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Game Reviews

Worried that Nintendo Switch 2 stock levels could leave you without a console until 2026? Well, Ninty’s reportedly done a deal with Samsung that might help

by admin May 20, 2025

Despite all the calls for Nintendo to drop its price, everyone and their mum has been trying to pre-order a Switch 2 now that they have the chance, leading to fears Ninty might not be able to make enough consoles to meet all the demand in timely fashion. The good news is that it sounds like a deal with Samsung could help supercharge Switch 2 production a bit.

It’s worth noting that to this point, pretty much all the chatter about Switch 2 sales has had the spectre of an unstable US tariff situation hanging over it, with any change in that threatening to potentially throw a spanner in the works. Hence even Nintendo itself putting out a launch sales forecast that most analysts reckoned was playing things safe.

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According to a new report from Bloomberg, Nintendo’s opted to do a deal with Samsung to produce chips for the new console, a move that could position the Switch 2 maker to up its production of Mario’s newest home box.

The deal has a chance to allow Nintendo to manufacture and sell 20 million Switch 2 units by the end of March 2026, a higher watermark than before, with the possibility for Samsung to “ramp up further if needed, though much would depend on capacity at hardware assemblers”.

Right, here comes the nerdy bit, though I appreciate that’s a bit of a rich thing to write in a story that was already about video games. Samsung is reportedly producing these chips using an 8-nanometer node, and landing this deal will help it in its fight against the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co for the upper hand in the chip making market.

More interestingly for us regular folks, Bloomberg reports that Samsung is already pushing for OLED panels to be used whenever Nintendo inevitably does its Switch 2 hardware refresh down the line, putting out a slightly swankier version for those with disposable income and a desire for better tech.

Are you hoping to grab a Switch 2 by 2026, and how much fun have you had trying to grab one so far if you’re participated in the pre-order wars? Let us know below!

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May 20, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Deliver At All Costs review

by admin May 20, 2025

Deliver At All Costs review

Excellent dumb fun and constantly creative mission design, hobbled by tedious interludes and an insistent, unconvincing, and unnecessary story.

Developer: Studio Far Out Games
Publisher: Konami
Release: May 22nd, 2025
On: Windows
From: Steam/GOG/Epic Games
Price: £25/€30/$30
Reviewed on: Intel Core i5-12600K, 32GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti, Windows 11

They say that if you ignore your detractors, you also have to ignore the praise. But I’m proud that my boss told me I’m a good courier. “I am a good courier”, I think, ramming a remote control corvette destined for a local child’s chimney into a pedestrian’s shins, knocking them skyward, zipping away before the sound of soft bones on hard concrete catches up with me. “The best courier,” I nod, reversing my truck into a beach-front bar on the way to fumigate a truckful of rotting melons. “The best damn courier in town!”, I exclaim, honking my newly-installed cursehorn, shattering nearby windows and streetlights into glinting injury confetti.

Sometimes, confidence is more valuable than a measured perspective on things, and if you need to focus on the praise to block out the little voice telling you the way you’re driving to these sun-kissed surf guitars is less Dennis Wilson, more Charlie Manson, so be it. Deliver At All Costs has me thinking a lot about confidence, in fact. It invokes GTA with a linked series of open maps, constantly devil-whispering your attention away from main and side missions with the promise of the hallowed fuckaboutsesh – smashable suburbia detailed down to the individual fence picket taking the place of rocket launchers and car pile-ups. But tragically, it’s also cursed with a lack of confidence that this is enough. It wants to be something more.

With games, I’ve come to view silliness – joyful, knowing, celebratory, confident silliness – as a kind of fearlessness. There was a much-mocked Tweet by an apparently well-known industry human a few years back along the lines of “in a world where every game is John Wick, The Last Of Us 2 is Schindler’s list”. Allusion aside, I remember thinking that my problem was that not enough games are John Wick. We should be so lucky to have more games exhibit that level of technical virtuosity and playfulness and inventiveness and character while also displaying such prescient levels of self-awareness and comfort regarding their own limits. Excellent, dumb fun with nothing to prove is in shorter supply than you might think.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Studio Far Out

To wit: Deliver At All Costs is about 70% videogame-ass videogame, and a pretty great one at that. The rest is dull cutscenes and conversations and other assorted faff, starring a deeply unlikable protagonist, standoffish enough to be instantly repellant while also being the sort of bozo who says shit like “well, here goes nothing!” out loud to himself before walking into a job interview. It’s been ages since I’ve played a freeform chaos ’em up (Destroy All Humans! springs to mind, in spirit if not specifics), and the result was like going for lunch with a friend I hadn’t seen for years, only for them to grab the delicious milkshake out of my hands every ten minutes and refuse to give it back until I’d listened to the next part of their screenplay. It’s not a good screenplay, Eric. And give me back my milkshake.

