Diablo 4 has been on the back-burner amid the chaos of Baldur's Gate 3 and Starfield's launches, but much like an arch-demonness putting together the pieces of an inter-planar conspiracy, Blizzard have been doing a lot of work behind the scenes. The action-RPG's next big round of additions, the Season of Blood, launches on 17th October alongside the Steam edition of the game. It introduces a new season journey and questline, a new season event, and some skulking new enemies of the Nosferatu persuasion.

The new quest sounds quite fun from the promotional materials. It sees you investigating a mysterious outbreak of punctured necks, recruiting a local Van Helsing named Erys, and tracking down a Dark Master, while harnessing 22 juicy new vampiric powers care of some pact armour. The latter range from turning into a cloud of bats, through cursing people, to treating yourself to a spontaneous bloodbath so as to enhance your channeled skills, The trade-off is that you'll have to acquire yet another Diablo 4 resource, potent blood, to perform these tricks.

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Dredge was a delightful indie surprise when it launched earlier this year, but if it left you wanting more spooky ship survival, you're in luck. The Pale Reach is Dredge's first DLC, and it launches in just over a month. For more on The Pale Reach, check out the reveal trailer below.

Set in icy waters, the DLC will include "1-3 hours of content" and is accessible at any point during a playthrough of the game. In addition to a new side story, the expansion will add 11 more fish and crab species to the world of Dredge, allow you to craft a ship add-on to break through small icebergs in the water, and add ice blocks to extend the shelf-life of some of your catches. The trailer also features new monsters, like a massive icy crab and a four-legged narwhal-like creature. The Pale Reach will be available to purchase on November 16, and Dredge is available on all major platforms. 

For more Dredge, check out this episode of the GI show. Then, read about how the game's publisher, Team17, announced a wave of layoffs this week along with the departure of its CEO Michael Pattison.

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It was announced that iRacing has acquired the NASCAR simulation-style console racing games license.

The deal will see 704 Games, a subsidiary of Motorsport Games, transfer the rights over.

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There’s a new Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash gameplay trailer, and this time the characters Maki Zen’in, Panda, and Toge Inumaki are the stars. While the three didn’t appear in the initial launch trailer, all three were rather swiftly confirmed as playable fighters in the game. Bandai Namco’s new footage shows each one in fights.

Things begin with Maki. She was a major character in Jujutsu Kaisen 0 and supporting cast member in Jujutsu Kaisen. While she started out as a non-sorcerer, she is a master of cursed weapons and standard fighting. 

After that, the video focuses on Toge. While he primarily uses hand-to-hand fighting, he will used his cursed speech for attacks like Fall, Get Twisted, Stop, and Get Crushed. 

Finally, the Panda portion shows him using hand-to-hand combat. While he looks like a panda, he’s a cursed corpse. At the end of his portion, he unleashes Gorilla Mode Max.

Diablo IV’s Season of Blood goes live October 17, and it’s aiming to inject some life back into the loot RPG with blood-sucking foes and quality-of-life fixes. The game’s developers promise players will level up 40 percent more quickly than last season, potentially paving the way for more fun and less grinding.

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Cyberpunk 2077 is on a bit of a roll at the moment. Following its recently released Phantom Liberty expansion and the base game's extensive 2.0 update, developer CD Projekt Red has announced a partnership with Anonymous Content to develop a brand-new, live-action story set in the world of Cyberpunk 2077. I wonder if they will bring Idris Elba and Keanu Reeves back for the occasion?

This live-action project is still in the very early stages of development, with the studios involved still on the hunt for a screenwriter to take the lead.

While the search continues, several members from media company Anonymous Content have been confirmed to be on board. Garrett Kemble, David Levine, Ryan Schwartz, and Bard Dorros will all be part of this project's production, which CDPR said will be developed in "close collaboration" with Cyberpunk 2077's creative team.

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Sony Interactive Entertainment has confirmed the personal information of 6,791 former and current employees was exposed as part of a cyber-attack in June.

The data breach was carried out by the Clop ransomware group, Bleeping Computer reports. Sony is now contacting anyone affected and is offering credit monitoring and identity restoration services.

In correspondence notifying affected individuals of the breach, Sony said it is "not aware of publication or misuse" of the personal details exposed during the hack.

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HoYoVerse explained more about the new Genshin Impact Dodoco's Bomb-Tastic Adventure event, which involves fish blasting with Klee. It begins on October 6, 2023. As long as you are at AR 20, finished the first chapter of Klee’s character questline, and went through the final Mondstadt Archon Quest “Song of the Dragon and Freedom,” you can take part in the game.

