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Embark unleashes The Finals Season 8

by admin September 12, 2025

Embark Studios have rolled out The Finals Season 8, bringing a few new weapons, systems, and balance changes. Medium gets the P90, a close quarters SMG, and Heavies gets the BFR Revolver, with low ammo and high damage. Embark have also introduced smoother destruction! To learn more, read the release below:

Stockholm – September 10, 2025 — Today, Embark Studios launched Season 8 of THE FINALS, the free-to-play, team-based multiplayer shooter. Season 8, “GAME TIME,” brings a major update to in-game destruction, designed to feel more immersive and visually striking than ever before. Alongside this overhaul, players can explore a range of exciting new features, including two highly anticipated new weapons, instant replay functionality to enhance competitive insight and skill development, mouse and keyboard support for console players, detailed match recaps, a fresh Battle Pass, an update to anti-cheat and much more. THE FINALS is available for free on PC via Steam, on PC cloud streaming via NVIDIA GeForce Now, on PlayStation 4 and 5 and on Xbox Series X|S.

Check out the official THE FINALS Season 8 launch trailer via YouTube here: https://youtu.be/wtubUGD2M-4?si=1q1MN8Hbfe2-MxX

Season 8 brings authentic and visually striking destruction with Smooth Destruction, which introduces new immersive features, such as cranes cutting through buildings and suspended structures reacting more realistically with massive impact. These elements increase the strategic destruction contestants can use to influence the outcome of their matches, offering new ways to outsmart opponents through precision and tactical play.

Players can also look forward to two new weapons for the Medium and Heavy archetypes:

P90 (Medium): A close-quarters weapon tailored for supportive playstyles and the first-ever SMG introduced for the Medium class.

BFR REVOLVER (Heavy): A medium-range weapon for the Heavy class that delivers high damage per shot, balanced by a lower ammo capacity and a high-risk, high-reward playstyle.

Season 8 also introduces quality of life features to enhance player experience and help strengthen their competitive skills, including:

Instant Replay (BETA): A major addition aimed at boosting competitive clarity and supporting skill development. Players can now replay intense gameplay moments linked directly to their opponent’s point of view, making it easier to identify the exact source of eliminations. Instant Replay has been a significant but fulfilling development challenge and is currently in BETA with ongoing improvements. (Note: This feature will not be compatible with Xbox Series S, PlayStation 4 and certain PC builds at launch.)

Updated Anti-Cheat: Embark remains committed to ensuring fair and competitive gameplay by maintaining structural integrity for all players in the Arena. The upgrade to the anti-cheat systems adds more tools and support from multiple external partners to enforce both detection and bans.

Mouse and Keyboard Support on Consoles: Console players will also benefit from mouse and keyboard support, catering to the growing prominence of competitive and cross-play communities where precision and control are key.

Match Recap: A newly redesigned end-of-round landing page that delivers detailed, easy-to-understand statistics. Players will receive performance ratings, more insights to help sharpen their gameplay and be rewarded with a player title.

Additionally, Season 8 will feature a new Battle Pass, offering players three tiers of rewards to choose from. “The Ultimate Tier,” will also be returning and is available for $29.99 USD, offering a fresh lineup of 11 premium, high-detail cosmetics designed to stand out in the arena. This updated edition brings even more to the table: more dynamic Elite Skins, increased Multibucks earn-back (2,575), a +25% Match XP Boost and 20 levels unlocked instantly.

Read the full breakdown of what’s coming in THE FINALS Season 8 on the website HERE.

Keep up with the world’s fastest-growing game show via reachthefinals.com and join the community on Discord, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Threads, TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.

To keep up with The Finals, stay tuned to GamingTrend!

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September 12, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

Pop Mart Unleashes Its Blind Box ‘Chucky’ Collection Just in Time for Halloween

by admin September 11, 2025

Pop Mart, purveyor of Labubu, is branching out in the world of creepy pop culture collectibles with a little help from Chucky. The blind box drop arrives September 12, timed to coincide with Halloween season and aiming to bolster the company’s roster of animation-influenced characters. At the recent San Diego Comic-Con, Pop Mart made a splash with the Monsters series Big Into Energy, Skullpanda, and Peach Riot, as well as its latest Star Wars line.