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I wouldn’t even say that the game’s writing is bad, in the sense that it does contain very good things resulting from humans putting imaginative ideas on paper. The formula stays consistent. Either get a thing and take it to a place, sometimes with a few stops across the way, without it getting ruined. Or, collect or deliver lots of things quickly, sometimes with a time limit, sometimes while being attacked by cops or other vermin. You’ll get a few cargo-loading tools to upgrade your truck as your progress – a winch, a crane. But the game is so creative with its twists and framing that each delivery stands out.

One mission, you’re delivering a stone statue of the mayor to replace an old one that’s been painted white over the years by a truly biblical quantity of bird plop. As you’re making your way back down treacherous volcano slopes, you’re set upon by a swarming armada of dysentery pigeons, forced to swerve incoming shit sheets to deliver your cargo as pristine as possible. Another, you’re delivering a gigantic marlin, driving through barrels of feed en route so it doesn’t get hangry and attempt to flip over your car with its tail. Next, you might be ramming into rival courier trucks and crane-stealing their packages to make the deliveries yourself.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Studio Far Out

This is all made goofier by what Brendy described as “slip-slidey Micro Machines goodness”. While I’d imagine trying to drive such a pressure-sensitive vehicle with a mouse and keyboard is a nightmare, on controller your truck is tight and responsive while also reacting to the slightest bit of overzealousness on your part with clownish histrionics. This is fine and good and welcome. The worse you drive, the more fun it is, and after playing two parryful games in a row that ceaselessly screamed at me like J. K. Simmons in Whiplash to get it right, it feels great to play something this joyously permissiveness of sloppy, slippy smashbastardry.

So, what’d be the perfect chaser to all this creative mayhem? Why, some sort of traumatic backstory for your courier, naturally. Comic strips where an overbearing father unsupportive of your engineer-tagonist’s love for “those damn gizmos” wants him to go shoot a fox instead. But he can’t do it! He can’t pull the trigger! I ran over twelve people yesterday, game. I made at least twice that many people homeless. There’s a rivalry with upper management trying to uncover your courier’s not-actually-that-dark past. You have to go to bed and wake up and get dressed every few missions in your apartment, despite there being no other life sim elements that would give this stuff purpose. There’s a sequence at the end of the first act where you have to push crates and filing cabinets from doorways to escape a burning building. It’s unconvincing, uninteresting, unfocused, and there’s far too much of it.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Studio Far Out

Thing is though, the city is already a nice enough place to spend time, vibes-wise; a toytown pastiche of mid-century Americana that creates a familiar and vibrant enough sense of place for you to enjoy levelling that place to bits. There’s enough here to convey the game’s identity without all the faff. And this is where I return to thinking about confidence. More specifically, how Deliver At All Costs has a lack of trust in itself. The game seems afraid to let itself be defined by its strongest elements, and attempts a type of storytelling structure that serves it not at all.

Because this doesn’t strike me as a story someone especially wanted to tell, nor the additional sequences ones anyone especially wanted to make. They are inclusions born of a nervous yearning to fulfill the mold of an impersonal idea of what constitutes a real videogame, a ladder to worthiness built from checkboxes. Worse, they drag the party down and refuse to give me back my damn milkshake. If you reckon you’ve got a higher tolerance for battering the ‘skip dialogue’ button though, by all means go for it. There is, as I say, some excellent, dumb fun to be had here.

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May 20, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Baldur’s Gate 3’s terrible miniatures “missed the mark” so much, WizKids is offering refunds

by admin May 20, 2025

Board game company WizKids has apologised for its recent line of Baldur’s Gate 3 miniatures, acknowledging the melty faced monstrosities “missed the mark” and offering full refunds.

WizKids announced the range – officially known as Dungeons & Dragons: Icons Of The Realms: Baldur’s Gate 3 – at the end of last year, and US customers began receiving their £50/$49.99, seven-character sets earlier this month. However, rather than the crisply detailed renditions of Astarion, Karlach, Gale, Shadowheart, Wyll, Lae’zel and Withers featured in WizKids’ promotional material, customers instead received pre-painted miniatures that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Borja church fresco – and complaints were swift.

And now, with more and more images of the squishy faced disappointments being shared online, WizKids has been forced to concede that, yes, its Baldur’s Gate 3 miniatures are in fact rubbish. “As a company, WizKids seeks to create products that enhance and add to the enjoyment of game play,” it wrote on its website. “We want our customers to build long-lasting, fond memories around game nights with friends and family using our products.”

Uncanny. | Image credit: Eurogamer/WizKids

“Unfortunately, we missed the mark on this goal with the D&D Icons of the Realms: Baldur’s Gate 3 Character Boxed Set,” it continued. “If you purchased this set through our online stores, we will be offering a full refund to those who are unsatisfied with their set… We’re aware of the recent reports and complaints and are taking them seriously. Our team is currently investigating these issues and taking action to make this right for those whose purchases were negatively affected and to ensure these issues do not recur in future products and reprints.”

