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Team Fortress 2 Classic, the throwback version of Valve's famed team-based shooter, is having an open beta on Steam in October
Gaming Gear

Team Fortress 2 Classic, the throwback version of Valve’s famed team-based shooter, is having an open beta on Steam in October

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Team Fortress 2 has come a long way in the nearly 20 years it’s been around, not entirely in ways that everyone would agree is better. For those who yearn for the days before hats (and bots) dominated the scene, the Team Fortress 2 Classic mod does just that.

Originally released in 2014, developer Eminoma announced plans for a Steam version earlier this year, enabled by the launch of the Team Fortress 2 SDK in February, and work seems to be coming along well: The team announced today that an open beta will get underway on October 13, alongside the start of the upcoming Steam Next Fest.

“We’re not sure if mods are normally at Next Fest, but the opportunity presented itself and we took it!” dev team member Nito wrote. “We have been working overtime for the past month to get ready for this, and I could not be more proud of the devs who have been toughing it out.”


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The open beta will include “every TF2C-exclusive weapon, gamemode, and map” (except Casbah), as well as new additions including damage feedback, balance changes, and “revamped” support for Four-Team, which adds Green and Yellow to the traditional TF2 mix of Red and Blue. The game will be playable on both official servers and “a number of community servers.”

TF2 Classic has been available for years, but the shift to Steam is significant. For one thing, it adds new features like Steam achievements, and more importantly it greatly simplifies the process of running it for people like me, who might be interested in some pre-hat TF2 action now and then, but not so much that we’re interested in dealing with the headache of setting it up.

We’re also good sources of new information for the developers, as Nito said developers quite often only get feedback from people who already know TF2 Classic: “The open beta is a great chance to cut through any sampling biases and get a good look at what newcomers think. If you love what you play of the open beta, please let us know! If you don’t, please let us know even more!”

The Team Fortress 2 Classic open beta is set to run for two weeks, until October 27. To take part, you’ll need to have Team Fortress 2 installed (it’s free, so no worries there)—otherwise, just download the mod from Steam when the open beta begins and you’re set to go.



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An image of the Great Mute of Habbo Hotel, with many Habbos holding up torches.
Gaming Gear

Habbo Hotel’s answer to WoW Classic is coming to Steam

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As a former child with unrestricted access to the internet in the 2000s, Habbo Hotel did irreparable damage to my psyche, as I’m sure it did for many other late millennials. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug though, which makes the fact that Habbo Hotel: Origins is heading to Steam all the more enticing.

Origins is essentially Habbo Hotel’s answer to WoW Classic—a stripped-back version of the social MMO that’s closer to its original browser days than… whatever NFT nonsense it was touting around back when that was a thing. It’s described as “Habbo as it was in 2005, lovingly restored,” launching last summer as a standalone launcher for PC.

Our own Harvey Randall dove in to try it out when servers went live, writing that Origins felt like “some ancient insect preserved in amber.” Of course, it had taken no time at all for folks to resurrect bygone traditions like blocking the pool ladder while declaring it to be closed, a scenario old Habbo heads will be all too familiar with.


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“Habbo Hotel: Origins, truthfully, feels like stepping into a portal to a time where the internet was wild, anachronistic, and had an entirely different set of ways in which it’d scar unsupervised children for life,” Harvey summarised.

It seems as though the year since launch has been fruitful enough for the team to want to take things to Steam. “Habbo Hotel: Origins is in a solid spot feature-wise,” a blog post on the Habbo website reads. “So now comes the fun party: spreading the word and pulling back some of the Habbos who’ve drifted away (and finding legendary new ones too). One big step? Steam. It’s only the biggest PC and MacOS game store on the planet.”

The game’ll be getting its big Steam launch “later this year,” so sometime in the next three months. I can’t lie, I’m tempted. I haven’t had the opportunity to check out Origins yet, and a Steam release feels like the perfect opportunity to relive my youth a little. Even if it’ll inevitably be 20 minutes of me poking around, going “I remember that!” to myself before logging off and never playing again. For the memories.



