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Kingmakers delayed indefinitely as developer needs "more time before we feel good about charging money for it"
Game Reviews

Kingmakers delayed indefinitely as developer needs “more time before we feel good about charging money for it”

by admin October 4, 2025


Redemption Road’s time-travelling bring-an-assault-rifle-to-a-medieval-sword-fight shooter and strategy game, Kingmakers, has been indefinitely delayed.

Redemption stated it pushed the release to ensure it does not “cut any planned features for the sake of getting it out of the door earlier” and apologised for “letting [players] down”.

Kingmakers – Early Access Release Date Trailer.Watch on YouTube

“After much contemplation, we realise that the scheduled Kingmakers launch on October 8 will no longer be possible. We want to apologise to all of the fans who are eagerly anticipating this game. We are sorry for letting you down,” the studio said in a statement posted to social media.

“Why is Kingmakers being delayed? In short, it’s an incredibly ambitious, uncompromising game, and we don’t want to cut any planned features, for the sake of getting it out the door earlier. Our goal, from the start, has been to create something that’s nothing like anything else on the market, in terms of gameplay, scale, scope, and interactivity.”


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The statement goes on to say that Redemption Road “pushed the Unreal Engine 4 codebase to its absolute limits”, while still providing “true 60fps to mid-range PCs, without the need for fake frames”.

“We are an 80% engineering team, who got into this business to push technological barriers,” the team added, before describing how the game has “tens of thousands of soldiers” each with AI and pathfinding that “rivals what you’d expect from a AAA person shooter” and how players can enter every room in its six-story castles.

“Every mission takes place in a giant, massive map that each player on the server is free to explore – with or without their own personal army of thousands,” Redemption added. “We set out to do all of this, with full drop-in/drop-out four-player multiplayer support, and we have. We just need a little bit more time on content polish before we feel good about charging money for it.”

The statement closed on promising that the studio would shortly present a half-hour-long deep dive on Kingmaker’s gameplay, “with a comprehensive overview of everything we’ve been working on”.

Donlan was certainly impressed when Kingsmakers memorable teaser dropped, writing: “Over the last decade or so, alongside the bigger, fewer bets publishers have made – which has also often led to formula, to conservatism – an onward march in graphical fidelity means that a certain kind of game has become obsessed with the details. I love details, and I love that games do this.”

Kingmakers may not be out yet, but it’s already secured a movie adaptation. The studio said it was “absolutely thrilled” that the unreleased game was “making its way to the big screen” in partnership with publisher tinyBuild and Story Kitchen.



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October 4, 2025 0 comments
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Zane, from Borderlands 4, pinches his fingertips expressively as he tries to communicate something so someone off screen.
Gaming Gear

Borderlands 4 dev clears up the difference between Skill Damage and Action Skill damage, and I feel like a combat log is in order so I didn’t have to find this out on a Reddit thread

by admin September 30, 2025



Borderlands 4 has a ton of possible builds to choose from—it’s one of the strengths I highlighted in my Borderlands 4 review—but I do have one teensy-tiny complaint, and it’s that I would like some of the tooltips to be a smidge more straightforward about what is what.

This feeling has returned full-force after seeing a developer kindly explaining the difference between Skill Damage and Action Skill damage on the game’s subreddit (thanks, TheGamer), which probably isn’t the place you should have to go for this sort of clarification.

Turns out, it’s a rectangles/squares situation. Except this is Borderlands, so lead character designer Nicholas Thurston uses guns and shotguns as the metaphor: “Skill Damage and Action Skill Damage is like Gun Damage and Shotgun Damage. All Skills are skills, but only some are Action Skills. Same as all Guns are Guns, but only some are Shotguns.” Simple, then.


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Thurston then explains that Skill Damage impacts basically everything involving the word “Skill”, including passive skills and traits and, you guessed it, Action Skills. However, Action Skill damage only boosts whatever’s on the Action Skill itself.