During io9’s preview at SDCC, Emily Brough, Pop Mart’s head of IP licensing in the Americas, talked about the company’s plans leading into Halloween. “We have this amazing product and these amazing characters and then we’re just extending the excitement and innovation to every touchpoint with our fans. We just love doing that and we love just continuing to bring the creativity of our characters,” she said of creating experiences around specific seasons, including the spooky Chucky release.

The Chucky collab is such a natural choice for horror fans. It will feature toy box-style packaging for various incarnations of the character throughout Don Mancini’s franchise legacy. “We like to lean in, especially in the U.S. Halloween is such a meaningful holiday, so we had a lot of fun here really leaning into that with product development,” Brough said of the Universal Pictures terror toy going mini and all in on the blind-box craze.

As someone scared of owning a 1:1 Chucky, I’m more comfortable with a miniature threat or pulling a Glen or Tiffany. “We made them kind of cute because that’s what we do. There will be more and more coming out around Halloween and some other key holidays for us,” Brough said.

We’re hoping for a second series of Chucky blind boxes because, as fans know, there are so many variants from the movies and the TV show we’d love to get our hands on—give us Phantom Chucky, the Colonel, or even more of Tiffany and Glen(da).

Brough continued, “We’re excited to bring [top IP] collaborations from beloved studios all over the world, and we’re also continuing to build out our artist roster and have the roster of artists that we work with reflect the diversity of the markets that we’re in. So we’re really, really excited to continue to bring in new artists and new IP and then extend those stories into the Pop Mart universe as well.”

As far as extending excitement for their existing licenses and their original IP drops, Brough elaborated on how the new toy titan aims to engage its audience.

“There’s so much great storytelling within all of the characters. At the core we are a pop culture entertainment company and we work with these amazing independent artists from all over the world to bring their characters to life and really bring the storytelling to life through collectible design, [but] we’re looking for ways to continue to extend their stories,” she said of the potential for their properties, such as Kasing Lung’s Labubu, to find life in other entertainment mediums.

“We’ve been doing it kind of [through] short animation for the social media channels to share a little bit more about the story of the series or the stories of the characters and every series is really building out either the story or the personality for each person. That is something that we are doing now and we’re looking forward to continuing to build out the storytelling in new and innovative ways.”

When we asked if that involves U.S. versions of the overseas pop-up and theme park offerings to meet Labubu, Brough doesn’t deny that could be in the works.

“Later this year we’ll be looking at some pop-up shop experiences, and we’ll continue to extend those out throughout not only later this year but also into next year,” she said.

As for getting immersive experiences such as Popland in the states, she added, “It’s a format that we have globally and that we’ve seen a lot of success with so we’re looking forward to bringing that to the US as well as some of those offline experiences. Popland is expanding right now, so over there in Beijing, as the offline experience, [and] we’re constantly looking for ways to extend that.”

Check out the Chucky drop in the gallery below. Buy online here or at your local Pop Mart location beginning September 12.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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September 11, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Atomfall’s second expansion, The Red Strain, unleashes its crimson tendrils next month

by admin August 31, 2025

Dig your finest cricket bat out of the loft – Atomfall developers Rebellion have revealed its second story expansion is set to arrive in September. It’s dubbed The Red Strain, and looks to star a not-Robobrain who’s connected to a bunch of crimson plantlife filling the Cumberland quarantine zone.

This second DLC follows Wicked Isle, the first Atomfall expansion that you got automatically if you plumped for the deluxe edition of the radioactive pasty survivathon. I still need to go back and play that expansion, and this next add-on looks like an intriguing excuse to do so.

As announced by Rebellion’s fittingly brief blog post and trailer, The Red Strain will be released on September 16th. There’s precious little further info about it at the moment, but the devs have whispered that we can “expect a highly confidential new location and plenty more mysteries to uncover”.

As for the trailer, which you can watch below, it shows off what looks to be a plague of red plants linked to a human-brained robot that’s part of an organisation going by the acronym CORE. One would assume they’re different to, or possibly an offshoot of, the base game’s British Atomic Research Division (BARD). One thing’s for sure, we can expect more rooting through old facilities full of malfunctioning doodads and god knows what else. There’ll be more details forthcoming as the cerise exertion nears, or so Rebellion promise.

