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Look how many of Elden Ring Nightreign’s skins reference classic Dark Souls characters, and how much better they look here
Game Updates

Look how many of Elden Ring Nightreign’s skins reference classic Dark Souls characters, and how much better they look here

by admin June 16, 2025


Even before anyone was able to get their hands on Elden Ring Nightreign, we knew that it would bring back bosses, enemies, characters and more from classic FromSoftware games – including the Dark Souls series.

Dark Souls 3’s Nameless King boss could briefly be seen in an early trailer, and the final game has a lot more from those classic games. But how does the asset quality of their modern interpretations compare to the originals?


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That is a very good question, and it’s one Souls dataminer and YouTuber BonfireVN attempts to answer in their latest video. The video focuses specifically on showing the Nightreign armour sets/skins that have history in earlier FromSoftware games.

For instance, it’s pretty clear to any Dark Souls fan that Wylder’s Abysswalker set is a clear reference to that game’s iconic Knight Artorias, just as the Guardian’s Sunlight Knight skin is an unmissable nod to that game’s Solaire of Astora. Even Patches makes an appearance, with his Dark Souls look having now become a skin (Black Leather) for the Duchess.

The video also uncovers several other, more obscure references to the classic games. Revenant’s Dragon School skin is a callback to Griggs of Vinheim, an NPC in the original Dark Souls. There’s also Ironeye, whose Sellsword skin is a replica of Dark Souls 2’s Chancellor Wellager attire.

Watch on YouTube

In many cases, these armour sets have appeared in more than a single game prior to their recreation in Nightreign, which gives us an even better appreciation of the model’s evolution, and how much more detailed their latest incarnations are.

If you’re curious about how you can unlock skins in Nightreign, we have a whole guide that explains everything. For all your other questions – including boss fight walkthroughs – hit up our mega Elden Ring Nightreign guide.



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June 16, 2025 0 comments
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Nintendo's Slow Rollout Of Classic Games Never Made Sense To Me, Until Now
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Nintendo’s Slow Rollout Of Classic Games Never Made Sense To Me, Until Now

by admin June 15, 2025



Though Mario Kart World may be Nintendo Switch 2’s headlining attraction, the most alluring part of the system’s launch lineup for Olds like me is its GameCube library. After more than 20 years, Nintendo has finally decided to crack open its vaults and bring some of GameCube’s most-beloved titles to a modern console–the first time most of these games will be available officially since their original release.

For many, however, the excitement over GameCube titles was quickly tempered by the fact that a meager three are available at the outset–the thinnest selection any Switch Online classics library has launched with. But as frustrating as it may feel to have to wait for more games to hit the service, this methodical rollout has long been an intentional strategy on Nintendo’s part, and it took me many years to understand and appreciate its benefits.

This slow release cadence is hardly exclusive to the Switch Online service. Ever since Nintendo first established its own digital storefront with the Wii Shop, the company has been deliberately measured when re-releasing its legacy titles. In the lead up to the Wii’s launch, Nintendo touted its digital shop as a repository of classics–a place where players could easily purchase the best Nintendo games of yesteryear and play them alongside new releases on one system. And indeed, by the end of the Wii’s life, more than 400 had made their way to the Wii Shop, giving Wii owners access to a wealth of beloved games from years past.

The biggest draw of the Wii Shop was being able to purchase games from older consoles, but Nintendo’s own classics arrived sporadically.

That was certainly not the case at launch, however. While a selection of older games was available right from day one, the early offerings left much to be desired. The Wii Shop launched with fewer than a dozen first-party titles, most of which were Nintendo Entertainment System games from back in the 1980s and 1990s. Anyone eager to revisit a particular classic such as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was out of luck; the only Nintendo 64 title available at the outset was Super Mario 64, and it would be months before more N64 games arrived.

This trickle of games was even more exasperating on the Wii U. After spending the previous six years steadily amassing a respectable selection of Virtual Console games on the Wii, Nintendo effectively wiped the slate clean when launching the Wii U eShop. Since the extant Virtual Console lineup was incompatible with Wii U’s GamePad controller, Nintendo decided to release new versions of these games tailored specifically to the system–which meant the company once again would be building up its retro catalog from scratch.