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Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles logo next to Ramza and Delita
Product Reviews

Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles review: a revamped classic that’s a must-play for any tactical RPG fan

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When Final Fantasy Tactics was released in 1997, it was lauded as a masterful tactical role-playing game (RPG), mixing impressive visual effects with depth-filled combat and a stellar narrative. But now, this beloved title has been reborn, affording longtime fans as well as new players the chance to experience it all. Enter Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles – Square Enix’s remaster of a true classic.

Review info

Platform reviewed: PS5
Available on: PS5, Nintendo Switch (physical and digital); Nintendo Switch 2, PS4, Xbox Series X and Series S, PC (digital only)
Release date: September 30, 2025

This expanded remaster brings plenty of shiny new stuff to the table. It’s fully voice-acted, has considerably upgraded visuals, and a fair few quality-of-life updates. All of these are available in the ‘Enhanced’ edition of the game, but you can also play through the original if you’d prefer, which uses the translation from War of the Lions – an updated version of the game which launched on the PlayStation Portable (PSP) back in 2007.

Anyway, I’ve played through the entirety of the Enhanced version of Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, and I’ve got plenty of thoughts – most of which are positive, fans will be delighted to hear! Let’s take a closer look at this remaster, then, and find out if it can do justice to a real fan favorite.

An adventure like no other

(Image credit: SQUARE ENIX)

If you’re new to Final Fantasy Tactics, I’ll give you a quick rundown of the game’s premise. Ramza Beoulve is a highborn young man, who is thrust into a deeply political, brutal conflict – one that centers around two nobles vying for the throne of Ivalice.

Ramza – alongside his allies – will play a gigantic part in the war’s trajectory…though his actions will later be obscured in the history books. It is up to you, the player, to uncover the truth behind this conflict – and the importance of Ramza’s role within it.

You’ll control young Ramza and his allies across various battlefields, which use a tile configuration – something that fans of the Fire Emblem series, for example, will be well familiar with. You’ll have to level up your characters, recruit increasingly powerful units, and make use of the renowned job system – one of the best parts of the game, hands down.

You can switch between a number of jobs – spell casters like Black and White Mages, sword users like Squires and Knights, and a whole lot more. A key difference in the Enhanced version is that there’s a fully-fledged Job Tree, which makes it easy to understand how to unlock each class, and lets you track your progress in doing so.

Best bit

(Image credit: SQUARE ENIX)

I had a huge amount of fun creating an army-crushing squad in The Ivalice Chronicles. Creating a monk, who could heal and hit-hard, while also using the Ninja’s dual wield skill for 2x the power, made for a truly devastating combination.

As had previously been the case, you earn job points in battle to increase a unit’s proficiency in a particular class, through which you can earn new abilities and passive skills. Mixing and matching skills from different jobs is great fun – and optimizing your skillset will be crucial if you want to make it through the main story, which is by no means a breeze…more on that later.

Some jobs do take ages to unlock – but it doesn’t always feel worth your time, given that some of the classes further along the tree have skills that seem a little situational. Still, you don’t have to make use of these jobs. One of my main units, for reference, was a monk – a melee fighter class you unlock pretty early. I just ensured that he had secondary skills from the Ninja class to keep him primed for late-game combat.

If your beloved monk unit dies in battle, for example, it may well be gone forever…devastating, I know. When a character faints, a display with three hearts will appear above it, and one heart will deplete for each turn a character remains unconscious. If you don’t revive it or complete the battle objective within this time, it will be gone forever.

New auto-save slots have made it easier to go back to before your unit dies – which is a very welcome inclusion. I used this a fair amount in my playthrough. After all, do you really want to spend hours on end re-training a new unit? Personally, I don’t have time for all that!

There’s one more thing I’d like to note about perma-death. In Fire Emblem titles, your units typically have a unique appearance and personality – something that can leave you feeling attached to them, and this causes deaths to feel that little bit more gutting.

In Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, though, a lot of characters have identical appearances and no personality beyond their brief vocal soundbites. This meant I wasn’t particularly attached or interested in my standard units – I often replaced them with special ones that play a more direct role in the plot, have unique costumes, and join your party as you progress through the story. By the way, Cloud from Final Fantasy VII (one of my favorite games, and one of the best RPGs of all time) is one of these…how cool is that?!

