titles in the genre. // Bungie also has ample three player team experience too, which can only help with Marathon. | Image credit: Bungie I think the game looks totally solid, I think Bungie has earned some trust when it comes to creating a FPS that feels good to play, especially in a futuristic setting. What I do concede may be the game's biggest barrier is its price point. Look, it's no secret that live service games have a hard time gaining a significant following. That's been the case for years, as evidenced by an ever-growing graveyard of admirable attempts that have come out and wasted away. It's likely worse now than it's ever been, with a potential recession coming on, consoles and PC parts potentially getting more expensive, and everyone pinching pennies. It's not an easy thing to sell people on a multiplayer only game with no offline single player content whatsoever. Titanfall struggled to do it, and that was a game so good it should have defined a generation. Here's my counter argument. Bungie, through Destiny 2, certainly has had practice rolling out an engaging narrative through limited-time major updates. While many out there will jump into a major expansion, play the new raid and dip out, those who stick around know that the team can keep interesting threads going. These aren't just for story nerds too, interesting new game modes come hot and ready from Bungie's oven all the time. This, in spite of multiple waves of layoffs and a reduction in Destiny 2's scope. If there's any FPS company out there who I believe has a good shot at actually making a live service extraction shooter with compelling enough updates to warrant a buy-in, it's Bungie. Now, this is something the Marathon team will have to prove to people, and continue proving for months. I surely hope they've got staff working hard on post-launch plans as we speak. If they can walk the walk, with Marathon looking how it's looking, I've got to say I'm officially excited for Marathon. Past experiences aside.

LOTF - 2025 Edition Somehow, Lords of the Fallen continues to get major patches - and its biggest one yet just gave everyone an unbeatable reason to play The developers of Lords of the Fallen just cannot stop working on the 2023 Souls-like action RPG, and the game's most recent patch has a very compelling reason for anyone to jump in. Image credit: CI Games / Hexworks News by Sherif Saed Contributing Editor Published on April 18, 2025 Lords of the Fallen faced a bit of a middling reception when it came out in October, 2023. Myself and many others had a lot to criticise about the launch version, and though some major design issues were never truly fixed, developer Hexworks stuck with it far longer than anyone could’ve predicted. What many thought would surely be its final update, version 1.7, came out last December and delivered significant improvements to many aspects of the game. Hexworks seemingly wasn’t done, because the game just received yet another major one. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. The latest Lords of the Fallen patch is so significant, in fact, that the developer is dubbing it the 2.0 version of the Souls-like action RPG. This one doesn’t just adjust core mechanics and overhauls so much of the game, it also introduces a fantastic new features for newcomers that I don’t think I have seen before in a game of this kind. CI Games is following in the footsteps of Split Fiction and It Takes Two developer Hazelight Studios by offering a Friend’s Pass, which does exactly what you think it would. The pass allows any player to invite a friend - on any platform - who doesn’t own the game, to play in online co-op. As a result, anyone can now download the game for free, create a character, and play the full tutorial - which incidentally has also been redone in this patch. Once that’s done, you’re free to be invited to sessions by anyone who owns the full game. Progression is a little more tricky to explain, but the developer has made several changes with 2.0 to make that experience viable. Character progress and loot is saved between sessions, but only the host will retain world progression. Within the same playthrough, both players will save mainline story progress individually, defeated bosses, and lit Beacons (Bonfires). Vigor and loot drop for each one individually, and both players can revive each other.. Watch on YouTube That’s not all, 2.0 is also making several major tweaks to gameplay. There’s now a dedicated jump button! Core combat has been overhauled, too, with refined lock-on, more precise weapon handling, smoother movement with faster evasions, and entirely new sounds for all combat moves. There’s even a new mechanic that lets you use the Umbral Lamp to help guide you to where you should go next. Elsewhere in this massive updates, you’ll also find a cleaner UI, and some upgrades to the general interface. There’s a host of quality of life updates here, too, such as faster (and automated) Vigor collection and a few other changes to the moment-to-moment flow. Just look at it! | Image credit: Hexworks, CI Games To celebrate this monumentous patch, Lords of the Fallen is currently on sale across all platforms for up to 72% off. Sale periods vary by platform, with some ending as early as April 23 while others going all the way to May 1. If nothing else, you should definitely download the Friend’s Pass on Steam or your preferred platform, play the tutorial and see how it feels. The patch isn’t live everywhere at the moment, but you should expect it to arrive no later than Monday, April 21.

