Control Resonant hides its best part 15 hours into the game, and it isn't one of the flashy moments designed to blow your mind. The author says the game's most stripped-down location is their favorite segment, even though memorable moments like the twisted streets of Manhattan, a mold-covered area, and a floating-head boss fight are worth loving.
Little Blackbird combines 2D platforming, squad ability puzzles and village building into a combat-free micro wasteland adventure. Players control a blackbird scattered by a storm, reuniting lost companions and turning collected junk into village buildings in a world humans have left behind. The hand-drawn picture-book game is officially described as "solarpunk," supports keyboard and mouse, and is better suited to a controller.
Honor of Kings: Chess announced on September 30 that a new Diamond Frenzy mode will unlock once one million players server-wide reach the top King rank, meaning over a million had already done so within about half a month of launch. The author, who has played over 100 hours, estimates that experienced players need 70 to 80 matches, roughly 40 hours, to reach that rank. The game topped the iOS free chart from pre-download through its first week, and after the Sun and Moon Walker skin line launched on September 25 it rose to sixth on the top-grossing chart and stayed in the top ten for several days. The author also notes community discussion moving from memorizing answers to understanding them, with players studying lineup logic and mid-game branching.
The Transport Fever series marks its tenth anniversary, and Transport Fever 3 launched on September 30 as Urban Games' first proper sequel in years. The game drops the rule that ties revenue directly to transport distance, giving different cargoes different delivery deadlines and letting goods continue flowing past a node, with delays affecting resident satisfaction. The traditional campaign is replaced by eight activities built around specific historical periods and transport events, and much of the UI was rebuilt to make the more complex systems easier to read.
Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls limits Deadpool's meta humor to an encyclopedic knowledge of fighting games and their culture. His moveset, voice lines, win screens, and character select portrait borrow from Street Fighter, Tekken, Mortal Kombat, Guilty Gear, and more, with some Fourth Wall Attacks only available while he recovers from damage. Takehito Koyasu, DIO's voice actor, voices him in Japanese.
Octopus Panic's PvE extraction shooter Gravhounds held an open playtest over the weekend ahead of its planned early access release later this fall. Up to four players take on human/canine hybrid roles, gathering resources on alien planets while fighting escalating enemy waves, with a pipeline network that automates resource delivery and can be grinded for fast traversal. The playtest offered four characters — Zane, Finn, Selene and Dozer — and shooting lacked punch, with tougher enemies feeling like damage sponges.
Section 9 Interactive's debut End of Abyss applies metroidvania structure to a twin-stick horror adventure, casting players as combat technician Cel in a gargantuan labyrinthian facility. Its atmosphere is the most captivating part, but exploration and combat slowly descend into a slog, and the roughly 10-hour campaign's plot only gains momentum in its back third. Boss fights feel rote compared to the moment-to-moment combat.
A PC Gamer writer spent 5 hours on September 30 scouring Nexus Mods for the least probable Goku mod, scoring contenders with a Saiyan Singularity Judgment (SSJ) average of Gokuitude, Limit Breakability, and Wish Grantology. The candidates ranged across Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, Skyrim, Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered, Black Myth: Wukong, Oblivion, Guitar Hero World Tour, and Elden Ring.
IGN breaks down the ending of Marvel's Wolverine, noting that the game gives Logan his adamantium skeleton via Apocalypse and turns him and Jean Grey into immortal lovers spanning centuries. Essex, better known as Mister Sinister, uses the Helix Device to awaken dormant mutants and unleash Sentinels before Wolverine kills him, though a final blast of Helix energy reactivates the Shinigami within Logan. A post-credits scene shows Apocalypse recruiting Sabretooth as his new Horseman of War, setting up a sequel.
PC Gamer reviews the Lenovo Legion 5i Gen 10, praising its 15.1-inch 2560x1600 OLED display at 165Hz and its £1,348 / $1,499 price. However, it ships with a single 16GB DDR5-4800 stick instead of a 2x8GB dual-channel setup, which becomes a real bottleneck in bandwidth-sensitive workloads. The unit packs an Intel Core i7 13650HX, Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 8GB, and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD.