Not for the faint of heart

(Image credit: SQUARE ENIX)

Speaking of special units, some of these are going to be extremely helpful – and sometimes almost feel necessary – to get through story battles. There’s one in particular who will join you late on, who is seriously powerful. I won’t spoil who it is for newcomers, but without them, I’d have been toast on a number of occasions.

Yes, I’ll be honest, I found The Ivalice Chronicles to be hard. At times, very hard. I’m an RPGs guy, and have finished some pretty punishing titles – yes, even Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne. But the thing that caught me off guard in this game was its severe difficulty spikes.

Some of these, especially early on, forced me to better my understanding of the title’s impressively deep battle mechanics – stuff like zodiac compatibility, faith, and bravery elements require close attention.

Difficulty spikes later on, though, could feel pretty frustrating. I went from reconsidering my team’s build and strategy early on to reconsidering whether my sanity was still intact by the end. These spikes can make progression feel a little uneven, it has to be said, although there are ways to push through the most challenging encounters.

For instance, you can hop into random battles on the world map to grind up your levels and earn job points to get better healing skills, spells, and combat abilities. And these are entirely at your own pace – don’t fancy a random encounter? Just press flee and you can skip it. Need some EXP? Run around for a bit and prepare for battle. I love that you’re not forced into fights – something that can make some RPGs feel repetitive and relentless.

In addition, you can complete errands, which give you gil (the game’s currency) to spend on better armor, weapons, headgear, and accessories. They can also give you experience points and job points. These are entirely optional and are a useful way to earn experience for any backup units you want to use in the event of a character dying, for example.

Anyway, after you’ve been struggling in a fight and you’ve taken some time to train up, you’ll likely find a route to victory. And when you do, you’re going to feel very satisfied – I know I did. The endgame especially was pretty rough for me, but I got there in the end. It’s worth noting that I played the whole game on Knight difficulty – the sort of ‘normal’ level. However, the Enhanced version adds an easy mode, Squire, and a hard mode, Tactician – that one’s for the show-offs.

A message more potent than ever, for a new generation

(Image credit: SQUARE ENIX)

Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles has a stellar narrative – one that plays to themes that are arguably even more timely now than they were almost 30 years ago.

The conflict I mentioned earlier takes place after a separate 50-year-long war, which has left much of the kingdom in economic turmoil. Distrust in the ruling class is at an all-time high, with the masses left to struggle in a ruined kingdom while nobles indulge in luxury. The world was, and remains, incredibly designed, with a new ‘state of the realm’ page that clarifies story details and can refresh your memory of character names, among other things.

State of the realm is one of many additions – most of which make for a much more refined experience. Personally, I love the revamped graphics – the game remains true to its roots, visually speaking. Battle animations are incredibly fluid, backdrops are beautifully composed, and colors really pop, injecting a ton of character into this complex world. The incredible score also adds so much texture to the world, and even random encounter tracks, like Apoplexy and Desert Land, had my head bopping mid-battle.

Functionally speaking, one of the best new features is fast-forward, which makes the pace of battle so much more palatable. A lot of movement and combat does feel pretty sluggish, so being able to speed through your enemy’s actions is most welcome. This also helps if you’re sitting through dialogue you’re already familiar with, and I made extensive use of it.

I already mentioned stuff like difficulty options, the job tree, and auto-save – and these all feel like considered, user-friendly inclusions – but despite that, there was some stuff I wasn’t loving about the Enhanced version.

(Image credit: SQUARE ENIX)

This might be controversial, but I think the voice acting is, at best, just OK. Some characters are well represented. Ben Starr – who was phenomenal as Verso in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – does a good job with the cunning and crafty Dycedarg. The personalities of other characters, including Agrias, Cidolfus, and Ramza himself, are also communicated well – but the same can’t be said for others.

Some performances feel a little restrained, non-special characters occasionally have inconsistent accents or tones of voice, and some non-player characters (NPCs) have voices that don’t match their sprites whatsoever. I mean, am I really meant to believe this teenage-looking soldier sounds like a 50-year-old geezer from the east end of London?