Following a small extension to Diablo 4’s currently-ongoing Season 7, Blizzard will officially kick off the game’s eighth season. We’ve known much about what to expect from this coming season - thanks to the PTR - but the developer never properly revealed it. Read more

Diablo 4 has officially revealed the first of two cross-over events coming to the game over the course of this year. We’ve known for a while that Blizzard has been working on collaborations with outside IPs, and there’s been plenty of guesses. Read more

Sim-ply Lovleh F1 25 hands-on preview, part two: Drifting when you give it a bootful, but not spinning out as much No more being dredged from the harbour: I can finally manage a lap of Monaco without full traction control on. Image credit: EA Article by Mark Warren Senior Staff Writer Published on April 17, 2025 I’ve spent a fair amount of time in F1 24 facing backwards before tapping the flashback button. It’s my own fault – I insist on setting the difficulty too hard, doing manual gears and turning the traction control down to the medium setting. With that previous entry in the series, when mixed with my brick of a right foot, this was a recipe for a fair amount of mistakes, especially on a tricky track that may or may not come with some close barriers ready to punish you for any mistake. Baku, for example, or the ultimate challenge in the form of Monaco – a track set up for the much smaller and nimbler F1 cars of yesteryear, rather than today’s comparative behemoths. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. In F1 25, though, based on what I've played so far, things have improved. The way I drive now feels like an experience that’s just as much of a wild ride, but doesn’t feel liable to bite you a little too often in ways that don’t quite make sense. In the hands-on laps I did, as well as Spa, Imola, Singapore, Bahrain (and a few others I’ll get into later), nailing the perfect lap was still very tricky, but not because of sudden mid-to-late corner spins that feel impossible to avoid unless you barely touch the throttle. Instead, I often found myself able to wrestle back control of - or - correct the slides getting on the power a bit too hard and fast induced. Don’t get me wrong though, there was still a penalty to my leadfootedness – going sideways looks cool, but it ain’t the fastest way to go F1 racing. Plus, the game’s still happy to make your life hard if you happen to go into a corner in the wrong gear, as happens to me on the reg. Meanwhile, on a controller it’s still hard to get that kind of in-depth feel for the car, but in the run around Albert Park I had using an Xbox pad, there’s still enough vibration to provide some feedback for you to react to and mould your driving around. Even if things on a whole feel a bit more floaty in terms of direction changes when you’re playing that way. Reverse, reverse! | Image credit: EA This brings me to F1 25’s year-on-year changes when it comes to stuff that isn’t mode-specific. Five new tracks have been laser-scanned so they’re more detailed and accurate – Bahrain, Miami, Albert Park, Suzuka and Imola. Interestingly, creative director Gavin Cooper revealed that these tweaks has involved doing some species-correct tree placement, in order to ensure that every tree you see by the side of the track is the right kind for the specific location. Suzuka’s famous cherry blossoms are probably the most obvious example. I dunno about you, but I’m gonna be parking myself in a gravel trap and channeling my inner Springwatch to truly appreciate this change. Trees aside, the addition of reverse layouts is a big change for three tracks – Silverstone, Zandvoort, and Austria. Cooper explained that these three were picked as they were the “best contenders” to be fun to run backwards, something I can conform from my hands-on. I’m not usually a fan of games that include a lot of reverse track layouts, as they rarely race better than they do in the intended direction and it can feel like needless track number padding if these alternative layouts are counted as separate to their right-way-around twin, but I did enjoy taking on these three. As it turns out, trying to take the searingly fast Copse corner flat is just as much of an adrenaline rush as trying to do it the other way round, with the added peril of having grass beyond the exit kerb on the right, meaning that you’re more likely to be punished if you carry too much speed and run wide. Ditto for Zandvoort’s banked turns, with the last one I imagine likely to be a recipe for some pretty hilarious start-line pile-ups. It’s no surprise that Codemasters has picked a trio of relatively short tracks that all boast at least a couple of these sketchy high-speed sweepers, and they seem like a solid addition, if not something I imagine I’ll be using regularly once the initial novelty wears off. This is nice, if a bit overdue. | Image credit: EA Alongside these track changes, there are some interesting additions to the cars and drivers themselves. The most noteworthy is that F1 25 sees the series finally introduce the kind of in-depth livery customisation via a decal editor that’s been commonplace in the likes of Forza and Gran Turismo for ages now, as well as having been in Midnight Club: Los Angeles as far back as the PS3 era. It’s better to finally have the ability to actually place sponsor decals in a way that forms part of a unique livery, rather than ending up with every custom F1 car being a bit of a cookie cutter design, but it’s fair to say this is an overdue addition rather than an innovation. That said, good on Cooper and co for only admitting the previous decal system “wasn’t as good as it could have been”. The sponsor decals themselves also got a revamp to match the expanded capabilities of this new placement system, ensuring that it’s not just a case of you trying to put together a swanky full livery with the same tools as before. Codemsters has attempted to give its array of not-quite-real companies more realistic brand identities, encouraging you to create a livery that incorporates their colours. Hopefully in a more visually-appealing way that the BWT Alpines have in recent years. You can also pick a custom font for your driver number in 25, which is a bit more unique and plays into the kind of personal branding all F1 drivers do nowadays. Beyond this, a couple of other changes that caught my eye are the fact that your custom MyTeam car will now actually have the engine sound of whoever manufacturer you’ve picked, instead of being just the same generic tone for everyone, and also the the real-world driver radio clip voiceover introduced in F1 24 has now been extended so you’ll get it playing in qualifying as well as races. Plus with the latter, Codemasters says it’s “doubled” just how many of these voiceover lines are in the game, and added in some from team principals, so you can hear Christian Horner whisper sweet nothings to Max Verstappen after every race because knows the team’s done for if the Dutchman leaves any time soon. Image credit: EA Finally, F1 World - the made that’s become the catch-all for the F1 series’ more casual one-off single player and multiplayer racing has a new PvE mode called Invitationals, which’ll see you sent a one-time code you can some friends can use to take on a specific race scenario against the AI that’ll have rewards based on how well you do. It sounds like an interesting idea, if maybe lacking the kind of unhinged bumper-car chaos that, for better or worse, defines the multiplayer of most big racing games. Plus, the flashback system has had a little visual upgrade to tell newbies which buttons they need to press to delve back into the action. As I mentioned before, though, from what I’ve played of F1 25 so far, I’m hopeful that at least with my usual wheel and preferences setup, I’ll not need to wind back time to get myself out of quite as many backwards predicaments.

