Gaming in Whether. Reviews, Walkthroughs, News

Darkest Dungeon 2 is adding a new Kingdoms mode to the game. The turn-based roguelike game released in early access in 2021 with a full release in 2023. Reviews noted that Darkest Dungeon 2 featured a strategic and difficult but ultimately satisfying gameplay loop. In addition, Darkest Dungeon 2 received praise for having stylish visuals, blending 3D and 2D into a brutal, gothic, fantasy aesthetic.

The early months of 2024 have seen Microsoft stepping up its efforts to bring its first-party Xbox titles to audiences on rival platforms, with Hi-Fi Rush having released for PS5 and Obsidian duo Pentiment and Grounded both having launched for PS5 and Switch. Sea of Thieves arrives for PS5 later this month, and though Microsoft hasn’t officially announced further plans to bring any other of its games to rival consoles beyond that, reports continue to insist that there’s more stuff in the pipeline.

Tekken 8's director and producer, Katsuhiro Harada, has stated that Tekken 9 would likely be the last game he would ever develop. Tekken 8 has been a huge success already, with the game selling at least two million copies since its late-January launch and is one of the most critically acclaimed entries in the long-running fighting game franchise. While the game is still fresh, some might wonder if Tekken 8 will get a follow-up.

Tomas Sala, the solo dev behind the upcoming Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles, is preparing for his extremely unique take on city builders and strategy games to launch against a pair of that space's most established names.

It feels like the video game console is at a crossroads. With Xbox Series X and S floundering in the ‘console war’, Sony suggesting PlayStation 5 is approaching the second half of its life after missing sales targets, and uncertainty around the release of the Nintendo Switch 2, there is growing concern that the traditional video game console business could be under threat.

A developer at Respawn Entertainment has provided an update about the possibility of Ranked Duos coming to Apex Legends, revealing that there are no current plans for the mode. While Apex Legends has a regular Duos option for fans who enjoy playing on smaller squads, some were hoping for a more competitive version of the mode.

Stardew Valley players are currently trying to figure out whether update 1.6 will let us finally visit an island filled with raccoons, and I really hope they're right. 

Renowned Elden Ring director Hidetaka Miyazaki recently spoke about the future of the Dark Souls franchise, suggesting he is open to «delegating» the directorial position to others. Since the debut of Demon's Souls in 2009, the Souls franchise has grown into one of the most recognizable brands within gaming, defining a genre that became known as "Souls-like" games. The franchise has made developer FromSoftware into a household name, recently winning Game of the Year in 2022 for the highly-anticipated Elden Ring. Now, Miyazaki could be looking to take a step back from the franchise.

We are once again in the season of Nintendo Direct speculation, as you might have guessed from the chaos that Switch fans have been in over the past few weeks. The most recent leaks suggest that a Direct is coming soon, but whether or not you believe the rumors, a decade's worth of history points to another February Direct.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars has been heralded for its stellar additions to the franchise’s canon. However, one fan pointed out what they believe is a rare disservice the show did to the pre-existing lore.

The following contains spoilers for the season 2 finale of The Bad BatchStar Wars: The Bad Batch featured one of the most heartwrenching deaths in the franchise's recent history. But some fans aren't ready to say goodbye, setting off a rather heated debate on whether certain characters should stay dead.

Gears of War creator Cliff Bleszinski has shared his thoughts on the rumored next entry in the franchise, suggesting that he would be open to returning to the series. First debuting on the Xbox 360 in 2006, the science-fiction shooter franchise would become one of Xbox's most popular first-party franchises. The first three games were all developed by eventual Fortnite creator Epic Games, with in-house Xbox studio The Coalition taking over the franchise starting with Gears 4. Now, Gears of War's original creator is still interested in helping with the franchise's future.

Tekken 8 finally gives fans a definitive answer about whether or not Kazuya is actually evil or if he's being controlled and influenced by the devil gene.

Star Wars fans got into a heated argument over perceived changes to the nature of the Jedi and the Force in newer films and shows compared to the original trilogy.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was officially revealed earlier this week, giving us our best look at a brand-new Indy adventure that we'll get to experience at some point later this year. While the game looks pretty great and has ticked a lot of boxes for Indiana Jones fans, one of the biggest talking points on social media is whether the game should have been in third-person rather than the first-person perspective that developer MachineGames has decided to go with for the majority of the game.

