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Mark Hamill’s Best Genre Roles (That Aren’t Luke Skywalker)

by admin October 3, 2025

James Jesse, The Flash

Imagine taking a C-list comics villain and having such a fun performance with it that you get to play him across the decades in three different TV shows. Hamill first played the Trickster in the ’90s Flash live-action show, before coming back for an animated appearance in Justice League Unlimited and then reviving the character again in the CW’s own Flash show. Hamill’s Trickster, like so many of his most beloved roles, really manages to balance the zany over-theatricality of a comic book baddie (even if Jesse is hardly the fiercest of Flash’s rogues), while giving the character a wonderfully human side too in his appearance in Unlimited. The 2014 Flash iteration definitely leans a bit more on the gag side of things, but it’s well worth revisiting his ’90s turn, considering it’s what purportedly played a key role in him landing the role of Joker.

Skeletor, Masters of the Universe: Revelations

It might be controversial to say, given any performance of He-Man’s antagonistic foil has to walk in the shadow of Alan Oppenheimer, but Hamill’s turn in Kevin Smith’s rebooted take on Masters of the Universe is a very fun take on the character, giving Skeletor a gruffness that lends him an underlying menace even when he leans a bit more into the character’s classic camp.

Christoper “Maverick” Blair, Wing Commander

Okay, sure, we can’t put one hotshot sci-fi piloting hero on this list, but there is another! Hamill played Wing Commander protagonist Maverick, aka Christopher Blair, in the FMV live-action cutscenes used in the third and fourth games in the series, Heart of the Tiger and Price of Freedom, giving the series’ previously unnamed protagonist a stronger depth of character, a more seasoned starfighter pilot on the front lines of a long and bitter conflict with the lion-esque aliens known as the Kilrathi. And as Hamill’s voice acting career took off, he even returned to the animated prequel spinoff Wing Commander Academy to reprise the role.

Mervyn Pumpkinhead, The Sandman

The Dreaming’s resident grumpy janitor (and sentient pumpkin-headed scarecrow), Hamill burns briefly but brightly on Netflix’s Sandman adaptation, with Mervyn providing a touch of charmingly abrasive levity to the climax of the first season. Thank god he recovered from his fight against the furies in the show’s sophomore season!

skekTek the Scientist, Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance

Sometimes you’ve just gotta lean all the way in, and when given the role of the Skeksis’ chief scientist in the incredible Dark Crystal prequel show, Hamill goes all out. He’s cackling, shrill, and just delightfully, ruthlessly over-the-top in his portrayal of skekTek’s otherwise logically cold evil, really selling you on just what wretched delight skekTek takes in the cruelty he enacts in his experiments.

The Major, The Long Walk

Hamill’s most recent performance is so great that it immediately has to sit among a recollection of his finest roles, playing the chilling commander of the titular dystopian march from Stephen King’s classic tale. It’s clear looking back on Hamill’s work that he loves playing a villain, but few compare to the chilling presence with which he embodies the Major as an ever-watching specter haunting the walkers.

Ozai, Avatar: The Last Airbender

Hamill fills Avatar‘s Fire Lord with tension in every line, a fitting balance of restraint for the fiery leader of the Fire Nation’s imperial ambitions: his performance as Ozai is electrifying, crackling with the potential for the character’s rage always swirling just beneath the surface. And that only means that when Ozai is allowed to let loose, Hamill goes suitably grand, imbuing the character with a snide and noble arrogance that you love to hate.

Albie Krantz, The Life of Chuck

The grandfather to the titular Chuck, Hamill plays a crucial role in this year’s Mike Flanagan tearjerker. Albie cuts a tired figure, and like so many of Hamill’s most beloved roles, there’s a little element of irascibility—but it’s for good measure, as we see through the young Chuck’s eyes the tragedies that have shaped his grandfather into the man he is. Even in dealing with all that, Hamill gives Albie a warmth and sincerity to deliver an incredibly emotional performance, one that stands in stark contrast to his other big 2025 role in The Long Walk.