Getting The Horns How have F1 25’s developers approached replicating Red Bull’s weird second driver black hole? Well, it’s a bit complicated “They build a setup that gives them the most insane lap time, but I couldn't drive one of their cars.” Image credit: EA News by Mark Warren Senior Staff Writer Published on April 17, 2025 We’re only four races into real world F1’s 2025 season as I type this, and the Red Bull team has already essentially fired (well, demoted) one of its drivers, drafting in a replacement after just two races. There were no factors outside of on-track performance that played into it as far as we know, just two cars on track that looked to be in totally different classes. The curse of being Max Verstappen’s team mate had already claimed its latest victim - in the form of Liam Lawson making way for the previously overlooked Yuki Tsunoda - prior to me even getting to preview this year’s F1 game. So, I had to ask F1 25’s devs how they’ve gone about replicating just how different two cars in the same team can perform and be like to drive. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. “I think the approach we take with the drivers in particular is that we build them based on what we perceive of their performance in the real world,” senior creative director Lee Mather told me, “So we'll try and build them based on the strengths that we see them have in the sport.” “For example,” he explained, “we use confidence under braking, confidence on the throttle, confidence in close proximity to another car. So, if they've got really good confidence with close proximity, they're more likely to make an overtake or make a risky overtake because they're more comfortable doing so. We have confidence in the wet as well. So, for someone who's maybe not performing at their best, that confidence is built into it. “I think, in that case, you would see in our game that you can have two drivers both driving exactly the same car, but maybe one of them's got less confidence under braking, and you would see that they're not as effective as the other driver. So, while we don't maybe build it to the degree - the extremes - that we've seen recently in the sport, where I think it's maybe not the best representation of their performance because of the time they've had in the car, we do build in those driver traits. “So, you would find one driver is better at certain characteristics than others. Then you've got some drivers where obviously - Max and Lewis, for example - they're strong in pretty much all areas.” I asked Mather if, as well as influencing the AI drivers, the difficulty to extract performance from a car as tricky as the Red Bull is something the player will be able to feel when they hop behind the wheel themselves. “I think the difference for us is we build the cars to try and be as approachable as possible and balanced,” he responded, “I was at the F1 sim racing recently, and they are very much in the Max [Verstappen] school of driving [in] that they build a setup that gives them the most insane lap time, but I couldn't drive one of their cars. I think that's probably a good comparison to sometimes what we see in the sport where some certain extremes are not easy for others to drive, and that's definitely the case in [the sim racing world].” For more on F1 25, make sure to check out the multi-part preview of it we've had going up over the course of this month - here's the first one on the big overhaul to the MyTeam mode.