To Nintendo’s credit, it did take steps to mitigate the inconvenience for users. Wii owners had the option to transfer their system data–including their Virtual Console collection–to the Wii U, so customers weren’t forced to buy their games a second time. The Wii Shop was still accessible on the new console as well, although it was nested within the separate Wii menu. Thus, any games purchased from it (or transferred over from a Wii) had to live within a separate user interface and could not take advantage of Wii U features like off-TV play. Even more notably, Nintendo also offered an upgrade path for returning users. If you previously purchased a Virtual Console game on the Wii, you could upgrade to the Wii U version of the same title for a small fee.

As welcome as these steps were, however, they were once again undermined by Nintendo’s slow release schedule. The Wii U eShop launched with just eight Virtual Console games, the biggest of which was Super NES launch title Super Mario World. It would take another several months for other classics like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Super Metroid to hit the storefront, while N64 games wouldn’t arrive until two years later. Nintendo did ramp up the rate of releases as the Wii U struggled to gain traction, and the eShop eventually offered Game Boy Advance, DS, and even Wii titles, giving it an even broader range of Nintendo classics than the Wii Shop ever boasted. Still, the paltry early lineup, coupled with Wii U’s frequent software droughts, made the wait for a particular game excruciating.

Game Boy Advance games didn’t start hitting the Wii U eShop until a year after the system’s first Virtual Console titles launched.

Given this history, then, it was not unexpected to see Nintendo continue this strategy on the Switch. With the advent of the Switch Online service, the company has opted to take a different approach to repackaging its legacy games, offering players access to a growing library of them for a subscription fee rather than selling each title individually on the eShop. But though the delivery model may be different, the pace of releases remains just as languid.

Early adopters had to endure a lengthy wait before the first Nintendo classics appeared on the system. The Switch Online service did not launch until 2018, more than a year after the Switch itself hit the market, and the only titles available at the outset were, once again, NES games. It would take several more years for Nintendo to gradually introduce SNES and Game Boy libraries to the base Switch Online service, while a premium Switch Online + Expansion Pack plan launched in 2021 and offered N64, Sega Genesis, and eventually Game Boy Advance titles as well.

As frustrating as it has been to see Nintendo repeat this slow rollout, its advantages have become much clearer in the Switch era. Most obviously, Nintendo often uses classic games to fill in any gaps in its release calendar. While titles are added to Switch Online fairly regularly, the company likes to trot out a particularly beloved game when there is little else on the way to the console, ensuring users remain engaged even during quieter months. The wait between releases is also more bearable when there’s a library of other titles to sample in the meantime. A curio like Devil World may not be attractive enough on its own to convince someone to plunk down $5, but it’s much more enticing to try when it’s part of a service you are already paying for.

Nintendo GameCube Classics – Official Reveal Trailer | Nintendo Switch 2

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More importantly, Nintendo’s slow release cadence means players can actually take the time to truly engage with and savor each of these titles for the classics they are. With the sheer number of games available to play nowadays (and the increasing prominence of subscription services offering access to them), many publishers and platform holders have come to treat gaming as disposable entertainment. By overwhelming their audience with options, companies are implicitly encouraging players to only dabble in a game and then move on to the next whenever the fancy strikes. This inexhaustible array of choices means few users actually play a game to completion before their attention is diverted to another one. In contrast, by doling out only a handful of legacy games every month, Nintendo positions each as a noteworthy release in its own right, while also giving players ample time to experience it before more arrive.

This is especially relevant for GameCube games. Whereas NES and even SNES titles can often be completed in a handful of hours, N64 and GameCube games are much closer in depth and duration to modern titles and require a much more significant time investment to play. Many can take more than 20 hours to finish, which makes Nintendo’s decision to space them apart a boon to players. As eager as I am to revisit Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance for the first time in two decades when it eventually joins the service, it’s been nice to leisurely devote my attention to The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker–the only single-player adventure currently in Switch Online’s GameCube lineup–in the interim.