WizKids notes anyone who purchased the box set from a third-party retailer should contact them directly for a refund, while those wishing for a replacement – one that “meets the standards expected” – can do so via its website.

“Please accept our sincerest apologies for the frustration and disappointment these quality issues caused our customers,” WizKids concluded. “We, too, feel the same as the final product did not meet our expectations or that of our Wizards of the Coast partner. Our teams are working to find the best solutions to resolve this for all involved and to work with you, our customers, to fix this. We appreciate your patience as we focus on getting back to those affected and helping them with their refunds in a timely manner.”

It’s hardly a fitting celebration of developer Larian’s acclaimed 2023 RPG, but with the studio’s work on the game now largely at an end following April’s massive Patch 8, Astarion, Karlach, and friends are now entirely at Dungeons & Dragons owner Hasbro’s mercy. And if that means licensing them out to be turned into unrecgonsisable bits of plastic, then so be. Hasbro has, of course, already confirmed it’s keen to find a studio to make Baldur’s Gate 4, but with Larian now working on its own mysterious projects, it’s unclear how far off that may be.

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May 20, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Here’s Why You Can’t Kill Animals In Assassin’s Creed Shadows

by admin May 20, 2025

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is a very good game that animal lovers can enjoy because there’s no way to harm a single creature in the game (except for people, of course). That’s a first for the franchise and I wanted to learn why Ubisoft went this route for its latest open-world adventure.

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When I played and reviewed Assassin’s Creed Shadows in March, I was surprised to discover that the player can never attack or kill any animals in the game’s virtual recreation of feudal Japan. You can, however, pet them and draw pictures of the various wildlife you encounter. Unlike so many other open-world games, including previous Ubisoft projects, there aren’t even any aggressive predators in Shadows. You are never forced to kill any wolves or bears to survive and craft upgrades. I recently asked Ubisoft about this change, and learned from AC Shadows creative director Jonathan Dumont that there were a few reasons behind it.

Kotaku: In Shadows, players can’t hurt or hunt animals. The only way you can interact with them is by petting or painting them. What was the rationale/design decision behind this?

Jonathan Dumont: There are several reasons behind this design choice. Firstly, feudal Japan didn’t have many large, aggressive animals to challenge players. When we reviewed the available animal roster, it seemed more appealing to observe and pet them rather than engage in combat.

Additionally, we wanted to incorporate world activities that offer a zen-like experience, providing spiritual or contemplative moments in nature to balance Naoe and Yasuke’s journey.

When did the idea of letting players add animals to the base happen? And did you expect people to start building petting zoos (like I did)?

JD: It happened really early on. In a team meeting, we saw the first implementation of the Sumi-e activity, where the initial design was to collect only the paintings, but as soon as we saw the animals it was unanimous that we needed to make them pets for the hideout. And yes, it immediately led to team members making cool-looking petting zoos and animal shelters.

Has the team appreciated the mostly positive online response to the lack of violence against animals in Shadows?

JD: I can’t speak for everyone, but I think players appreciated that it gave a different dimension to the exploration we were going for.

Does the team/Ubisoft feel like hunting animals could return in future installments, or is this a new direction for the series?

JD: I think it will depend on the setting and player fantasy. For AC Shadows, it made sense.

This interview has been lightly edited and formatted.

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May 20, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

It’s pretty clear Monster Hunter Wilds’ first Capcom collab will be with Street Fighter

by admin May 20, 2025

Capcom dropped a nice and easy-to-parse teaser earlier today for the first collaboration event in Monster Hunter Wilds. We’ve known for a while that the company is working on one such event, and we’ve also known it’s going to be with another Capcom brand.

Naturally, people have been guessing, but today’s teaser makes it pretty clear which other Capcom series the first collaboration will be with.

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Over on Twitter, the official Monster Hunter account shared a single image of a claw mark that has a very distinct Street Fighter art style, which inarguably means the first cross-over event will be with the iconic fighting game series.

The tweet doesn’t contain any other information besides, but it’s pretty clear we’re getting closer to a proper announcement. Street Fighter has, of course, crossed over with Monster Hunter games in the past. Monster Hunter World had its fair share of Capcom collaborations, including with Street Fighter.

Pretty clear. | Image credit: Capcom

This would be Wilds’ first, and judging by how Capcom has been known to run these in the past, the new content will very likely be available as part of a limited-time Event Quest. Though we can only guess, it’ll also likely include various pieces of armour that make your Hunter look like a Street Fighter character – such as Ryu.

Usually, Capcom also likes to release other cosmetics for purchase around the same time, too, for those who want some extra bling. Typically, Event Quests are little more grindy than normal quests, especially if you want to get the entire set.