It's a wonderful day for MapleStory fans, and those with a deep nostalgic love for early 2000's MMOs. MapleStory Classic World has been announced as part of the game's 20th anniversary celebration, a recreation of the original version of the game with select quality of life improvements. Read more

A new report has claimed that Ubisoft is working on a new battle royale that's "heavily inspired by Apex Legends". It is apparently being worked on under the project name "Scout", and has been in development for a few years. Read more

Tempered Flood Monster Hunter Wilds' latest schedule of Event and Challenge Quests has a lot of Tempered monsters for anyone looking for a difficulty bump There's a new set of Event and Challenge Quests that just went live in Monster Hunter Wilds, and we've got all the details along with the full schedule. Image credit: Capcom. News by Sherif Saed Contributing Editor Published on April 17, 2025 Monster Hunter Wilds has rolled out the latest set of limited-time quests for all players. Thanks to the recent introduction of Challenge Quests with Title Update 1, the schedule now includes both Event Quests as well as Challenge Quests. There’s a considerable uptick in the number of difficult encounters in this one compared to past weeks, however, likely because most players are probably well into the endgame. It could also be a response to feedback about the challenge (or lack thereof) of the major fights in the game. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. This new schedule covers this week, next week, and the week after that. So that’s the week of April 14, April 21, and April 28. Each week’s quest kick off on Wednesday of that week, meaning this week’s batch is already live. As always, first week’s quests will be available for the following two weeks, so you can wait until the third week to play all of them if you like. That said, this time around the second and third weeks both have the same schedule. This is all pretty standard, except for the difficulty level of some of the quests - which now include a number of Tempered mosnters. So, without further ado, let’s dig into what you can expect for the next few weeks in Monster Hunter Wilds. Week of April 14 Tongue-Tied - 5 Stars (HR 21 or higher) - Hunt the the Tempered Chatacabra to obtain Hard Armor Spheres and Advanced Armor Spheres. When Do Quematrice Sing? - 4 Stars (HR 9 or higher) - Hunt the Quematrice to obtain materials to craft cute headgear: Amstrigian α. [Challenge Quest] Doshaguma of the Hollow - 5 Stars (HR 16 or higher) - Slay the Doshaguma using specific equipment in a race against the clock. Earn an exclusive pendant for participating. Weeks of April 21 and April 28 That Won't Work on Me! - 6 Stars (HR 31 or higher) - Hunt the Tempered Xu Wu to obtain materials to craft Sealed Eyepatch α headgear as well as an outfit for Alma. Gravios Blockade - 6 Stars (HR 31 or higher) - Hunt the Tempered Gravios to obtain new ingredients for BBQ grilling. Daughters of Carabosse - 4 Stars (HR 16 or higher) - Hunt two Lala Barina to obtain Blossom α armor set and Felyne Butterfly α Palico equipment. Chemicus Nocturnus - 2 Stars (HR 3 or higher) - Hunt the Rompopolo to obtain Firestone and other crafting materials. Careening Out of Control - 1 Star (HR 2 or higher) - Hunt the Balahara to obtain Armor Spheres and Armor Sphere+. King of a Faraway Sky - 6 Stars (HR 31 or higher) - Hunt the Tempered Guardian Rathalos to obtain Artian materials for use in crafting Artian weapons. Tongue-Tied - 5 Stars (HR 21 or higher) - Hunt the the Tempered Chatacabra to obtain Hard Armor Spheres and Advanced Armor Spheres. Ballet in the Rain - 5 Stars (HR 21 or higher) - Hunt the Tempered Lala Barina to obtain Glowing Orb - Swords Decorations. Sand-Scarred Soul - 5 Stars (HR 9 or higher) - Hunt the Doshaguma to obtain Glowing Orb - Armors Decorations. Anguish and Atrocity - 5 Stars (HR 21 or higher) - Hunt the Guardian Doshaguma to gain a lot of Hunter Rank Points. Kut-Ku Gone Cuckoo - 4 Stars (HR 9 or higher) - Hunt the Yian Kut-Ku to obtain the Mimiphyta α headgear. Like a Fire Hidden by Sand - 4 Stars (HR 9 or higher) - Hunt the Rathian to obtain materials to craft Expedition Headgear α. When Do Quematrice Sing? - 4 Stars (HR 9 or higher) - Hunt the Quematrice to obtain materials to craft Amstrigian α Headgear. Some of those are going to be pretty challenging, especially given the limited equipment choices for the Challenge Quests. If you need a little help getting your gear right, or finding an answer to any question you might have, our Monster Hunter Worlds guide was recently updated, so keep it bookmarked.