The point of Dodoco's Bomb-Tastic Adventure is to use Jumpty Dumpty bombs with different ranges to defeat dangerous Spikey Fish. If you do, you earn rewards like Primogems, Mora, Hero’s Wit books, and Mystic Enhancement Ores. 

People will face a board with a Dodoco that can move along the edges. The Spikey Fish types of enemies will be arranged on the grid, as will other obstacles that will make a Jumpty Dumpty explode if it hits it. Your goal is to use the Jumpty Dumpty varieties you have to defeat all of the fish to earn points. They explode when they hit them or can be detonated after being tossed. The two example bombs shown by HoYoVerse in the image below showed one type had a range of five squares in a cross shape, while another would hit everything in a 3x3 box.

Today is the first day of former president Donald Trump’s $250 million fraud trial in New York. A case brought by the state’s attorney general accuses the Republican primary frontrunner of lying about his net worth by billions of dollars to try to secure more favorable loan terms. One of his attorneys, Alina Habba,…

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Today, Sony announced a new app coming to PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 consoles that’ll offer PlayStation Plus Premium and Deluxe members access to a bunch of Sony Pictures Entertainment films.

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After six years, the latest Forza Motorsport entry has arrived on PC, with developers Turn 10 having crafted a new renderer, dynamic weather and enhanced AI. However, expectations have evolved too, especially on PC where the racing genre has set new heights for visual excellence and ray-traced effects with series like F1 and Forza Horizon. AAA PC gaming over the past two years has also seen plenty of disastrous releases, with a bad user experience and stutters out of the gate. In this review of the PC version of Forza Motorsport, we'll examine how the game meets those expectations, whether it stutters, how the PC and Xbox versions compare and the best settings to use for an optimised experience.

Before we get into comparisons and optimised settings, let's start with the user experience - and that all-important shader optimisation step, which required around 20 seconds on my Core i9 12900K before I could get into the game proper. This short delay is lengthier on slower CPUs, but translates into a title that is mercifully devoid of shader compilation stutter, one of the biggest spectres of PC gaming in 2023 - so kudos to Turn 10.

Unfortunately though, CPU performance is critical in Forza Motorsport, and older yet still popular CPUs like the Ryzen 5 3600 can fare poorly. I saw average frame-rates in the 40s with ultra settings when in the middle of a full 20-car race, even at 540p, though even racing alone CPU limitations can become evident. The track seems to be divided into multiple zones, and I noticed regular dips on the frame-time graph as I raced around the circuit. To avoid these drops at higher settings, you'll need to have a powerful CPU. Replays also seem more taxing than races, with 30 percent lower frame-rates in CPU-limited like-for-like scenarios.

Blizzard has announced the Diablo IV Steam release date. It will be releasing on the storefront on October 17, 2023. This coincides with the release of Season of Blood, the second season of Diablo IV that is set to begin on October 17, 2023. That first came up during gamescom 2023 Opening Night Live.

Anybody looking to play on Steam will need to connect the game to a Battle.net account in order to enable cross-platform play with others on PlayStation and Xbox consoles. The Steam version will also have access to Steam functions like achievements, friends lists, and the ability to invite friends to play in-game on Steam. Players can add the game to their wishlists ahead of the game's launch.

The minimum requirements to play Diablo IV on PC from Steam can be viewed below:

The Cyberpunk franchise has been on a winning streak lately. From the acclaimed anime Cyberpunk: Edgerunners to the 2.0 update of 2077 and the release of Phantom Liberty, public perception of the series has largely turned around. Today, CD Projekt Red announced that they're taking the next step with the franchise – creating a live-action production.

The game studio is partnering with Anonymous Content, a media company known for its work on shows like Mr. Robot and films like The Revenant. The project will be produced by Garrett Kemble, David Levine, Ryan Schwartz, Bard Dorros, and Charlie Scully, who will develop the project "in close collaboration with the Cyberpunk 2077 creative team." That said, this is still in the earliest stages; there's still no screenwriter attached to the project.

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2023 continues to be a difficult year when it comes to layoffs.

In the past couple of weeks alone, companies including Ascendant Studios, Beamdog, Crystal Dynamics, Roblox, Blizzard, Epic Games, Team17, Naughty Dog, Twitch and Keywords have all dismissed varying numbers of staff, ranging from 10 Hearthstone developers to more than 800 Epic employees.

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CD Projekt Red has announced that Cyberpunk 2077 has sold more than 25 million units.

The futuristic RPG was released back in December 2020.