However, considering how much more player-friendly Wilds has been compared to past games, the game’s iteration of this collaboration might end up being more accessible. We’ll also have to wait and see whether this event will only include costumes, or if there’s going to be a little more to it.

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May 20, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Every mainline Elder Scrolls game and DLC, ranked

by admin May 20, 2025

The Elder Scrolls VI is coming. Slowly, but it is. We all dearly miss this series that’s already way older than many of the people playing it nowadays, so we should perhaps look to the past for some great TES moments that we might have missed.

What better time than now, or the four years that we’ll have to wait in line, to read about the best and worst games in the series to get you ready for TES VI? Note that this is about the single-player RPGs, so The Elder Scrolls Online is not part of our rankings here.

Image via MobyGames

I know I’m a big meanie for putting the oldest game in the franchise in the lowest rank, but this is actually a great achievement for the series. How many franchises can boast that every single sequel in their catalog has managed to outdo the original?

Arena, even with the help of some neat fan-made mods, looks and plays very dated nowadays. Still, it was a revolutionary thing back in the day—and one that you can still enjoy for some of its merits and archeological value.

Screenshot by Destructoid

Daggerfall greatly improved upon its predecessor in terms of graphics, scope, and size. Though ancient, Daggerfall remains one of the games with the largest play area in gaming history, although you’ll probably get bored before seeing one-tenth of the whole thing. I’d call Daggerfall too dated to play nowadays if you’re not a game history buff, but you can experience a much prettier version if you get the Unity remaster, which I totally recommend.

Oblivion’s first expansion begins with some dumb and repetitive design choices that might end up causing a bunch of players to give up on it, but those who brave through the great filter are in for one hell of a treat.

Knights of the Nine invites players to go through the trials and tribulations of knighthood, and it turns out it’s actually a pretty fun ordeal. Also, one of the things that always bothered me about Oblivion was the lack of a direct confrontation against a villain. Yeah, sitting back while a dragon goes on a kaiju fight against the Devil isn’t that awesome, Oblivion. Luckily, KON more than solves that problem.

Image via Bethesda

Remember when I talked about a confrontation with a cool villain in the entry above? Well, Shivering Isles is all about going after a mad god in an equally mad world. This one is filled with memorable moments worthy of Morrowind, but the star of the show is the main quest. One of the quarrels one can have with Oblivion is the lack of open-endedness, but you won’t find that here, as your decisions will finally impact the story.

Image by Bethesda

You can never do wrong with vampires and werewolves. Both had been staples of the series for a while, but now they take center stage in the main plotline. The main story is fun, but even more fun are the Werewolf and Vampire skill trees that you can now unlock and explore to quench your thirst.

Before there was Bloodborne, there was Skyrim’s Dragonborn. It teased a great confrontation with someone capable of rivaling the Dovahkiin, and we got that, but the star of the show, in my opinion, was the Lovecraftian elements. Skyrim is gorgeous, but I find the environments a bit repetitive. Dragonborn solves that in spades by taking us to a new area filled with eldritch horrors that will likely stay in your mind, as you slowly lose it to madness.

Tribunal, the first expansion for Morrowind does away with the massive and beautiful areas of the main game. It makes up for that, however, by inviting players to solve an engrossing conspiracy whose setting is based on classic TES concepts. It’s a short but sweet experience that you should totally get into if you like the original Morrowind, as it raises the overall difficulty and expands upon its challenges.

Important note: Do not install Tribunal as soon as you begin your adventure in the original game. This will create a high chance of powerful ninjas showing up to kill your character whenever they go to sleep. This is not a joke.

A hero arrives at a snow-covered island to go on a werewolf-hunting adventure. Bloodmoon isn’t Skyrim, but only because it doesn’t take place in Skyrim. Morrowind’s second expansion more than sows the seeds for what would become Skyrim by sending players on a darker adventure in a Norse mythology-inspired land. If you love Skyrim and want to experience a “demake” of sorts, this is the one for you.

Image via Bethesda Softworks

They finally did it. There was speculation, there were rumors, but when the Oblivion remaster shadow dropped on one sleepy day, the internet was damn near set on fire. It was a fun time, sure, but still just a remaster.

That’s why it ends up in the fourth spot on this list, two whole places behind the original. The OG was the one that showed us all what games could really do with its living world and roaming NPCs. The remaster is a fantastic homage to what is undoubtedly an Elder Scrolls classic.

Image via Bethesda/Steam.

Well, there’s not much left to say about this one. I mean, there are a lot of people talking crap about it on the Internet, but they write their negative reviews while on their coffee breaks from their 500+ hour-long playthroughs, so do those even count?

Skyrim is a massive success, a game that has remained popular for over a decade, and one that so many claim is the strongest entry in the series. I disagree, as I’m not a fan of how it hand-holds us throughout the main quest, but who am I to say that this is not the ultimate TES experience for you?

