Tag:

Games

A member of the Coast Guard points a handgun at a zombie on the deck of a boat

Atari now owns the rights to five Ubisoft games: Cold Fear, I Am Alive, Child of Eden, Grow Home, and Grow Up

by admin August 27, 2025

Ubisoft has reached into the back of the cupboard, grabbed the intellectual property rights for five games it wasn’t doing anything with, and sold them to Atari. The five games are Cold Fear (which is basically Resident Evil on a boat), I Am Alive (a post-apocalyptic survival platformer), Child of Eden (a psychedelic rhythm game), and both Grow Home and its sequel Grow Up (which are physics-based climbing games where you’re a cute robot).

“Ubisoft and Atari both have a legacy of crafting worlds that players can fall in love with—games that resonate with generations of players not just for how they played, but for how they made us feel,” Wade Rosen, chairman and CEO of Atari, said in a joint statement. “We’re excited to reintroduce these titles while also exploring ways to expand and evolve these franchises.”

While Atari may just be planning ports for Switch 2 and the like for this bundle of games, given that the publisher also owns Nightdive—the studio responsible for projects like the System Shock remake and more recently the re-release of Hexen and Heretic—there’s reason to hope at least some of these games will receive more high-effort revivals.

I’d personally love to see a remake of Cold Fear, a survival horror game set on a whaling ship during a storm. Original developer Darkworks put a lot of effort into modeling the constant heaving of the sea, making the deck of the ship shift beneath you while you were trying to shoot zombie parasites. A short, self-contained experience, it caught some flak for being about five hours long at release, but honestly that sounds ideal for a haunted-house survival horror game.

Best gaming monitors 2025

All our current recommendations

Source link

August 27, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

Climbing games are so hot right now

by admin August 27, 2025

Welcome to Video Games Weekly on Engadget. Expect a new story every Monday or Tuesday, broken into two parts. The first is a space for short essays and ramblings about video game trends and related topics from me, Jess Conditt, a reporter who’s covered the industry for more than 13 years. The second contains the video game stories from the past week that you need to know about, including some headlines from outside of Engadget.

Please enjoy — and I’ll see you next week.

The climbing genre is not a monolith — that is to say, there’s plenty of variation in the realm of mountaineering games, from mechanically driven cliff-scaling sims to silly multiplayer survival experiences, but they tend to share the same premise: Reach the peak. You’re miles from civilization, with no vehicles and a limited backpack of equipment, and directly in front of you, there’s a mountain. Ascend.

All you have is your body and mental fortitude against an overwhelming physical challenge, and your step-by-step journey is the story. There’s an obvious symbolism to these games, offering a cliff face as the physical manifestation of impossibility, hopelessness, oppression or fear, alongside a surface-level message about never giving up, trying again and generally hanging in there. Cat poster vibes, but an ever-relevant and poignant lesson nonetheless.

Today, though — particularly after spending time playing the Cairn and Baby Steps demos, and watching PEAK streams — I want to focus on the other half of the climbing-game equation. The part where you fall, over and over and over again. Your grip slips, your leg doesn’t bend that way, your energy depletes, and your body tumbles down the mountain, bouncing off boulders and crashing into trees, leaving you bloody and broken and right back where you started. Or, at the very least, staining your onesie with mud.

I’m learning to appreciate these moments. In mountaineering games, falling tends to generate the most powerful reaction in players, whether that’s immediate laughter (PEAK) or grim frustration (Cairn), and this is an admirable quality. It’s easy to argue that the fall is more important than the climb, because without the lush bed of emotion generated by the constant threat of slipping and tumbling and restarting, reaching the peak wouldn’t feel that special at all. There’s context in the fall, and with that, there comes a sliver of peace.

When you spend all your time climbing, it’s easy to forget that falling is actually the most natural thing you can do. Next time you’re on your way down, try to make peace with the fall.

OK — we’ve gone from motivational cat posters to new-age cult speak, so I’ll get to the point. There are a notable number of mountain-based games in the zeitgeist at the moment and I just wanted to shout them out because they’re all pretty incredible in their own ways.

