Video gaming group Aonic has acquired VR developer and publisher nDreams.

Aonic previously received a minority stake in nDreams - which is known for the likes of Synapse, Far Cry: Dive Into Insanity and Powerwash Simulator's VR port - when it invested $35m in the VR-focused studio in March of last year.

The company has now fully acquired nDreams for a total enterprise value close to $110m.

Read more

Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter's #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. This week, I bring you not just screenshots but a screenshot of an options menu too, so I'll hear no more griping about all the videos thank you very much. Hop on in to admire automative combat, cool platforming, an infinite city, and more attractive and interesting indie games.

Read more

Capcom have announced a showcase for November 28th to delve into Dragon’s Dogma 2, a sequel to their oddball fantasy RPG from 2012. That’s exciting news to me, since the original’s small-person-climbs-big-monster combat was pure fun to simply watch. Doing the actual monster-stabbing was even better, though, and thankfully the sequel’s release date doesn’t seem that far off if a videogame ratings board is to be believed (accidental ratings boards leaks being the way many release dates are revealed these days).

Read more

The CEO of Immortals of Aveum developer Ascendant Studios has said releasing the game during such a busy window "100 percent" contributed to its poor sales figures.

Bret Robbins made the statement in an interview with Windows Central, where he discussed the reception to Immortals of Aveum, the subsequent layoffs at the studio, and putting the game onto subscription services.

Immortals of Aveum released on 22nd August 2023, which meant it was competing with the likes of Baldur's Gate 3 (which "no one anticipated" would be so successful, Robbins said) and Armored Core 6, with Starfield releasing soon after. The studio knew Immortals' release date was in a packed window, and Robbins said "trying to create awareness for us [as a new studio and IP] was really, really difficult".

Read more

Insomniac Games' take on Wolverine is reportedly set to release in 2025 as a PlayStation 5 exclusive.

That's according to internet tipster DanielRPK , who is perhaps best known for their scoops on Marvel TV shows and movies.

DanielRPK said the upcoming Wolverine game will be, perhaps unsurprisingly, a much darker and more violent game than the studio's Spider-Man titles. Additionally, the tipster has said it will feature Madripoor, Marvel's fictional island often associated with X-Men stories (which popped up in the MCU relatively recently in the Falcon and the Winter Soldier TV series).

Read more

Fortnite OG is a short season and we will need as much XP as we can get to level up and claim everything in the OG Pass before the new chapter begins. With that in mind, we have collated a bunch of the best Fortnite OG XP map codes for you to try out.

These are all tried and tested XP maps we use during Fortnite OG. Don’t forget to favorite any map you enjoyed so you can easily find it again!

Want to get the best value gamepad for PC? Microsoft's Xbox Wireless Controller is down to £39 at Amazon UK, a great price for a controller that is widely supported in PC games, with Bluetooth, 2.4GHz Xbox wireless and USB-C connectivity. These controllers also work on Xbox Series and One consoles, and plenty of phones and tablets too.

A wide range of colours are available too - I spotted white, purple, red, lime and blue options all available at £40 or below. I also spotted a similar deal on Amazon USA, with the price dropping to $45 on some colourways.

Read more

The Logitech G Pro Wireless was one of the first mice to kick off the ultralight trend, offering incredible agility, bulletproof Lightspeed wireless and high-end components at under 80 grams. Its successor, the G Pro X Superlight, is even lighter at 63g with a refined shape and even better specs, resulting in its adoption by a huge percentage of active esports pros and competitively-minded amateurs alike.

Today the Superlight model is down to £90 on Amazon UK versus its normal £140, a £50 discount that means it's a great time to see why this mouse is so popular - and one of my all-time favourites.

Read more

Back in September 2023, Square Enix announced a FFVII Ever Crisis PC version would appear on Steam. Now we’re a step closer to that, as the product page is live on the storefront.

The Steam page for the game only notes that it is “coming soon.” No release window is mentioned. It can be added to a wishlist, however. 

There are also a number of screenshots and a trailer for it already live on the page. All of these show scenes present in the base version of the game that appeared at launch. There aren’t any screenshots with young Sephiroth in them. He appeared in the game post-launch in the First Soldier storyline. It also doesn’t show any events, such as the FFIX one running in FFVII Ever Crisis during November 2023. 