The Hobgoblin, Spider-Man: The Animated Series

While Joker dominates people’s memory of Hamill’s superheroic voicework, his turn as the Hobgoblin in Marvel’s ’90s animated icon is not to be missed. There’s just enough menace to keep it distinct from his other, more grandiose vocal performances, while keeping a bit of a more subdued vibe.

Thorn, The Wild Robot

In a wonderfully sweet role as the grizzly bear with a soft heart, Hamill gets to do a lot with Thorn, softening him from a ferociously cantankerous initial threat to a loveably warm friend to Roz the robot over the course of the film. Hamill clearly loves voice roles where he gets to play both sides of the coin… and occasionally do so with gruffness that, in this case, is suitably bearish.

Jim the Vampire, What We Do in the Shadows

An iconic part of an all-time iconic What We Do in the Shadows bit, Hamill’s Jim is the hilarious foil to Laszlo in “On the Run”: the vampire Laszlo stiffs on rent, leading to a near 200-year grudge and Laszlo’s brief flight to Pennsylvania to live a life as human bartender Jackie Daytona. Hamill’s comedic chops are on full display here as the oddball, vengeful, yet very oblivious vampire, and it’s a delight to see him having so much fun.

Arthur Pym, The Fall of the House of Usher

Ah, the Pym Reaper. The Usher family’s sinister fixer lets Hamill play a particularly intriguing nastiness: Pym is far from a good person, but he is surprisingly nuanced in the way he acts as the ruthless thread weaving together the unfolding doom the Usher family faces. It’s a wonderfully chilling mirror to many of Hamill’s more overtly evil roles, and he plays it pitch-perfectly.

You know this had to be on here somewhere. The performance that defined the Dark Knight’s greatest foe for generations of fans—and kept defining it, as he returned to voice Joker across various other projects—Hamill’s Joker will forever remain as iconic a spotlight in his career as Luke Skywalker. Able to balance the character’s humor and darkness in equal measure while imbuing the clown prince with a cackling theatricality, Hamill took the great material he was given in Batman and made it sing.

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October 3, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s progression-helping boosts aren’t exclusive to Switch 2 and Xbox, will also arrive via patch for PS5 and PC

by admin September 27, 2025

Final Fantasy 7 Remake is set to release on Switch 2 and Xbox next January and will come with boost features familiar to players of the Pixel Remasters, known as Streamlined Progression.

Square Enix has confirmed to Eurogamer these boosts will also be coming to the PS5 and PC versions of the game in a future update, though there’s no date yet. The PC version’s enhanced lighting features will be coming to PS5 too.

As outlined previously in a Square Enix blog, players will have access to a new menu where they can implement a number of boosts such as HP full, MP full, Limit gauge full, and maximum damage dealt, which can be toggled individually.

FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE INTERGRADE – Release Date Announcement – Nintendo Switch 2Watch on YouTube

“I feel that the way people enjoy content has become more flexible these days, as we see with video streaming platforms, and that people also want the same thing from games, with options to tailor the experience based on the time they have and their levels of interest,” said director Naoki Hamaguchi. “I have also had personal experiences where I wanted to play something with the limited time I have but gave up because of the time it takes to level up characters or traverse the game.

“That’s exactly why I think that the Streamlined Progression feature is very effective – to give players smooth access to the story.”

Meanwhile, Hamaguchi stated Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is “doing very well” on PS5 and PC in an interview with Automaton, so there’s no need to worry about part three.

For its remake of Final Fantasy 7, Square Enix decided to create a trilogy. But as sales appear to have decreased with each installment, some fans have been worried about the quality of the third game, presuming the company may be keen to move on.

“I know some fans have expressed concerns, but please rest assured, we’ll be able to deliver a proper, high-quality third installment,” said Hamaguchi.

He additionally provided a status update on the project.

“Development is going extremely well, and the game is shaping up nicely,” he said. “A lot of the content is already playable, and the game’s direction and form are firmly set in place. Right now, the team is united around refining everything.”