Other modifiers, like Melee Damage and Minion Damage, can apply to an Action Skill if it also does those things. For example: “Amon’s ‘Onslaughter’ does Melee Damage with his fist, this would get Skill Damage, Action Skill Damage, and Melee Damage … Forgedrones (as an example) only benefit from Skill Damage, as they come from Passive Skills, as well as Melee Damage.”

In a separate comment, Thurston also explains that there’s no real difference between “status chance” and “status application chance”, and that all instances of the former should be the latter: “if something doesn’t, that’s a goof on our part that we’ll need to investigate and correct.”

And hey, props to Thurston for coming in and clearing some of this up, but it does beg the question whether or not the series needs a little more transparency on just how everything works.

Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.

Most ARPGs, a genre which Borderlands shares most of its DNA with, have combat logs that let you mouse over your damage and get a peek at the math going on underneath the hood, allowing you to test whether all those floating modifiers are actually being fed into the machine properly.

And while BL4 does have training dummies, not having any proper mouseovers for its various tooltips—or a way to check on your damage after the fact—does hamper the otherwise stellar buildcraft somewhat. I probably shouldn’t be having to do napkin math to figure out why a non-legendary gun is causing Total Existence Failure.



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September 30, 2025 0 comments
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There is an absolute banger of a Feel Good Inc. remix made exclusively out of Stronghold Crusader sound effects, and it is now available on Spotify
Game Reviews

There is an absolute banger of a Feel Good Inc. remix made exclusively out of Stronghold Crusader sound effects, and it is now available on Spotify

by admin September 14, 2025


You’ll always find some sort of otherworldly artifact in your YouTube song mix if you let it run long enough.

I’m not sure how and why the algorithm decided to serve me up this recent banger from Egg Beatz that uses nothing but sound effects from Middle Age strategy game classic Stronghold Crusader to recreate Gorillaz’ legendary Feel Good Inc., but it almost makes up for the precipitous drop it has recently caused to many of my favorite creators’ view count.

(Almost.)

But back to the banger! While you’ll definitely get more out of the song if you have played any of the classic Stronghold games, you can appreciate the skill and effort on display even without any experience with the world of the Rat, the Snake, the Pig, and the Wolf.

Starting off with The Pig’s distorted, slowed-down laughter, and the Arabian Assassin unit’s classic voice line setting the tone, followed by a slow buildup of the ever-so-common “No change in the treasury, lord,” you just immediately know that you’re in good hands.

Then it goes on like this:

“Something is wrong with our hops, mylord

My master thinks we’re losing this war

Gird your loins, sharpen your steel

Failure is not an option, just keep your eyes peeled

I’ll be away from work for a fair while

No space in the stockpile

I heard a rumor, a message from your scribe

Bandits are operating near the castle, lordship.”

Again, all this is arranged to the tune of Feel Good Inc., and it works shockingly well.

The best part? This awesome arrangement is now also available on Spotify, courtesy of the team at Firefly Studios being good sports about such a truly transformative work. For my money, this has now surpassed the legendary Age of Empires 2 theme song remix with the unforgettable Wololo autotune.

Yeah, there are some great gems at the bottom of the internet if you are still willing to rep the classics.

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September 14, 2025 0 comments
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I Tried Apple's New AirPods Pro 3 and They Feel Surprisingly Different
Gaming Gear

I Tried Apple’s New AirPods Pro 3 and They Feel Surprisingly Different

by admin September 10, 2025


Apple was widely expected to release the next generation of its AirPods Pro noise-canceling earbuds this fall, and now it has. As part of its September “awe-dropping” event, the company debuted the AirPods Pro 3. The new buds are upgraded in several ways, including better noise canceling and sound quality, and they have heart-rate sensors like the Beats PowerBeats Pro 2. You can preorder them today for $249 and they ship on Sept. 19.