The results of the latest Splatoon 3 Splatfest are officially in. Players competed all weekend long to determine which greeting is the most superior: handshake, fistbump, or hug. Team Handshake was declared the winner after 48 hours of Turf War matches.

The five categories that decided the winner of the Splatfest were a sneak peak round, popularity, open battles, pro battles, and tricolor battles.

A canny Stardew Valley player has devised an intriguing way of decorating the in-game spa thanks to a little-known bug that lets players access their inventory out of bounds.

By spamming weapon attacks, ItsJinosaur has been able to fully customise the bathhouse/spa, arguably one of Stardew's most overlooked, and under-used, landmarks.

"The Bathhouse looked a little decrepit, so I decided to touch things up and made everything look better," ItsJinosuar explained on the game's subreddit page.

Read more

Respawn says it has "resolved" the issues that scuppered its recent rollout of cross-progression on Apex Legends.

In a message posted to social media, Respawn said that as the issues have now been addressed, it will continue "rolling out more waves over the next few days" but advised players not to unlink their Play Apex accounts for the time being.

"We recently resolved several issues related to cross-progression and will continue rolling out more waves over the next few days," Respawn tweeted over the weekend.

Read more

A Felix the Cat collection has popped up on the ESRB website.

As spotted by the Nintendo Switch subreddit, the collection – in which players "traverse 2D pixellated environments using gadgets and vehicles to defeat small cartoony creatures" – looks to be coming to PC, PS4, PS5, and Nintendo Switch.

Sadly, there's no mention of an Xbox-flavoured release just yet.

Read more

Two as yet unannounced Borderlands games have appeared on the LinkedIn profile of a former Gearbox employee.

A former studio technical director who had previously worked at Lost Boys Interactive on a three-month contract has included references to Borderlands 4 and Tiny Tina's Wonderland 2 on their professional profile, even though neither game has been formally confirmed.

In the director's own words, they supervised 66 employees across the team to "plan and engineer development on Borderlands 4 UE4" and "Tiny Tina's Wonderland 2 UE4", as well as a whole of other games in Take-Two's considerable portfolio.

Read more

The Nintendo Wii had so many good titles—Mario Kart Wii, a great port of Okami, Monster Hunter Tri—but it also had a deluge of awful games that weren’t worth the material they were printed on. We’re not talking about games that are so bad they’re good. No, we’re talking about the worst Nintendo Wii games everyone loves to hate.

10. Anubis II

It’s a miracle Anubis II was released, let alone ported to the Nintendo Wii. If you can spare 15 to 30 minutes, that’s all you need to beat the game, provided you manage to avoid enough bugs and glitches. None of the levels offer any real challenge other than timing and the occasional enemy. Heck, you’ll spend more time fighting the camera than you do enemies!

Some of my earliest childhood memories involves me staying up at night to watch reruns of Gargoyles, which I thought was one of the coolest show to ever appear on television before I even understood what “cool” meant. Gargoyles seemed so dark and edgy compared to other Disney Channel cartoons airing at the time. Seeing Goliath soar across the skyline of New York, watching him constantly battle his former love Demona while growing closer with his new love Elisa, and seeing what new plans Xanatos had in store for the Manhattan Clan of gargoyles always kept me on my toes. Despite my interest in the show, I never once played the video game adaption that releases on the Sega Genesis. My mom refused to buy me any video game consoles when I was younger, believing I would treat them with a passing interest, thusly wasting money on an expensive hobby. I remember crying at the store when I saw the game and thought I would miss out on some integral story from the show if I didn’t have the game. 

It is probably for the best that my young child self never had the chance to play Gargoyles. 28 years later and I’ve finally had the chance to play Gargoyles Remastered, and while it certainly isn’t the worst tie-in game I’ve ever played, it definitely isn’t the greatest and is at best an outdated relic of the 1990s side-scrolling platform adventure genre.

Warner Bros. has denied claims its upcoming Wonder Woman project will be a live-service game.

A recent job listing for Warner Bros. and developer Monolith Productions' upcoming Wonder Woman game sought a 'Lead Software Engineer, Gameplay', with "live software product or game" experience listed as a "nice to have".

Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, this led some to speculate that Warner Bros. might have been looking to incorporate live service elements in the upcoming title.

Read more

Logitech's MX Master series of office mice are incredible for getting stuff done, thanks to their iconic wide shapes, multiple scroll wheels and powerful software. Today the newest version, the Master 3S, has dropped from an RRP of £120 to £82 at Amazon UK, a historic low price.

This latest edition is ideal for writing, programming, content creation and surfing the web, thanks to quiet button clicks, a fast and accurate 'magspeed' scroll wheel (and a secondary thumb wheel), and a high-end 8K laser sensor that allows for accurate tracking on any surface, even glass.

Read more

AMD's Ryzen 7 7800X3D is the best value gaming CPU by a wide margin, often outgunning the Intel Core i9 14900K while costing nearly half the price.

Today the CPU is down to just £329.99 at Overclockers and Amazon in the UK or $369 at Best Buy and Amazon in the US - with a free copy of the ambitious Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora game (to be released in early December) included.

Read more

Dragon’s Breath is a weapon that had humble beginnings in Destiny 1 before being revamped and now returning this year to Destiny 2 with further sweeping changes. So, here’s why Season 23’s Dragon’s Breath Heavy Exotic will be Amazing for Scorch Builds.

Destiny 1 was neat because rocket launchers didn’t always have only one rocket in the chamber. Sometimes, you would find a rocket launcher that could shoot two rockets at a time. Enter Dragon’s Breath and its chamber that could hold three rockets. But that’s not all because Dragon’s Breath’s munitions would leave behind a solar flare that acts much like Destiny 2’s Solar Grenade.

Masahiro Ito shared some details of his involvement with a new Silent Hill 2 Pyramid Head (Red Pyramid Thing) figure. This particular statue of Pyramid Head is from Gecco, and it started shipping out between March and May 2023.

Gecco describes this figure as a statue that recreates details the Silent Hill 2 team wanted on Pyramid Head, but could not put on the in-game model due to the PlayStation’s technical limitations. Because it’s wielding a long spear, it looks more like the executioner from Silent Hill’s in-game history. Other details include open wounds, torn clothing, and a rough texture on his iconic pyramid helmet. It also looks like the helmet broke at some point, and he fixed it up with a patch of leather.

Here are some more pictures of the Pyramid Head statue:

With its remarkable OLED HDR display, dramatically improved battery life and numerous quality of life fixes, the new Steam Deck OLED is an exceptional PC handheld - but there was something else I noticed during testing that I wanted to check out. The system felt snappier and more responsive - and it is. Backers of the DF Supporter Program were also expecting response time improvements from the new screen which further motivated my testing and yes, it turns out that Steam Deck OLED doesn't just last longer and look better, depending on your sensitivity to input lag, it plays better too.

At a basic level you can define input lag as the time taken between user input - like pressing a button - then the resulting action happening on-screen. There's always going to be processing time within the game engine itself, which is the time taken to process the input from the player through the game logic and then through the renderer. This will vary quite dramatic in of itself from game to game. And then there's extra lag from the display itself.

In receiving an impressive upgrade to its display, Steam Deck OLED attacks input lag seemingly on two fronts. First of all, the response time of the panel itself in like-for-like display refresh rates seems to be faster on my OLED Deck up against my launch LCD model. So, comparing the LCD panel at 60Hz with a game running at 60fps up against OLED in the same scenario, the OLED is typically 10ms faster to respond in my testing. But there's more than that - the OLED can top out at 90Hz, opening the door to even faster response. You may not be playing too many games at 90fps on Steam Deck, but the 90Hz panel can play a key role when the Deck's frame-rate limiting options are engaged - and you'll be using those a lot.

The first volume of the Higurashi When They Cry: Gou manga hits hard, so it should be no surprise the second does as well. However, in this instance it is because of the hope that sometimes appears throughout the tales and the promise of perhaps seeing characters get to be truly happy.

Editor’s Note: While there will be no specific spoilers for the stories contained in Higurashi When They Cry: Gou volume 2, there will be general ones for the situation in the manga and game.

