The best indie game of 2023 just hit one million downloads

Rhythm games just haven’t been the same since RedOctane saturated the scene, spawning 30 Guitar Hero games in a span of 5 years. In such a scenario, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is a most peculiar hero.

The best optical gaming keyboards are quickly becoming a popular choice among gamers, thanks to fewer moving parts to go wrong, and a shorter actuation distance (a fancy way of saying you can type on a scale hitherto undreamt of). While optical switches do feature mechanical components, they use light for actuation rather than a physical mechanical connection.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 has arrived on PS5 and marks the biggest gaming adventure yet for our favorite friendly neighborhood hero who first swung into the gaming world in 1982’s Spider-Man for the Atari 2600. Since then, there have been some spectacular and amazing entries in the wallcrawler’s game output, as well as some that didn’t quite live up to Spidey’s good name.

It's been three years since Ubisoft announced it was working on a VR instalment of Assassin's Creed, and with the game — now officially titled Assassin's Creed Nexus VR — nearing its release, the company has shared an extensive eight-minute gameplay breakdown to get players in the mood ahead of its November launch on Meta Quest 2, 3, and Pro.

If you even keep just a tiny watch on the video game world, you won’t be shocked to learn that Starfield has been quite the big deal. As of September, Bethesda’s epic sci-fi RPG was the top ranking game in the US in terms of sales.

In case you had forgotten, a BioShock movie is coming to Netflix. While the writers’ strike may have put the brakes on a trip down to Rapture, the project’s writer Michael Green has offered up a small, yet promising, update.

Starfield managed to hold off Mortal Kombat 1 to be the best-selling game of September 2023 in the U.S., according to new numbers from Circana.

Video game analyst group Circana has released its September 2023 U.S. video game market highlights and in it, the company reveals that developer Bethesda Game Studios' Starfield was the best-selling game last month, which is the month it launched. And after just six weeks on the market, Starfield is already the seventh best-selling game of the year. February's Hogwarts Legacy remains in the top spot. 

Slender: The Arrival crept its way onto the indie horror scene a decade ago and has gone on to become a fixture in the world of PC horror games. Now, the upcoming Slender: The Arrival 10-year Anniversary Update has arrived, with the inclusion of Nvidia DLSS 3,just in time to scare a whole new generation of players this Halloween season.

Cyberpunk 2077 has reinvented itself following the release of numerous updates and the stellar Phantom Liberty expansion, but the big lessons learned from its rough 2020 launch are still front of mind for developer CD Projeckt Red. With current development happening on The Witcher 4 - codenamed Polaris - the developers are taking steps to ensure they won't have another troubled launch.

Starfield. BioShock. Dishonored. Some of the greatest PC games of the last two decades owe their inspiration to the Thief series. Originally developed by Looking Glass Studios, of System Shock and Ultima fame, the third Thief, Deadly Shadows, would move to Ion Storm Austin, shortly after it shipped another stone-cold classic, the first Deus Ex. The team that helped build Thief 3 would eventually work on some of the most-beloved games of the modern era, including Skyrim, BioShock, and Starfield. Renowned for its superlative Shalebridge Cradle level, Thief Deadly Shadows is now all yours for less than $1.

Spider-Man 2 is one of the most confident sequels we’ve played in years. Not only does it address, often mock, and then resolve the issues of the first game, but it also introduces new mechanics to improve the best parts of the original.