I was just pondering writing something about Subnautica, inspired by revelations that there’s a new Subnautica project on the boil, and along comes the decidedly Subnautica-esque Honeycomb: The World Beyond with a trailer. Developed by Polish team Frozen Way, whose other projects include, erm, Hairdresser Simulator, it casts you as Hennessy, a human xenobiologist who is starting afresh on the alien planet of Sota7.

As in Unknown Worlds’ survival sim, you’ll search various biomes for resources, build solar-powered habitats on stilts with nice, wide windows, and gradually amass a database of local animals and plants. Unlike in Subnautica, you won’t be constantly at risk of suffocation.

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Final Fantasy is a staple in JRPGs and video games as a whole. It might have more entries in it than any other series out there and it won’t be slowing down anytime soon. On top of that, thanks to its anthology-like nature, if one Final Fantasy game doesn’t click for you, there’s a good chance another one will. As a result, ranking the Final Fantasy series can be highly contentious. Everyone has a lot of love for the first entry they played, and then there are heavy hitters like Final Fantasy X and VII, too. 

However, the staff here at Game Informer did the seemingly impossible: we ranked all 19 mainline numbered Final Fantasy games, including their direct sequels, from worst to best. As a reminder, this ranking is the sum of collective thoughts of the Game Informer staff and your own personal ranking will almost certainly be different. We’d love to know your ranking, though, so after checking out ours, drop your own in the comments below!

UPDATE 29/11/23: Following its announcement last week, Killer Instinct Anniversary Edition is now available across Xbox and PC. It is also on Game Pass.

"We're so excited to see all the incredible things you'll do with the brand-new meta," the team wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

You can find more details in the blog post here.

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Both the Steam Deck and Steam Deck OLED come bundled with cases – new and improved ones, if you get a 1TB OLED – so it wouldn’t initially make sense to invest in a third-party one. But Steam Deck accessories can take many forms, and I’ve been particularly convinced by the case style that combines a space-saving protective skin with a tougher removeable cover. Since the Dbrand Project Killswitch isn’t playing Black Friday ball, it falls to my other favourite, JSAUX’s ModCase, to provide the bargains.

It works thusly: instead of taking your Steam Deck in and out of a zip-up sarcophagus every time you want to play it on the move, you simply leave the handheld wrapped in the ModCase’s snug, rubbery skin, simultaneously protecting it and adding grip as you hold it. The front cover simply snaps on and off as needed. It’s a lighter, more compact alternative to a full case that, I can say from experience, absolutely shields the precious Deck effectively enough for everyday bag duty. As the name suggests, it’s modular as well, so you can mount other accessories (like kickstands, power banks and even a secondary cooling fan) to the back of the skin.

Just want the case? No bother, that’s down from $30 from $26. There’s no UK version of the JSAUX store, unfortunately, though JSAUX ships internationally. Just click through the link below, and select which kit you'd like.

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Former Rockstar North developer Obbe Vermeij had been enjoying a few weeks of sharing some decades-old tales. Reminiscing on his many years with the GTA developer, Vermeij took to his personal blog to recall revealing inside stories behind games like San Andreas and Vice City, and everyone was having a good time.…

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The upcoming PC requirements for Tekken 8 are now available on Steam.

According to the platform, PC users will need to ensure they have 100GB of installation space available.

Tekken 8 developer Bandai Namco has also listed 16 GB RAM as its recommended memory requirement. While this does seem to be along the standard line for PC games today, it is still twice that of Mortal Kombat 1's memory recommendations.

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I know this is the second Crucial P5 Plus deal we’ve posted about in two days, but hey, it’s Black Friday week. ‘Tis the season. Besides, this time there’s something for us Britain-dwelling lot as well, as the 2TB P5 Plus’s price has been slashed 60% to £88 on Amazon UK – the lowest it’s ever been.

This is, to be clear, an almost mystifyingly small amount of money for a 2TB NVMe SSD that’s also capable of real high-end transfer speeds and game load times. Maybe not to the standards of its successor, the Crucial T500, but this is still a competitively quick-acting drive with oodles of space for game installations. The same goes for its heatsink-equipped edition, which also happens to be on sale in the US at $88, making it (currently) cheaper than the non-heatsink 2TB model. Good deals all round, then – told you ‘twas the season.

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This is for all the Hunters out there who appreciate the sneaker side of Destiny 2’s combat sandbox. From overshields, to invisibility, to Volatile Rounds, the Exotic armors found in this ranked list should give plenty of insight into many varied build choices for your Void Hunter.

With that said, here is Destiny 2: the top 10 Exotic armor for Void Hunters in Destiny 2.