Although it’s undoubtedly still aggravating to wait for a particular favorite to hit the service, Nintendo’s methodical drip-feed of classics has its merits. By meting out its legacy games gradually, Nintendo gives players enough time to properly delve into and appreciate them, which in turn preserves the allure of these games and makes their eventual arrival feel like a significant occasion. More than other publishers, Nintendo understands the value of its vast back catalog and treats it with the reverence and care these titles deserve. And unlike on Wii and Wii U, there’s no shortage of other games to tide fans over while they wait for their favorite classic to arrive.



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June 15, 2025 0 comments
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GTA Online's next update will let you pull off a classic, if slightly dull, type of crime: money laundering
Game Updates

GTA Online’s next update will let you pull off a classic, if slightly dull, type of crime: money laundering

by admin June 15, 2025



I feel like money laundering is one of those concepts you see in a lot of crime TV shows but it’s not really something that seems to come up much in games. I certainly can’t think of any games that feature money laundering as an actual mechanic, but I’ll be able to add one to the list next week: GTA Online. The multiplayer game is getting a new update this coming June 17th called Money Fronts, and is literally all about buying up small but generally lucrative businesses that you can sneak some money through.


There’s a few businesses you’ll be able to pick up but you’ll be starting off with a classic: the car wash, specifically Hands On Car Wash. You’ll get passive income through this from your criminal network, eventually allowing you to pick up the Smoke on the Water dispensary and Higgins Helitours, all of which will also bring in their own money from actual, legal business operations.


However, with the pro of lots of moola, there is a big con too. Operating these businesses this way will generate heat, and if that gets too high, you’ll have to actually step in as the local business owner you’re pretending to be to manage these companies the way they’re legally meant to be.


There’s a few new rides you can pick up too, like the Karin Everon RS or the Declasse Tampa GT (Muscle). Money Fronts is also bringing in some gameplay tweaks. More than 50 vehicles will have missile lock-on jammer capability, and all sources of arena points are being doubled. A number of cutscenes will be skippable on mission replays too, though which ones that’ll be weren’t specified.


More details will be coming, uh, at some point, Rockstar just said “stay tuned”. You only have to wait a few days for it anyway, you’ll live.



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June 15, 2025 0 comments
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Silent Hill revival is far from over, with the original 1999 cult classic finally being remade
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Silent Hill revival is far from over, with the original 1999 cult classic finally being remade

by admin June 13, 2025


Off the back of the success of the Silent Hill 2 Remake – a remake that blew my initial low expectations out of the water completely – Konami has announced that it is working with Bloober Team once more to remake the original Silent Hill from 1999. We don’t yet have a release window, however, with the game being announced as ‘in development’ from Bloober Team and Konami, with no additional details.


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This reveal isn’t exactly surprising, given that Bloober Team announced it would be working with the publisher again in future not long after Silent Hill 2 Remake’s release. This led many, including myself, to believe that remakes of Silent Hill and Silent Hill 3 would be on the cards. After all, Bloober Team did such a good job of faithfully remaking Silent Hill 2, so it would be a damned shame to not give the studio another shot at remaking more cult classic entries in the series.

Fortunately, it’s clear that Konami has thought the same, and Silent Hill fans can now look forward to returning to the foggy, disturbing town of Silent Hill once more. Rather than being introduced to James Sunderland and his less-than-pleasant trauma surrounding his late wife, Silent Hill puts players into the shoes of single father Harry Mason as he and his adopted daughter set off on holiday to the town, in an attempt to seek some respite after the passing of Harry’s wife. Ok, that might seem a little similar to Silent Hill 2, but hear me out.

