Magic: The Gathering's KPop Demon Hunters Secret Lair crossover in the Corn Maze Superdrop omits both Huntr/x and the Saja Boys, and offers no legendary creatures to build a Commander deck around. The $29.99 non-foil Drop includes reprints like Swan Song and Underworld Breach with art by Scott Watabane. The author hopes it is just a timid first step toward a larger crossover in 2027.
After Netflix's extended look at Grand Theft Auto 6 in August, Rockstar Games had said little until Game Informer published a 14-page deep dive on Sept. 29. The article revealed new details about the game's dynamic weather system, its NPCs, and six unique areas of the world map, but 12 major questions remain unanswered.
A PC Gamer writer says two long-awaited life sims launched back to back, making it hard to choose between them. Nivalis Nights is a moody, neon-drenched cyberpunk shop sim with deeper shop finances than expected. Songs of Glimmerwick is a wizard school life sim with gardening, a seasonal schedule, voice acting, and a musical take on magic.
After loading GTA 5 with so many mods that it would no longer launch even in windowed mode, the author got it running again by deleting essentially random files from the game's directory. He then added a new mod called TornadoV, which spawns enormous tornadoes in Los Santos, configured with F5 and spawned with F6. Since F6 is also his noclip key, he can no longer fly around the map without summoning a twister.
September 30 marks 28 years since Raccoon City was destroyed in Resident Evil 2, the day the cop inside Leon S. Kennedy died. To mark it, the author lists their most traumatic Resident Evil moments, including the giant fetus in Resident Evil Village, Marguerite Baker in Resident Evil 7, T-00's footsteps, Emma Kendo, and the bad ending of Resident Evil: Revelations 2.
Kotaku's John Walker argues that Xbox's cloud gaming push is shrinking. Owners of 2020 Samsung Smart TVs were told the XBOX app will lose support on November 3, while Game Pass's most expensive tier is cutting cloud streaming from unlimited to 15 hours a week with per-hour surcharges. Separately, New York Times sources say the rumored Xbox cloud controller was a real project seemingly shelved after the Activision acquisition, though an Xbox spokesperson says it is still in development.
Many players in the WoW: Forever beta are rolling the new elf race, the Skyborne, out of curiosity. The author argues the blue sky elves don't fit into World of Warcraft, and many players wouldn't roll one for real when the game launches on Nov. 4.
Level-5 has announced a remake of Professor Layton and the Curious Village, due next year, alongside Professor Layton and The New World of Steam's 10th December release date. The author feels uneasy about the remake because Level-5's Vision 2026 showcase leaned heavily on AI-generated assets and the remake's trailer showed odd visual details, with no AI-free promise made for the Curious Village remake.
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.
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.
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 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.
Arc Raiders executive producer Aleksander Grøndal admitted Embark overestimated its capacity for work after transitioning to live service, saying he "wasn't completely prepared for how hard it was." He said the team was exhausted from constantly overshooting its capacity, leading to player drop-off, and that it has since re-evaluated its long-term plan to prioritize quality and work-life balance.
Former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden advised Xbox CEO Asha Sharma that Xbox should "pick a lane": either compete as a platform against PlayStation or accept its role as one of the world's biggest game publishers and focus on software. He called it Xbox's "Dreamcast moment," citing Sega's exit from hardware to become a software company. Xbox has recently seen waves of layoffs, parted ways with several studios, and consolidated remaining developers under Activision, Blizzard, King, and Bethesda.
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.
Frank O'Connor, who spent nearly 20 years at Xbox and left in 2023 as creative director of the Halo franchise, shared his view on Halo's future in a LinkedIn comment, laying out three possible directions for Activision: a "classic" Halo experience for the core audience, a modern reinvention of the game and universe, or translating the Halo IP into Activision's proven player, progression and business models. He also advised Microsoft not to tie the next Halo to the Xbox hardware or services cycle, and urged Activision to hire recently laid-off talent from Bungie and Halo Studios.
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.
Control Resonant director Mikael Kasurinen confirmed the game deliberately avoids yellow paint and similar guidance markers, saying player autonomy matters more than pointing players where to go. He added that yellow can be used if it fits the game's world thematically, but it must not feel like the game is deciding for the player. The decision stands out given Resonant's map is larger than the original Control's office-building setting.
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.
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.
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.
Arc Raiders executive producer Aleksander Grøndal told Game Developer that Embark heavily underestimated the challenges of running a live service game. The team planned monthly post-launch updates but was constantly overshooting its capacity, and in May switched to larger biannual additions. Grøndal, a 15-year EA veteran who worked on Battlefield and Star Wars: Battlefront, also recalled taking five months of sick leave after overworking on a Battlefield game.
Kotaku rounds up the best new games released in the first five months of 2026, including Big Walk, Deltarune Chapter 5, Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Resynced, Denshattack!, Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, Star Wars Zero Company, and Fields of Mistria. Big Walk supports one to 11 players, Deltarune's fifth chapter is one of roughly seven, and Black Flag Resynced is Ubisoft's remake of the original. The list will be updated periodically through December.