While we’re all waiting on tenterhooks to learn when Naughty Dog will be announcing a re-remaster for the just revealed remaster of The Last Of Us Part II, in the meantime we shall make do with more news from this first reworking of 2020's horror sequel: Three “lost levels” are to be added to the game, and one of them…

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Dear Daniel is a scourge upon this planet. Okay. Maybe that is a bit harsh. He’s a cash-in character, but perhaps more of a forgettable annoyance in our everyday life. Would that we could say the same for Hello Kitty Island Adventure, a game in which Dear Daniel is not only the worst Visitor, but a blight upon anyone attempting to get specific characters to stop by and stay forever.

I’m not going to be mean and make this about looks, even though I’m not a fan of Dear Daniel’s design. (A few strands of hair on his forehead to differentiate him is quite lazy.) This is about his nature. The character is part of the Visitor tutorial in the game. This means his requirements to occupy a cabin are easy to clear. It needs to be in the Seaside Resort area, as that is where Hello Kitty lives, and it needs to have three pieces of furniture. Simple!

Also, frustrating! Most other Visitors require specific pieces of furniture from certain types, and often at least three pieces. Because Dear Daniel will set up shop — for multiple days without asking which is very rude — in any cabin in that area that even vaguely fits his requirements, it can lock you out of getting other people to visit. The place you might have specifically prepared for them will have this basic cat squatting in it!

Intellision has released Amico Home, an app for Android phones, as the company continues to struggle getting its hardware out the door.

But you'll actually need two phones to play it - one to act as a controller, while a separate mobile device needs to have the Amico Controller app installed and be connected to the same wireless network.

Alternatively, Intellivision states the official Amico hardware controllers are compatible with the app via Bluetooth, except they haven't been released yet and the company didn't specify when customers can expect them.

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According to a new report, 83 percent of games released on mobile platforms fail within three years of launch. In addition, 43 percent of mobile games are cancelled during development.

The report, conducted by Atomik Research for SuperScale's Good Games Don't Die and shared by Eurogamer's sister site GamesIndustry.biz, was based on interviews with 500 game developers, from both here in the UK and across the pond in the US.

The report stated the majority of mobile games reached peak revenue within the first 12 months of their release. While 76 percent reach their peak revenue in the first year, only four percent peak in the second year of release.

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Made by solo dev Andy Brophy, Knuckle Sandwich is a turn-based RPG that's about guiding a bloke through an island paradise and eventually uncovering some weird mystery. Its main hook? Turn-based battles are filled with WarioWare-style minigames, many of which are unique to the kooky residents or rats you come up against. Unfortunately, I'd say its main hook is actually its most painful barb, and one you're barely able to extract by flicking some switches in the settings menu. A shame then, as exploring its strange world and absorbing its bonkers story beats is a wonderful thing marred by dire fights.

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Former Mass Effect lead writer Mac Walters has said his new studio Worlds Untold will be focused on creating fresh worlds and characters without limitation.

Its first project will be a near-future action-adventure game set "in a breathtaking world filled with mystery and exploration".

The recently-announced Worlds Untold is based in Vancouver with a fully remote operation, and has been injected with cash from Chinese game giant NetEase.

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If rumour speak true, the next Call of Duty game will be another entry in the Black Ops series. It'll also, allegedly, take place during the first Gulf War across 1990 and 1991, in which a US-led coalition of countries including the UK, Saudi Arabia and Egypt invaded Iraq in response to the Saddam Hussein government's conquest of Kuwait.

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Let's get this out of the way first: KnifePlayground: Horror Battle Royale is an absolutely terrible name for game. You might as well call Halo "GunMap: Alien Crowd Control", or Baldur's Gate 3 "TownDungeon: Party Enhancement Simulator". But the project beneath the moniker has something to it. Announced just today and created by small Brazilian team MadMozer, it's a first-person, multiplayer-focussed, Unreal Engine deathgame that traps you in a randomly generated mansion with a bunch of archetypal horror movie munsters - demon clowns, cursed puppets, toothy ghouls and hooded axe-murderers.

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 developer Sledgehammer Games has said it is "investigating" an exploit that allows players to wriggle around on the floor while prone at fast speeds.

It leaves you looking like some kind of human Call of Duty snake, but it also leaves you able to zoom around while lying prone - a very handy tactic for winning gunfights.

Now, Sledgehammer has taken notice and dubbed Call of Duty snaking as a PC exploit to be looked at further. "We're investigating an exploit that allows players to sprint while appearing in the prone animation," the developer wrote on the official CODUPdates account on X, formerly Twitter.

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Time for something a bit different from the usual Black Friday PC deals: Sony’s DualSense gamepad, my personal favourite controller, is down to £40 here in the UK. That matches its previous all-time low, and to sweeten the deal – in the traditional sense, not the Nate Trying To Make Me Do Horrible Things sense – you can get a £5 ShopTo gift card in the process. To gift to yourself? I believe so. This deal applies to six different DualSense colour options too, from PS5-standard white to a cool blue and a dubiously useful camo pattern.

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Andrzej Sapkowski may have penned The Witcher novels, which in turn inspired both CD Projekt Red's video game series and Netflix's TV adaptation, but that doesn't mean that the streaming service ever listened to his feedback.