Watch this: I Tried Apple AirPods 3: First Impressions of New Features

05:00

Here are some of their key upgrades. It’s worth noting that the AirPods Pro 3 still use Apple’s H2 chip, not the rumored even more powerful H3 chip some people thought they might get. (It apparently doesn’t exist yet.) Also, the case uses a new U2 chip for advanced precision in the Find My location system. 

  • Refined design for better fit (the buds are slightly smaller)
  • New heart-rate sensors
  • New 10.7mm drivers with new multiport acoustic architecture
  • 2x better noise canceling compared to AirPods Pro 2
  • Upgraded microphones
  • Improved sound quality with better bass
  • More natural sounding transparency mode
  • New ear tips with upgraded foam on the inside (now available in five sizes)
  • New live translation feature
  • Up to 8 hours of battery with noise canceling on (up to 10 hours with transparency and hearing aid modes)
  • IP57 water-resistant and dust-resistant (AirPods Pro 2 are IPX4 splashproof)
  • Price: $249, £219, AU$429
  • Shipping: Sept. 19

The AirPods Pro 3 have heart-rate sensors like the Beats PowerBeats Pro 2.

Apple/Screenshot by CNET

I got a chance to try the AirPods Pro 3 in Apple’s demo room at the event. While they look very similar to the AirPods Pro 2, they’ve been redesigned and are slightly smaller. The angle of the buds has been altered slightly so the eartips point more directly into your ear canals. The tips themselves have also been redesigned, with new memory foam in the tips, though the exterior of the tips is still silicone. The tips now come in five sizes, including a new extra, extra small tip. While there’s no extra large tip (which I was hoping for), the large tips now fit more like XL tips. Alas, the new tips aren’t compatible with the original AirPods Pro or AirPods Pro 2. 

The buds definitely felt different in my ears than the AirPods Pro 2, and overall they seemed to fit more snugly and securely. I suspect more people will be able to get a secure, tight seal with these new AirPods, which is crucial for noise-canceling performance and sound quality.


Enlarge Image

The case is the same size, but has a new U2 chip that enhances the precision of Apple’s Find My system. 

David Carnoy/CNET

The noise canceling seemed excellent, but it was hard to tell whether it was really two times better than the noise canceling of the AirPods Pro 2, as Apple says. But the buds are supposed to do a better job across all frequencies with noise canceling, including mids and higher frequencies that can be challenging to muffle. I’ll see how they stack up to the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd gen) when I get my review sample. Those $299 Bose buds currently offer the best noise canceling in a set of earbuds.

It was hard to judge sound quality in the noisy demo room, even with the noise canceling on, but I got a chance to try them briefly in a quieter area and came away impressed. The bass seemed slightly deeper and better defined and the treble clarity seemed slightly improved. The new multiport acoustic architecture allows for more airflow in the buds (the vent on the bud is significantly larger), which is important to improving sound quality and bass performance.

Watch this: AirPods Pro 3: Everything Apple Just Announced

03:42

I wasn’t able to make any calls, but supposedly voice-calling performance is improved with even better noise reduction and voice clarity. Transparency mode is also supposed to sound even more natural and Apple has enhanced the hearing aid feature — battery life is improved to 10 hours when in hearing aid mode.

Heart-rate monitoring is new to the AirPods, though, as noted, it’s already available with the PowerBeats Pro 2. I’ll be testing that feature as soon as I get my hands on a review sample along with Apple’s new live translation feature, which will also be coming to the AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods 4 series (it’s coming to any AirPods with the H2 chip). Note that live translation only works with iPhones that support Apple Intelligence, including iPhone 15 Pro models, as well as all iPhone 16 and iPhone 17 models.

While we didn’t get a new H3 chip or a touchscreen LCD in the charging case, we got a lot of what we were expecting with the AirPods Pro 3, and the buds do seem like a nice upgrade over their predecessor for the same price. That wasn’t a given, as the Trump administration’s tariffs seem to be affecting the prices of premium Bose and Sony headphones. Look out for my full review in the coming weeks with comparisons to other premium earbuds in this price range.