Bloody Action Hands-on: Ninja Gaiden Ragebound is NES-inspired, retro ninja action done right, and the perfect entrée to whet your appetite for Ninja Gaiden 4 In a preview of The Game Kitchen's next title, Ninja Gaiden loses a dimension, but keeps the quality. Image credit: VG247 Article by Connor Makar Staff Writer Published on April 16, 2025 Some things are just better together. Wine and cheese. Salt and Pepper. Bass drum and hi-hat. All these are good, but having played through The Game Kitchen's next bloody action romp, Ninja Gaiden Ragebound, I'm convinced some of that one combination deserves a spot pretty high up the list of all-time best pairings: Ninja Gaiden and 2D. The Game Kitchen proves the combo is just as effective as it was in the NES days. For those who don't know, The Game Kitchen was responsible for the excellent Blasphemous and Blasphemous 2, which brought side-scrolling action gameplay, gorgeous art, and rich religious theming together in a wonderful blend I can't help but recommend. It seems the team, fresh from depicting rampant violence of a Catholic nature, has decided to put down the Mea Culpa and pick up the Ninjato. You couldn't have picked a better team to make Ragebound, as the gory combat, traversal, and deep-rooted challenge makes the transition seamlessly. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. When first discussing Ninja Gaiden Ragebound, there are three main topics of merit: the gameplay itself, the presentation, and the difficulty. The Game Kitchen smash all three, in a way that makes it hard to imagine truly old school Ninja Gaiden fans being upset with. Sure, you can't beat the classics, but as far as odes to the past go, this seems to me to be a pretty darn good one. The feel of gameplay in Ragebound is tight, responsive, and drenched in that visceral feedback that's downright mandatory in good side-scrollers. Hits feel good in Ragebound, which is important, because the game's bread-and-butter is high octane slicing and dicing. Playing through the tutorial and two missions, every weapon and ability I used felt responsive and cathartic. Even movement - itself key to the overall play experience in side-scrollers - felt fast and punchy. It's the kind of game that melts away in your hand, along with the hours you spend behind the controller. As you proceed through the story, you confront various oni (read: demons). These can be, broadly speaking, broken up into two categories of foe: small and large. Small enemies are killable in a single hit, while larger blokes take a few blows (or an enhanced strike) to take down. There's also a colour-coded mechanic that adjusts the flow of brawls. Occasionally, enemies will radiate a blue or red aura and through killing select softies with that same aura, you are granted a single hit of an enhanced attack in that colour, which you can use to fell a particularly powerful that shares the same hue. You soar through levels at a breakneck pace, granted you know what you're doing. | Image credit: The Game Kitchen Conseqently, fights in Ragebound are practically mini-puzzles in which you must quickly determine the optimal route through an encounter, making use of what opportunities arise to quickly dispose of the forces of evil. It's a restriction sure, but not burdensome. DmC: Devil May Cry this is not. I found myself engorged in the process. Seeing what you're about to face, and figuring out on the fly how best to make my way through in good time and health. Ninja Gaiden Ragebound is visually stunning. It perfectly captures that retro aesthetic, while also pushing things somewhat given the resources provided with modern hardware. The game loads quickly, and looks great. Each enemy is distinct and recognisable, variants present in different levels. When you kill an enemy with one of those aforementioned enhanced attacks, they fold into themselves in a puddle of blood and gore, collapsing pleasingly like a chocolate lava cake. Delicious. The most notable part of the game's presentation are the fantastic stage transitions and boss fights. You leap out a window from the tutorial right into mission one a massive encounter, with no load time whatsoever. The bosses are vast and bombastic affairs, set in vibrant arenas and shooting out massive attacks that capture the attention and summoned from my mouth audible sounds of approval throughout my time playing. Take a gander at this pixel work. The game is quite the looker. | Image credit: The Game Kitchen As is gospel for the Ninja Gaiden series, the game is hard. Hard, but not unfair. You're given all the tools you need to blast through levels fast and clean, and given ample information ahead of fights to determine how exactly to overcome challenges without having your ankles shattered. Still, hits you do take hurt, and you're lacking something like passive life regeneration, your life being a resource more than an area of constant worry. Checkpoints are present, though scarce, and it feels as though you're met with a choice in Ragebound: get good, or struggle. This is exactly what you'd want from any Ninja Gaiden game, and that feeling here adds all the more to my claim that this is a brilliant revival of classic Ninja Gaiden. You see, it's core to the fun. Enemies attack from awkward angles, perhaps they're positioned in such a way that forces you to leap over platforms or through a particular ability through a gap in the wall, but nothing is sprung on you without warning. Ragebound, like classic Castlevanias, Mega Man games, or other retro royalty, teaches you what you need to know with a soft and nurturing hand, before using that same hand to throw punches your way. You can dodge them (the game makes sure you know how) but a punch is a punch and the bruise-averse should keep this in mind. At the end of the tutorial, you fight Ryu Hayabusa. This is a fight you're meant to lose. Losing most of your health transitions you straight into the first real mission, as Ryu goes off to do Ninja Gaiden 1 stuff as you set off on your own new adventure. However, if you dodge well and strike where you can, you can whittle down his health! At roughly 70%, Ryu starts pulling out some nasty attacks that are incredibly hard to avoid with your starting kit. I confirmed with one of the devs present that this is a fight you can win, but it's extremely hard. I wasn't able to do it, the best I got in my short time playing was 60%. But you can do it. I can see your eyes widening, masochists. Even the first boss isn't exactly a pushover, setting the tone for the rest of my preview. | Image credit: The Game Kitchen The team at The Game Kitchen didn't need to add that, but they did because they understand what makes a game like Ragebound so appealing. The fight is filled with "oh sh*t" moments as Ryu pulls absurd aerial attacks out and throws them at you. It's hard, but the game knows you want to win that fight. On top of that, when you lose, he Izuna Drops you. It's exactly what I wanted from Ragebound, and there's a good reason I spent the last 30 minutes of my preview time trying to take him down. Ninja Gaiden Ragebound seems to me to be an absolutely fantastic addition to the Ninja Gaiden series, even if it isn't mainline. It represents everything I feel is important to the series, and fits nicely into the canon in a way that should be pleasing to old fans too. I would highly recommend keeping an eye on this one, it's a scorcher. Ninja Gaiden Ragebound is coming sometime in 2025, to PC. This game was previewed at the Dotemu offices in Paris, with travel and accommodation handled by Dotemu.