Has SSD cooling gone too far? Are PCIe 5.0 speeds worth it? These are the questions to wrestle with as you stare down an SSD with its own dedicated liquid cooler.

Spawn creator Todd McFarlane has promised that if Hollywood doesn't move forward with the movie in 2024, he'll "figure it out outside". 

A new video released by notorious rumour channel Moore's Law is Dead is digging into the potential RTX 5090 release date and quotes a source, claiming to be from inside Nvidia, stating that whether it launches its next-gen cards in 2024 will be largely down to how competitive AMD's RDNA 4 GPUs will be.

DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn has confirmed whether or not the costumes of the in the new DC Universe will be CGI.

Sonic Superstars is a side-scrolling platformer available on multiple consoles, but it was always going to have a hard time in 2023 against a critically acclaimed Super Mario title. Speaking as part of its latest financial sales report, publisher SEGA hinted that launching the co-op outing against Nintendo’s latest – as well as Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 – may not have been the brightest idea.

Grand Theft Auto 6's highly-anticipated trailer arrived in spectacular style last night, revealing that the game will take place in Vice City and is dropping at some point in 2025. It's gone down well for the most part, except for certain groups mad about the existence of Black people, though there is one particular person in the trailer causing a bit of a ruckus among GTA fans.

Gigabyte G5 | Core i7 12650H | RTX 4060 | 16GB DDR5-4800 | 512GB SSD | 15.6-inch | 1080p | 144Hz | $1,099.99 $799.99 at Best Buy (save $300)This is a lot of laptop for not very much money. To start with, you're getting a 10-core, 16-thread CPU that will easily cope with pretty much any game you throw at it. There's an RTX 4060 Mobile graphics chip too, that supports DLSS upscaling and frame generation. The storage is a bit disappointing, and you'll probably want to upgrade it at some point with a large SSD. For portable gaming and school work, though, this Gigabyte G5 laptop will keep you and your wallet happy.

The debate over how long video games should be has raged since the 90s at least. I’ve certainly dipped my toes into this conversation before, including here on Destructoid. But for the recent release of Super Mario RPG, those asking “how long is it” may need a slightly more nuanced answer than usual.

Last night, the Game of the Year nominees were announced, and headlining the titular award itself are Alan Wake 2, Baldur's Gate 3, Marvel's Spider-Man 2, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and Resident Evil 4. It's the last one on that list that has sparked controversy, as many are now arguing over whether a remake should be eligible for GOTY.

Burn-in remains the great worry when it comes to OLED panel technology. Now a new investigation by Ars Technica claims that what you do with your OLED monitor matters more than the panel type or brand.

Sometimes, it’s a no-brainer that a video game should get a follow-up, spinoff, or direct sequel. Whether it’s because the gameplay is incredible, the story has room to be expanded, or the game overall is just a fun time, it’s usually easy to see whether a game is doing well enough for a sequel to be made. For Mario + Rabbids Sparks Of Hope, that success is harder to gauge. Part of it is because Ubisoft has been not-so-subtle jerks about the game since its release in October of 2022. The game had universal praise from fans and critics and seemed to be on its way to glory on every level.

Mortal Kombat 1's first Kombat Pack includes three comic-book characters, Peacemaker, Omni-Man (from Invincible), and Homelander (from The Boys). All three have appeared in TV adaptations over the past few years, with the first two played by John Cena and J. K. Simmons respectively. They're both reprising their roles for MK1, but there's still no word on whether Antony Starr will.

Resident Evil is one of the key pillar franchises for Capcom. This series has spanned across several console generations at this point. We’ve seen mainline installments continue to come out into the marketplace alongside spinoffs. However, as of late, we’ve started to see Capcom embrace the older games. A few remakes have managed to make their way out into the marketplace for modern platforms. The question some fans have now is if we’ll see this trend continue and if a remake for Resident Evil 5 is in the works. 

You probably missed Minthara as a companion in Baldur's Gate 3 since recruiting her means slaughtering refugees, druids, and children. You can even romance her. But we're talking about bumping uglies with a genocidal villain, so it's caused some debate among fans.

In a recent interview with SFX, director David Gordon Green teases the return of Ellen Burstyn in future Exorcist movies. "It depends if she dies or not, in terms of the character,” Green tells SFX magazine in the new issue, which features The Exorcist: Believer on the cover.

