Developer Mike Lacher's Triple-A Minesweeper spoofs excessive handholding in blockbuster games with unskippable title cards, yellow diamond markers showing where to click, and a Sweeper who constantly vocalises his thoughts. Hitting a mine doesn't kill you—the Sweeper just exclaims "Oof, a mine!" and the game continues. It takes about five minutes to play.
Nivalis Nights : 'If you want a cozy existence in this city, you're going to have to earn it' https://www.pcgamer.com/games/life-sim/be-warned-nivalis-nights-may-not-be-the-cozy-game-you-expect-if-you-want-a-cozy-existence-in-this-city-youre-going-to-have-to-earn-it/
Triple-A Minesweeper is a gleeful send-up of blockbuster gaming's worst habits https://www.pcgamer.com/games/puzzle/triple-a-minesweeper-is-a-gleeful-send-up-of-blockbuster-gamings-worst-habits-from-yellow-paint-to-characters-who-talk-too-much/
Aspyr has brought Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor Game of the Year Edition to Switch 2, sold separately or bundled with its sequel as the Middle-earth: Shadow Bundle. The Game of the Year version includes all previously available DLC, including the Bright Lord campaign, but the game remains locked to 30fps and a max resolution of 1080p in both handheld and docked modes. The Nemesis system still stands out, giving procedurally generated Orc and Uruk-hai Captains unique names, appearances and rivalries that make each playthrough feel different.
The author played part of Sonic Racing CrossWorlds Season 2 at TGS2026. The Evangelion crossover adds Rei Ayanami and Asuka as racers, Unit-00, Unit-01 and Unit-02 as speed-type cars, and a new Third New Tokyo City track where Unit-01 appears and Ramiel fires beams at players. The Godzilla crossover turns Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah into cars and adds an Escape from Godzilla track based on a Sonic Adventure city route, where Godzilla's destruction and atomic breath affect the race. The demo also includes Bayonetta, Aigis from Persona 3 Reload, a McLaren collaboration car and Super Shadow.
Heathen is an upcoming indie first-person dungeon crawler from solo developer Christoper Yabsley, set in the fantasy town of Saltgrave. Its latest trailer reveals a new enemy dismemberment system that lets players chop off a monster's head, kick it midair, and kill another monster with it. The game will support online co-op when it launches into early access, with no release date announced yet.
This indie first-person ARPG will let you defeat monsters by kicking severed enemy heads at them https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/if-youre-skilful-enough-you-can-chop-the-head-off-a-monster-kick-it-midair-and-then-kill-another-monster-with-it-consider-me-sold-on-this-indie-first-person-arpg/
Eurogamer's regular What We've Been Playing column returns with editors Dom and Bertie sharing their current games. Dom is back in Gears of War: E-Day on Xbox Series X, praising the Horde Siege mode's open-ended maps and cross-squad interplay as "pure video game popcorn movie stuff." Bertie is stretching out The Blood of Dawnwalker on PS5, reloading a save to explore more of the world and making a deal with the vampire Xanthe before Brencis' coronation.
"Elite Legion," a tactics card mini game published by Nanjing Yuanrong Network, has stayed within the WeChat mini game best-selling chart's Top 20 since launching during National Day, peaking in the top ten. The game features a Red Alert theme with tactics card PvP and human-vs-AI combat, and monetizes through in-app purchases and rewarded video ads.
YouTube channel ElAnalistaDeBits has released a side-by-side graphics comparison of Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen on Switch 2 and PS5. The Switch 2 version runs at an upscaled 1080p in handheld and 1440p docked, hovering around 40fps, with frame generation toggled on delivering the equivalent of 60fps. The game arrived on Switch 2 this week with the Dark Arisen expansion, and a free character creator is available on the eShop.
Ace Combat 8 has sold over 1 million copies worldwide, making it the fastest-selling mainline entry in the series. It has 16,000 Steam reviews with an 81% positive rate and a peak of 52,000 concurrent players. The article notes that its retro close-range dogfighting, which downplays stealth, electronic warfare, and beyond-visual-range combat, drew criticism from Chinese players over outdated design, PC performance, and Simplified Chinese localization.