If you've suddenly recieved an invite to a beta test for The Witcher 4 and have been telling all of your mates about it, I've got bad news. CD Projekt has just warned fans about a beta test scam that's going around, with folks being offered phony opportunities to play the game early. Read more

Bloober Team has just released a gameplay trailer for Cronos: The New Dawn, it's next big horror game. A Sci-Fi 3rd person shooter, the game will be available on PC, PS5, and the Xbox Series X|S. Read more

Sweet Oblivion Quick, come to the Meat Harbor: The Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion Remastered is real, and it better have brought back the original’s best feature Forget everything else, we need Mehrunes Dagon’s ludicrously-named corridors. Image credit: VG247 Article by Mark Warren Senior Staff Writer Published on April 16, 2025 Look, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. I entered the Oblivion Gate, a plucky young adventurer overflowing with zeal and a desire to prove the nine divines were right to give me a second chance. I channeled the spirit of the dearly-departed Patrick Stewart in a wig. His words, commanding me to CLOSE SHUT THE JAWS OF OBLIVION, they were ringing in the ears attached to my potato-shaped head adorned with a face only a janky mother could love. I was not ready. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. I followed those Bruma guards in, and they weren’t ready either. I watched them slide down the slight incline into the lava, powerless to stop them from meeting their tragic and toasty fate. The hairs on the back of my misshapen neck pricked up as I listened to their cries of pain. UURGH. HAHHH. WUHUGHH. OUUOOGHH. HGGGHHH. The screaming of spring lads that don’t know to run, it paralyses you. But the silence that followed, once they’d all flopped down into the orange ooze, either dead or unconscious. That’s what really turned the screw. “Jauffre,” I yelled at the top of my lungs, “Baurus! Where are you both? Come and save me from this fresh hell, this oblivion of Oblivion!” No one came. And so, I trekked on, searching for the sigil stone that would teleport my helpless form, bedecked in armour the condition of which would be improved if only I’d remembered to pick up some repair hammers during my last trip to the Market District. I began to acclimatise to the realm. With its looming, spiky towers housing unspeakable horrors. Its pale dirt paths, penetrated by jagged stone slabs jutting out of the earth and patrolled by bloodthirsty scamps. The constant auditory screaming and bubbling in the background. I would be okay. This was just a generic hell. Terrifying, sure, but nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing unique, nothing weird. Nothing too alien from the very Lord of the Rings movie-ish forests and fields back in Cyrodiil I was accustomed to wandering or jumping past because my acrobatics skill was lagging behind. I knew no jungles, despite what some lore books in Vvardenfell might have once said on the matter. What could lie within these infernal towers, these lusty keeps? | Image credit: Bethesda/VG247 Then, I came to the first door. ‘Enter: The Blood Feast’ it read, and suddenly the tights under my cuirass were no longer clean. The Blood Feast, I whispered to myself as though just saying the words could curse my family for generations. Oh, by the nine! Foul and horrific imaginings of what could lie within were conjured in my mind. Two Clannfears roasting an Imperial on a spit. Spikes being thrust into places that spikes should not be thrust. A dinner date with the Adoring Fan that ends with his entire still-living form being surgically implanted into your skull. I shuddered. Surely it cannot be this bad? Thankfully, it was not. Each section I ran through, from the Blood Well, to the Meat Harbor, to the dreaded Corridors of Dark Salvation, all contained things, but none quite lived up to their uber-saucy names. They were all just rooms, halls, and passages that looked a bit spooky, and were home to a few enemies. They weren’t areas you would breathlessly tell your grandkids you fought through, rather tales you might save for if you need to deploy a distraction while holding up the queue at Jensine's ‘Good as New’ Merchandise because you can’t find the official Tiber Septim memorial wallet you bought in the White-Gold Tower’s gift shop. I overcame