Star Wars: Galactic Racer devs on capturing Burnout's game feel
Star Wars: Galactic Racer devs on how they bottled Burnout's magic 'game feel'. https://bit.ly/4yasTwv
Star Wars: Galactic Racer devs on how they bottled Burnout's magic 'game feel'. https://bit.ly/4yasTwv
Escape from EloHello is a strategy roguelike in which players collect MMR while climbing from Iron 4 to Challenger, rank 1, within 60 matches before the season resets. MMR can only be gained by winning matches, and players must gamble on their ability to win to earn long-term effects. In the writer's first season, 48 wins and 12 losses only reached Bronze 3; a second run climbed to Silver 1 before falling back to Bronze 3.
This Control-inspired action game set in a 'planet-scale alien mind' looks absolutely stunning https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/this-control-inspired-action-game-set-in-a-planet-scale-alien-mind-has-one-of-the-most-stunning-art-styles-ive-seen-this-year/
LA-based Studio Lifeforms has revealed Etre, a narrative-driven action game set on Orbis, described as a "planet-scale alien mind on the brink of awakening," where you play as Xyle searching for his soulmate Atel. Its visuals draw on '70s and '80s graphic novels, while its semi-open exploration and movement-based combat cite Remedy's Control as the primary influence. No release date has been announced, though the game has a Steam page.
A Pure Xbox editor reflects on a year of daily use with the ROG Xbox Ally X, saying the hardware still feels great with no obvious wear on buttons, sticks or triggers, aside from a d-pad issue that resolved itself. He now uses it mostly in docked mode as a Windows PC, prefers Xbox Series X for AAA titles and the handheld for AA and indie games. Software has improved over the past year, but he says it still requires some tinkering like any Windows PC.
Deadlock's City Never Sleeps update makes Valve's MOBA my favorite videogame setting in years
Valve's Deadlock has received the City Never Sleeps update, which reworks the entire map, adds new neutral monsters, and gives the lanes and mid-map districts new looks. The update also introduces new heroes including Deadman Danny, Nurse Harrow, Rat King, Solomon, and Baba, plus many new conversations and voice lines for the existing cast. The author, who has put in 350 hours, calls the reworked Cursed Apple one of his favorite game settings in years.
Krafton's Wisconsin studio PUBG Madison is developing PUBG Ded.Net, a third-person battle royale shooter in which players are contestants in an ultra-violent gameshow. Its twist is a pick-three-style roguelite system that carries across consecutive matches, where upgrades and injuries from one game affect the next. Creative director Dave Curd says chasing that power-up fantasy is meant to take the edge off losing.
Valve's upcoming Deadlock added the chess grandmaster hero Solomon in its recent "City Never Sleeps" update, alongside five other heroes. Each time Solomon reloads, the pieces on his board rearrange into a layout based on his remaining ammo count, with every position taken from an actual historical game. Fans have picked up on the detail, which references matches including the 1851 "Immortal Game" and Deep Blue's 1996 win over Garry Kasparov.
Sword Sage: Awakening feels like a breezier kind of Soulslike, and it's not just the adorable tea-serving panda that's got me intrigued. https://bit.ly/4y3y5SP
Digital Foundry has analysed the PC version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered, calling it a generational shift in visuals. It says players will need optimised settings, and the piece offers those settings.
Final Fantasy Resonance feels so good to play because Square Enix 'experimented' with combining the best bits of FF5 and FF6. https://bit.ly/3VjMpZV
Medium Rare, a Resident Evil-inspired dungeon crawler RPG about rescuing your wife from a human meat factory, uses real stock photos run through Photoshop and dithered into crunchy, pixel-art-adjacent assets. Combat places enemies on a three by three grid where distance affects damage, with dice rolls and weapon choice determining survival, plus tile-based inventory management and infected enemies hunting you down. A demo is available on Steam, with release set for 2027.
WoW: Forever, by casting off convenience, has horseshoed back around to being casual friendly again https://www.pcgamer.com/games/world-of-warcraft/wow-forever-by-casting-off-modern-convenience-has-horseshoed-back-around-to-being-casual-friendly-again/
The Lost Art Museum -Eirei Shūshūroku-, an adventure game published by Happynet, offered a prologue demo at TGS2026 in which players take the role of Vince, who wanders into a museum world and restores the lost memories of "Eirei" born from famous paintings. Producer and planning lead Honoka Ohara said the game's theme is passing down memory through paintings, aiming to bring more people closer to art rather than simply teaching art history. Each chapter focuses on one Eirei, while the reason they lost their memories and whether Vince can return to his own world form an overarching mystery.
Nivalis Nights is a cyberpunk shop and life sim whose Steam user tags include relaxing, but lead writer Thomas Welsh says a cozy existence in the city has to be earned. The volume of quests and story content can feel overwhelming at times.
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.
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.