For now, the game remains without a release date, but as Remake is heading to Switch 2 and Xbox in January, and Square Enix has confirmed the whole trilogy will be coming to both platforms too, the final part presumably won’t be released until after then. Perhaps it’ll even be a simultaneous multiplatform release.

Indeed, the multiplatform release of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake project will certainly boost sales, helping to counter any decline in sales.

Speaking to Windows Central, Hamaguchi declared himself an Xbox fan. “I’m going to do my best to make sure that Square Enix can continue to reach a wider audience, including Xbox,” he said. “So thank you from me as well.”

He also discussed optimising the game for the Xbox Series S, which is notoriously tricky due to its lower specs.

“In terms of hardware specs, I would say the Xbox Series S is actually quite solid in terms of spec,” said Hamaguchi. “We didn’t come across much of a processing challenge, but many of the challenges were more memory related.

“Optimisation is something we were strongly cognizant of as we worked on the PC version as well. For Final Fantasy 7 Remake, we took some of the philosophies found in Nanite for Unreal Engine 5 and created our own solution for Unreal Engine 4. We were successful in delivering stable graphics there, and gain Steam Deck verification as well. We have been pretty proud of what we were able to achieve, even on lower spec systems.”

Meanwhile, Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida has hinted that game may also be headed to Switch 2.

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September 27, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Modded Borderlands 4 guns are being sold on Ebay, but the sellers aren’t making much money

by admin September 26, 2025

Modded Borderlands 4 guns and equipment are being sold on Ebay with tailored gun parts and effects. However, as of writing, it doesn’t appear this grey market of modded loot is particularly profitable.

Ebay – a public e-commerce marketplace – is no stranger to gaming related side hustles, with numerous account, cosmetic, and service sellers setting up camp there over the years with the release of popular online video games. Eurogamer reached out to one Borderlands modded gun merchant to find out how it’s going.

“It is fairly difficult to do as they have included a new encryption method to the guns this year that makes doing specific builds very very hard and will take, I would imagine, a long time to get perfected” states one Borderlands modded weapon reseller to Eurogamer under anonymity.

Check out the Borderlands 4 story trailer here!Watch on YouTube

This new encryption method implemented by Gearbox not only makes the act of modding the exact weapon you want difficult, it’s also making prospects of profit for resellers unlikely due to the cost of getting the decrypted values for weapons people will actually pay for. When asked how successful business is, the seller told Eurogamer:

“Not very successful. I’ve sold maybe three or four since release, which is around £15 to £20, which doesn’t even cover the costs to build the guns, but I don’t do this to make money or profit.

“To make the modded guns you often need to pay for tables that data miners have made that breakdown gun parts. Each part of the gun has an encrypted value, so does the rarity, manufacturer, level etc and the tables can be expensive to buy at around £50 to £100.”

As such, at the moment, it appears that the grey market for selling modded Borderlands 4 loot is more for the hobbyists rather than those looking to make a buck from a hot new release (unless you’re a data miner able to sell off valuable info, rather than the sought after weapons themselves).

Whether or not this will become a great problem as time goes on, and more of the game’s loot encryption is broken down and made publicly available, remains a potential problem for the future. Although as a PvE game, the modded gear seller made an argument for why the practice of modding isn’t doing any harm:

“Borderlands games have always been modded and I’ve modded them since Borderlands 1 and every game in between. It’s a huge part of why I love the games so much.”

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September 26, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

The ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X prices aren’t too bad in the UK, but tariffs bite in the US

by admin September 26, 2025

After much hemming and hawing, Asus and Microsoft are finally ready to talk pricing on their handheld PC team-ups, the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X. It’s nothing too egregious in the King’s sterling, with the Xbox ROG Ally confirmed at £499.99 and the Xbox ROG Ally X at £799.99 – while hardly chump change, these are pretty standard prices for entry-level and premium portables respectively.

Those in the US, however, will be paying $599.99 for the ROG Xbox Ally and $999.99 for the ROG Xbox Ally X, the latter representing a big increase on Asus’ current ROG Ally X model.