Not all romances in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt are created equally, with some romanceable characters being mere flings while others can become the love of Geralt's life. This guide covers the romance paths, whether players stay faithful to Triss or Yennefer or pursue others.
Castlevania: Belmont's Curse is a side-scrolling Metroidvania from Evil Empire, the studio behind Dead Cells post-launch content, starring vampire hunter Rose Belmont. Defeated bosses are sealed into Rose's Tarot Cards so their skills can be used against enemies. A pre-order discount is available before the game is even available.
PC Gamer reviewed the MSI Katana 15 HX B14W gaming laptop, which costs £1,299 in the UK but $1,799 in the US, a $500 difference. It packs an RTX 5060, Core i7 14650HX, and 16GB of DDR5-5600 RAM with a 2560x1440 165Hz display, but the screen looks dull and the 115W TGP often runs at half that due to CPU bottlenecking.
The Asus TUF Gaming A16 wins this three-way mid-range gaming laptop group test, thanks to cooling and power delivery that let its RTX 5050 run at a full 115W TGP alongside a Ryzen 7 260 and a 1920x1200 165Hz display. Its 16GB of DDR5 and RTX 5050 are conservative for the long run, with frame rates potentially stuttering around the three-to-four-year mark. At $1,550 it needs a hefty discount to count as genuinely budget-friendly.
IGN rounds up the best, worst, and weirdest games based on the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, spanning shooters, racers, and ecology simulators. The 1999 Episode I: The Phantom Menace game sold well on PC and PlayStation but suffered from an unpleasant high camera angle, while 2005's Lego Star Wars, with 6.1 million copies sold, is the most commercially successful Prequel Trilogy game.
Business coach Martijn van Zwieten begins a five-part series on successfully managing an indie studio. He introduces a management framework called FIRM, standing for Future, Issues, Rocks, and Meetings, the four pillars that drive focus, alignment, and accountability. This first part asks what a studio is, describing it as made up of a team, games or IP, and distribution and marketing.
End of Abyss has an OpenCritic average of 73 with 50% recommended across 8 reviews. The sci-fi survival horror metroidvania on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox drew praise for its atmosphere and exploration but criticism for technical glitches and map issues.
Songs of Glimmerwick, from the developer of Eastshade, is a farm sim set in a musical magic school where spells are learned by playing rhythm charts, and fishing and potion-making also use rhythm mechanics. The game has a relaxed pace, freezes the clock so you never miss class, and avoids quest markers, leaving players free to farm, socialize, and explore. The writer says they are slowly becoming enchanted with it, though most main characters feel a bit bland.
Invoke Studios showed a Gamescom demo of Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons in which protagonist Kaatri, who gains magic through a pact with the witch Tasha, uses spells like Tasha's Leash and Black Tentacles together for combat and puzzle-solving. General manager Dominique Guay said the world is meant to react to the player's magic rather than live entirely without them, and that Darkon is smaller than worlds like Crimson Desert's but dense enough that a new location is about a minute away. Guay also said Kaatri is a written character with a fixed main narrative, unlike Baldur's Gate 3's dialogue-driven role-playing, and that the game launches next year.
End of Abyss blends the eerie atmosphere of Little Nightmares with the thrills of a '90s sci-fi horror flick, delivering an unnerving descent into a blue-toned hell. Your tiny bobble-headed hero navigates steel corridors that seem to stretch on forever, evoking the feeling of being lost in an empty mall at night as a child. Despite messy execution, the parasite-infested game occasionally sticks in your gut as a nerve-racking tone piece.