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After a decidedly rocky launch almost three years ago, CD Projekt Red has announced that Cyberpunk 2077 has now sold 25m copies.

This latest figure comes hot on the heels of the game's Phantom Liberty expansion, and that rather hefty 2.0 update that added new content to the base game. The developer also announced that Phantom Liberty sold 3m copies in its first week of launch.

The news was welcomed with many congratulating the developer on its latest milestone.

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The Electronic Wireless Show podcast returns to one of our recent previous messes to discuss Payday 3. More specifically, we look at the post-launch changes the devs are making in an effort to improve matchmaking and wait times. Specifically, we use this to think about games that have changed their reputations after a rocky start, what with Cyberpunk 2077's recent 2.0 update. What are the circumstances that allow games to do that? Why are they such outliers? How do we think about reviews in the context of something like No Man's Sky?

We've also been playing some big recent games, so tune in for discussions of Assassin's Creed Mirage, a call for pirate games, and a hilarious misunderstanding about Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor.

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As part of the preparation for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Square Enix shared some screenshots comparing it to the original FFVII. Each of these essentially shows a moment from the original game alongside the remake’s situation. The four shared feature moments from outside Midgar and at Cosmo Canyon.

First, here are the two images showing Aerith, Barret, Cloud, and Tifa as they’ve just escaped from Midgar. In the case of the original FFVII, we actually see Midgar’s walls and everyone as they’re just getting up after the final chase. with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, we see the party looking at the world outside the walls.

The Assassin’s Creed franchise continues to slay in the gaming industry, incorporating its own take on classic tales and ancient locations. Due to this long reign, the series is packed with intriguing details, both in-game and in its origins. So, if you want to take a Leap of Faith into the series’ rich history, we’ll show you some Assassin’s Creed facts you may not know about.

TV Tokyo has released the first trailer for a new live-action Pokémon drama series called Pack Your Pocket With Adventure (literal translation), or Pokétsume for short.

Pokétsume has been made in collaboration with The Pokémon Company, and stars actress and former girl group member Nishino Nanase as Madoka Akagi, an adult who finds out the working world is not how she dreamt it would be. Her mother sends her her old Game Boy and Pokémon Red cartridge, and she decides to start playing Pokémon again.

As she carries on playing Pokémon Red, Madoka begins to find the same energy as her game character to work through her hardships in real life.

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In The Lamplighters League, three evil factions are gathering the power to seize an apocalyptic tower, and you must stop them by finding and trashing their power bases. They'll grow in power the whole time, but you'll slow them by stealing and sabotaging with your team of colourful secret agents, who'll bash through gauntlets of mooks and monsters with munitions, magic, and mkicks to the stomach, mostly two action points at a time. All that makes for a colourful ride, and its 1930s setting and adventurous tone carried it for a while, but the more I played it, the more my wavering opinion turned into outright resentment. That's a damn shame, because it gets a lot right.

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Assassin’s Creed Mirage is, so says the Alice B review, "the most enjoyable Assassin’s Creed game for years." That’s thanks in part to a returning focus on classic AC stealthing in a single, densely detailed city, and this back-to-basics approach extends to the technical side too. Mirage cares not for being the glossy poster child of ray-traced glamour; it’s just a game that looks pretty nice and runs well on PC, older hardware and Steam Decks included.

It also keeps its list of graphics settings relatively brief, though there are a few in there that can dish out some extra frames per second at little cost to the visuals. Here it is, then: your complete guide to Assassin’s Creed Mirage’s PC performance, from its refreshingly reasonable system requirements to its best settings combinations.

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Megahouse will release a 1/8 scale Gundam Girls Generation figure of Suletta Mercury from Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury. It will open pre-orders in select Japanese stores including AmiAmi, which will support international shipping. It will appear in late June 2024. [Thanks, Hobby Watch!]

The 215mm (8.46 inches) tall figure will be completely static with no movable parts, including the 'windblown' hair and tie. Megahouse will instead focus on adding details to the character's attire. A part of the Gundam Aerial's chest will appear as the figure's base.

Pre-orders for the figure will be exclusively available on Premium Bandai, AmiAmi, Volks, and Yellow Submarine on October 6, 2023, at 1 PM JST (12 AM ET). The figure will have a price tag of ¥24,200 (~$162).

Earlier this week, Rockstar quietly added a 60fps toggle to Red Dead Redemption on PlayStation 5. The game, which was released back in August for both PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch, can be played on PS5 thanks to backwards compatibility. And now, that little toggle gives PlayStation 5 users a new framerate to play around with while exploring the Wild West.