That, at least, won’t quite make it the most expensive Windows handheld around, as the MSI Claw 8 AI+ has also hit (give or take a penny) the one-grand mark in recent months. But still, this looks an awful lot like the effects of US tariff policies, with the added cost of importing Taiwan- and China-made hardware being passed down to aspiring owners. It’s a process Microsoft’s console business will be familiar with, its current generation of lounge-dwelling Xboxes having hiked their prices twice in the past year, with big green fingers pointing at macroeconomic conditions on both occasions.

By contrast, the ROG Xbox Ally X’s UK price merely matches that Asus’ 2024 predecessor, while upgrading its innards with a newer, faster AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme APU. The ROG Xbox Ally, mind, still seems like something of a wildcard. It’s only £21 more than the equivalent 512GB Steam Deck OLED, and £50 less than the already budget-minded Lenovo Legion Go S SteamOS. Yet mystery surrounds its own APU, the Ryzen Z2 A, a chip whose four cores and ageing RDNA 2 graphics processor gives it specs largely in line with the original Steam Deck. If performance is a match as well, then it’ll struggle with the GPU-threshers that are modern 3D games.

That said, Microsoft and Asus aren’t just banking on framerates. The ROG Xbox Ally duo will be the first Windows 11-powered handhelds to include the operating system’s new, bespoke, Xbox-branding gaming mode, where many of Win11’s extraneous guff remains switched off at launch to preserve speed and batter life. It’ll have a more handheld-friendly UI than standard Windows as well, potentially wiping out a major advantage that SteamOS has always held over its desktop-tuned rival.

I’ll be seeing whether this mode will be worth the money, especially for stateside punters, with a review prior to the handhelds’ October 16th launch date. That’s assuming they’re not partaking in ongoing boycott calls against Microsoft for their alleged dealings with the Israeli military, including providing access to Azure cloud storage and AI tools for the purpose of running a mass surveillance programme against Palestinians. Microsoft have, reportedly, since revoked this access.

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September 26, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Fortnite launches new Daft Punk Experience, but no the duo aren’t getting back together

by admin September 22, 2025

Fortnite is launching a new Daft Punk Experience, but is adamant the robot rock duo aren’t getting back together.

Unlike previous Fortnite concerts – from the likes of Marshmello, Travis Scott, and Ariana Grande – The Daft Punk Experience is instead a “fully interactive playground” in the Discover(y) mode, with multiple rooms in which to enjoy the music and lose yourself to dance.

That includes blasting robots with a soundwave laser in the Robot Rock Arena, remixing songs at Dream Chamber Studios, or making a Lego music video at Around the World. Some form of “afterparty” is also being teased, whatever da funk that might be.

“The band may be no longer, but their music lives on in Fortnite,” reads a new blog post on the experience.

And to really hammer it home, the FAQ directly states: “The band is not getting back together”. So no, you don’t feel it coming – it’s the end of the line.

It also states the experience won’t feature any new music, as all songs have been previously released. Players will be able to make their own mashups though, but good luck making them harder, better, faster, or stronger.

The experience launches on 27th September at 2pm ET (that’s 7pm UK time), but players are advised to join early. It will then be available “for a while” in Discover.

Of course, a Fortnite collaboration wouldn’t be complete without a load of stuff to buy, either individually or as part of the Dark Punk Bundle. It includes song emotes, glittery outfits, and some adorable Lego characters so you too can be a Starboy, as well as other Jam Tracks including the duo’s collaborations with The Weeknd.

Image credit: Epic

Speaking of Lego, the first ever music-reactive build will be added to Fortnite – it’s a lego pyramid that lights up when music is played.

Full details can be found on the Fortnite blog, so you can read up on the experience one more time.

Last week, Epic announced it would be giving Fortnite creators some more digital love by allowing them to sell in-game items on their created islands.

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September 22, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Nintendo Argues Game Mods Aren’t “Prior Art” In Palworld Lawsuit

by admin September 22, 2025

Nintendo’s legal battle against Palworld developer Pocketpair has intensified, as the Japanese game-making company alleges in part of its ongoing lawsuit that user-made mods don’t constitute “prior art.”