Image by Bethesda

Even though Skyrim blew its numbers out of the water a few years later, Oblivion was the breakthrough game for this series. Oblivion made not just the series, but RPGs in general, the hot new mainstream thing.

Back when it came out, Oblivion looked better and brighter, thanks, absurd HDR, than any other game on the market. Oblivion looked like an impossible feat for a console, but it was the real deal. Moreover, it featured a more console-friendly approach to its combat and overall gameplay than its predecessor, which sacrificed some depth but allowed Oblivion to put the Xbox 360 on the map as a serious threat to the PlayStation 3.

Image by Bethesda

Even though many might contest my decision, I must rub salt in the dissidents’ wounds by stating that this wasn’t even a close one. Though old enough to drink in the US, Morrowind remains not just one of the best RPGs of all time, but one of the best exploration games ever — an achievement it simply did not owe us.

If you ever feel like taking a break from the main quest, you can just walk in a direction — any direction. It’s ok, as you’ll surely stumble upon some underground area where you’ll have an unforgettable adventure and likely get a cool new item. Morrowind doesn’t take players by the hand and never fails to reward the adventurer inside you. The combat might be a bit dated by today’s standards, but it also features the deepest gameplay in the series, making it a perfect marriage between clunky and fun. We may never ever get anything quite like Morrowind, and the world is a sadder place for that.

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May 20, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

The Last of Us TV showrunner confirms four season plan, says “no way” to wrap things up in three

by admin May 20, 2025

Craig Mazin, the showrunner behind HBO’s acclaimed live-action TV adaptation of The Last of Us, has confirmed the team is working to a four season plan, insisting there’s “no way” the narrative can be wrapped up in three seasons.

This isn’t the first time the magic number four has been floated in regard to The Last of Us’ TV adaptation, of course. Mazin started the chatter all the way back in 2023, suggesting the show could “end up being three or five [seasons]. But four seems like a good number. Some seasons, because of the story we’re telling, will need fewer episodes and some will need more.”

Then earlier this year, HBO exec Francesca Orsi mirrored those comments, saying it was “looking like four seasons” for the adaption, but stressed HBO didn’t have “a complete or final plan”. Instead, she appeared to defer to Mazin, adding, “I wouldn’t want to confirm that, but it’s looking like this season and then two more seasons after this and we’re done.”

And now Mazin has seemingly made that official in an interview with Collider. Discussing the big Joel moment that kicked off season two, Mazin explained, “It’s so impactful. It’s such a narrative nuclear bomb that it’s hard to wander away from it. We can’t really take a break and move off to the side and do a Bill and Frank story. I’m not sure that will necessarily be true for Season 3. I think we’ll have a little more room there.”

“There’s a decent chance that Season 3 will be longer than Season 2,” he elaborated, “just because the manner of that narrative and the opportunities it affords us are a little different… but certainly, there’s no way to complete this narrative in a third season. Hopefully, we’ll earn our keep enough to come back and finish it in a fourth. That’s the most likely outcome.”

As for season two, there’s just one episode to go following this week’s sixth instalment. Opinions on the second season have been a little more mixed compared to the widely acclaimed original, with Eurogamer’s The Last of Us superfan Victoria Kennedy recently pondering if Mazin and team might have bitten off more than they can chew.

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May 20, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Fortnite In Legal Trouble After Adding AI Darth Vader

by admin May 20, 2025

Screenshot: Epic / Lucasfilm / Kotaku

SAG-AFTRA, the massive actors and media union with over 160,000 members, has filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board against Epic Games over its inclusion of an AI-powered Darth Vader in a recent Fortnite update.

Nintendo Switch 2 Price Is Set at $450 for Now, But Could Go Higher

You might have heard about the AI-powered Darth Vader that was added to Epic’s popular battle royale game last week as part of an ongoing Star Wars-themed season. Players could talk to this AI-powered Vader and ask him questions. The AI character’s voice was designed to mimic that of the late James Earl Jones and was done with his and his estate’s permission. Pretty quickly after he was added to the game, players got him to say slurs, swears, and other questionable stuff. Epic patched him up and seems to have gotten the Sith Lord under control. But now the developer is in hot water with one of the largest media unions in the country because it included this AI-powered Vader without first communicating or bargaining with SAG-AFTRA.

On May 19, as reported by Eurogamer, SAG-AFTRA announced that it had filed an unfair labor practice charge against Epic Games and its subsidiary, Llama Productions.

“We celebrate the right of our members and their estates to control the use of their digital replicas and welcome the use of new technologies to allow new generations to share in the enjoyment of those legacies and renowned roles,” said SAG-AFTRA in a statement.

“However, we must protect our right to bargain terms and conditions around uses of voice that replace the work of our members, including those who previously did the work of matching Darth Vader’s iconic rhythm and tone in video games.”

SAG-AFTRA says that Epic and Llama Productions “chose to replace the work of human performers with A.I.” and did so without “providing any notice of their intent to do this” and without allowing the union to bargain over fair terms.