However, there are some Xbox Series X/S players who are now feeling rather left out by Rockstar, asking where their 60fps Red Dead Redemption port is.

When Rockstar brought Red Dead Redemption to PlayStation 4 and Switch, it directed its Xbox community to the original 360 version of the game. As Digital Foundry noted earlier this year, the Xbox Series X and One X versions of Red Dead Redemption are running on the 360 code, with a higher resolution, anisotropic filtering, and a negative LOD bias to enhance texture mip-maps.

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As far as The Alters is concerned - the new game from the This War of Mine team 11 bit Studios - every time we reach a major junction point in our lives, another version of us is theoretically created. Had you chosen to pursue a different subject at school, for example, it could have led to a different career. That's maybe an obvious example but junctions can apparently happen because of many things - hobbies, friends, relationships. Where might we have ended up?

This question is central to The Alters, because here, we can realise these different versions of ourselves and even manifest them by bringing them to life, where they'll work alongside us. Hence the game's name. And we will have to, because in The Alters, we're in a race against time to survive.

In the game, we are Jan Dolski, a person working for some kind of sci-fi mining operation, and we've become stuck on a planet and are in danger of being fried by its nearby sun. If we don't get out of the way before sunrise, we'll die. But getting out of the way is not so simple, because we'll also need to move our entire base. Fortunately for us, it's wheel-shaped, so it can be rolled, but there are environmental challenges like lava-filled canyons to navigate along the way.

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Jen Glennon has been hired as the new editor-in-chief of Kotaku. Glennon will start on October 10 and report to G/O Media's deputy editor, Lea Goldman.

She brings with her experience of over a decade as a professional journalist.

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The Google Play listing for Silent Hill: Ascension is live and suggests a Halloween release date. The description for the Genvid experience says it will launch on October 31, 2023. As this is an interactive experience, the page also clarified that it will premiere at 6pm PT/9pm ET that day. However, Gematsu’s Sal Romano said developer Genvid only said to wait for additional updates. [Thanks, Gematsu!] 

We first learned about Silent Hill: Ascension back in 2023. It was described as an interactive series at the time. It has a 2023 release window at the time. Genvid also mentioned the goal would be for people to watch and interact to determine the course of the story to determine the “canon” path during the experience. An update in 2023 noted there would be multiple characters showcased from around the world and the audience watching would determine their fates.

A Pokémon live-action series is coming to Japan, but it’s not of the Detective Pikachu variety. No, the next Pokémon live-action project will be a drama about a woman trying to find adventure in her life through playing Pokémon, rather than it being set in the Pokémon universe.

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"But what if there were dinosaurs???" is a setup that goes a long way with me, as a Jurassic World Evolution player and defiant fan of Capcom's Exoprimal, and in this case, that setup rests atop a tasty-looking fruitcake of references to Warcraft and Stronghold. Woah there, Dr Grant - what the hell are you talking about? Why, the just-announced Dinolords, of course - a blend of strategy and action-RPG from Northplay and Ghost Ship Publishing, in which you raise troops and build castles to fend off armies of T-Rex-riding Danes. Here's a trailer.

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CD Projekt Red said it plans to move on from Cyberpunk 2077 now that its big Phantom Liberty DLC and 2.0 systems overhaul are out, but it still has a few things left to patch. A new 2.01 update that went live on October 5 fixed corrupted save issues on PlayStation 5 and a bunch of other issues, including a wrecked cop…

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Sunrise published the third trailer for Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Freedom. The new trailer focuses on showing combat scenes between the manned robots known as Mobile Suits. It also reveals that Kira Yamato's new unit, the Rising Freedom Gundam, will have the ability to transform into an airplane-like Mobile Armor mode.

The new trailer is available to watch worldwide on the GundamInfo YouTube channel with closed captions in English, Chinese, and Korean.

At the same time, Bandai also released a separate trailer showcasing the upcoming Gunpla model kits from the title. The company will release 1/144 scale HG (High Grade) kits of the Rising Freedom Gundam, Immortal Justice Gundam, Gelgoog Menace, and the Black Knight Squad's Shi-ve.A and Rud-ro.A. It will also produce a 1/144 scale RG (Real Grade) kit of the Force Impulse Gundam Spec II and a chibi-proportioned SD Gundam EX-Standard kit of the Rising Freedom Gundam.

The rumoured Animal Crossing and Lego collaboration has been confirmed by Nintendo, which released a short teaser video for the sets.

Images of five different Lego Animal Crossing sets leaked in August, with a release date of March 2024 floating around.

This is the first official confirmation of the sets, which will include models of villagers, trees, and flowers.

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