While the first volume of the Higurashi When They Cry: Gou manga focused on Rena, Mion, and Shion, as well as setting the stage for things happening in Hinamizawa ahead of the Cotton Drifting Festival, the second really stars Satoko and Rika. It’s a smart decision, given the situations both characters faced in the game. Both of their routes can involve more spoilers, especially with Rika. 

Infinity Ward has opened a "brand new studio" in Austin, Texas.

Confirmation came via a recruitment advertisement on Activision's own website, in which the developer put out a call to recruit an "expert UI engineer" to work on Call of Duty at the new studio.

"Founded in 2002, Infinity Ward is the original studio behind the Call of Duty franchise," the developer said. "The titles developed by Infinity Ward have won more than 200 'Game of the Year' awards and 100 'Editor's Choice' awards, among many other industry accolades.

Read more

Fan game Holo no Suika is now available in English. As of the time of writing, there’s also an in-game event going on where you make the biggest Kanata you can.

The in-game Kanata event adds an additional layer of strategy to Holo no Suika. Aside from fusing Hololive members together like normal, you can also fuse them with a Kanata to make her big. What Hololive member you need to make to fuse with Kanata will change depending on how big she gets. For example, in the beginning, you simply need to fuse Kanata with Kanata. But later, you have to fuse VTubers like Fubuki with the Kanata to increase Kanata’s size.

Holo no Suika is a fan game that is obviously based off the viral hit, Suika Game (Watermelon Game). This game is free to play and it came out before Cover implemented its Holo Indie service. Developers who want to make fan games based on Hololive can sign up with Holo Indie to receive support from Cover in distributing the game. Cover also allows developers with Holo Indie to monetize their game and receive compensation.

Sundays are for cleaning the tea stains out of your mugs. Before you scrub, let's read this week's best writing about games (and game related things).

Read more

It may come as a surprise, given how accustomed we are to games weighing in at hundreds of gigabytes, that the entire Nintendo 64 library comes to less than 25GB. Including Japanese exclusives, that's 388 games - 7530 fewer than released on the PlayStation. It's odd, then, in such a relatively small selection, how much room there is for games to fall through the cracks and slip out of our collective consciousness.

One can justifiably blame this on the titanic status of many Nintendo 64 titles. Super Mario 64 revolutionised platforming as the genre moved to three dimensions, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remains one of the most beloved games in our history, and one can make the case that few first-person shooters have lived up to Goldeneye's legacy. The list goes on, longer than one would think from the miniscule catalogue from which it's sourced.

But those games mask a wider catalogue that didn't become cultural touchstones. Games like Hybrid Heaven and the criminally underrated (and unfinished) Holy Magic Century (Quest 64, if you're nasty), that fell into the relative obscurity that awaited so many third-party titles on Nintendo's flagship console of the late-90s. Yet among those games that continue to languish in anonymity, one sticks out as perhaps the least deserving. Released in 1998, Space Station Silicon Valley was an innovative and ambitious 3D platformer and, as it celebrates its 25th anniversary, it still holds up in an industry bereft of the platforming genre.

Read more

Half-Life turns 25 years old tomorrow, with new maps and updates to celebrate. Valve also reunited the game's original developers for an hour-long making-of documentary in which its original programmers and artists reminisce about creating the first-person classic at a time when many of them had never shipped a game before.

Chief among the revelations within is that all of Half-Life's textures were created by a single person, Karen Laur.

Read more

Immortals Of Aveum never looked like it was going to be successful, and it wasn't. I root for it, however. In an industry where big budget blockbusters are most often sequels, or boringly safe, Aveum feels comparatively bold just by being a self-evidentaly daft first-person mashup of Call Of Duty and Doctor Strange magic powers.

Now it has a demo, so you can try it for free.

Read more

Half-Life came out 25 years ago tomorrow and to celebrate Valve ahve released an anniversary update. It includes four new multiplayer maps, updated graphics settings, and fully verified Steam Deck support. It also includes some new multiplayer models and skins, including proto-Barney and the original design for Gordon Freeman, pictured above.

Read more

The upcoming movie “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” is a screen adaptation of the Suzanne Collins book of the same name. The story is a prequel to the main Hunger Games series, but you might be wondering what movies you should watch before seeing this blockbuster (and why).