At the 2026 Yunqi Conference's Alibaba Cloud AI Gaming Forum, Zheng Yinhe, head of miHoYo's Honkai series AI NPC & Gameplay tech team, shared the company's AI practices in gameplay, development, and AI research. The "AI Pom-Pom" launched in Honkai: Star Rail version 4.2 supported story Q&A, guide queries, long-term memory, and emotional feedback, and kept up with the game's 42-day major version updates, though it is now offline. miHoYo also built its own Agent platform EchoX and teased a new tabletop gameplay where AI characters compete autonomously.
miHoYo's Li Yanran, AI lead for Star Valley, spoke at the 2026 Yunqi Conference's Alibaba Cloud AI gaming forum about the game's AI NPCs. All AI NPCs share one brain-inspired Agent architecture and a "super-intelligence memory system" that lets characters share memories and retain them across platforms, while a "multi-teacher online distillation" technique puts different personas into a single model. Li also said miHoYo is trying to enable self-evolving Agents in the game so players and NPCs can grow together.
Anker has launched the "Anker Space Station" high-refresh desktop docking station, along with a VALORANT limited edition, targeting gaming laptop users who connect to external monitors. It supports high resolution, HDR, 144Hz to 240Hz+ refresh rates and multi-display output, and features an industry-first smart screen interface with smart detection, customization and OTA upgrades. The VALORANT edition includes a Jett rice-ball-cutting Pomodoro clock UI easter egg, priced under 1,000 yuan.
A player reflects on his RedOctane X-Plorer controller for Guitar Hero, which came bundled with Guitar Hero 2 and is about to turn 20 years old, noting that it still works and remains his favorite guitar controller. He owns several other guitar controllers, but says the X-Plorer's fret buttons feel the best and it works plug-and-play on PC, unlike the 2015 Guitar Hero Live guitars that require remapping software. The only issue he has had in twenty years is a broken whammy bar, which he fixed with an elastic band.
Embark is finally testing a PvE mode for Arc Raiders, a change the author believes should have come much sooner. He recalls the fun of early co-op fights against high-value arcs, but says PvP lobbies later filled with liars, assholes, and cheaters. Embark has admitted a large chunk of the playerbase is PvE orientated, though there's no guarantee the test leads to a permanent addition.
After installing the Dynamic Traffic Colours mod, my GTA 5 installation now only launches in windowed mode, and trying to go fullscreen before it loads leaves you stuck on a black screen. The mod is meant to mix up the hues of Los Santos' cars, but most vehicles still show the same humdrum colours, with only the occasional garish one.
Former Bethesda writer and designer Kurt Kuhlmann said on the FRVR Podcast that he is "100% convinced" a load-bearing piece of Elder Scrolls lore was inspired by a typo. He noted he tried to bring more grounded, historiographic ambiguity to the Dragon Break concept in his Morrowind-era book, and Dragon Break Re-Examined deliberately references events in Morrowind's future as the past.
A spreadsheet compares every line of dialogue in Final Fantasy 7's official PC release, the Japanese original, and fan translator TurquoiseHammer's new text. That retranslation is part of the Shinra Archaeology Cut mod, released two years ago and available through the fan launcher 7th Heaven, with an optional "Cultural Heritage Mode" that restores odd lines and infamous typos from the original English script. Square Enix's 2013 update to modern platforms fixed some grammatical mistakes but left the rest of the script largely untouched.
The World of Warcraft: Forever beta has recaptured the essence of oldschool MMOs for the author, but he rejects turning Retail, Classic, and Forever into warring factions. He argues Retail WoW's design isn't inherently bad, just different, and that Forever itself shows the versions can learn from each other. Building an identity out of which version you play and attacking others over it is exhausting and unhealthy.
Frank O'Connor, Halo's Franchise Creative Director for nearly 20 years at 343 Industries/Halo Studios, has outlined three possible paths for Halo under Activision. They include a classic Halo movement, sandbox and shooter experience for the core audience, a modern reinvention of the game and universe, or translating the Halo IP and sandbox into Activision's proven player, progression and business models. He also advised against tying the series to hardware or services launch cycles and suggested hiring talent from Bungie, Halo Studios and other laid-off developers.
At Logitech G Play 2026 in Warsaw, Poland, a Counter-Strike 2 tournament with a $100,000 prize pool pitted Canadian team Luminosity Gaming against French team 3DMax. Sitting in the bleachers rather than the VIP and press area, the author felt a sense of belonging despite not understanding the Polish commentary. The second game went into two overtimes, and Afro's AWP clutch became an unforgettable moment.
PC Gamer speculates how the main characters of Crime and Punishment would survive the plot of Halo 1. Raskolnikov would be traumatized by the Flood's first appearance in 343 Guilty Spark, Razumikhin's empathy would become a liability in Assault on the Control Room, and Sofya might join the Covenant due to her religious faith. Dunya would solo the campaign, while Marmeladov is crushed by a Warthog and Svidrigailov is banned from voice chat.