Cairn is a climbing simulator, endurance test and survival game in one gorgeous package, complete with music by Furi composer The Toxic Avenger, French artist Gildaa, and Martin Stig Andersen, who did the soundtracks for Control, LIMBO and INSIDE. Climb absolutely anywhere, manage your inventory by shaking your backpack, bandage your wounds, forage for food and sleep under the stars. Cairn comes from Furi studio The Game Bakers and it’s due out on November 5 for PlayStation 5 and Steam; the demo is available on both platforms now.

Baby Steps is a different kind of mountain-scaling game, and one could argue that it doesn’t even belong in the same category as something like Cairn, but I believe you’ll find that it does. Baby Steps adheres to the established premise of the climbing genre — reach the peak — and it features a distant mountaintop as the main waypoint for Nate, a lost and lonely man in a gray onesie. Nate is essentially a dude-sized baby learning how to walk, and creators Maxi Boch, Gabe Cuzzillo and Bennett Foddy are infusing his journey with the appropriate amount of hilarity and mechanical intrigue. Baby Steps is published by Devolver Digital and it’s heading to PC and PS5 on September 23, a date that was recently pushed back to avoid the curse of Hollow Knight: Silksong. (More on that below).

PEAK is the thing all the cool kids are playing this summer, and as a fadingly hip not-kid who prefers solo games and familiar FPSes, I can attest it’s entertaining to watch and looks like a lot of fun to play. PEAK is a co-op climbing game with simple 3D models and deceptively challenging mountains to summit, each with four biomes. The map updates each day so there’s a steady stream of fresh climbing content, and the proximity voice chat works exceptionally well. I particularly like that players get to live on as little ghosts after they die. PEAK comes from indie studio Team PEAK and it’s on Steam for $8.

And why not, I’ll shout out some other modern, but not as recent, mountain-based favorites of mine: Jusant, Celeste, GIRP and Journey are all pretty spectacular.

Enjoy the climb — and the fall.

The news

A selection of indie and AA games I’m looking forward to that aren’t Silksong

Baby Steps is the latest game to change its release date in order to get out of the way of Hollow Knight: Silksong, which is coming out on September 4. Team Cherry dropped the release date in a trailer on August 21 and since then, at least eight indie studios have delayed their own games to avoid the Silksong window. It’s lovely to see Silksong have its day in the sun, but personally, I’m more interested in playing Baby Steps in full.

With that said, here’s a sampling of indie and AA games I’m anticipating that aren’t Silksong, in no particular order and right off the top of my head:

And obviously, Baby Steps (September 23, 2025) and Cairn (November 5, 2025).

A date for skate.

Electronic Arts has revived the Skate series after 15 years, and the (very youthfully styled) skate. is primed to hit early access on September 16 across PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC. The new skate. is a shift for the series: It’s a free, online, open-world experience with microtransactions (but nothing in the pay-to-win realm, according to EA). The early access version will be free, too, of course.

The scariest part of Silent Hill f might be its mental health awareness

You’ll find this one alongside Resident Evil Requiem and Pragmata in my AAA-inclusive list of games I’m most looking forward to, and Engadget UK Bureau Chief Mat Smith’s preview from Gamescom is only making me more stoked on it. Silent Hill f is set in a remote village in 1960s Japan and stars a schoolgirl named Hinako. Here’s a bit of Mat’s take after a two-hour demo, which involved a scarecrow confrontation and marionette attacks:

The latest Silent Hill still has jumpscares, like you’d expect from the horror series, but the setting and game systems are more focused on tension, putting both Hinako and the player under constant duress. A typical health meter is joined by a sanity gauge and even your weapons have limited durability, so you’re forced to pick your fights.

… The entire experience is drenched in atmosphere, supported by this new sanity system — is there anything more 2025 than a mental health gauge? The constant feeling of isolation (“Where is everyone?”) and unanswered questions made the demo a persuasive introduction to the game.

Silent Hill f is due out on PS5, PC and Xbox Series X/S on September 25, 2025.

OVERWATCH 2 STADIUM GET’S ITS BIGGEST UDPATE EVER!