Furthermore, I was frustrated by the game’s camera on numerous occasions. Sometimes, it would pan to a bizarre angle that prevented me from seeing the on-screen action. A new overhead tactical view did remedy this at times, but I would’ve liked some further improvements here. Otherwise, performance is fantastic on the PS5 version, no notes.

There’s one more thing that didn’t bother me too much, but will be a concern for others. Content from War of the Lions is largely missing in this remaster. That means that its side content and drawn cutscenes have been mostly left out – something that will upset fans of the well-regarded PSP version, I’m sure.

Still, though, I have to say that I had a great time with Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles. Yes, I have some minor gripes – severe difficulty spikes, a sometimes flawed camera, and imperfect voice acting, above all. But those things are certainly not enough to get in the way of an unforgettable adventure, packed with satisfyingly deep combat, a timely, well-written story, and a great score. The quality of life upgrades and enhanced visuals make this the ultimate way for new players to explore Ivalice, and if you’re a fan of tactical RPGs, this remains easy to recommend.

Should you play Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles?

(Image credit: SQUARE ENIX)

Play it if…

Don’t play it if…

Accessibility features

There are a few useful accessibility settings in Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles. For instance, there’s a sound visualization option, which displays in-game sounds on the edges of the screen, as well as the choice to show speaker names during spoken exchanges.

There are also sound effect subtitles, volume sliders, multiple text languages (Japanese, English, German, and French), and both English and Japanese voice language options. Unfortunately, there is no colorblind mode or similar.

How I reviewed Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles:

(Image credit: SQUARE ENIX)

OK, so I spent more than 50 hours playing Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, battling through the entire main story, a healthy portion of side content, errands, and random encounters. I played the Enhanced version of the game in order to assess the remaster’s quality of life upgrades, graphical improvements, and voice acting.

I played the PS5 edition of the game, with my console connected up to the Sky Glass Gen 2 television and the Samsung HW-Q800D soundbar. When I was out and about, I’d also occasionally dip into the game via remote play on my Samsung Galaxy S24 FE, but this was pretty rare.

Personally, I’ve reviewed a variety of games here at TechRadar, including recent releases like Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army and Drag x Drive. I’ve also played a number of tactical RPGs, such as Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, and a range of Final Fantasy titles.

First reviewed September 2025



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There's a fan patch for FEAR if you want to play the classic FPS with a scalable UI, controller support, and other modern conveniences
Product Reviews

There’s a fan patch for FEAR if you want to play the classic FPS with a scalable UI, controller support, and other modern conveniences

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FEAR is one of those games we lament because the things that were great about it feel like they’ve been lost, for few now live who remember it. Sure, there’s Trepang2. But FEAR was so good there should be an entire subgenre based on it. There should be an entire cottage industry of indie studios making singleplayer shooters with slow-motion and advanced enemy AI and something supernatural thrown in to give you the willies just when you’re feeling overpowered.

Anyway, instead of being all sad about how history becomes legend and legend becomes myth, let’s celebrate the fact that FEAR remains incredibly playable today—if you download the Echo Patch. It’s not one of those games that’s completely busted without mods, but if you play it at any resolution above 1080p all the text will look like it was written for ants.

The Echo Patch fixes that, and adds controller support so you can play it on your Steam Deck. It also lets you disable the letterboxing in cutscenes and optionally make the flashlight last forever if you don’t want to have to chase down batteries for it.


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In terms of bugfixes, the Echo Patch deals with a lot of problems that emerge if you run FEAR at high framerates. There’s “ragdoll physics instability” and “excessive water splash repetitions” if you go above 60 fps, and should you run it at more than 120 fps you’d find yourself unable to do a jump-kick, which is just unconscionable. All that and more is fixed in the Echo Patch.

It even makes the world state persistent, so all those bullet holes remain to remind you of the shootouts in days past. Bodies, blood, shell casings, and other debris hang around as well instead of despawning like it’s 2005 and we need to constantly clear the decks before your PC overheats from having to depict too many polygonal dead men at the same time.