them, grabbed the stone in the equally grandly named Sigillum Sanguis, and CLOSED SHUT THIS PARTICULAR JAW OF OBLIVION. I wasn’t done, though. There were a bunch of other gates that required slamming like a car door in the rain, and I was the only one who could do it. So, I braved the Caverns of the Abused, the Halls of Shame, and the Embers of Hatred. I scaled the Brooding Fortress, climbed the Gore Steeple, and mounted the Flesh Spire. I endured the Molten Halls just to battle the craven innards of the Lust Keep. I wandered the Rending Halls, then negotiated the Portals of Natural Disaster. I overcame the Red Gnash Channels, the Bowels, and the Chaos Stronghold, though not necessarily in that order. The Smoke and Scorch was nothing to me and I roared with booming laughter as I strolled through Vaults of End Times to secure a date with the summit of the Great Gate’s World Breaker. The gates - lesser gates, great gates, medium gates - I moseyed through them all. | Image credit: Bethesda/VG247 As I became a more and more seasoned Oblivion Gate delver, Merhunes’ monikers ceased to scare me at all. I came to love them, because like a lot of the rest of my adventures in Cyrodiil, the surface-level ridiculousness they offered often brought me more joy than the solid elements that lay behind them. I revelled in the style - the aesthetics - of Oblivion, because a lot of the time it was that which played the most prominent role in making the experiences I had so memorable, rather than the substance of them. Long after my adventuring days were done, and I had CLOSED SHUT THE JAWS OF OBLIVION, I found myself reminiscing about this aspect of them during a spot of midnight afternoon tea with Sheogorath at New Sheoth Palace. The Mad God, not often one to be too interested in what I said, suddenly seemed interested on this occasion. “In that case, and given that mods exist, do you think The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is worth remastering?” he responded, out of the blue. I was taken aback. “My Lord, what are these strange things of which you speak?” I spluttered. “Humour me, mortal, or Punishment Point awaits!” he commanded. “Does any video game that you can still actually play on a fair amount of platforms in something close to its original state really need a remaster?” The words left my lips without my brain even having formulated or processed them. Could it be that the Prince of Madness had used a scroll of hot take on me without my knowledge? “Hm,” he replied, “Haskill reckons Morrowind or Daggerfall might have been more useful subjects to receive such a treatment.” “That’s fair,” I said, again without thinking, “I guess it was just supposed to be like this.”

You. Do you crave more Nintendo Directness than you've already had this month? Do you want to learn more about Mario Kart World? Well, big Ninty has confirmed hoe long the special MKW Direct it pencilled in during the Switch 2 Direct will run for. You can also watch it right here. Hey, it's not like you'll have anything better to do on a Thursday than watch Mario and Luigi show off their latest attempt to run each other of the road, because only one brother can remain. Watch on YouTube You'll be able to tune into this Mario Kart World Direct via the video above on April 17, 2025. It's set to kick off at 2PM BST, which is 6AM PT, 9AM ET, and 3PM CEST. Just press play at that time wherever you are and boom, racing action with Toad, Daisy, and all the other characters who're riding their coat-tails if we're being honest. It'll run for "roughly 15 minutes" - about the length of a Grand Prix - and tell you a bunch more stuff about the game on Switch 2. Will the entire chat be screaming 'DROP THE PRICE', like they were during the Treehouse livestreams the other week? To see this content please enable targeting cookies. We'll have to see, but Mario Kart World's price tag has definitely been a part of all that controversy, though it certainly hasn't been the lone source of ire. The console itself, the Switch 2 Welcome Tour, and most recently the Switch 2 edition of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild have all caught flak from fans due to Nintendo's pricing decisions. In other recent Nintendo news, a leaker has claimed that Switch 2 pre-orders in the US and Canada could be back on soon, after Ninty delayed them so it could see how those pesky tariffs played out.