Do be aware that this article will contain spoilers for the main Hunger Games movie and book series. Consider this your first and last *Spoiler Warning*.

It looks like PUBG Studios' upcoming extraction shooter, Project Black Budget, will drop in the second half of 2024.

That's according Krafton's most recent financial report, which hints that the PvPvE shooter may release on the earlier side of its original 2024-2025 estimate.

Project Black Budget first came to light in a different Krafton financial report earlier this year, described as a project destined to "challenge ourselves to popularise the extraction shooter genre based on our PUBG production and service experience".

Read more

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best community creations from the previous week!

The biggest announcement BY FAR has to be about the site's Game of the Year plans. If you have not yet heard, the final day of Giant Bomb's 2023 GOTY content will be conducted before a live audience at The Moroccan Lounge in Los Angeles, California. While tickets were available for people interested in attending, those tickets have sold out.

However, many people have been confused about this announcement, and here's some clarification from @turboshawn, one of the people in charge of editing videos and Giant Bomb's social media team.

Since Grubb mentioned it on the Bombcast, I'll reiterate for anyone who missed it: The live event is the "finale" of GOTY discussion stuff. The focus, at least, will be on the Eurovision-style voting and the discussions surrounding that. But hey, who knows what else will be included in the show.

So, yes, the site will still have a full slate of GOTY deliberation podcasts for your enjoyment. For those of you asking about guest lists, I have nothing specific to report at this time other than Grubb is exploring the site's options. I would hint that you should remain optimistic.

With shojo manga, there’s often a push to immediately start setting up the couple and romantic moments. However, what I appreciated about the new Viz series Tamon’s B-Side is that it starts more with character development for Utage and the potential love interest and pop star Tamon.

Which is funny, given how Tamon’s B-Side begins. It starts off by establishing Utage is a huge fan who adores Tamon, a member of the boy band F/ACE. Super fan is likely the more appropriate term, given her actions with her friends, dedication to watching, and collecting of his merchandise. We see overwhelming support for the performer she sees on stage.

Then she meets the actual Tamon when he’s off-stage. Her part-time job is to work as a housekeeper, and she fills in for his absent one. But because the name and the actual person are so different, it gives her pause. While his stage presence means he’s a flirty, bad boy extrovert, he’s actually a pessimistic, quiet, and even depressed introvert. 

45 years after Space Invaders first, ahem, invaded arcades, Numskull Designs has gifted a quarter-scale playable replica to the game's creator, Tomohiro Nishikado.

Numskull worked alongside Taito to "accurately replicate the original 1978 and 1979 arcade cabinets", which went on sale this time last year. After quite the wait, pre-orders are now winging their way to players in the UK and Europe, and US players should expect their mini-cabinets in the next few weeks.

After signing 78 of the Space Invaders and 79 of the Space Invaders Part 2 cabinets – they released in 1978 and 1979 respectively – Nishikado spent a little time putting the machines through their paces, as captured in the brief clip below:

Read more

With her rollercoaster of relationship dramas, prolific back catalog, and intense fanbase, there is no wonder so many memes exist about Taylor Swift. It was tough whittling them down to just ten, but we have the list of our top favorite Taylor Swift memes ranked right here!

10 Best Taylor Swift Memes Ever Made

Swifties are an enthusiastic and, at times, scary bunch of fans who adore Taylor and her music and are obsessed with every move she makes. And who wouldn’t be? Taylor pours her soul into her music and her entire heart into her relationships so her fans can feel it whenever they listen to her songs. Of course, she is much more than just a music-obsessed romantic. Swift is also a cat-lover and awkward dancer! All these things make for some amazing memes made by her fans.

Riot Games is rolling back changes it had planned to make to Riot IDs following a revolt from its own community.

Riot had originally intended to migrate all accounts to Riot ID and then restrict the number of times players could amend their IDs, as well as charge them $10 for the privilege of changing their online identifier.

Now, however, Riot says that in response to community feedback, it has "made some big updates to the plan" and while it is still "moving forward with Riot IDs" – and Summoner names in League of Legends will be retired as planned from 20th November – it is no longer restricting players to one name change every 365 days. It will continue to permit players to amend their names for free once every 90 days.

Read more