#Review / preview

Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons devs on setting aside Baldur's Gate 3 comparisons to build their own open world

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: Resident Evil Meets Little Nightmares in Terrifying New Horror Game

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.

End Of Abyss Commits A Metroidvania Cardinal Sin

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.

End Of Abyss Review: A Metroidvania That Stumbles

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.

The Guardian Breaks Embargo for Gears of War: E Day Review

The Guardian broke the review embargo for Gears of War: E Day, publishing its review early with a 3/5 score. The review notes that much of the game is spent in large, open areas filled with hundreds of collectibles, and that an audio chime for nearby pickups drowned out a character's emotional moment during a cutscene.

End of Abyss (PS5) Review: A Delectably Dark Metroidvania That Forces You to Look Closer

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.

Crusader Kings 3's By God Alone expansion offers plenty of holy hijinks, even if your polyamorous Pope doesn't get divorced three times in one day

No Law Might Be the Open-World Deus Ex That Cyberpunk 2077 Wasn't

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.

The Witcher 3 Remastered Drives Record Steam Concurrent Players

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.

Monster Hunter Wilds runs at a stable 30FPS on Switch 2, but Capcom calls the port a painstaking process

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.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered (PS5) Review: How to Improve a Masterpiece

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.

Minecraft Dungeons 2's First Reviews Arrive, Metacritic Average Edges Past the Original

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 First Reviews Are In for The Witcher 3 Remastered

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.

The First Reviews for The Witcher 3 Remastered Are In

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.

Video: Gameplay of Ghost of Yotei's new roguelike mode, featuring the return of Jin Sakai

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.

ByteDance's AI Cultivation Game Buwen Fanchen Hits Steam Early Access: Why Praise Doesn't Equal Sales

Buwen Fanchen, an AI cultivation game developed by ByteDance's Jiangnan Studio and published by Nuverse, launched in Steam Early Access at a discounted China price of 19.89 yuan. As of September 28 it peaked at 7,206 concurrent players with an 88% positive rating but only around 700 reviews, a gap the article attributes to thin content, inconsistent NPC relationship states and limited AI dialogue quotas.

Chuapp Talk: The Tailor Knows Too Much

Chuapp Talk discusses Dressmaker, a recently popular indie game in which the player runs a clothing shop as a tailor newly moved to a small town, making dresses to customer orders through measuring, designing, choosing fabric, cutting, sewing and decorating. The game recreates real details such as fabric grain direction and sewing machine handling, and the official description lists 150 clothing parts, over 450 fabrics and over 350 accessories. Its shortcomings include only dresses being available, unclear tutorials, and finished clothes never being worn by customers.

Minecraft Dungeons II Review - Built Better Than Before

Game Informer's review says Minecraft Dungeons II improves on its 2020 predecessor with a new jump mechanic, clearer menus, and more enemy and weapon variety. But its item-driven progression feels linear and aimless, and the reviewer finished the game in under 10 hours and felt done after about 15, with an endgame limited to side quests and destroying Storm Generators for randomized loot. The game introduces a new dimension called the Sift, which is coming to Minecraft proper in 2027.

SteelSeries Rival Pro gaming mouse review

SteelSeries has released the Rival Pro, a 53 g competitive gaming mouse with a TrueMove 42K Pro sensor, ultra-wideband (UWB) wireless connectivity, and up to 8K polling, priced at $179.99 / £169.99 / €199.99. It ships with two hot-swappable batteries rated for 60 hours each and has no USB-C port, making it fully wireless. The review calls its palm-grip comfort excellent, though the lack of a cable for firmware updates leaves long-term reliability uncertain.

SteelSeries' New Rival Pro and Sensei Pro Mice Drop USB Entirely, Going UWB Wireless Only

SteelSeries has unveiled the Rival Pro and Sensei Pro gaming mice, which have no USB connectivity at all and rely solely on UWB wireless, priced at $179.99 / £169.99 / €199.99. Both weigh 53 g and share a TrueMove 42K Pro sensor, optical switches, and a hot-swappable battery, differing only in grip shape. After weeks of use, the reviewer found them excellent in weight, build, and feel, though long-term UWB reliability remains unproven.

Minecraft Dungeons 2 Review: A Cozier Co-op ARPG Built for Parents and Kids

Minecraft Dungeons 2 launched on September 29, and after playing it with his almost-12-year-old, the author says it keeps the original's kid-friendly co-op ARPG design while splitting armor into helmet, chest, leggings and boots and adding the explorable Brave Haven map plus rifts to the new dimension The Sift. In the pre-release Xbox build he hit bugs including unselectable inventory slots and characters vanishing when switching between online and offline play. The Sift is due to be added to Minecraft at some point in 2027.