The Echo Patch can be downloaded from Github, and is an easy install. Unzip it into the folder FEAR.exe is in, and tweak the .ini files if you want to enable optional stuff like turning off letterboxing or disabling the GOG version’s 60 fps limit.



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A soldier in an icy landscape facing off against two well-armed skeleton enemies while a dragon watches in the background
Product Reviews

This metroidvania based on an old Atari 2600 classic had the audacity to release on the same day as Silksong, but it’s a nice break from Hornet’s hell

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Every week at least a couple of metroidvanias release on Steam, and most remain obscure. Adventure of Samsara, which released on September 4, was more fated to obscurity than most, despite being published by an ascendant Atari. Because September 4 was also the day Silksong released. Few were going to make time for a handsome but orthodox pixel art metroidvania when the joys and indignities of Pharloom beckon.

Except me: I needed a break from Silksong earlier this week, mostly because I was getting my ass kicked, but also because a small detail on the Adventure of Samsara Steam page piqued my interest. This is actually a spiritual sequel of sorts to the 1980 game Adventure, which was probably the most cryptic and sprawling Atari 2600 cart on the market.

Adventure gave me nightmares as a child. Whereas most Atari 2600 games were cheerfully straightforward one-screen arcade games or scrolling shooters, Adventure had designs on being a full-blown, well, adventure, and it displayed some proto-metroidvania qualities to that end.


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You explore a same-ish labyrinth as a dot, collecting color-coded keys to unlock color-coded doors, avoiding bats and dragons, and using tools—such as a magnet and a bridge—to solve problems. Its austere blocky graphics are to ASCII what Duplo is to Lego, but there’s a quiet inscrutability to it that freaked me out as a kid (as did Secret Quest, another fairly ambitious Atari 2600 adventure game).

Here’s what the original Adventure looked like (via Retro Games Fan):

Atari 2600: Adventure – YouTube

Watch On

After spending around seven hours in Adventure of Samsara, I can confirm that it doesn’t share a hell of a lot in common with its 1980 source material. The closest call-back I can find, the dragons, are coiled in the same way as the old game and similarly color-coded. If you liked Adventure (I highly doubt you ever loved it), then you’re probably not going to feel relief or the frisson of familiarity with this 2025 game. It definitely feels like a case of having a languishing IP fitted to a new game, almost as an afterthought. (Beyond the Ice Palace 2 comes to mind.)

That’s fine (that’s business) but how does Adventure of Samsara stack up as a 2025 exploration platformer? Kinda well, but not brilliantly. As a “Solar Champion” it’s my job to reactivate “a mysterious interdimensional fortress”, which means exploring a big interconnected underground labyrinth full of monsters, traps and those dragons. Along the way I find the usual array of exploration-gratifying power-ups while unlocking shortcuts, save points and fast travel stations.

Image 1 of 5

(Image credit: Atari)(Image credit: Atari)(Image credit: Atari)(Image credit: Atari)(Image credit: Atari)

My Solar Champion is a floaty lil’ fellow (“lil” because Adventure of Samsara feels more zoomed out than most modern platformers) and his actions can’t be canceled. These qualities do not bode well at first, but I did get used to the stiffness of the controls, probably because Samsara isn’t otherwise a very demanding game. My Solar Champion eventually has three weapons—a sword, a bow and a hammer—and the latter two double as traversal and exploration tools, alongside the usual hard-won character upgrades. Yes, there is a double jump.

I was surprised to find that this game kept me up just as late as Silksong has been this past week.

What I like about Adventure of Samsara is its atmosphere. Yes, it blends fantasy and sci-fi in a pretty familiar way, but the retro-futuristic synth soundtrack is evocatively subtle. It clearly has designs on channeling the 1980s, but it does so in a quiet, nearly plaintive way that’s quite at odds with the nowadays suffocating banality of synthwave.

The other thing I liked about Samsara, especially compared to the 30-odd hours I’ve spent in Silksong, is how exploration-forward it is. There are bosses, but they’re not especially hard, and once you’ve beaten them you can look forward to big chunks of just nosing around. At first this exploration is done tentatively, as the combat is pretty rote and repetitive: attack, dash back, attack, dash back. But once my Solar Champion has some crisper moves and more effective weapons, the exploration becomes freewheeling and engaging. I was surprised to find that this game kept me up just as late as Silksong has been this past week.