While attending Vienna Comic Con, Sapkowski was asked about the various adaptations that have stemmed from his original works. Speaking with Cerealkillers, the author said that every visual adaptation of his The Witcher series was "strange" for him to see, because as a writer he only uses his words.

"My raw material when I work, it's only letters. I do not describe pictures. I don't see any pictures. I use the letters only because I know that my reader will see in the book the letters only, not the pictures. So I have to do with my letters to make the reader imagine the picture, not the other way around... so every [visual] adaptation, it's simply strange for me," he explained.

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Virtual reality has come a long way since its resurgence in the last decade but two problems remain: image clarity and field of view. There's always the feeling that you're looking through a pair of binoculars, your view limited by the screens placed directly in front of your eyes. This is the problem the Pimax Crystal was designed to solve, with a huge field of view and more raw pixels than any other VR headset, but its $1599 asking price (currently reduced to $1440) and steep system requirements raise questions about its viability.

After testing the Crystal for a few weeks, I have some answers. Though there are a lot of hoops to jump through - and some puzzling design choices - when the Crystal shines, it delivers perhaps the most stunning VR experience you can get today.

After all, VR games are unique in that the headset used to play them can have such a profound impact on your experience. Unlike a typical monitor, the headset controls your input, your movement, what you see and how clearly you see it. All of this must be balanced with weight, size, and price, making the process of choosing a headset even more challenging. That's why I'd like to walk you through my experience with the Crystal, so you can judge whether its obvious strengths can overcome its more subtle limitations.

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The Pokémon Company is kicking things off for Christmas with a huge 5m (16.4ft) Poké Plush tree set up at the North Atrium in Westfield London.

The tree is made up of over 800 plushies, and in an artist's impression shared by the company it consists of numerous species including Ditto, Piplup and Grookey, all topped off with large Pikachu wearing a festive jumper.

The Poké Plush tree can be visited at the North Atrium in White City's Westfield shopping centre from today until 4th December. If you manage to get a visit in, please make sure to take a picture!

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Sony has begun taking UK pre-orders for the PlayStation 5 Slim, its redesigned PS5 model that now offers an optional disc drive.

The PS5 UK release date is next Wednesday 29th November, and as of this morning you can now pre-order one via Sony's own online store PlayStation Direct, priced £479.99. This is for the model with a disc drive, rather than without.

Other retailers have begun offering the PS5 Slim too, with Amazon offering both the PS5 Slim with a disc drive (also at £479) and the PS5 Slim without a disc drive (for £389). Both models feature the same 1TB of onboard storage.

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Black Friday week has already yielded some tempting deals on Nvidia’s latest mid-range graphics cards, the RTX 4060 and the RTX 4060 Ti. Up at the top of the GPU pyramid, meanwhile, AMD cards are getting in the act as well. Like, say, this £200-off deal on the MSI Radeon RX 7900 XTX Gaming Trio Classic, bringing it down to £900. Still a lot of money, sure, but the RX 7900 XTX is the absolute crème de la crème of the current Radeon lineup, with native 4K performance on par with that of Nvidia’s RTX 4080.

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I swear that London used to have a palace situated on a bridge. I've been googling around this morning and I think I might have been thinking of Nonsuch House, which was on the old London Bridge. Four storeys and built in 1579, I've also just learned that Nonsuch House was the first recorded pre-fab building in history, having been built and then dismantled in the Netherlands and then shipped over to London where they put it back together again.

The reason I've been thinking about all this comes down to an old picture I once saw of London Bridge with this palace on it, and all these other buildings stacked around it too, fairly crowding off the bridge itself in every direction and hanging out over the water. It's exactly the kind of look that Pile Up! traffics in, and I'm getting quietly hooked on Pile Up! at the moment. (That said, I'm going to skip the exclamation point from now on because it keeps bodging up my typing.)

I first read about the game on RPS, where Katharine Castle referred to it as a sort of spin on Townscaper with a bit more actual game to it. That's spot on. Another way of putting it might be: it's Townscaper but everyone's furious with you from the start.

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The Naruto franchise has a story spanning over 26 seasons total between both the Naruto and Naruto Shippuden series. With such a high number of seasons, it’s only natural that there have been some iconic and memorable opening credits throughout. We’ve rounded up fifteen of the best, based on music, animation, and imagery/symbolism to the show, so tighten your ninja headbands and follow along below to relive these moments.

15. Seishun Kyousoukyoku

Seishun Kyousoukyoku is the Naruto opening that revolves around the Sasuke retrieval ark, with Naruto, Shikamaru, Neji, Choji, and Kiba forming a special squad to try to track him down and bring him back to his home in the Hidden Leaf. There are a lot of really interesting angles used as the team runs and jumps through the trees, and the song portrays the perfect sense of urgency that this retrieval mission has bestowed on the Genin.