The Witcher 3 Remastered review: a generous free upgrade that doesn't change the game

Eurogamer's Robert Purchese reviewed The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered, calling it a free upgrade to an 11-year-old game with improved visuals, lighting, reworked skill trees and new combat animations. He said it does not fundamentally change the game and does not overhaul combat, though it adds transmogrification, cross-platform mod support and new accessibility options. He described it as preparation for the Songs of the Past expansion.

Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave's Early Game Is So Filled With Non-Major Battles It Puts Me to Sleep

Two weeks into Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave, the game's first part feels poorly paced, with hours of training and dungeon delving between story missions that can put players to sleep. Developing all four lords equally could mean 15-30 hours of this slog before things get more action-focused in part two. The clash and dungeon-crawling mechanic is the main culprit: clashes are mindless turn-based fights with paper-thin enemies that can be handled via auto-attack, though a few narrative clashes like Dietrich's bounties show their potential.

Fright Train is the best Call of Duty Zombies alternative I've played in ages, despite starring a dog

Fright Train is a singleplayer B-movie survival shooter starring a dog soldier named Doug Barker, and it's the best Call of Duty Zombies alternative the author has played in ages. Players scavenge vidyacoins, manage 15 tactical pockets and manually load bullets while fighting zombies, lockdowns and a pursuing giant iceworm aboard a train hurtling through the Antarctic. It's available on Steam, and the author's praise is based on two hours of play on normal difficulty covering the first two acts.

GTA 6 Will Include Over 170 Animal Species and Hurricanes, With Wind Blowing Ripples Across Water

A 14-page Game Informer preview published on September 29 revealed that Rockstar has confirmed GTA 6 will simulate hurricanes and tropical storms, with a re-engineered weather system that makes conditions more localized and persistent. The map will feature over 170 animal species, including more than 60 types of birds and 30-plus land mammals, plus sharks, reptiles and fish, and Red Dead Redemption 2's animal rarity system and Legendary creatures will return. GTA 6 launches on November 19 on PS5, Xbox and PC.

Toem 2 review: A sweet sequel that's a tad too easy to be memorable

Toem 2 launched on September 29, 2026 for $17 / £13.59, developed by Something We Made and published by popagenda, with Steam Deck Verified status on Steam. Players use a multi-attachment camera to complete photo quests and collect stamps across four towns, but each area's clear pairing of a camera attachment with a local in need makes the puzzles too obvious. It's a quick and sweet sequel, yet the easy objectives make it feel less inventive than the original.

15 Things The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time Remake Is Changing From The Original On N64

I perished in the flesh pipes of Darktide's Depths of the Damned update, and you will too

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide has released the Depths of the Damned update, whose centerpiece is a new mission called Spillway set in Tertium's water treatment facility; the author calls it the biggest addition since the Skitarii arrived. Having played it once, the author says it still alternates fierce wave combat with quieter traversal but runs longer than Rolling Steel and No Man's Land, includes a graffiti memory puzzle, and can throw a traitor Captain at you. The update also adds two new weapons, the Thugshot and the Cruncher, which the author finds hard-hitting but slow.

Wardogs early access review

The Witcher 3 Remastered on Switch 2 Can Be Unlocked Free With Any Switch Physical Copy

Players have found that any physical Switch cartridge of The Witcher 3 can be used an unlimited number of times to unlock a digital copy of The Witcher 3 Remastered on Switch 2, including borrowed or rented copies, and the cartridge is not needed after unlocking. The upgrade stems from CD Projekt's promise that Remastered upgrades are free on all platforms, physical copies included. The remaster adds combat, traversal and mount improvements, monster behavior and skill tree changes, armor transmog, an expanded photo mode, cross-platform mod support and ray-tracing improvements, ahead of the paid third expansion Songs of the Past due next year.

在《空战奇兵8》中，假王牌如何打赢一场真战争

GTA 6 will simulate hurricanes, rainbows and persistent dynamic clouds, plus 170 animal species

Rockstar vice president of art for lighting and rendering Owen Shepherd told Game Informer that GTA 6 uses a re-engineered, more localized and persistent weather system ranging from rainbows to full hurricanes, with fully dynamic cloudscapes, localized rain showers, puddles and wet ground. He described storms bringing heavy clouds, strong winds, dense atmospherics and rain that leaves everything dripping, with thunder and lightning lighting up the clouds. The game also features 170 animal species, including around 60 kinds of bird and over 30 land mammals such as manatees, flamingos, pelicans, sharks, rays, turtles and jellyfish.