SAG-AFTRA voice actors are currently on strike against large video game companies including EA and Activision over various issues. The strike started in 2024. One of the big ones is more protection against AI copies, like Darth Vader in Fortnite.

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May 20, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

RoadCraft review: Streamlined building biz beset by bumbling AI Bobs

by admin May 19, 2025

It’s getting close to 10PM on a Friday night.

There’s a slightly muddy hill. Halfway up it, their tires spinning helplessly, are two trucks carrying goods they need to deliver to a shed about half the map away. I sigh, and give my bulldozer/cargo truck the beans. As one fourteen-wheeled mass, we begin to crawl up the gentle slope, which would be easy pickings if the AI-manned haulers glued to my front scoop had any off-roading capabilities whatsoever.

They don’t. There’s no driving skill to make up for it, either. If they run into an obstacle during the course of the route I’ve plotted out for them which can’t be overcome by simply reversing and pulling forwards less than three times, they just give up. Small rocks terrify them, turns that happen to be in any way sharp are the banes of their existence, and sometimes they seem to roll over just for a laugh. They need me. When I’m not Bob the builder, I’m Bob the babysitter.

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What I’ve just described is one of the main things that sets RoadCraft – the latest entry in Saber Interactive’s Spintires series of off-roading sims – from its rugged, outdoorsy siblings. These games, MudRunner, SnowRunner, and last year’s Expeditions, were generally games about you – the player – getting from A to B through untamed environments and getting stuck when you messed it up.

I’ve regularly, and slightly sarkily, compared these games to the driving equivalent of FromSoft’s boss battlers. Notoriously unforgiving adventures about eventual success earned through overwhelming skill or luck, and usually preempted by a crap-tonne of failure that gradually pushes those who haven’t already taken their lumps in the direction of doing the right thing.

When you’re behind the wheel, RoadCraft’s by far the least hardcore title in its delivery of that gameplay loop that Saber has put out to this point. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still a learning curve and plenty of ways to mess up that’ll require a reset. However, in its creation of a game that’s more focused on construction, maintenance, and logistics management than it is straight-up haulage or frontier-conquering exploration, the studio’s simplified things.

As you carry out jobs, you no longer have to keep a watchful eye on your fuel gauge or do any repairs if you slam into a wall. RoadCraft’s fleet is permanently fully-fueled and indestructible unless you roll over, sink, or otherwise get wedged in a spot you can’t extricate yourself from. While this, and the resulting lack of an in-depth upgrade system for vehicles, might be a bit frustrating to hardcore haulers, you can see why Saber’s opted to do it.

See? Told you there are still ways you can monumentally mess things up. | Image credit: VG247/Saber

The rides you’re handed the keys to this time are generally a lot more specialised towards very specific roles for the jobs you’ll be doing as the game walks you through getting locations which have suffered different kinds of natural disaster – from floods, to earthquakes, to hurricanes – up and running again.

You’re running a construction firm that you start off by naming and picking out a livery/logo combo for. When you first deploy into one of the maps, which thankfully are openly free-roamable outside jobs unlike those in Expeditions, you’ll do the usual thing and head out in a nippy scout 4×4 to recon the environment.

Then, your re-construction efforts begin, and can be divided into about five or six different general activities you’ll do in various orders and with different quirks as you progress – scouting, logging, road and bridge building, plotting routes for AI supply runs, debris clearing, and resource delivery.

In terms of the latter, there are four types of resources you’ll need to fix various things – logs, steel beams, metal pipes, and concrete slabs – all of which you’ll acquire by either recycling debris at the plants on each map that part of your job is to get up and running. Getting ahold of those, ferrying them where they need to go, and installing them is done in very SnowRunnery fashion, albeit with manual loading being your only option.

As such, the vehicle I’ve spent by far the most time in during my time with the game so far is the Mule T1 crane cargo truck. As the name suggests, it’s a lorry with very decent off-roading capabilities that’s built to transport goods, and even boasts its own built-in crane.

(Slaps roof) You know how much junk this Mule can haul? | Image credit: VG247-Saber

If you’re playing solo, it’s by far the most important purchase you’ll make early on, because its good stats and that crane mean it’s ideal to handle the vast majority of haulage jobs the game gives you. There is a point where some loads start to get a bit too heavy for it to deal with easily, but I’ve made it up to level 12 so far and it’s still the heart of my fleet. That arguably exposes a bit of a flaw in RoadCraft’s launch vehicle offerings – there’s only one or very occasionally two better successors you can unlock for each of the different vehicle types as you progress.

You do unlock some new types of vehicle around the midpoint, such as a heavy crane and beefier cargo truck that together can handle the heavier loads the Mule struggles with, but in plenty of cases there’s a beginner rusty variant of a specific vehicle, a refurbished version of the exact same model with slightly better stats, and then an advanced variant you’ll unlock once you’re starting to home in on the endgame.