In news that is sure to thrill Elon Musk, European regulators say that Twitter is currently the biggest source of disinformation. 

Take-Two has refused to be drawn on whether it would be interested in acquiring Gearbox Entertainment, following reports that the Borderlands studio is potentially up for sale.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth creative director Tetsuya Nomura and producer Yoshinori Kitase can't seem to agree on whether the term JRPG is a bad thing or not.

This week’s explosive Xbox leak set the Elder Scrolls community into overdrive with the revelation that Bethesda may be working on an official Oblivion remaster.

There is the suggestion going around that the green team is testing out a chiplet version of its top GeForce graphics card for the future Nvidia Blackwell GPU generation. This comes hot on the heels of another rumour stating explicitly that the Blackwell architecture is going to be used for data center silicon, too, and that this successor to Hopper will definitely be a multi-chip module GPU.

After quietly removing references to crossplay—or «Kross-Play» as it's been dubbed—from its Steam page earlier this month, NetherRealm Studios has confirmed that Mortal Kombat 1 will be launching without the feature.

One of the most immersion-breaking things about video games compared to movies and TV shows is the fact that friendly NPCs rarely react to your input as player outside pre-programmed interactions. For example, aiming a shotgun at your non-player companion (as one does) and watching them maintain composure and appear perfectly calm, creeping you out a little. Well, it sounds like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 will change that with its recently revealed "open combat missions." Sledgehammer Games has now revealed that NPCs will react differently depending how you approach these new missions.

Konami's announcement of Metal Gear Solid: The Master Collection Vol. 1 was both long-awaited and arrived with a few eyebrow-raising details. It won't just include Metal Gear Solid 1 through 3, for example, but the earlier 2D games: including the non-canon game Kojima wasn't involved in and apparently dislikes. The PC version's Steam listing also popped up with the unwelcome news that the games would not include mouse and keyboard support, which seems rather bizarre (especially as there exists an old PC version of MGS which does have keyboard controls).

With the end of the year somehow now in sight, not many are happy about it; people are starting to wonder what will happen in the year’s final four months. For gaming fans, they know about many big releases in the last four months from all three major parties. For Nintendo fans they’re used to certain things happening in September. Specifically, they’re used to a Nintendo Direct coming out and further highlighting what will come out the rest of the year while teasing what is coming out next year. But some fans aren’t so sure that’s what will happen this year.

We're thrilled to announce the return of GamesBeat Summit Next, hosted in San Francisco this October, where we will explore the theme of «Playing the Edge.» Apply to speak  here  and learn more about sponsorship opportunities  here . 

Confusion is arising among players as to whether Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is coming to last-gen consoles.

Baldur’s Gate 3 fans are debating whether save scumming is the correct way to play or whether it takes away a key part of the experience. This is because a lot of outcomes in Baldur’s Gate 3 are tied to random numbers, so it’s easy for your run to get derailed by a series of misfortune, especially when bad dice rolls happen in the middle of combat.

Kickstarter has announced a new policy regarding projects that make use of AI in some way, including video games.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is now in development for PS4 and Xbox One - that's right, two consoles that were first released around 10 years ago. 

Suits executive producer Gene Klein has weighed on the likelihood of a revival series, following the show's newfound success on Netflix. 

As the studio behind Metroid: Samus Returns and Metroid Dread, Spanish developer MercurySteam has proven itself capable of meeting the high expectations that go hand-in-hand with a new mainline 2D Metroid game. With both games – Dread in particular – also having both critically and commercially successful, it’s no surprise that there’s already been plenty of speculation regarding whether the studio will be working with Nintendo on another 2D Metroid game in the future.

Square Enix wants to let Final Fantasy 14 fans play with others who live across the globe, though certain challenges throw up a barrier to making that happen.

Actor Zachary Levi has shared an update on whether he will reprise his role as Billy Batson/Shazam in the DC Universe.

The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) have proposed a new method for guaranteeing parental consent to help protect children's privacy online. The method involves "Privacy-Protective Facial Age Estimation" technology, which would scan an adult's face to confirm their age before they're able to consent on behalf a child.

Activision Blizzard revealed in its second-quarter earnings report that it has started laying off esports employees ahead of changes to the Overwatch League. This has left teams with the chance to vote to continue with the "updated operating agreement", and if they choose not to, they will receive a termination fee of $6 million. Essentially, teams will vote on whether Overwatch League lives or dies.