Remember when I said I liked playing familiar FPSes? Overwatch 2 is my kind of decompression. With season 18, Blizzard is changing how hero progression is displayed, adding color-coded borders and top-hero cards to the character-selection process. The aim is to make it clearer how skilled you are with any given character, and also share this information with teammates and enemies in a way that won’t enable trolling during the ban phase. The progression 2.0 developer notes are here, if you’re interested. Season 18 also brings keyboard and mouse support to consoles, but those players will be thrown into the PC matchmaking pool, and introduces the water-bending support hero Wuyang.

Overwatch 2 Season 18 went live today, August 26. My colleague and fellow Overwatch 2 player Kris Holt spotted two egregious copy errors in the new season’s welcome screen, captured for posterity below:

Overwatch 2 Season 18’s welcome screen could’ve used a copy editor.

(Blizzard)

Pete Parsons leaves Bungie

Bungie’s longtime leader has left the studio and the Destiny community couldn’t be happier. Pete Parsons has taken a lot of heat for the stale state of the company’s shooter (and the size of his car collection), but it’s more likely the whole art theft, bungled launch and indefinite delay of Marathon led to his departure. New CEO Justin Truman, who at one point ran Destiny 2 and most recently was the company’s “chief development officer,” has his work cut out to win back fans.

Additional reading

Kris Holt’s indie game roundup
PlayStation Boss Says Company Now Does ‘Much More Rigorous and More Frequent Testing’ After Concord’s Failure – IGN

Have a tip for Jessica? You can reach her by email, Bluesky or send a message to @jesscon.96 to chat confidentially on Signal.

Source link

August 27, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Lumines Arise’s new demo reveals Burst mode, the game’s answer to Tetris Effect’s Zone, and the demo is out now

by admin August 27, 2025

In our house, the first level of the new Lumines Arise demo already has a name. The demo hasn’t been with us long – and it’s available for PS5 and Steam until 11.59pm local time on the 3rd of September, so get on it – but it’s made an impact. That first level has made an impact. I call it Cadbury Physics.

Super quick: Lumines is a puzzle game about sorting blocks into groups of two colours. The blocks drop into the horizontal playing area wonderfully jumbled, and you rotate them, match the colours, and ideally use them to build squares of 2×2 blocks of the same colour. You then grow these squares by adding more blocks of the same colour until the timeline sweeps through and cancels them out. Points for you! And more space to play with! And onwards and upwards. Beautiful.

Manage cookie settings

But the colours, and the theme and music surrounding them, change with each level. And in the first level of the Lumines Arise demo? Well. Hard to say, really. You’re either deep in space or diving down into the secrets of the quantum universe. One of the colours you’re matching is less a colour and more a little galaxy captured in an oily bubble. Form 2×2 squares and it sort of blobs outwards into a bigger bubble. It’s less bottle galaxy and more puddle galaxy, and it clashes gorgeously with the other strain of blocks in this level, which are jagged little gold leaf diamonds.

Far-flung space? Deep within an atom? Whatever’s the truth, it all looks strangely delicious. Houston? We have a tasty problem. It’s like a chocolate advert out there. I can just imagine ripping the foil off those diamonds to reveal the chocolate melting within, and then dipping them in the syruppy quantum goo from those puddle galaxies. It would be irradiating, sure, but it would be such a sweet way to go. The whole level feels like a black forest gateaux baked by Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The thing about Lumines is that you can talk about it forever just by talking about the small things, and Arise is no different. Small things: the way the camera now zooms in slightly when you’ve started a square going, as if the universe notices your work and is leaning in, eager to see how it turns out. Small things: the way the “Bonus” text on the first level turns to a coffee swirl of vapour as it melts away. Small things: the way the chalk circles in the second level – this level has yet to have a name in our house – sometimes jangle into scribbly squares when the music dictates that they must.

The shape of (not) you. | Image credit: Enhance

And yet there are big things to talk about, too. Lumines Arise is basically Lumines getting the Tetris Effect treatment. The sound and fury has been dialled up. The graphical approach is glossy and melting one minute, and geckos dancing while campfires flicker in the darkness the next. But just as Tetris Effect introduced Zone play, which allowed you to break the game by entering a bizarre state of being in which you could grow a Tetris stack until it was six, eight, ten rows deep, Lumines Arise gets Burst mode.