While Pocketpair previously claimed that mods (such as the Dark Souls 3 Pokemon mod Pocket Souls) invalidate Nintendo’s patents, Games Fray (via IGN) has reported on September 16 that the Pokemon creator has argued in the ongoing lawsuit that, because mods require games to function, anything created by users isn’t “prior art.”

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Essentially, Nintendo is claiming that mods are “fair game” as they could be patented by someone else. Thus, the company fears that its gameplay ideas and innovations could similarly be lifted and used by anyone. As IGN noted on September 19, this is particularly worrying for the games industry because patent thieves could theoretically create entire games out of just mods.

The problem here, though, is that Nintendo’s “ideas” and “innovations” aren’t novel. Pokemon has been around for decades, and as Games Fray reported, the ideas the company filed patents for in 2021 weren’t new, either.

Pocketpair, for its part, has purported that Palworld and Pokemon are fundamentally different beasts. Sure, they both start with “p,” and they feature monsters you can capture in balls, but one is an open-world action game and the other is a more traditionally turn-based affair. This, alongside the notion that Palworld isn’t merely a modded Pokemon no matter how much it may look like it, is perhaps why Pocketpair is confused by the lawsuit.

Palworld is out now on PC, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.

Meanwhile, the next Pokemon games are Legends: Z-A and Pokopia. The former is a continuation of the Pokemon Legends series that launches on October 16, while the latter is a life sim not unlike an Animal Crossing title that comes out sometime next year. Both will, of course, be available on Nintendo Switch 1 and 2.

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September 22, 2025 0 comments

Wario grinning and dancing with a pair of JoyCons.

Gaming Gear

Nintendo reportedly gets even more obnoxious about patent law by taking a ‘mods aren’t real games’ stance against a Dark Souls 3 mod that could invalidate its Palworld lawsuit

by admin September 19, 2025

Last year, Nintendo initiated a patent lawsuit against Palworld developer Pocketpair, and in the months since the Pokemon publisher has seemingly decided to double down on moustache-twirling IP law villainy at every opportunity. The latest development in the Pocketpair proceedings might be Nintendo’s worst look yet, because the company has reportedly decided that modders’ ideas don’t count. Cool!

Thanks to the efforts of a Tokyo contributor who was able to review the case file for the ongoing Pocketpair lawsuit, videogame patent law site Games Fray (which broke last week’s Nintendo patent story) reports that part of Pocketpair’s defense against Nintendo’s lawsuit aims to invalidate Nintendo’s patent claims based on the existence of prior art in mods.

(Image credit: Pocketpair / Toasted Shoes / The Pokemon Company)

As IP attorney Kirk Sigmon told PC Gamer last September, demonstrable prior art—meaning preexisting work resembling the invention described in a patent’s claims—is bad news for patent holders, because it means they shouldn’t have been granted the patent in the first place. Sigmon said that courts in Japan have a strong history of siding with patent lawsuit defendants who could present examples of prior art.

By presenting mods like Pocket Souls for Dark Souls 3, which allowed the player to capture enemies in a method resembling Nintendo’s JP 2023-092953 patent claims, Pocketpair is hoping to demonstrate that Nintendo was granted a patent on ideas that had already been deployed in game design. If it’s successful, it could render Nintendo’s patent invalid.

According to Games Fray, however, Nintendo has argued in two separate pleadings that mods simply don’t qualify as prior art, because they aren’t real games.

(Image credit: Nintendo)

To evaluate this, let’s consider the conditions for patentability in Japanese patent law, as translated by Japan’s Ministry of Justice:

Article 29

(1) A person that invents an invention with industrial applicability may obtain a patent for that invention, unless the invention is as follows:
- (i) an invention that is public knowledge within Japan or in a foreign country prior to the filing of the patent application;
- (ii) an invention that is publicly known to be worked within Japan or in a foreign country prior to the filing of the patent application; or
- (iii) an invention that is described in a distributed publication or made available for public use over telecommunications lines within Japan or in a foreign country prior to the filing of the patent application.
(2) A person may not obtain a patent if prior to the filing of the patent application, a person of ordinary skill in the art of the invention would have easily been able to make that invention based on an invention prescribed in one of the items of the preceding paragraph, notwithstanding the preceding paragraph.