Among Us 3D, a new version of the viral hit that took the gaming world by storm a few years back, finally has a release date. The game will be launching May 5, 2025, on Steam - so grab some crew mates, call an emergency meeting, and get ready to hop back into it. Read more

Still In The Vault? While the Oblivion remaster looks imminent, "it'll be a while" before we see the Fallout 3 remaster mentioned in those leaked Microsoft court docs, leaker claims Assuming this is accurate, you'll just have to sit tight for now, lone wanderers. Image credit: Bethesda News by Mark Warren Senior Staff Writer Published on April 16, 2025 Amid all the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered leakage of the past day or so, you might have forgotten that one of the first places that was ever mentioned was in a document which leaked during Microsoft's court battle with the FTC. Another thing said doc listed was a Fallout 3 remaster, and a leaker's now claimed "it'll be a while" before we see that game. As a quick refresher, those Microsoft documents accidentally came out as part of 2023 court proceedings between the company and the FTC over the former's Activision Blizzard deal. God, remember that being the news story that just never ended? Anyway, listed alongside stuff like the Oblivion remaster, Dishonored 3, and a bunch of games that have since released was a remaster of 2008's most iconic dad-chasing simulator. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Fast forward to now, and we've heard barely a peep else about that Fallout 3 remaster. Enter prominent leaker NateTheHate (via TheGamer), who's responded to a tweet from a fan keen to know if said remaster is still a thing, seemingly because getting an Oblivion remaster sometime very soon isn't enough. "It'll be a while before we see it," the leaker claimed in response. Short, sweet, and vague enough that we'll all be kept guessing for the foreseeable. Nice. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Looking back at the original leaked doc, the Fallout 3 remaster was listed for what looked like the 2024 financial year, alongside stuff like The Elder Scrolls 6 (aaaaaaahhhhh) and Dishonored 3 - basically most of the other stuff we've not gotten yet since the doc emerged. As folks pointed out at the time, however, there's no telling how accurate the doc still is at this point, with the potential for plans to have changed or ideas to have been scrapped between it being leaked and it actually being put together, let alone now we're a year and a bit down the line from the leak. So, all we can do for now is sit and wait. To be fair, it's not like we're already looking to have two Oblivion remasters to play this year in the form the official one and massive mod Skyblivion. We're so hard done by (seriously though, please release TES VI before I turn 30).

Screens and details about The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered - that long-rumoured remake of the Elder Scrolls game about a soon-to-be mad realm dweller helping some potato-faced weirdos to shut some big doors so youths in hoodies can't keep letting a draft in - appear to have leaked via Virtuos Games' website. Read more

A new Space Marine 2 update has gone live today, adding a bunch of new content to the game. This includes a new Extraction game mode, the new Inferno Pistol for players to use, new cosmetics and perks, and a new enemy: the Trygon. Read more

Dune Awakening has been delayed from its intended May 15 release date, pushed back by just under a month to June 10. This comes following feedback from its closed beta testers, who have led Funcom conclude it needs "a bit more time to cook". Read more

Baldur's Gate 3's huge Patch 8 is now live, finally giving you your chance to dive into its new subclasses, cross-play mechanics, photo mode, and more. Yep, your days of jealously staring through the window at all of those stress testers enjoying some early fun are now over. Read more

Warning: Spoilers for season 2 of Prime Video's Fallout may lie ahead. Read more

In spite of all the pre-release online vitriol, it looks like there's a real appetite for Assassin's Creed Shadows, at least in the USA. The game currently is the second best-selling game in America, behind Capcom's massive hit Monster Hunter Wilds. Read more

It looks as though the Minecraft movie money train just keeps on choo-chooing away, as the film has generated another $80 million in its second weekend in movie theatres in the USA. That doesn't even include worldwide ticket sales, which continue to fly off popcorn counters around the globe. Read more