On the way to Silent Hill, Harry and Cheryl wind up in a car crash, and when Harry wakes up, his daughter is nowhere to be found. The story then ensues with Harry desperately trying to find his daughter and meeting all manner of terrifying creatures and kooky characters along the way. This still sounds similar to Silent Hill 2, but believe me, there’s a lot more going on here than the likes of Harry Mason’s psyche that I dare not spoil for folk whose first experience of the story will be this remake.

Bloober Team has its work cut out for it remaking yet another Silent Hill game. It’s a lot of pressure to be put on any developer’s shoulders. That said, after just how well Silent Hill 2 was executed and how much well-deserved praise it garnered, I personally have pretty high hopes for anything Silent Hill that has Bloober’s name attached to it. What do you think?



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June 13, 2025 0 comments
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Stray Children, the oddball RPG from the devs behind cult classic Moon, is coming to PC in English later this year
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Stray Children, the oddball RPG from the devs behind cult classic Moon, is coming to PC in English later this year

by admin June 6, 2025



Back in 2023, Nintendo held one of those Direct thingies it likes to do, and as it often does the Japanese version of the stream had some games the western one didn’t. In particular, there was one game that drew my attention: Stray Children. It caught my eye in part because it has a really unique pixel art look to it, but also because Yoshiro Kimura was its director, one of the original designers of cult-classic Moon: Remix RPG Adventure. And now, after a bit of a wait, developer Onion Games have confirmed it’s getting its English release later this year, and it’ll even be doing so on PC.


If you haven’t heard of Stray Children before, here’s the lowdown of the oddball game: you play as a young, dog-like boy who gets whisked away to another world through a strange old console. In this new land, its inhabitants are all children, a wall set up around them keeping out The Olders, “monstrous adults, carrying the heavy load of their own inadequacies, self-doubt, and all of the grievances that grown-ups gather.”

Watch on YouTube


Much like Moon before it, it’s not a typical RPG adventure. Battles take place in small arenas with enemies sending out occasionally bullet-hell like attacks for you to dodge. You can either fight these messed up adults literally, or figuratively with your words, all of this adding up to something definitely reminiscent of Undertale, which is a bit ironic given how much of an influence Moon was on that game.


Stray Children actually released in Japan last year, but only on Nintendo Switch, and an English localisation was promised right from its announcement. The bad news is that there’s still no exact date in place just yet. It’ll arrive sometime in 2025, at least, and we’re basically halfway through the year already. No, you’re having a crisis about the passage of time, bog off, go and wishlist Stray Children on Steam or something.



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June 6, 2025 0 comments
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After more than a decade, classic stealth series Thief is being revived for PSVR2
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After more than a decade, classic stealth series Thief is being revived for PSVR2

by admin June 5, 2025



Beloved first-person stealth series Thief is being resurrected for a new instalment on PlayStation VR2. It’s called Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow and it’s out later this year.


Thief, the brainchild of System Shock developer Looking Glass Studios, first surfaced back in 1998. Its initial instalment, Thief: The Dark Project, was immediately heralded as something of a classic and three further entries followed. Unfortunately, 2014’s Eidos-Montréal-developed Thief reboot was poorly received and the series floundered.


Now, though, over a decade later, Thief is back in the form of Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow. It’ll once again see players slinking through the streets of The City, but this time there’s a new protagonist doing the stealthy. Gone is the Garrett of earlier games, this time replaced by Magpie – a “cunning thief orphaned by Northcrest’s brutality and shaped by the streets, who steals as the only means to survive”.

Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow – reveal trailer.Watch on YouTube


After stumbling across a legendary artefact holding a mysterious secret, players embark on a journey across The City that’ll see them evading and outsmarting its controlling forces as they seek to expose a “sinister conspiracy”. All this, of course, takes the series’ classic shadow skulking and gives it a VR twist.


“Physically crouch, hide, and move between shadows, using every inch of the environment to stay undetected,” Sony explains on the PlayStation Blog. “Whether you’re sneaking through darkened alleys or scaling the rooftops of towering buildings, your every movement feels real. Extinguish light sources with your water arrows, hands, or even a well-aimed breath to deepen the darkness and expand your cover. The VR mechanics allow you to live out the fantasy of stealth in a way that no other medium can replicate.”