Oh Burst mode! Tantalising and terrifying. It’s a game-changer. It’s a game disruptor. And yet, like Zone, it feels so simple.

Burst mode is built up through regular play. As you clear squares, your Burst percentage meter at the top of the timeline ticks upwards. When it reaches 100, you squeeze both triggers and time coughs and turns inwards on itself. Suddenly, you can grow a single colour of squares without the timelines clearing them as they sweep past. (A number above the timeline tells you how many sweeps you have left.)

But there’s more. As you grow your single colour square, blocks of the opposing colour will regularly shoot into the air as you play, and will hang, suspended above the playing field until Burst mode is over. Eventually, you’ll have grown your square as much as you can, and you’ll have run out of timeline sweeps – Lumines is a really weird game to talk about, isn’t it? – and then you get a double-whammy of scoring. The square you grew finally disappears, showering you in points, and then all those other-coloured blocks that had been suspended overhead suddenly fall back into play, and will probably lead to a decent amount of squares themselves.

Tetris who? BTW, there’s a multiplayer game type included in the demo that sees you firing garbage blocks back and forth by using Burst. | Image credit: Enhance

Here’s the thing about Burst mode. It’s wonderful, but it’s also terrifying. Sure, you can use it to get out of trouble. You can actually trigger it once the meter’s above 50 percent for this purpose, it just won’t last as long. But to get the most out of it, you have to understand that while the whole thing looks chaotic, it requires absolute precision if you’re to do it justice. Sure, it looks like the universe is erupting around you and that time itself is stuttering, but you need to have a plan for all those incoming blocks. You need to know when to rotate right and when to rotate left and when to drive them all home and grow that square.

I hope it goes without saying, but I absolutely love this. With the chain block, Lumines has always been the most geologically minded of puzzle games – a game that’s all about drilling down into the earth, laying seams of dynamite and then touching them off. But now there’s this anti-gravity component where detritus is sorted and flung into the aire and just waits there while you create the perfect environment for it to return to. I’m still getting my head around it. I’m still trying to bring Burst mode into focus with the way I lay out the grid to get the most from that chain block. I’m still trying to rumble the secrets of this strange physical universe, one delicious puddle galaxy at a time.

Source link

August 27, 2025 0 comments

Esports

New games industry body launches in India

by admin August 26, 2025

Nine India-based developers and publishers have formed the Indian Game Publishers and Developers Association (IGPDA).

Its aim is to foster “the creation of original made-in-India IP, bringing Indian stories into gaming, skill-building across the animation, visual effects, gaming and comics (AVGC) value chain, and enabling India to produce globally competitive AAA titles.”

The industry body has been structured to bring primary members (game developers, studios, publishers, and platforms) and partners (tools and tech providers, academia and training institutions, investors and “ecosystem enablers”) together to collaborate on game development.

The IGPDA’s founding members include:

Nazara Technologies
Gametion
nCore Games
Reliance Games
SuperGaming
Tara Gaming
Underdogs
Aeos Games
Dot9 Games

“The IGPDA will provide the platform that helps to unify the voice of the gaming industry and articulate its interests,” said nCore Games president Kaval Bombra.

“By advocating for our industry across the regulatory, investment, and operational landscape, we will ensure that India’s vibrant gaming sector continues to expand its presence responsibly and sustainably, both here and across the world.”

Tara Gaming co-founder and author Amish Tripathi added: “Video gaming is the biggest creative industry; it’s bigger than movies, books, music, and theatre combined – India gets very little of the pie.

“Much of our gaming industry presently is mobile-game-dominated, which has a large number of users but not enough revenue. The market is also dominated by Chinese games. But with our own games, based on our own culture, we could actually bring revenue to the country and also export our culture. IGPDA will supercharge this effort to make India a gaming superpower.”

The IGPDA has already proposed a state partnership with the Maharashtra government, in which it aims to “work with the [government] to make Mumbai the global games hub by attracting gaming companies to the state through policy support.”