Watch on YouTube

Our James liked Atomfall, writing in his review:

It’s a shame that next to the investigating, Atomfall’s shooting, sneaking, and cricket batting don’t deliver the same joys. Still, they’re competent enough not to get in the way, and with a little finesse it’s possible to enjoy extended bouts of that rich, intricate sleuthing without doing a single violence at all. Don’t let those village pub bores get you down: there are far worse places for a forgetful soldier-detective to be.

I’d generally agree with all of that, even if I was maybe a bit more downbeat in my review of it for my old home, mainly because I felt its endings were a bit too on the muted side to be truly satsifying conclusions to all of the great intrigue built up as you wander the hostile sectors of the zone. To me, that robbed Atomfall of totally nailing the ideal short-but-deep experience Rebellion were going for, but it’s all a matter of perspective. Those more into Atomfall’s British sci-fi inspirations than they are keyed up by Fallout to expect more in-your-face radioactive wackiness might find these conclusions perfectly fine.

Either way, I definitely need to give Wicked Isle a go, so am making a point of sliding the game up the great backlog list. I’ve tattoed said list across my inner thigh, so that every time I have impure throughts, I’m reminded that I bought The Saboteur in a Steam sale ages ago and still have zero hours in it.

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August 31, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

Whisper of the House takes the cosy isometric decorating of Unpacking and unleashes it upon an entire town like an ultra-relaxing endless mode

by admin August 21, 2025

Unpacking is one of my favourite videogames, where you grab things out of boxes and neatly pop them around an isometric home. It’s pretty linear though—not a complaint, it needs to be to serve its excellent narrative—but I’ve longed for a similar game with fewer shackles ever since.

Whisper of the House is that exact game, if my time with its demo is anything to go by. It takes the same cosy isometric vibes with wee pixel art decor as Unpacking, but gives me that bit more freedom to decorate however I want.

(Image credit: GD Studio)

Instead of following one character’s life as told through the places they live, Whisper of the House plonks me in a town where I can rearrange both my own space and the spaces of villagers who reside there. I’m first tasked with getting my own place in order, before mail requests come through each morning from folk who want my help moving in.

A wee robot helps me pull items out of a moving box one by one, and I can rotate objects and place them on top of each other—plants that go on shelves, boxes that perch atop refrigerators, plushies that adorn an otherwise plain bedspread. Each location has multiple rooms, but I’m not actually confined to placing the objects inside each one.

Wanna stick a microwave in the hallway? A little weird, but sure thing. You’re the interior designer. Want to keep every photo in one specific location? You can easily bring items between rooms as you please. It’s not quite as tactile as Unpacking—I can’t open every single cupboard and drawer to store things out of sight, which bummed me out a little—but every item is gorgeously crafted with a wee description when you hover over it.

(Image credit: GD Studio)

There are some loose parameters around each villager request. My first job is the dog-loving Luna, and while I’m given free reign across most of her house, her one request is that I create a gallery of photos in her hallway. My second task is a little more out there, requiring me to literally go back in time and help my client clean up his move-in day mess, which I guess makes things better in the future. It wasn’t quite what I was expecting, but having to tidy up everything scattered across a tiny apartment broke up the standard “grab item from box, place item” pace.

One of my favourite little additions in Whisper of the House, though, is being able to roam around the town and rummage in various dumpsters for trinkets and doodads. I am an absolute clutter fiend in The Sims—if it doesn’t look majorly lived in, I don’t want it—so grabbing random Ramune bottles and snacks to adorn my tiny loft apartment with was a real treat.

Even more furniture can be unlocked through nabbing vouchers by completing tasks or picking them up out in the world and then spending them on decor loot boxes. Normally I’d much prefer to pick and choose items myself, but being given random pieces encouraged me to think outside the box and use items I would have normally condemned to my storage for all eternity.

The demo is pretty short overall, but thankfully it’s not a long wait to dip my toe into the full thing, as Whisper of the House launches on August 27.

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August 21, 2025 0 comments