Thief VR is the work of Vertigo Games and Maze Theory, and is being developed in collaboration with Eidos-Montréal. It doesn’t have a release date yet, beyond a vague “2025” window, but more details are promised “in the coming months”.



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June 5, 2025 0 comments
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Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles is remastering the 1997 cult classic later this year
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Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles is remastering the 1997 cult classic later this year

by admin June 5, 2025


It seemed inevitable after the Tactics Ogre remaster back in 2022, and so it was. Square Enix are remastering Final Fantasy Tactics, the classic strategy-RPG from 1997. It’ll arrive on September 30th, 2025 and there’s a trailer below.

Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice ChroniclesWatch on YouTube

The remaster includes the original game, playable with its original graphics and interface, along with the English translation used in a previous remaster, 2007’s War Of The Lions. Or, if you’re looking for some quality-of-life upgrades, you can switch to an enhanced version which promises “a renewed interface, extensive additions and adjustments to the story, [and] fully voiced dialogue.”

Unlike the main series of JRPGs, Final Fantasy Tactics is, as the name suggests, a tactical role-playing game. You direct a small troop of soldiers on a battlefield grid in turn-based fights, although there’s a beloved story stringing those scraps together, just as per any other Final Fantasy game. The remaster adopts a new subtitle, The Ivalice Chronicles, which refers to the land in which the game is set.

Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles will release via Steam when it launches on September 30th, although the Steam page isn’t yet live at the time of writing.



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June 5, 2025 0 comments
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Painkiller RTX is a path-traced upgrade to a classic but almost forgotten shooter
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Painkiller RTX is a path-traced upgrade to a classic but almost forgotten shooter

by admin June 1, 2025


Nvidia’s RTX Remix is a remarkable tool that allows game modders to bring state-of-the-art path traced visuals to classic PC games. We’ve seen Portal RTX from Nvidia already, along with the development of a full-on remaster of Half-Life 2 – but I was excited to see a community of modders take on 2004’s Painkiller, enhanced now to become Painkiller RTX. It’s still a work-in-progress project as of version 0.1.6, but what I’ve seen so far is still highly impressive – and if you have the means, I recommend checking it out.

The whole reason RTX Remix works with the original Painkiller is due to its custom rendering technology, known as the PainEngine. This 2004 release from People Can Fly Studios was built around Direct X 8.1, which gave it stellar visuals at the time, including bloom effects – specular lighting with limited bump mapping and full framebuffer distortion effects. Those visuals dazzled top-end GPU owners of the time, but like a great number of PC releases from that era, it had a DX7 fallback which culled the fancier shading effects and could even run on GPUs like the original GeForce.

RTX Remix uses the fixed function DX7 path and replaces the core rendering with the path tracer – and that is how I have been playing the game these last few days, taking in the sights and sounds of Painkiller with a new lick of paint. It’s an upgrade that has made me appreciate it all the more now in 2025 as it is quite a special game that history has mostly forgotten.

To fully enjoy the modders’ work on the path-traced upgrade to Painkiller, we highly recommend this video.Watch on YouTube

Painkiller is primarily a singleplayer first-person shooter that bucked the trends of the time period. After Half-Life and Halo: Combat Evolved, many first person shooters trended towards a more grounded and storytelling-based design. The classic FPS franchises like Quake or Unreal had gone on to become wholly focused on multiplayer, or else transitioned to the storytelling route – like Doom 3, for example. Painkiller took all of those ‘modern’ trappings and threw them in the garbage. A narrative only exists in a loose sense with pre-rendered video that bookends the game’s chapters, acting only as a flimsy excuse to send the player to visually distinct levels that have no thematic linking beyond pointing you towards enemies that you should dispatch with a variety of weapons.