“Our focus has been to drive strategic investments, foster global partnerships, and accelerate transformative infrastructure and technology initiatives in Maharashtra under the leadership of chief minister Devendra Fadnavis,” said Kaustubh Dhavse, chief advisor of Investments and Strategy to the chief minister of Maharashtra.

“We welcome this proactive initiative from the Indian games industry.”

The formation of the IGPDA comes after India’s Online Gaming Bill was passed as a proper legal act.

As IGN India reports, the bill will ensure that traditional video games and esports are separated from real money games, betting, and gambling apps and platforms.

The Online Gaming Bill “seeks to ban platforms that offer online betting, gambling, lottery, card games with money stakes, and fantasy sports with cash rewards.”

Source link

August 26, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

This week in PC games: a MGS3 remake, new Blumhouse horror and some freshly peeled spaceships

by admin August 26, 2025

Well, it happened again: the Maw devoured a Monday. My recent, highly suspicious news article about a sudden “bank holiday” was, of course, a hasty PR smokescreen to avert a stock market crash. In Horace’s name, we have now forced the Maw to sick up the missing Monday, but locating the gag reflex of a cosmic monster has its risks, and there have been a few casualties.

Mark has theoretically been “on holiday” since last Wednesday, returning tomorrow, but that’s another piece of disinfo – he’s actually stranded somewhere in the Cretaceous period. James, meanwhile, has come down with a case of the Schrödingers, neither away at Gamescom nor back at his desk. I am going to email him shortly – fingers crossed the quantum binary collapses in a way conducive to preview write-ups. As for this week’s new PC games – here you are. I’ve included the regurgitated Monday, but please handle with care as it’s still rather radioactive and, er, talkative.

Monday 25th August

NG Y’ STOOD L’ SAND OT GN’TH. NG Y’ MGEPMGR’LUH UH’ENYTH NAFL’FHTAGN YOGOR YOG OT GN’TH, HAVING YEEOGNGM NWW NG YEEOGOG HORNS, NG L’ H’ HORNS YEEOGOG UH’EOGHR’LUHH, NG L’ H’ NWW YAAH OT BLASPHEMY
Pizza Bandit is a Gearsy goof shooter in which you try to whip up a nice margherita while fending off aliens.
Watertight is a free horror game in which your submarine gets into difficulties while investigating the wreck of the Titanic. For clarity, this doesn’t seem to be about Oceangate.
good is a minigame package about an American teenager trying to avoid learning anything. It reminds me strongly of Homestar Runner.

Tuesday 26th August

Let’s continue the theme from Pizza Bandit with point and clicker The Supper: New Blood, which is about having people for dinner but hah hah, not like that. Gosh you sure look delicious when you’re anxious.

Wednesday 27th August

By eck, I love the cutaway spaceships of Pixel Starships 2, “an FTL-esque game in a MMO setting” with programmable crewmate behaviour.
Blumhouse-published Eyes Of Hellfire (pictured) is Among Us but set in a handsomely furnished, orthographic haunted house. I think this is “orthographic”, anyway. It’s the kind of elevated diagonal viewpoint that generally gets handwaved as “isometric”. Any pointers, geometry fiends?

Thursday 28th August

Friday 29th August

This week’s sacrifice upon the altar of Hybridisation is Neon Village, a match-3 town/deck builder with roguelike elements.
Shinobi: Art Of Vengeance marks the bloody revival of another ancient Sega side-scroller, I think, though it’s juuuust possible that it’s actually a painting sim.

As always, let us know if there’s any must-plays we’ve missed. My plans for this week include making sense of a big, tangly interview-driven feature and maybe writing something about liminality that would secretly be a love letter to a particular videogame level. Providing the superposition resolves in our favour, I imagine James will be Jamescomming it up with sundry impressions articles and interviewage. Assuming he overcomes the giant Venus flytraps and makes it past the Ankylosauri to the time portal, Mark should be on regular news and possibly a review. I seem to remember him bagsying something in the spreadsheet before he disappeared into the vortex. What are you up to this week?