Now, I’m not an expert, but I don’t see anything in there that says “Nintendo gets a pass if it doesn’t think creators of prior art deserve to have ideas.”

It’s an argument that doesn’t just insult the creativity of modders—it imperils them. If Nintendo’s rationale was accepted by the Tokyo District Court, it could create a world in which a developer of a “real” game might patent gameplay mechanics inspired by a mod and then hit that mod’s creator with a cease and desist for infringing on their own ideas.

Nintendo has already demonstrated it’s perfectly happy to hammer modders with legal action, having previously issued DMCA notices that drove Garry’s Mod to remove Nintendo-related items from Steam Workshop and forced Breath of Wild multiplayer modders to shut down development.

In a just world—which, considering Nintendo’s legal oeuvre, we probably shouldn’t take as a given—it’s a ploy that wouldn’t stand. We’ll have to wait and see.

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September 19, 2025 0 comments

Esports

Fortnite ‘censors’ “freaky emotes” & players aren’t happy

by admin August 29, 2025

Fortnite players are upset over a new change that affects several emotes in the game, as they can no longer be used under certain conditions.

One of Fortnite’s well-known features is its massive list of emotes. These range from Epic’s original dance emotes to those from collaborations, and everything else in between.

Players often use these to express themselves, be it celebrating a win after eliminating the last player or simply taunting the enemies. While it’s long been a fan favorite feature, of course, things aren’t always sunshine and rainbows.

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The community is well aware that there are players who tend to use certain emotes for other, more suggestive purposes (looking at you, Party Hips.) Now, it appears that Epic has finally patched out the ability to use certain emotes this way, drawing the ire of the community.

Fortnite players are furious over new emote change

Through social media posts, players have started pointing out that some emotes, such as Bring It Around and Ride The Pony, can no longer be used when you’re too close to someone else, specifically if they’re doing the Poki and Party Hips emotes.

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Instead of having your character perform the selected emote when you pick it in the communication wheel, they’ll either just do nothing or shake their head. Previously, this wasn’t the case at all.

Epic has yet to speak up about the matter, but some players in a Reddit thread claimed “Freaky” emotes have been patched to no longer be usable next to other emotes.”

Many in the thread speculated that this sudden change may be a response to Roblox getting backlash over a similar matter with its own custom emotes.

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So far, many players aren’t too pleased with this kind of change, blasting it as a form of alleged ‘censorship’.

“I would be fine with this if it were for game modes rated E and E10. T-rated ones should be left alone,” said one user.

“Dumb change, was funny to do on my friends. And the fact they’ve made an initial change without announcing it means they’ll likely want to make more changes like this in the future, which isn’t good,” mentioned another.

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Meanwhile, several users are convinced this is merely a “band-aid fix”, as people will eventually figure out alternative ways to do something similar by using a combination of other emotes.

Some fans are hoping Epic will rethink this change, and only time will tell if they do.

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August 29, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Gears of War Reloaded Is A Mess On PC And Players Aren’t Happy

by admin August 27, 2025

Gears of War: Reloaded, the newly released remaster of the original Gears of War, has a low review score on Steam due to crashes and missing split-screen support. This follows a day-one patch that was supposed to fix a number of bugs and crashes on both console and PC.

On August 26, Xbox launched Gears of War: Reloaded–a remastered version of Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, itself a remaster of Gears of War--on Xbox Series X/S, PC, and for the first time in franchise history, PlayStation, a leap it made via a PS5 port. And the game is totally fine if you want to replay Gears of War again. But on PC, players are encountering some annoying issues and are upset about the lack of split-screen. Meanwhile, the Xbox port has a weird FPS bug, and I’ve experienced some issues on PS5, too.