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September 10, 2025 0 comments
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A third of women mobile gamers in the UK feel guilty, says new study
Esports

A third of women mobile gamers in the UK feel guilty, says new study

by admin September 2, 2025


A new study has found that nearly a third of women who play mobile games in the UK feel guilty about gaming.

Published on August 21, 2025, the study was led by University of Stirling’s Dr Steph Rennick and Cardiff University’s Dr Seán Roberts, in partnership with Swedish gaming studio Undone Games, and surveyed 1,000 women who play mobile games in the UK about their attitudes to gaming.

The research found that 28% of the women surveyed agreed they felt guilty about taking time to play games, with older players (those over 55) less likely to feel shame than young players (those aged 16 to 24).

According to the study, women who kept that gaming secret from friends and family were three times more likely to feel guilt (63%) than those who didn’t (23%), while women who look forward to playing are 9% more likely to feel guilty than those who don’t (34% vs. 25%).

The research also found that this feeling of shame was aligned with whether women identified with gaming culture.

60% of respondents didn’t believe they played enough games to be considered a “gamer,” and women who said they perceive gaming as a male pastime were twice as likely to feel shame about playing games (46% vs. 23%), while those who would be embarrassed to call themselves a gamer felt 20% more guilt.

By contrast, women who believe occasionally playing games makes you a gamer felt 42% less shame.

“The study shows many women feel excluded from video game culture, with significant numbers of women feeling guilty about playing video games and worrying about what others think of them taking time to play games,” Dr Rennick told the University of Stirling.

“Interestingly, feeling guilty or keeping secrets about gaming did not correlate with how much time women spent playing games.

“We expected a significant proportion of women to report feelings of guilt around playing video games and taking leisure time more generally.

“But while we thought feelings of guilt or shame would have a negative impact on the amount of time women spent playing games, we didn’t find such a connection. Those who feel guilty or keep secrets don’t play less, but they feel worse.”

Elsewhere, the study found correlations between guilt and barriers related to game marketing, with 41% of women more likely to feel guilt if they didn’t know which games to try, and 44% feeling more shame if they thought games were too violent.

“This aligns with barriers identified by Chess (2017): That women may not be aware of the diversity of games available, because there is a limited range marketed to them (thus the former), and yet when they think of ‘games’ simpliciter, they may not have casual games in mind (thus the latter),” the report said.

The report specifies that this study only considered responses from people identifying as women, and while its results are “revealing,” they do not demonstrate that women feel more guilty about playing mobile games than other genders.

“Taken as a whole, we propose that the results suggest that many UK women feel excluded from video game culture, and that this exclusion can be a barrier to playing mobile games, or being open about one’s play,” the report stated.

“In other words, many of the results can be explained by women’s sense that games and gaming culture are not for them.”

“This is in keeping with previous research, which has found many gender disparities in leisure time, with women being almost twice as likely to feel guilty about taking ‘me time’ than men (GameHouse, 2023),” the report continued

“Women tend to spend less time playing if they feel they don’t fit into gaming culture – for example, if they believe that gaming is a male pastime, or that they don’t play enough games to be a gamer, are embarrassed to call themselves a gamer, or think video games are too violent,” Dr Roberts told the University of Sterling.

“In contrast, women spend more time playing if they are proud of their gaming achievements.

“This suggests that guilt and shame are just symptoms. While these are clearly negatively impacting women gamers, they may not be the root of the problem.

“Instead, removing barriers to play for women may require deeper changes such as reducing leisure inequality between men and women.”