Source link

August 26, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Demonschool delayed due to Hollow Knight Silksong release, “the GTA of indie games”

by admin August 26, 2025

Demonschool, the forthcoming RPG Eurogamer described as “Persona meets Buffy”, has been delayed once again due to the surprise release of Hollow Knight Silksong.

The game was originally intended for a release last year, but was delayed until 3rd September this year. Now it’s moved back to 19th November thanks to “brutal” market conditions.

The decision appears to have been made by publisher Ysbryd Games. “With 11 years under our belt as an indie publisher, we at Ysbryd Games are reasonably qualified to say that any point of 2025 on balance, has been or will be as brutal as market conditions can get when it comes to releasing a game,” it wrote in a statement on social media. “Crueler still, that we should find out with such short notice that Hollow Knight Silksong will launch just one day after our planned release for Demonschool.”

Demonschool release date trailerWatch on YouTube

Visibility is of prime importance for the publisher; as such “we would not be doing our game any favours by wading into waters we can clearly see are blood red”. Instead, it wants to allow Silksong to have its moment, and for Demonschool to follow.

The publisher has also confirmed there will be no more delays after this. Until release, more time will be spent polishing and enhancing the game experience, with more endings and minigames originally planned for a post-release patch to be included at launch.

This was not our choice but we understand why the choice was made. We aren’t mad at Ysbryd but at the situation. Dropping the GTA of indie games with 2 weeks notice makes everyone freak out. Ysbryd is being a good partner and paying for the delay. We’re sorry this is happening. https://t.co/uz2FlPMUNi

— Necrosoft Games | wishlist Demonschool now! (@necrosoftgames) August 25, 2025

Manage cookie settings

“This was not our choice but we understand why the choice was made,” wrote the developer Necrosoft Games in response. “We aren’t mad at Ysbryd but at the situation. Dropping the GTA of indie games with 2 weeks notice makes everyone freak out. Ysbryd is being a good partner and paying for the delay. We’re sorry this is happening.”

I went hands-on with a demo of Demonschool last year and came away impressed by its haunted university setting, graphic style, and turn-based combat.

This is a news-in-brief story. This is part of our vision to bring you all the big news as part of a daily live report.

Source link

August 26, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Today in video games – 26th August: the Gamescom mop-up continues as the industry takes a breath

by admin August 26, 2025

It’s 26th August, the day after a bank holiday in the UK – I hope you had a nice one – and we’re back with another daily live report. We’ll be catching all of today’s news and events here while chatting merrily along with you, providing thrilling coverage about the world of video games. That’s right – thrilling!

Note, Tom’s on holiday this week so I’ve muscled in, which is why you’re already seeing excited words like “thrilling” in the report. Expect a lot of Gamescom mop-up this week as our roving reporters return and share more about the games they’ve seen, and as the games industry takes a breath before September appears and the cascade of autumn releases begins.

Coverage
Comments

Source link

August 26, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

Inside the Chinese PC gaming industry as it gets ready to dominate the next decade: ‘We have to work harder, we have to make the games even better’

by admin August 25, 2025

Phantom Blade Zero: Are Chinese games about to take over the world? – YouTube

Watch On

In 2019, PC Gamer published the in-depth feature PC gaming in China: Everything you need to know about the world’s biggest PC games industry. At the time, our goal in covering what our shared hobby looks like in a country that Western players still have little insight into.

“China’s PC gaming industry is the largest in the world by a wide margin. The entire US games industry, including PC, mobile, and console games, generated only $30.4 billion in revenue in 2018—China’s PC gaming scene alone is equal to about half of that,” reporter Steven Messner wrote at the time. “In spite of those numbers, you might be hard-pressed to name a Chinese-made PC game.”

One year later, Chinese developer Game Science announced Black Myth: Wukong, and everything changed.

“The past 10 years was a crazy, historic decade for the Chinese gaming industry,” the founder of Chinese studio S-Game told me in Beijing last month. That may even be an understatement from Qiwei “Soulframe” Liang, who’s directing Phantom Blade Zero, which I think has the potential to be the next action game to leave a Black Myth-sized impression on players. I’ve already talked and written about Phantom Blade Zero a lot, but it’s not the only game picking up the torch from Black Myth and running with it.