(Image credit: Atari)

I also came to appreciate the pixel art, which was a bit of an obstacle for me at first. The world is coherent and carefully illustrated, but the enemy sprites kinda look like something you’d see in uh, Siralim. They’re barely animated—they just blob around. But this culminates in Samara having an interesting primitive quality that oddly reminded me of Barbuta from UFO 50.

Will Silksong signal the end of the charming, humble indie metroidvania? Are these games now doomed to be big budget affairs designed to sap mindshare for weeks going and months? What I love about the genre is that the vast majority of its purveyors—the ones making games you find on Steam with less than 50 reviews—feel like the work of joyful hobbyists, a tradition that runs from Cave Story through to stuff like Astalon.

Adventure of Samsara definitely belongs to that tradition, despite having a 40-odd year old IP attached to it. Yes, it has rough edges, but the next time you want to slide into a mysterious, enveloping metroidvania that doesn’t want you to suffer mercilessly, I’d recommend giving it a look. Maybe also check out Zexion.



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Tony Hawk Recreated THUG's Classic Intro And Fans Are Excited
Game Reviews

Tony Hawk Recreated THUG’s Classic Intro And Fans Are Excited

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It was just earlier this year that Activision published Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4, a remastered collection of two of the best games in the skateboarding series. But now, after a fun video from Hawk himself, fans are once again begging for a Tony Hawk’s Underground remake to join the series’ slate of recent re-releases.

Over the weekend, Tony Hawk posted a short video on his personal Instagram page. In it, the skateboarding legend re-created the intro cutscene found in the original PS2-era Tony Hawk’s Underground. Here’s the short video:

In the video, Hawk can be seen taking on the role of the player-created character, even wearing a similar outfit to the one sported by the default character. Using some nice editing, Hawk interacts with the game’s popular villain, Eric Sparrow, even calling him a bully at one point. At the very end, Hawk leaves and jokes, “Whoa! I can get off my board?!”, a reference to the fact that in THUG players could, for the first time in franchise history, hop off their skateboards and walk around levels.

But before you get too excited and assume Tony Hawk is teasing some future Underground remake ala THPS 3+4, calm down. The video is marked as “Not a THUG promo.” Hawk also claims that the reason he created this short bit of nostalgia bait is to have some fun and celebrate Video Games Day.

“In hopes of bringing some joy to your timeline: Happy Video Games Day from E.S. and me,” posted Hawk on Instagram.

And like, yeah, I get that he’s trying to make it clear this isn’t a teaser, but of course, the internet is going to internet. Many are already assuming or hoping that this Instagram post is actually the first bit of marketing for a full-on Tony Hawk’s Underground remake. And while I do think a Tony Hawk’s Underground remake is coming one day, I do believe Hawk here, and this is just him having fun with fans. The famous skater has said in the past that he would love a THUG remake, but made it clear that he doesn’t get to make that call. It’s all up to Activision, and considering the five-year gap between THPS 1+2 and THPS 3+4, I’d suggest fans go play THUGPro or something else while they wait for a THUG remake, because it’s likely many years away.





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Dragon Quest VII Reimagined Is A Remake Of The Classic RPG
Game Updates

Dragon Quest VII Reimagined Is A Remake Of The Classic RPG

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Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past is getting a remake that serves as a reimagining of the classic RPG.

Dubbed Dragon Quest VII Reimagined, the game features a new 3D art style with character models rendered using real-life dolls to create an overall hand-crafted, diorama-style aesthetic.  According to Square Enix, the game’s story has been “enhanced to provide a more streamlined experience.” Other quality of life improvements include a redesigned UI. 

The turn-based battles have also been overhauled to be more dynamic, and the vocation system has been updated with a “Moonlighting’ mechanic that lets players use two vocations at once. Furthermore, a “Let Loose” ability activates when a character becomes worked up, and a new “Monster Master” vocation introduces a perk called Positive Reinforcement that summons powerful monsters to help in battle. 