The basic gameplay sounds familiar if you ever played Doom Eternal or Doom 2016. It is simple on paper, but thanks to the enemy and level variety and the brilliant weaponry, it does not get tiring. The game enhanced its traditional FPS gameplay with an extensive use of Havok physics – where a great deal of the game’s environmental objects could be broken up into tiny pieces with rigid body movement on all the little fragments, or environmental objects could be manipulated with ragdoll or rope physics. Sometimes it is there for purely visual entertainment but other times it has a gameplay purpose with destructible objects often containing valuable resources or being useful as a physics weapon against the game’s enemies.

So, what’s the score with Painkiller RTX? Well, the original’s baked lighting featured hardly any moving lights and no real-time perspective-correct shadows – so all of that is added as part and parcel of the path-traced visuals. The RTX renderer also takes advantage of ray-traced fog volumes, showing shadows in the fog in the areas where light is obscured. Another aspect you might notice is that the game’s various pickups have been now made to be light-emissive. In the original game, emissives textures are used to keep things full bright even in darkness, but they themselves emit no light. Since the path tracer fully supports emissive lighting from any arbitrary surface, they all now cast light, making them stand out even more in the environment.


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The original game extensively used physics objects, which tended to lead to a clash in lighting and shading for any moving objects, which were incongruous then with the static baked lighting. Turn on the path tracer and these moving objects are grounded into the environment with shadows of their own, while receiving and casting light themselves. Boss battles are transformed as those enemies are also fully grounded in the surrounding environments, perfectly integrated into the path-traced visuals – and even if the titanic enemies are off-screen, their shadows are not.

The main difference in many scenes is just down to the new lighting – it’s more physicalised now as dynamic objects are properly integrated, no longer floating or glowing strangely. One reason for this is due to lighting resolution. The original lighting was limited by trying to fit in 256MB of VRAM, competing for space with the game’s high resolution textures. Painkiller RTX’s lighting and shadowing is achieved at a per-pixel level in the path tracer, which by necessity means that you tend to see more nuance, along with more bounce lighting as it is no longer erased away by bilinear filtering on chunky light map textures.

Alongside more dynamism and detail, there are a few new effects too. Lit fog is heavily used now in many levels – perhaps at its best in the asylum level where the moonlight and rain are now illuminated, giving the level more ambience than it had before. There is also some occasional usage of glass lighting effects like the stain glass windows in the game now filtering light through them properly, colouring the light on the ground in the pattern of the individual mosaic patterns found on their surface.

Half-Life 2 RTX – built on RTX Remix – recently received a demo release. It’s the flagship project for the technology, but modders have delivered path traced versions of many modern games.Watch on YouTube

New textures and materials interact with the path tracer in ways that transform the game. For some objects, I believe the modders used Quixel megascan assets to give the materials parallax along with a high resolution that is artistically similar to the original game. A stoney ground in the graveyard now actually looks stoney, thanks to a different texture: a rocky material with craggy bits and crevices that obscure light and cast micro shadows, for example. Ceramic tiles on the floor now show varying levels of depth and cracks that pick up a very dull level of reflectivity from the moon-lit sky.

Some textures are also updated by running them through generative tools which interpret dark areas of the baked textures as recesses and lighter areas as raised edges and assigns them a heightmap. This automated process works quite well for textures whose baked features are easily interpreted, but for textures that had a lot of noise added into them to simulate detail, the automated process can be less successful.

That is the main issue I would say with the RTX version so far: some of these automated textures have a few too many bumps in them, making them appear unnatural. But that is just the heightmap data as the added in material values to give the textures sheen tend to look universally impressive. The original game barely has any reflectivity, and now a number of select surfaces show reflections in full effect, like the marble floors at the end of the game’s second level. For the most part though, the remix of textures from this mod is subtle, with many textures still being as diffuse as found in the original game: rocky and dirty areas in particular look much the same as before, just with more accurately rendered shadows and bounce lighting – but without the plasticy sheen you might typically find in a seventh generation game.