In 2019, Chinese PC gaming was its own ecosystem that we wanted to help PC gamers outside China wrap their heads around, but most of biggest hits—League of Legends, PUBG—were imports, rather than games developed in China. And the relatively few hit games being developed in China were unlikely to be translated for other parts of the world.

In 2024, Black Myth: Wukong proved that big budget PC games developed in China could kill it on the world stage.

By 2030, we’re going to be inundated by games of that same caliber.

What we’re seeing now is a wave of games inspired and emboldened by Black Myth, as developers there take profits they made in mobile and start putting it towards what we more often think of as AAA games—like when Netflix started producing TV and films and gave Martin Scorsese $150 million dollars to make a 3-hour gangster drama. Chinese devs are hungry for that same prestige, and big publishers like Tencent and NetEase have the deep pockets needed to fund their blockbusters.

“All the focus is on making triple-A games. You can see a lot are coming,” Liang said. “It’s different. For Americans, it’s not a new concept, because you guys are making huge games. GTA or something like that is quite familiar. Black Myth: Wukong has created this possibility for Chinese games, but I would say for most, the quality is still your basement, your foundation. Making the games better is very important.

“I think there’s a pride for the gamers who played Black Myth, because they feel: We can make such a game. So we are very careful as Chinese developers to fulfill the requirements, the hype of the Chinese gamers. We have to make the games even better.”

This is going to be a defining story of the next decade in PC gaming. So when I was invited by S-Game to fly to Beijing for an event focused on Phantom Blade Zero, I also saw it as a chance to really get a sense for where the Chinese industry is right now, and maybe peek over the horizon at where it’s going.

The video above is the result: a detailed look at how the Chinese gaming industry has evolved since the 2010s, and the games like Delta Force, Wuchang, The Bustling World, Blood Message, Where Winds Meet, and more bringing about that new era.

Source link

August 25, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

6 Awesome-Looking Games That Went Under The Radar At Gamescom 2025

by admin August 25, 2025

Gamescom 2025 was the biggest on record. Maybe your eyes began to glaze over from the multi-day barrage of new game announcements, trailers, and interviews. Now that the dust has begun to settle, we can finally reflect on a few of the fresh looks at cool, upcoming projects that may have gone under the radar. The following games didn’t catch the Gamescom spotlight, but they did catch my eye. Here are six neat trailers you probably missed.

Katanaut is a cosmic horror slash ’em up

Katanaut is a 2D pixel art roguelite about killing tons of abominations in a post-apocalyptic urban hellscape. You run, slash, dodge, and find lots of power-ups along the way. Will survival be rewarded with some cooler sci-fi story reveals than your average roguelike? I hope so. It comes to PC on September 10.

Wild Blue brings back classic Star Fox vibes

Wild Blue is an on-rails shooter starring anthropomorphic animals trying to save the world one blown-up enemy ship at a time. It’s being developed by Chuhai Labs, founded by Giles Goddard, one of the original programmers of Star Fox on the SNES. While we’ve gotten a few other spiritual successors like Whisker Squadron: Survivor, a new Star Fox doesn’t seem in the cards anytime soon, so the more the merrier. There’s no release date yet.

Kaidan is a samurai extraction game

Kaidan‘s trailer might be giving some people Soulslike flashbacks, but it actually seems like it might have more in common with the quick, arcade action of a 3D Ninja Gaiden. You play as a samurai in feudal Japan fighting Cthulhu-infused horrors, but the real twist is that it’s an extraction-lite. You’ll prepare for missions, select from multiple characters, and head into them solo or with an online group to fight mythical Yokai and try to come out the other side alive. It’s confirmed for a release on PC, but there’s no timeframe yet.

Project Bloomwalker is a Studio Ghibli-looking cozy sim with a twist

Project Bloomwalker is about removing blight from the world with a magical house that’s moved around by robotic legs. Once you settle down somewhere, you forage for materials, craft crystals, and try to get everything you need to restore the area to its natural splendor before moving on again. There are more than a few hints of Howl’s Moving Castle in the air, and the best part is that you get to recruit cute little creatures called Oddlings to help you with your survival crafting chores.