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September 2, 2025 0 comments
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Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds Still Doesn't Feel Like It Has An Identity Of Its Own
Game Updates

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds Still Doesn’t Feel Like It Has An Identity Of Its Own

by admin August 26, 2025



Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is quickly approaching the finish line, scheduled to launch in September. I got the chance to play the kart racer for a second time recently, and my opinion of the game is largely unchanged from my verdict during Summer Game Fest: It’s dropping the best aspects of its predecessors to become something closer to Mario Kart. This second session, I spent a little more time with the game, getting a chance to race on additional tracks and play as the previously unavailable Hatsune Miku and Ichiban Kasuga.

CrossWorlds sees you jump into a kart or onto a hoverboard and compete against several other racers from Sega’s catalog of Sonic characters (plus a few guests from other franchises!). Each race across the 24 different tracks is three laps, with the second taking place in an entirely different world after the racers teleport through a travel ring. Whichever competitor is in the lead as the racers approach the second lap chooses which world everyone hops over to, with two options given at random from a total pool of 15 other worlds.

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Now Playing: 8 Minutes of Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds Gameplay

It’s an interesting gimmick, best seen in the Grand Prix mode that was the focus of both the SGF preview and my latest hands-on. In that mode, you’re awarded a number of points depending on your place, which are added up at the end of a series of races to determine the ultimate winner. Each Grand Prix is four races, with the fourth and final race taking place across the three previous tracks–the first lap is on the track from the first race, the second lap is on the track of the second race, and so on.

As was the case at SGF, I crushed the computer-controlled competitors handily on the hardest available difficulty (there is one that’s even harder, but it has not been available in either preview). As fun as it is to win, it’s been hard to enjoy the game without the challenge of needing to try. I still believe that challenge will come when given the chance to play with other humans, but until then, CrossWorlds feels lacking compared to what came before.

Anyone else miss Sonic Riders?

The game borrows mechanics and features from Team Sonic Racing and Sonic Riders, but lacks the teamwork-oriented relay racing of the former or fuel management and character abilities of the latter. Those aspects made Team Sonic Racing and Sonic Riders distinct enough from Mario Kart to give them more identity, and also make them more challenging–it was rewarding to win at those games and I remember playing them (especially Riders) for hours upon hours and wanting to push myself to get better. I haven’t gotten that sensation from CrossWorlds yet.

Like all of the other characters, Hatsune and Ichiban have their own stats that affect the minutiae of play–making slight adjustments to how each kart handles in a race. It must be very slight though, as I didn’t notice any discernible difference between them, nor any change from my time with Jet the Hawk and Amy Rose at SGF. Changing up the plate loadout of the kart is a far more noticeable adjustment. I tinkered around with the kart plate system–which allows you to create several established loadouts to change how your kart behaves–a little more this time around, creating plates that let me start off with the monster truck transformation so I could run over everyone from the very start, or draft off others more easily and overtake the competition by stealing their rings, or spin like an unstoppable top while drifting to bash other racers and build extra speed boost.

With 24 tracks and 15 other worlds to explore, you’ll see plenty of strange sights throughout the race.

These plate builds are fun and zany, and I wish they had a bigger impact on my performance to encourage me to spend more time tinkering in the shop. But I won with them all and I didn’t really have to adjust my strategy for how I raced with any of them. I still needed to collect rings to build speed, pick up items to mess with opponents, dodge other racers’ items, and drift around corners. Like everything else, the customization features don’t help CrossWorlds differentiate itself from its competitors–nothing (so far) about this experience feels like it belongs solely to CrossWorlds.

I’m still hopeful that I’m just missing something. I generally enjoy the Sonic games that focus on racing, so this one not connecting with me feels like I’m somehow lying to myself. I’m sure that as soon as I sit down on the couch with my closest friends and we’re screaming at each other for the bullcrap that we manage to pull off, I’ll recognize in that moment what makes CrossWorlds special. Until that moment, however, I’m choosing to remain cautious of this one.

Sonic Racing CrossWorlds is launching for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and Switch on September 25. The game will be released for Switch 2 during the 2025 holiday season.



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August 26, 2025 0 comments
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