Video games

Video games

"We want players to explore the world in a freeform way, and Free Ride turns it into an expansive hub where you'll find and access various Challenges by travelling around, unlocking Hitching Posts, and meeting contacts. Challenges are instanced and accessed via these contacts, and doing so will place you into a combat location or special world state," the game's associate design director Josh Zammit said.

Doom: The Dark Ages, which just launched this summer, is down to $50.39 (was $70) as part of Amazon's Black Friday 2025 deals--which is one of the better price drops we've seen this year. The brutal shooter earned high marks from critics, and if you haven't yet checked out the latest entry in the storied franchise, it's an easy recommendation at this new price.

A new Xbox Partner Preview event kicks off tonight, as several third-party studios will have news and updates on partner titles coming to PC and the Xbox ecosystem. Several confirmed games include 007 First Light, Tides of Annihilation, Reanimal, and "brand-new reveals and Game Pass announcements" are also being promised for the showcase. The livestream will be hosted by Jennifer English, the voice of the protagonist Gwendolyn in Tides of Annihilation.

Square Enix confirmed the numbers on social media, clarifying that the standard edition is 90 to 95 GB, while the Limited Early Purchase Edition, which includes a port of the original Final Fantasy VII game, is a hefty 93.8 to 99 GB. The Switch 2's default internal storage is 256 GB, meaning that Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade would use between 35-40% of a console's space. For comparison, the game takes up around 81 GB on PlayStation 5, slightly less than the Switch 2 version.

If Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 flew under your radar in 2025, or you just haven't gotten around to playing it yet, now is the perfect time to jump into the sprawling medieval RPG thanks to an early Black Friday deal at Amazon that drops the Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 standard edition to just $40 (was $60) and the Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 Gold Edition to $70 (was $90).

Co-op horror game Reanimal will be released on February 13, 2026. If you simply can't wait until Valentine's Day to have an eerie experience with a fellow horror-loving person, you can check out a demo that dropped today. The announcement was part of the Xbox Partner Preview showcase, but you can also try the demo on PC and PlayStation 5.

Today's Xbox Partner Preview had a bunch of big announcements and trailers like a new look at the upcoming 007 First Light and the reveal of a follow-up to Vampire Survivors, but one of the surprise standouts for me was Zoopunk, a new action game by F.I.S.T.: Forged In Shadow Torch developer TiGames, starring a bunch of anthropomorphic animals in a sort of dark, science-fiction post-apocalypse.

On the flip side, Fast Pass limits you to a mere 10 hours of game streaming per month. Up to five of those hours can roll over to the next month if unused. Nvidia's free GFN has a session limit of one hour, but it sounds like that is not the case for Fast Pass-we've asked Google to clarify and will report back.

When Vampire Survivors won a BAFTA for Game of the Year back in 2023, it was a handful of Galante's colleagues at Poncle who took to the stage to accept it. At convention panels, Galante is known for using screens and decoys rather than addressing the audience himself. In the NoClip documentary chronicling the success of Vampire Survivors, Galante opted to have a Muppets-esque puppet resembling the game's iconic vampire mascot made so he wouldn't have to appear on camera himself.

Bethesda is now selling a highly-detailed wearable replica of the Pip-Boy 3000 from Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. It was designed using the 3D models of the accessory in the games to make it as accurate as possible, and is available for preorder now for $299.99, with shipping expected to start as early as June 2026. Sadly, it won't arrive in time for the season two premiere of Amazon's Fallout series that starts on December 17th, 2025.

Gambit is a versatile support, with high healing, high damage, and anti-heal, something unique to him on the support roster at the time of release. For his primary attack, he throws three playing cards in an arc outward, which explode on impact healing teammates and damaging enemies. The base healing is 28 per card, and the damage is 20 per card.

After four days of nonstop, high-level VALORANT action, G2 Esports claimed the championship title at Red Bull Home Ground 2025, sweeping NRG 30 in a thrilling Grand Final. This year marked a historic moment as the tournament touched down in the United States for the first time, taking over Manhattan's iconic Hammerstein Ballroom with thousands in attendance and even more tuning in from around the globe.

Yesterday, Game Freak announced Mega Zeraora will be one of the new Mega Evolutions coming in Mega Dimension DLC. It's one of the few "cool" Mega designs in the RPG, which has otherwise leaned pretty heavily into silly and exaggerated designs with monsters like and Feraligatr . I like a silly Mega as much as the next guy, but it's nice to have some that don't look like jokes, as well.

Linux has been a perfectly viable desktop OS for ages. But gaming on Linux is now viable, too. Valve's hard work getting Windows games to run well on the Linux-based Steam Deck has lifted all boats. Gaming handhelds that ship with Windows run better and have higher frame rates on Bazzite, a Fedora-based distro, than they do with Windows. And after reading about the upcoming Steam Machine and Antonio's experience running Bazzite on the Framework Desktop, I want to try it.

In August, reports emerged that Microsoft had paused development on Contraband, a co-op smuggler game from Just Cause developer Avalanche. At the time, some sources noted that Microsoft put a "hold" on production rather than a full cancellation. But now, Contraband's fate appears to be sealed as mass layoffs at Avalanche have resulted in the closure of its Liverpool studio.

If you've got a retro gamer close to you, you've got the perfect oppprtunity to buy a fun, tailored gift this holiday season.

At first glance, it appears to be a fairly traditional NG+, allowing you to start the game over once you've completed it, but this time with all the equipment and skills you picked up on the way. That comes with new difficulty levels that'll let you boost the challenge to accompany your greater abilities (although c'mon, you know it's fun to wait a bit before turning those on and just enjoy being ludicrously over-powered for a little while first),

Bethesda Softworks is an influential American video game publisher best known for shaping modern role-playing and open-world gaming. Founded in 1986, the company rose to prominence through iconic franchises like The Elder Scrolls and Fallout, celebrated for their expansive worlds, deep storytelling, and player freedom. Now part of ZeniMax Media, which was acquired by Microsoft's Xbox Game Studios in 2021, Bethesda continues to play a major role in the industry through both its publishing arm and its internal development studio,

Veteran RPG developer and Fallout co-creator Tim Cain argues that modern games have forgotten some lessons of history--a point he made in a recent YouTube video--you can watch the full video below--responding to a viewer's question about whether older titles contain any supposed lost wisdom. Cain's answer--"Yes, there is. Good question." Looking back at his own early years in the industry, he describes an era with only programmers and some artists, but no narrative designers, and far fewer competing priorities.

Earlier this week, the official nominations for The Game Awards 2025 were unveiled. The biggest category is always Game of the Year, with six games up for the coveted award. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has to be the frontrunner at this point since the RPG has 12 nominations in total. That makes it the most-nominated game ever at The Game Awards.