The most egregious example of this is with the field service vehicles. There are two. One you’re given for free at the start of the game and can’t even be repainted in your company livery as far as I can tell, and then its endgame replacement, which you won’t unlock until level 20, which based on my progress so far looks like it’ll be when you’ve basically finished all of the game’s current content.

You’re still unlocking one or two new vehicles or variants of existing vehicles with each level you gain to help freshen things up a bit, but the relatively thin depth at each position and lack of part customisation means the sense of progression feels a lot more limited. No doubt there’ll be plenty of DLC to beef up the roster, but Focus seems to be leaning a bit too heavily on that.

C. W. McCall intensifies. | Image credit: VG247/Saber

Combined with the aforementioned stripping out of stuff like fuel management, and the XP/cash rewards for jobs being quite generous (the latter especially so because you aren’t constantly spending on upgrades), to this point RoadCraft is the entry in the uber-hard Spintires series I’ve made my way through with the least struggle. The one exception to that, as I outlined in the intro, is that damn route plotting for AI trucks. If it’s the part of the game that’s supposed to dial the difficulty back up, it certainly does just that at regular points, often in infuriating fashion.

If I’ve gotten stuck while driving, usually because I’ve done something stupid, that’s annoying, but at the end of the day it’s on me to do a better job. If an AI lorry I’ve already built a bunch of bridges and roads for requires me to follow it along its entire route and do some push-based babysitting whenever it encounters the tiniest obstacle because it’s using a truck that only works on perfectly straight asphalt highways, that’s less easy to take on the chin. Kudos to Saber for trying something different, but some of the ways I’ve had to resort to helping its lorry Lemmings feel like they pretty much defeat the point of not having me just make the deliveries myself.

While folks who take a bit more time to clear the perfect path might well find RoadCraft lacking a bit of challenge, I’ve personally enjoyed the non-AI lorry bits of it generally being a lot more chill than the usual. The game’s at its best when you’re heading to a base or driving your field service vehicle somewhere and setting up to spend some time doing a specific job. Both act as spawn points for vehicles, though the latter requires fuel tokens that’re pretty easy to earn from side jobs. Once you’re there, you’ll be doing something like watching the four stages of RoadCraft’s namesake party trick, building roads by dumping sand with a dump truck, using a dozer to flatten it, wheeling out your paver to coat it an asphalt, and then hopping in a steamroller to make it nice and smooth.

It’s as mega-satisfying as you always dream baking a cake will be, even if the first step can be pretty unforgiving because it’s near impossible to drop sand in a nice uniform fashion. Luckily, you’ve got the choice to do each step manually or let the computer do it automatically, with the latter tending to go ok given you’re only making short stretches of road. Well, unless your paver finds a small rock you haven’t cleared.

It’s a piece of cake to lay a pretty road. If the way is hazy, you gotta do the laying by the codex. | Image credit: VG247/Saber

Logging by chopping down trees with a tree harvester, picking up the big twigs with a log hauler, and then cleaning up your mess with a stump mulcher is just as fun. There’s not as much process to laying electrical wires between different spots on the map to power up substations, but finding a way to guide the comically unwieldy cable layer through the backwoods has its good moments, even if it’s possible to get stuck in weird ways.

Overall, RoadCraft offers a unique enough twist on the established Spintires formula, if a streamlined one, to be worth giving a go. Some series veterans will end up longing for the elements it’s stripped out, especially when the new stuff that’s been drafted in is being more frustrating than fun. But, that central loop of frustration giving way to jubilation as you overcome the environment is still there and regularly just as satisfying.

Especially when the convoy you’ve spent all evening pushing up hills finally reaches its destination.

RoadCraft releases on March 20 for PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PS5. This review was conducted on PS5 using a code provided by the publisher.

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May 19, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

In Theory: will next-gen Xbox run on a Qualcomm Snapdragon ARM processor?

by admin May 19, 2025

Could the next generation Xbox run on an ARM-based processor? The possibility has been mooted ever since Microsoft’s FTC-related leak revealed that the firm was investigating which architecture to consider for a circa-2028 console. Would it be x86 or ARM? Would Microsoft collaborate on a custom chip with AMD or tap into the firm’s roadmap of upcoming technology? We never found out. However, Microsoft commentator Brad Sams found something interesting last week: a Qualcomm job ad discussing “the next generation of Surface and Xbox products built on Snapdragon solutions”. Based on his tweets, Sams believes the upcoming tenth generation Xbox will run on ARM – but how plausible is it?

Well, job ads are notorious as a poor sourcing for actual company strategy but can sometimes offer up some insights. This one, for a sales director, seems particularly slight – and after Sams’ reporting, the link stopped working, with the ad eventually re-appearing with all Xbox mentions deleted. So is this an unintended leak or just an error?