 

Dragon Quest VII was first released in Japan for the PlayStation in 2000 and in North America in 2001. The game was later re-released for the 3DS in 2016, which served as a remake in its own right, so Reimagined is technically the time DQ VII has been overhauled. 

Dragon Quest VII launches on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, Switch, and PC on February 5. 



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Dinosaur smashing through a window
Product Reviews

GOG wants to revive more classic Japanese games on PC: ‘Working with Japanese partners often requires demonstrating both technical capability and cultural understanding’

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They may not officially be called Good Old Games any more, but GOG still sells plenty of games that are both old and good alongside new releases like Hollow Knight: Silksong. Speaking to Automaton, senior PR rep Piotr Gnyp emphasized that by saying, “GOG has been doing this for well over a decade, and we’re constantly reaching out to secure iconic games. Sometimes, it takes years. Diablo came to GOG after almost a decade of conversations. Preservation often means knocking on the same doors again and again, hearing ‘no’ most of the time, until one day, it’s finally a ‘yes.'”

That paid off with GOG eventually getting to re-release a handful of Japanese games that were difficult to get hold of in the west like Silent Hill 4: The Room, some of the early Metal Gears, and the OG Castlevanias and Contras. Capcom eventually agreed to let GOG re-release Dino Crisis and the first three Resident Evils, though it took “time, persistence, and trust-building,” Gnyp says. A re-release of Breath of Fire 4 earlier this year was one of the stand-outs of GOG’s preservation initiative launched in late 2024.

“Working with Japanese partners often requires demonstrating both technical capability and cultural understanding. In this case, Capcom treated these launches as full new releases, so we followed a complete QA and certification process, just like we would for a brand-new game.”


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Gnyp went on to say that, while sometimes a game’s creators or an external partner is involved at this stage, “in most cases, it’s GOG handling the porting and compatibility work.” Games in the GOG Preservation Program get some extra care and attention, whether they’re packaged with fan-made mods or otherwise altered to run on modern operating systems, have controller support, and generally embrace the modern world.

“Our internal tech team analyzes each game,” Gnyp said, “builds custom wrappers or tools when needed, and thoroughly tests the result. That’s how we make sure the experience is authentic but also practical for today’s players.”

Not every game that makes it to GOG gets to be preserved forever. The first two Warcraft games were pulled by Blizzard, as were Adult Swim games like Westerado and Fist Puncher. Sometimes GOG has to remove a game from sale when it’s delisted for a rights issue and sometimes it’s because the publisher wants to sell it on their own storefront, but recently there’s been a more censorious group trying to get games removed from sale. GOG responded by giving 13 horny games away for free.

“At GOG,” Gnyp said, “as a platform devoted to Good Old Games and videogame preservation, we see it as a game preservation issue. Every year, many games are disappearing, for various reasons. Every game that disappears from distribution is potentially lost to game preservation efforts. It is particularly worrying when games are potentially vanishing due to external pressure.”



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Borderlands 4 combat radar compass: All four Vault Hunters stood back to back firing weapons. Harlowe is in the bottom left, Vex in the bottom right, Amon in the top left, and Rafa is in the top right.
Gaming Gear

Your first move in Borderlands 4 should be to turn on this classic map setting

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The biggest change in Borderlands 4 is undoubtedly the shift towards a full open-world. Long gone are the days of separate zones; now we can walk from end to end with no interruptions—besides killing hordes of bandits, of course. However, this change has always made navigation that much more complicated, as we’re not restricted by closed-off locales and predictable corridors anymore.

Because of this, Gearbox made the baffling decision to remove the traditional minimap in favour of a compass at the top of the screen. Sure, the compass is useful for getting your bearings, but it’s also completely useless in pinpointing enemies in combat. There’s a psycho to your northeast, but they could be standing right in front of you or ten blocks away. See what I mean?

Luckily, tucked away at the bottom of the ‘gameplay’ tab in the settings menu is the radar display. This isn’t quite the minimap of old, which would give you the exact layout of the area, but it will help you track the exact location of enemies in combat relative to your own position.