Gears of War: Reloaded’s user review score on Steam sits at 49 percent as of 1 p.m. EST on August 27. That’s not great! Checking out the reviews, it seems a big issue with this new remastered shooter is that it crashes a lot for some folks. What’s odd is that some players claim that Gears of War: Reloaded was running fine shortly after launch, but has started crashing more since then. One fix floating around online involves deleting a specific folder and not connecting to Xbox Live, which seems to imply there might be some server shenanigans happening. Gamesradar reports that Gears of War: Reloaded works fine when downloaded and installed via the Xbox PC Game Store, suggesting that the version on Steam, or at least how it connects to Xbox servers, might not be working properly.

Other players report that changing the game’s graphical settings leads to frequent crashing. I’ll say that on PS5, I ran into two crashes and some weird performance problems as well. Digital Foundry also reports that there’s an odd FPS bug on Xbox Series X that causes the campaign to improperly run at a not-so-stable 120FPS. I also ran into weird FPS issues on PS5 and had to turn off VRR. The PC port also lacks an FOV slider and has some weird limits on keybinding.

The team is investigating crashes on Steam when launching the game and missing pre-order character skins for some users, as well as initial reports of matchmaking issues.

You can see all known issues by going to https://t.co/LNNEO2vf0H

Thank you for your patience.

— Gears Community (@Community_Gears) August 26, 2025

A day-one patch was supposed to iron a lot of this out, but it doesn’t seem to have completely worked. As a result, Xbox and The Coalition posted on social media on Tuesday that the team is currently “investigating” the PC crashes and reports of online matchmaking errors, as well as an issue in which people who pre-ordered did not receive the cosmetics they were promised for doing so. Keep in mind, this is a remaster of a 10-year-old remaster. It’s wild to me that Gears of War: Reloaded seemingly shipped in such a wonky state.

Another reason for the game’s low rating on Steam is that players thought Gears of War: Reloaded would support split-screen co-op on PC. Split-screen was reportedly listed on the game’s official Steam store page. There’s also evidence that split-screen co-op support was mentioned in Reloaded’s Steam page trailer. But it appears all mentions of split-screen support have since been removed. My guess is that this was a mistake and Xbox never intended to add split-screen to PC. Regardless, it’s just one more reason PC players are disappointed with Gears of War: Reloaded.

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August 27, 2025 0 comments

The cast of Critical Role, campaign four.

Game Reviews

Critical Role Explains Shakeup, But Some Fans Aren’t Convinced

by admin August 22, 2025

Earlier this month, the actual play phenomenon Critical Role announced a pretty big shakeup for its upcoming fourth campaign. Matt Mercer, who had led each of the group’s previous stories as the game master, will instead take on a player role, and Dimension 20’s Brennan Lee Mulligan will step up to lead the next campaign in October. Now, we know what campaign four will entail, and it sounds much more complex than anything Critical Role has done before.

In a 17-minute presentation, Mulligan outlined his plans for the campaign, and it sounds pretty ambitious. Rather than being set in Exandria, the world where Critical Role’s first three stories took place, this season will see the players enter a new world. Mulligan is dividing the 13 cast members into three distinct groups: Soldiers, Schemers, and Seekers, with each tackling the new fantasy setting and story from a different angle. As such, not every cast member will be present for each episode as it jumps between different perspectives. The announcement didn’t confirm which cast members would be in each group, but it did solidify that Critical Role‘s founding members will all be returning. The full cast is as follows:

Laura Bailey
Luis Carazo
Robbie Daymond
Aabria Iyengar
Taliesin Jaffe
Ashley Johnson
Matthew Mercer
Whitney Moore
Liam O’Brien
Marisha Ray
Sam Riegel
Alex Ward
Travis Willingham

Now that it’s confirmed the founding members will return for campaign four, some of Critical Role’s fans are more optimistic about all the changes on the way, though others are still skeptical about the structure, given that the entire crew won’t be playing together. At least, not at first. It’s entirely possible the story goes in a direction that sees all these disparate groups end up together down the line, which sounds like it would make for a sick finale, but will likely not happen until years from now. The first episode is set to premiere on October 2.

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August 22, 2025 0 comments