Based on everything we know about how Microsoft works, what its intended strategy is, and its comments on delivering the “largest technological leap ever in a generation”, it’s difficult to reconcile any of this with the notion of an Xbox console running on Snapdragon hardware. While Qualcomm has achieved incredible success with its Snapdragon processors on mobile phones, its collaboration with Microsoft on the Surface line has so far been unimpressive. I bought a Surface laptop with the fully enabled Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite, finding that gaming was a mess: the PRISM compatibility layer for running x86 code on ARM was missing key support to the point where many games would not even boot. Meanwhile, GPU performance was frankly awful with tremendous stuttering problems.

Xbox and Snapdragon is just one of the many stories within the latest edition of DF Direct Weekly.Watch on YouTube

0:00:00 Introduction
0:00:57 News 1: Nintendo reportedly not sending early Switch 2 review units
0:11:52 News 2: Should we criticize “forced ray tracing”?
0:32:03 News 3: Next-gen Xbox to use Snapdragon ARM chips?
0:43:03 News 4: Assassin’s Creed Shadows devs spill ray tracing revelations
0:59:11 News 5: Days Gone patch brings balanced modes, VRR support
1:13:27 News 6: John tests the Backbone Pro
1:23:23 Supporter Q1: Are we reaching the end of the home console era?
1:29:46 Supporter Q2: Should Halo run on id Tech?
1:38:38 Supporter Q3: Could Doom: The Dark Ages get a PS4 version? A Switch 2 version?
1:41:55 Supporter Q4: What happened to the review of Spider-Man 2 on PC?
1:48:33 Supporter Q5: What are your favourite memories of the Sega Saturn?

To base a new Xbox on Snapdragon hardware would see Microsoft facing huge challenges on every front. Interestingly, developing games on CPUs using the ARM architecture is possibly the least onerous problem. After all, developers got to grips quickly with Nintendo Switch, which ran a range of CPU-heavy games. Ultimately, it would all be down to how good the compiler is.

Graphics? Well, the latest Snapdragon processors do deliver the modern range of features. The Adreno graphics core does support ray tracing, for example. Snapdragon processors do ship with an NPU (neural processing units) that could have certain gaming applications: the Surface’s AutoSR upscaling is a very interesting piece of technology, while an NPU could conceivably handle frame generation too.

Where things start to get tricky is with compatibility. It’s hard to imagine even the most potent ARM processor being able to emulate the Zen 2 CPU of the Xbox Series X and Series S with the same level of performance – and it’s key for Microsoft to be able to assure gamers that its existing library of games will run (and run well) on its new hardware. Similarly, while the DirectX API does a lot of heavy lifting, shifting GPU architectures from one generation to the next is also going to cause problems. For that, there’s already a ready-made solution – certainly from the transition from GCN-based graphics in Xbox One and One X to the RDNA tech in the Series consoles, AMD baked in hardware backwards compatibility (which Sony benefits from too).

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Then there’s the whole question of what “largest technological leap ever in a generation” actually means and the extent to which a Snapdragon processor could deliver it. Both Microsoft and Sony face a unique challenge in delivering a tenth generation console: firstly, it needs an actual reason to exist bearing in mind how good the existing hardware is – and how limited the gains were with the PlayStation 5 Pro. Secondly, it needs to deliver this generational leap while still being affordable as a console should, which sounds almost impossible bearing in mind that Microsoft had just raised prices on its five-year-old consoles.

Ironically, it’s PlayStation 5 Pro that gives us some idea of where the platform holders are heading: sacrificing a much larger GPU in favour of ray tracing support and (inevitably) machine learning hardware. Moore’s Law may be alive, but the concept of cramming larger amounts of transistors – more logic – onto the same area of silicon is no longer cost effective. Microsoft itself knew this would happen, hence the creation of Xbox Series S, which as this classic DF interview reveals, essentially came about because the engineers could not foresee a scenario where Series X could be cost-reduced over the generation.

By confirming a tenth generation console, Microsoft and indeed Sony seem to have made the costs work for a future process node (TSMC 3nm being a likely prospect), but costs will be tight – and similar to PS5 Pro, expect that silicon budget to be less about extraordinarily large graphics hardware and more about a balance between graphics, RT and ML. Not much is known about AMD’s roadmap going forward but the unified UDNA graphics architecture (or a customised version of it) seems much more likely. There’s nothing to stop ARM being combined with UDNA on an architectural level, but remember, compatibility is king in a world where persistent digital libraries are so important and in that scenario, ARM is more hindrance than help.

And going back to the Qualcomm job ad, remember that the definition of Xbox is somewhat fluid. Is there any reason why a Surface device running the Xbox app isn’t an Xbox in the “this is an Xbox” era? With a planned mass diversification of Xbox devices, there’s plenty of room for a Snapdragon device of some description – and not just within the Microsoft Surface line.

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May 19, 2025 0 comments