Preview: PS5 Remake Danganronpa 2x2 Revives the Cult Series with a Shocking New Mode

A Push Square preview says the PS5 remake Danganronpa 2x2 launches on 14th January and includes a full beat-by-beat remake of Goodbye Despair plus an alternative storyline called Slayhem Mode. The author played a PC build at Tokyo Game Show, trying a portion of Slayhem Mode and a courtroom battle from the original, and confirmed the new mode adds a character named Sakutaro Higashi voiced by Natsuki Hanae in Japanese and Griffin Burns in English. The new scenario is written by Yoichiro Koizumi based on a concept by original series creator Kazutaka Kodaka and Danganronpa Kirigiri author Takekuni Kitayama.

First-time dev Yinengjie's Character House demo peaks near 30,000 concurrent players on Steam with almost 98% positive reviews

Yinengjie, a Chinese indie team from the OC fan community, released a free demo of Character House: Desktop Companion on Steam, peaking at nearly 30,000 concurrent players with almost 98% positive reviews across 258 user reviews. The game centers on creating original characters and having them live on the desktop, but the demo has limited customization assets and no custom drawing import yet. Players reported memory usage, rendering glitches and concerns over a typing-count feature, while the team said friend visits, asset import and Steam Workshop support may come in later updates.

Dune: Awakening on PS5 Is Making Me Break My Rule Against Playing Survival Games

Dune: Awakening arrived on PS5 and Xbox as part of a large update that added new story content, a full single-player mode, and the option to avoid PvP entirely. After over a dozen hours on PS5, the author says the game controls well on a gamepad, its harvesting and combat avoid tedium, and online sessions run with almost no lag. It previously launched on PC.

Capcom says porting Monster Hunter Wilds to Switch 2 was a painstaking rebuild

Capcom producer Genki Sunano told Kotaku that the Switch 2 version of Monster Hunter Wilds was not a simple scaled-down port but a rebuild aimed at delivering a natural Wilds experience on the console, targeting a stable 30 FPS in handheld mode even during four-player hunts. The team evaluated assets and underlying processing one by one, rebuilt certain assets and shaders, and kept new visual effects aligned with existing hitboxes and collision detection. Sunano said the process was painstaking and at times seemingly endless, and that the lessons will feed into performance improvements for existing platforms ahead of Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance. Monster Hunter Wilds comes to Nintendo Switch 2 on December 4.

Big Stretch is a wonderfully ethereal physics platformer jam game where you're a little round guy with very stretchy arms

Big Stretch is a physics-based platformer made in 72 hours by three people for the most recent Down2Jam, and it's free to download on itch.io. You play as a spherical red creature with two stretchy arms, grabbing parts of the world to fling yourself up a tower. There's no saving system, so reaching the top has to be done in one go, though a glider pops out after a short fall to help you recover.

Five Key Things We Learned About GTA 6 From The Game Informer Cover Story

Pure Xbox rounded up five notable details about GTA 6 from Game Informer's 14-page cover story. The map is Rockstar's biggest yet at twice the size of GTA 5, with six primary regions: Vice City, the Leonida Keys, Grassrivers, Port Gellhorn, Ambrosia and Mount Kalaga National Park. The weather system was re-engineered to be more localised and persistent, with an updated wind system, dynamic cloudscapes, tropical storms, hurricanes and rainbows, while the game features over 170 animal species and brings back six-star wanted levels alongside a new Heat system.

Exclusive: Grand Theft Auto VI Includes Over 170 Animal Species

Game Informer's exclusive cover story reveals that Grand Theft Auto VI's Leonida will feature over 170 animal species across land, air, and sea, several of which have never appeared in a Rockstar game. Native Florida animals like flamingos, manatees, pelicans, and alligators will coexist with invasive creatures including green iguanas, cane toads, feral cats, and rhesus macaque monkeys. Rockstar is building on its Red Dead Redemption work with iridescence, bioluminescence, translucency, and feather types, plus new hair and fur systems, and certain animals can be tracked as Rare, Discoverable, or Legendary.

Game Informer preview: GTA 6 map is twice the size of GTA 5, adds hurricanes and tropical storms

A new Game Informer preview says GTA 6's map is twice the size of GTA 5's and features dynamic weather including tropical storms and hurricanes. Rockstar's Owen Shepherd said the weather system was re-engineered to be more localized and persistent, so different parts of Leonida can see very different conditions at once. Leonida is split into six main regions, and the game will include over 170 animal species plus activities such as base jumping, billiards, gyms, kayaking, mini golf, scuba diving, street and off-road racing, zoos, air boating and jet skiing.