GameSpot's review says End of Abyss is a third-person metroidvania in which you play Cel, a voiceless technician investigating a facility that has gone dark, across a 12- to 15-hour sci-fi horror story. It draws on Little Nightmares' texture, soulslike bosses, and Resident Evil-style fixed camera angles, and its exploration and backtracking are the reviewer's favorite part. However, several flaws and poor blending of those influences leave it an inconsistent patchwork.
GameSpot's video review of End Of Abyss, the horror-themed debut from Section 9, finds much to like but not everything works. The Metroidvania commits what the review calls a cardinal sin for the genre.
Push Square reviewed End of Abyss, a sci-fi horror metroidvania from Section 9 Interactive, with the author reaching the credits in roughly 13 hours. The review praises its large, layered map and tense twin-stick combat while noting minimal guidance and a map-marking quirk, and reports audio issues, invisible barriers and getting stuck in the environment during play. It ran at 60 frames per second on both PS5 and PS5 Pro with no performance options, and the author hopes the bugs are fixed in a day-one patch.
Former Sony executive Shuhei Yoshida said in an interview with The Verge that Sony should keep the PS5 generation going as long as possible, because people are very happy using PS5 and Switch 2. He pointed to rising component costs and said neither players nor developers are strongly demanding more powerful hardware. He added that Xbox, with Series X|S falling behind and the company going through changes, may be more incentivised to release its next console.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered adds an armor appearance transmog feature officially called Reforge, unlocked by completing the Master Armorers questline from the blacksmith at Crow's Perch, which is recommended for level 24 and requires defeating an Ice Troll and an Archgriffin. After completion, the new forgemaster Yoana lets you pick one piece of gear for its stats and another for its appearance, paying a small fee per altered piece, and Reforge can only be used by returning to Yoana.
Neon Giant's No Law is being framed as the open-world Deus Ex that Cyberpunk 2077 never became. The first-person open-world shooter RPG casts you as veteran Grey Harker in the city of Port Desire, with missions solvable through stealth, hacking or open combat. Neon Giant says every apartment is handcrafted rather than procedurally generated, and the game includes an "Immersive" mode that disables UI navigation hints in favour of in-world signage.
Logitech's G Pro X3 Superstrike (and X2 Superstrike) promises lower click latency thanks to analogue switches that shorten button-press distance. Using the Human Benchmark reaction test, I did 150 reactive clicks—50 each with the SteelSeries Sensei Pro, the X3 Superstrike at level 1, and at level 3—and got about the same average reaction time with all of them, with level 1 only 1 ms faster and level 3 actually worse than the Sensei Pro. That difference looks like natural variance, and individual results seemed far more influenced by factors like sleep and hydration.
After The Witcher 3 Remastered launched, the game hit a peak of 120,975 concurrent players on Steam, beating its previous record of 103,329 set in January 2020. The game is also available on GOG, the Epic Games Store, PS5, Switch 2, and Xbox Series X|S, and the Remastered Edition is a free upgrade for existing owners. The numbers came during a busy release month that included Onimusha: Way of the Sword, Control Resonant, Marvel's Wolverine, and Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave.
Capcom producer Genki Sunano told Kotaku that the Switch 2 version of Monster Hunter Wilds was built around delivering a natural Wilds experience rather than a scaled-down port, describing it as a painstaking and at times seemingly endless process. The version launches on 5th December with all free DLC updates including new monsters and local co-op support, and runs at a solid 30FPS in handheld mode even during taxing multiplayer hunts. Capcom plans to apply what it learned to performance improvements for existing platforms ahead of Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance in 2027.
Push Square reviewed The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered on PS5, finding no game-changing additions but noticeably smoother movement for Geralt and Roach, reworked enemy behaviour, an overhauled skill tree, and redone lighting and environmental assets. On PS5 Pro the ray tracing mode runs at 60fps and the performance mode is uncapped, while base PS5 locks ray tracing to 30fps, and the autosave stutter remains unfixed. The remaster also adds dynamic meditation, transmog, accessibility options, and console mod support via mod.io, though transmog only unlocks later in the game.