Lost Hellden has the PS2-era JRPG charm

Lost Hellden is an old-school Japanese RPG with shades of PS2 classics like Rogue Galaxy and Dragon Quest 8. There’s a job system, skill tree, and painterly backdrops to the areas you’re exploring. Final Fantasy veteran Hitoshi Sakimoto is helping with the music, and Gravity Rush artist Takeshi Oga is involved with the character art. Combat blends turn-based decision-making with real-time mechanics. There’s even a card-based mini-game. It’s all there on paper, though I’ve seen enough of these kinds of games fail to stick the landing to keep me cautiously optimistic.

Morsels is a Pokémon-like collectathon in the sewers

Morsels has you play as a mouse who transforms into strange creatures mutated by sewer life and has access to unique abilities. Structured as a roguelite, you can swap between the creatures you encounter on demand in order to fight your way back up to the surface and defeat the ruling regime of cats. Some are calling it a cross between The Binding of Isaac and Atomicorps. It looks really pretty and is mixing together enough different ideas to have a shot at distinguishing itself in a crowded genre. It’s set to launch on console and PC on November 18.

Source link

August 25, 2025 0 comments

Hermen Hulst, managing director and co-founder of Guerrilla Games, speaks during a Sony Corp. event ahead of the E3 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, California, U.S., on Monday, June 15, 2015.

Gaming Gear

After cancelling 8 of the 12 live service games Sony promised to release by 2025, PlayStation studios boss says the number doesn’t really matter: ‘What is important to me is having a diverse set of player experiences’

by admin August 25, 2025

By the time Sony started printing money releasing its exclusives onto PC, the company had made a name for itself delivering the biggest and best singleplayer games on the market. Its run of solo PS4 exclusives from Bloodborne to The Last of Us Part 2 was so strong that it blew Microsoft’s console strategy out of the water, in a way that the Xbox has arguably never recovered from. Even we PC heads with our vast Steam libraries had to acknowledge those games were pretty great.

Yet for the PlayStation 5, Sony decided it would almost completely ignore that legacy, and instead be all about live service. In 2022, former CEO Jim Ryan promised Sony would make and release 12 live-service games by 2025. As of 2025, only one of these—Helldivers 2—has enjoyed a successful launch. Seven were cancelled before release. Three are supposedly still in development (including the deeply troubled Marathon) and one of them was Concord.

It’s a strategy that has, so far, proven catastrophic, leaving the PS5 largely bereft of quality first-party exclusives. But if you thought gazing upon this virtual graveyard might cause Sony to reconsider its priorities, think again.

Concord – Gameplay Trailer | PS5 Games – YouTube

Watch On

Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Studio Business Group CEO Herman Hulst was recently asked about Sony’s live-service strategy by the Financial Times (via GamesRadar), as part of an in-depth article about the company’s broader business strategy. “The number [of live-service releases] is not so important,” Hulst told the FT. “What is important to me is having a diverse set of player experiences and a set of communities.”

Instead of changing strategy to avoid massive live-service failures like Concord, or cancellations like The Last of Us Online, Hulst says he basically wants Sony to fail better. “I don’t want teams to always play it safe, but I would like for us, when we fail, to fail early and cheaply.”

To change these massive failures into, er, smaller failures, Hulst says PlayStation has implemented several new safeguards, such as “more rigorous and more frequent testing in many different ways.” According to the FT, this includes a higher priority on group testing, more cross pollination of ideas within Sony, and “closer relationships” between top executives. “The advantage of every failure…is that people now understand how necessary that [oversight] is.”

I would be more convinced by what Hulst says if Sony had demonstrated its PS4-era strategy no longer worked before going all in on chasing the theoretical live-service money train. Those glossy singleplayer titles were often enormously expensive to make, and selling games in general has become significantly harder over the last five years. But while Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 seems to have been a commercial disappointment, God of War: Ragnarok was the fastest-selling PlayStation title ever on launch in 2022, and had sold 15 million copies a full year before it came to PC in September last year.

Best PC controller 2025

All our current recommendations

Source link

August 25, 2025 0 comments