Whether maxed on an RTX 5090 or running on optimised settings on an RTX 4060, the current work-in-progress version of Painkiller RTX can certainly challenge hardware. | Image credit: Digital Foundry

Make no mistake though: path tracing doesn’t come cheap and to play this game at decent frame-rates, you either need to invest in high performance hardware or else accept some compromises to settings. Being a user mod that’s still in development, I imagine this could improve in later versions but at the moment, Painkiller RTX maxed out is very heavy – even heavier than Portal RTX. So if you want to play it on a lower-end GPU, I recommend my optimised settings for Portal RTX, which basically amounts to turning down the amount of possible light bounces to save on performance and skimping a bit in other areas.

Even with that, an RTX 4060 was really struggling to run the game well. With frame generation on and DLSS set to 1080p balanced with the transformer model, 80fps to 90fps was the best I could achieve in the general combat zones, with the heaviest stages dipping into the 70s – and even into the 60s with frame generation.

The mod is still work-in-progress, but even now, Painkiller RTX is still a lot of fun and it can look stunning if your hardware is up to it. But even if you can’t run it, I do hope this piece and its accompanying video pique your interest in checking out Painkiller in some form. Even without the path-traced upgrade, this is a classic first-person shooter that’s often overlooked and more than holds its own against some of the period’s better known games.



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June 1, 2025 0 comments
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The grimdark Pac-Man reboot has a classic Pac-Man game hidden inside it
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The grimdark Pac-Man reboot has a classic Pac-Man game hidden inside it

by admin May 22, 2025


Bandai Namco’s bold new take on Pac-Man — the 2D action platformer known as Shadow Labyrinth — has a secret: Despite being a grim sci-fi, Metroid-inspired game that looks nothing like a traditional Pac-Man sequel, there’s actual real Pac-Man gameplay in here. A new trailer for Shadow Labyrinth reveals the Maze, a portion of the game that for shorthand purposes looks a hell of a lot like Pac-Man Championship Edition 3.

The core gameplay of Shadow Labyrinth has players controlling a mysterious warrior named Swordsman No. 8, who is accompanied by a Pac-Man shaped guide named Puck, battling to become the apex predator of an alien planet. But at certain points in Shadow Labyrinth, you’ll play honest-to-goodness Pac-Man maze levels that draw inspiration from the Championship Edition line of pellet- and ghost-chomping games. Shadow Labyrinth’s take on Pac-Man gameplay adds to the Championship Edition formula, with jumping, boost pads, giant ghost boss battles, and a variety of maze types.

In other words, if Shadow Labyrinth hasn’t quite done it for you thus far, it might be worth checking in on your feelings after watching the game’s new trailer.

Shadow Labyrinth will be released on July 18, for Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X.



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May 22, 2025 0 comments
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A cult classic gets some love with the Space Marine Master Crafted Edition, launching June 10
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A cult classic gets some love with the Space Marine Master Crafted Edition, launching June 10

by admin May 22, 2025


After Space Marine 2 released to a supurb level of consumer and critical acclaim, it should be no shocker that the Space Marine Master Crafted Edition has just been announced during the Warhammer Skulls event.

This game is coming from SEGA and Sneakybox, the latter responsible for a sweep of modern additions like 4K resolution, updated controls, improved models and enhanced audio. In the press release sent out alongside this announcement, Sneaky Box producer Vaidas Mikelskas states it is more of “a thoughtful restoration” than a technical upgrade.


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This modern recreation of the cult classic comes with all the original modes, including the campaign and PvE / PvP multiplayer. What’s particularly interesting with this new and improved version of the game is that the Orks are getting a special touch up. The faction has new models and over 100 new voice lines, which sounds great of course, granted Warboss Grimskull keeps all his fantastic quips.

Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine is one of those games that has carved a place in people’s hearts for years, and given that we’re now in a real golden age of both Space Marine love and Warhammer 40K passion in general, in makes sense we’d get a touched-up version of the classic on modern platforms. Plus, you won’t have to pay full price for it either! The game will be sold for €39.99 or your regional equivilent, or downloadable on Game Pass for the subscription fee.

Are you going to dive into this new and improved version of Space Marine? Let us know below!



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May 22, 2025 0 comments
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