Nintendo Life has updated its ranking of the best Fire Emblem games of all time, adding the Switch 2 title Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave to the list. The ranking covers every Fire Emblem game released in the West, including spin-offs, while excluding straight ports of games already available on Switch. Mobile titles Fire Emblem Shadows and Fire Emblem Heroes sit at the bottom of the list.
Minecraft Dungeons 2 launches this Tuesday as the next Xbox first-party release, and early reviews are already out. Destructoid gave it 9/10, while Day One, CGM and TheSixthAxis each scored it 8.5/10, with GamesRadar at 3.5/5, GameSpot 7/10 and IGN 6/10. At the time of writing its Metacritic average sits at 76 for Xbox Series X and 74 for PC, compared with 70 on PC and 74 on Xbox One for the 2020 original; it costs £24.99 / $29.99 and is included with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass.
The Witcher 3 Remastered launches this Tuesday, and the first media reviews have started to appear. Metro gave it 4.5/5, calling it a remaster rather than a remake with 4K visual polish and rebalanced combat, while Noisy Pixel, GamingBolt and GameTyrant each scored it 9/10 and Polygon, Sportskeeda and PCGamesN were positive or mostly positive. The update is free for owners of the digital version, and seemingly the physical version, of The Witcher 3 on Xbox Series X and S.
In Zach Cregger's new Resident Evil film, Austin Abrams plays Bryan, a courier delivering a package containing the final ingredient for a cure to Raccoon City General Hospital, who is bitten by an infected girl and slowly mutates. By the end, Bryan fully transforms, devours the scientists, and dies as his mutation robs him of consciousness. The author praises this willingness to kill off the main protagonist, calling it a rare "bad ending" for a high-budget production and an antidote to the games' refusal to kill off their main characters.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered launches this week, and existing Switch owners of the game can get it for free. Nintendo Life rounded up early reviews: Push Square said it looks and plays better than ever but adds nothing truly game-changing, Gaming Bolt gave it 9/10 and called it the definitive way to play with both expansions included, and Press Start said the Switch 2 version is a fantastic achievement with full synced saves and a free upgrade for Switch 1 owners. Switch 2 impressions remain limited, and Nintendo Life's own Switch 2 review is still to come.
Quick Sign Casting in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered was originally added in TW3's next-gen update and lets you hold R2/RT on a controller, then press a face or shoulder button to cast one of Geralt's Signs. With it disabled, Geralt can only cast an equipped Sign with R2/RT and must swap Signs through a selection wheel that pauses the game. If you've never played The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt before, Quick Sign Casting should be turned on; the only reason not to use it is if you're already used to the older style.
VGC went hands-on with the opening hours of Most Wanted, the new roguelike mode in Ghost of Yotei: Complete Edition, in which players fight waves of enemies from the base game before facing one of the Yotei Six. The run-based mode has players earn currency and upgrades each run, spend it in a menu to upgrade abilities and change each character's starting weapon, and unlock extra playable characters including Ghost of Tsushima protagonist Jin Sakai based on how much currency has been spent on other characters. Most Wanted and the Echoes of Sekigahara expansion release together on October 1 as $14.99 DLC, while a $69.99 Complete Edition lets new players start the base game now.
Control, I'm Not Coming Back is an indie game of about one hour, following a rocket launch mission in which the player and a commander wait for the ignition signal from ground control. It has no save feature, so it is best played in one sitting, and its localization was recently updated alongside other languages. The author said the multilingual update was completed by volunteers from various countries by hand, without relying on AI.
Episode 2 of the podcast series Puzzle Construction Method uses a scene-by-scene analysis of Ace Attorney 4-1 Poker Murder Case to explore how a mystery story builds a logic chain from clues to conclusion. The episode spoils two works, Ace Attorney 4-1 Poker Murder Case and The Tragedy of X, and features mystery author Zhong Shengli as guest. The six-episode series aims to help listeners understand the creative logic behind mystery stories.