"We felt that fans were getting a bit desensitised to the violence" Gears of War: E-Day devs made a "big investment" in gore, and weirdly, it works. https://bit.ly/4hK4lo5
Blur Busters founder Mark Rejhon and former Nvidia developer Timothy Lottes debuted a CRT beam simulation algorithm that uses 240+ Hz displays to drastically reduce motion blur in 60 Hz content, working like a motion-focused DLSS. It was first implemented in a Retroarch shader and later split into a standalone tool called ShaderBeam, tested on the Asus PG27AQWP-W's 540 Hz OLED panel. The author argues Windows itself must change before the effect can reach its full potential.
This week on The Game Informer Show, Giant Bomb's Will Crosby joins to discuss the recent launch of Gears of War: E-Day, with the hosts agreeing that returning to the past is good for the series. Later, Eric shares his review impressions of Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, and Charles talks about his progress in Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave.
IGN played a linear slice of Final Fantasy VII Revelation's first chapter at New York Comic Con, running from the North Crater entrance to a boss fight against Jenova Deathmourner. Materia can now be leveled with consumable fragments that add AP, and Rebirth's Item Transmuter returns with auto-loot enabled by default instead of unlocked by beating the campaign. The demo party was Cloud, Cid, and Vincent, and while Cid's rhythmic attacks stood out, the overall difficulty felt low ahead of the April launch.
'Overcooked broke you apart and Stage Fright is there to put you back together'
Stage Fright is the next co-op adventure from Overcooked maker Ghost Town Games, published by Hello Games, and co-director Oliver De-Vine says "Overcooked broke you apart and Stage Fright is there to put you back together." Two players guide a pair of kids through a Luigi's Mansion-style adventure of puzzles, threats, and mystery, relying only on verbal communication with no inventory management. The game supports both local and online splitscreen co-op, with the developers aiming to make online play feel as close to sitting on the couch together as possible.
The 2026 multiplayer shooters Arc Raiders and Marathon both use a loop of venturing from a safe hub into hostile areas, shooting enemies, grabbing loot, and returning to safety. These hits owe a debt to Outriders, a maligned 2021 loot-shooter published by Square Enix.
A Polygon editor calls Bungie's extraction shooter Marathon the scariest game he has played in a long time, largely because dying means losing all the gear you brought in and looted. Playing solo as Rook turns the experience into straight survival horror, and this week streamer Shroud called the game "a little too sweaty" while Ninja rage quit on launch day.
Polygon lists seven racing games worth trying for fans of Fuse Games' Star Wars: Galactic Racer, including Star Wars Episode 1: Racer, Burnout Paradise Remastered, F-Zero GX, Wipeout Omega Collection, Fast Fusion, Reality Drift, and Need for Speed Unbound. Reality Drift has a demo available on Steam now and launches on Nov. 11.
Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen is a great expansion that adds the new Norgan region with more loot, beasts, and stories, but its changes dilute what made the base game unique. The author notes that the Eternal Ferrystone and portcrystals across Norgan reduce how often you travel on foot, though you must still reach each one first to activate it. Those changes aim to make the experience more approachable, yet they also shift Dragon's Dogma 2 in a different direction.
Exploring Arc Raiders' new Frigate. It doesn't go well. 😅
Game Informer's weekend roundup highlights games to play, including Echo Weaver. The game keeps Metroidvania-style exploration but ties progression to knowledge gained during play rather than new equipment. Reviewer Kyle Hilliard calls its unique approach admirable and well executed, with a fantastic sense of discovery.
Lead creatives on Gears of War: E-Day have debunked a 20-year-old fan theory that heightened in-universe gravity is why every character is so muscular. According to the developers, there is no truth to the theory whatsoever.
In Control Resonant, a recurring miniboss called the Hiss Transporter is a vertically floating city bus front that glows red, slams the ground with shockwaves, and spawns waves of Hiss Passengers fused with bus seats. Players must clear the Passengers exposed on both sides before destroying the Transporter in an explosion. It is another example of developer Remedy Entertainment turning ordinary objects into fantastical threats, continuing the Altered Items and Objects of Power concept from the first Control.
Phantom Blade Zero released a 20-minute gameplay video showing combat and exploration. The footage has no commentary.
After six hours of hands-on time with Phantom Blade 0 in LA, GameSpot found that its combat lets players attack and defend simultaneously, a detail confirmed by director and CEO Soulframe Liang. The S-Game title features motion-captured martial arts combat, with boss design, soundtrack, and wide linear metroidvania-style environments also standing out.