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(Image credit: Gearbox)

Plus, you can use the combat radar alongside the compass to have the best of both worlds. With the radar enabled, enemies will no longer be marked on the compass, making it way less cluttered than it is by default. So, use the radar to track your enemies, and the compass to track your quest objectives and other open-world activities with no messy overlap.

Whether you’re a Borderlands veteran or not, try it out and see what I mean immediately—it’s a great boost to your situational awareness. Really, the radar should be enabled by default, as most people are going to completely gloss over this option and needlessly struggle on with the compass. It’s not optional in my eyes.



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Zhai the half-drow holding a dagger, rendered in red on white
Product Reviews

We may never see PS2 classic The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers on PC, but we got the next best thing in Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone

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PlayStation 2 hack-and-slash The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is a mainstay of the ports being begged for on the GOG dreamlist (though it doesn’t rank as high as bona fide classics like Silent Hill and The Simpsons: Hit & Run, of course). According to my memories of 2004 it deserves the nomination, because The Two Towers let you recreate the battle of Helm’s Deep and that’s always amazing whether you’re modding it into Left 4 Dead 2 or playing Lego Lord of the Rings.

It’s not likely we’ll ever see a PC port of The Two Towers, but fortunately its creator, Stormfront Studios, made a similar hack-and-slash shortly after and that is on PC, with a rerelease by SNEG showing up on Steam. It’s Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone, which may lack the cool moments where movie Viggo Mortenson transforms into polygon Viggo Mortenson and then you get to slice up some ringwraiths, but is otherwise very much in the same mold.

(Image credit: SNEG)

Which is to say it’s a fixed-camera button-masher that throws you into epic fantasy battles with a lot of orcs, though since this is based on a Dungeons & Dragons setting there are also some bugbears and githyanki and whatnot. Right from the off you’re in the middle of a battlefield being divebombed by a dragon, with conveniently placed war machines just waiting for you to cut the ropes and hurl medieval implements at people who probably deserve it.


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The combat may be button-mashy, but as someone who resents games that expect me to lock on to one enemy rather than wildly swinging my longsword/paired daggers/magic staff at everyone in the vicinity, sometimes I’m in the mood for that. As you biff bad guys in Demon Stone their armor flies off, which helps to sell the impact, and there are plenty of opportunities to shove them off cliffs, into fires, down holes, or into a magical pool of death water that should probably have a guard rail.

You play as three adventurers, a fighter, sorcerer, and half-drow rogue, caught in a war between two extraplanar armies. There’s the githyanki, ruled by a queen who is everything Lae’zel wants to be when she grows up, and the slaad, chaotic toad people whose boss Ygorl is voiced by Michael Clarke Duncan from The Green Mile. (Patrick Stewart also narrates from the point of view of local wizard Khelben Blackstaff.)

(Image credit: SNEG)

Though co-op was a standard feature for games like this, Demon Stone’s purely singleplayer. That means you can switch between characters as you like rather than being stuck with Gimli (though sometimes the party is split and your choice restricted). Where the fighter’s a basic sword-swinger and the sorcerer better at range, the rogue can duck into convenient patches of sparkling shadow to turn temporarily invisible, then get behind enemies for a one-hit kill. It looks ridiculous, but is actually pretty fun, which is Demon Stone all over.

When it takes away your freedom of choice, it’s less fun. Having to protect the sorcerer against endless waves of enemies while he does a magic thing, for instance, or when a boss conveniently paralyzes party members, forcing you to switch to others. The boss issue isn’t helped by every boss having way too many hit points—you learn the pattern to defeating them, then repeat it over and over. In both situations there’s a proscribed thing to do and you just have to do it, where the best parts of Demon Stone are when you’ve got a choice between attacking the orcs on the wall or knocking down the ladders before the next wave comes and you feel like the flow of battle’s under your control.

The 2025 re-release on Steam does come with some improvements the previous version lacked, like a separate volume slider for the music and both borderless and windowed display modes. It’s also locked to the original framerate of 30 fps, and if that’s a dealbreaker for you then enjoy your life, I guess.



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