A review of RuneScape: Dragonwilds finds the game strikes a respectable balance between fantasy RPG and survival crafting, but its crafting system is bloated with workstations and materials that make it more laborious than fun. The first arc took 20 to 30 hours to finish, and the second arc, Fellhollow, took about the same time for its story quests. Dying drops your entire inventory and teleports you back to your last camp, though this can be turned off in the settings.
Nivalis Nights is a story-heavy shop simulation with light relationship building, where conversations affect four attitudes toward the player—friendly, combative, romantic, and savvy—but dialogue options are not clearly marked. Lead writer Thomas Welsh said the opaque romance system was an intentional choice rather than a tested alternative. Some characters' romantic paths are obvious, for comedic effect.
IGN revisits "Reuniting the Families," the penultimate mission of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas' opening act, calling it the peak of Rockstar's cinematic mission design. Inside the Jefferson Motel, CJ fights through scripted corridors to rescue his brother Sweet, turning the open world into a third-person cover shooter two years before Gears of War. The piece argues players should experience this mission before GTA 6 arrives.
Why Nivalis Nights intentionally avoided transactional romances https://www.pcgamer.com/games/life-sim/i-was-nice-to-you-three-times-in-a-row-so-can-i-have-one-sex-please-why-nivalis-nights-intentionally-avoided-transactional-romances/
Trivia Murder Party 3 still needs some work, but that's what early access is for. https://www.siliconera.com/preview-trivia-murder-party-3-has-a-ways-to-go-to-match-the-sequel/
World of Warcraft: Forever associate production director Clay Stone says there's a real longing for a slower, more deliberate pace in MMOs, calling it a deliberate pushback on the "go go go" nature. He pointed to the success of Classic, the 2023 response to Hardcore, and players who skipped Season of Discovery because seasons felt ephemeral. Stone says Blizzard is deliberately building WoW Forever to answer whether it's too late to start with an emphatic "no."
Why Deadlock is my favourite videogame setting in years 😍 Subscribe to our FREE Play This Right Now newsletter: https://pc-gamer.visitlink.me/GCMIEt
When the weather turns bad in Arc Raiders' Pendola Pass, head to a Storm Hut for some great looting https://www.pcgamer.com/games/third-person-shooter/when-the-weather-turns-foul-in-arc-raiders-pendola-pass-take-a-trip-to-a-storm-hut-theyre-some-of-the-best-loot-spots-ive-found/
Blaze Entertainment's Evercade Nexus is a new handheld with a 5.89" IPS screen, front-facing stereo speakers, Bluetooth headphone support for the first time, and two added analogue sticks. The standard version bundles a Banjo-Kazooie Double Pack cartridge featuring native ports of Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie with widescreen support, higher resolution, 60fps and dual-stick controls. Around 15 of the 750 Evercade games currently support analogue control, including Soul Reaver, Tomb Raider 3, Duke Nukem: Time to Kill and 40 Winks.
Evercade's Banjo-Kazooie Double Pack for the Nexus console has earned praise for its native Evercade versions of the two N64 games, featuring higher resolution, improved performance, adapted controls and extra features. GameXplain noted the Evercade release adds 60FPS gameplay while Xbox remains locked to 30FPS, calling it "kind of a game changer," though it lacks the Xbox versions' note and Jinjo saving features. The cartridge retails for £24.99 and works on any Evercade or Super Pocket device, with 60FPS only on the Evercade Nexus, Evercade Alpha or Super Pockets.
Eurogamer's review calls Gears of War: E-Day a conservative but technically solid prequel whose campaign, Horde Siege, and Versus each have strengths and problems. Horde Siege splits 12 players into four-person squads that pick their own difficulty and complete objectives across the map, and the reviewer says 15 hours in it still produces emergent moments. The review also notes balance and mechanical issues in Versus and baffling checkpoints plus some repetitive beats in the campaign.
Eurogamer published its review of Gears of War E-Day under the headline a hole new world that grubs me up in all the right ways. The full review is available at eurogamer.net.
IGN's preview of Militsioner shows players trapped in a town watched by a giant policeman, with freedom to explore and interact however they choose. The game includes roguelike elements, letting players spend points earned by improving the policeman's mood after death.