Latest Gaming News

PC Gaming March 20, 2025 Oisin Kuhnke

InZOI's free character creator demo is out now, just make sure you're ready to do some work to get access to it

InZOI kind of looks like an exercise in pushing the uncanny valley to me, something I'd wholeheartedly respect if that were definitely the intention behind the game, but I have a hunch that it really is just meant to be The Sims, but if it looked like real life. Whether that's enough to win over Sims lovers or not, I'm not sure, its early access release isn't until next week so we'll all know more then. However! You do now have the opportunity to try and test the limits of its character creator, as like a few games have done in recent years, its Create a Zoi feature is available to download as its own thing… if you're happy to do a bit of homework. Read more

PC Gaming March 20, 2025 Nic Reuben

Six-armed octopuses and other abyssal horrors from Ark: Survival Evolved's new AI slop trailer

What's the going rate for a flight to attend GDC these days? I ask because I'd have loved to be buzzing my merry way about the convention walls when Snail Games USA unveiled this doozy of an AI-generated trailer for Ark: Survival Evolved's Aquatica expansion. I'd give it a solid nine on the "we're not even trying to disguise it any longer" scale. How bad is it? Bad enough that original developers Studio Wildcard hastily and firmly distanced themselves from the project, reiterating that their focus was on ARK: Survival Ascended and Ark 2. If I had to sum up the trailer in a single word, I would attempt to write that word out with four-day old regurgitated Alphabetti spaghetti, invariably failing to give voice to my flailing disgust before retiring to the corner to fart at god. This would still take approximately fourteen times more effort than whoever got paid to write "like the ocean, but worse" into their phone to tease out the following results. Read more

PC Gaming March 19, 2025 Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Square Enix sue mech game developer for allegedly recycling parts from Front Mission

It's been a billion years since I played a proper new Front Mission game, and I'm depressed to learn that Square Enix cancelled one in 2022. Titled Front Mission 2089: Borderscape and developed by BlackJack Studio, it was announced for release on iOS and Android but, who knows, might have clanked and rumbled onto PC, the place all good mobile games go when they die. Alas, Square Enix shut the project down a few months after reveal. Now, they're suing BlackJack for releasing a new game that allegedly makes use of leftover parts from the Front Mission contract. Read more

PC Gaming March 19, 2025 Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

All InZoi early access DLC "will be provided for free" because of course it should be

Forthcoming life sim InZoi - the plucky (genAI-ridden) David to The Sims 4's Goliath - will cost $40 at its early access launch, the developers have announced. What's more, "all updates and DLCs will be provided for free" until the game hits 1.0, according to translated commentary from game director Hyungjun Kim. This is being styled as a gift unto the gamers, and another way of tempting them from the clutches of The Sims, whose DLC packs commonly sell for full-game prices. The other way of looking at it is that of course early access "updates and DLC" should be free. The point of early access is that you're paying for an unfinished game with the expectation that it'll eventually be worth the money. Also, what's the difference between an update and a DLC? My my, Inzoi, what a can of worms you have opened. Read more

PC Gaming March 19, 2025 Nic Reuben

Ok, Fallout 76's Ghoul Within update: I'll play as a ghoul if you stop using words like "Ghoultastic"

What's the pettiest reason you began to distance yourself from an old friend? I once casually suggested to a mate that I found toast more filling than bread, which prompted them to bang on for far too long about how I was actually wrong, since the act of toasting necessarily diminishes the structure of bread or somesuch. I'm not sure whether that's true and I don't care. I was speaking my truth about toast and you undermined it. Jog on, toast denier. Fallout 76's new Ghoul Within update is 18.9 GB, which may well conclusively prove that searing ghoulification actually ends up with the victim weighing more than they did previously. I wish I'd known this at the time of my yeasty bust-up, because I'd have probably tried to make the same argument about toast. We might have stayed mates then. Maybe we could have played Fallout 76 together? Why, that's the subject of this very Steam blog! Incredible. Read more

PC Gaming March 18, 2025 Oisin Kuhnke

Stalker 2's latest patch once again comes with four figures worth of fixes and improvements

It's been four months since Stalker 2 was released, starting life as a really great shooter that had more tech issues than you can shake a stick at, but GSC Game World have kept themselves busy with some hefty patches. The first one alone had almost 2000 fixes, with the second one following that up with more than 1700. As of today, patch 1.3 is here, this time bringing in over 1200 changes, fixes, and improvements. Obviously quite a bit less than the previous two main patches, but a sizable figure nonetheless, and hopefully a sign that the game is getting to a healthy point. Read more

PC Gaming March 18, 2025 Oisin Kuhnke

Chromatic Conundrum is a nifty looking puzzle game that will really test your understanding of colour theory

I like a good puzzle game, but to be honest I don't play them all that often. Not because I'm bad at them, thanks for assuming I'm a numpty, it's more just that I prefer games with a really good hook to them - think Portal as the prime example of such a game. Clean, knows exactly what it is, and uses its concept in increasingly interesting ways without overstaying its welcome. I have no idea if Chromatic Conundrum will manage that or not, but I've never seen a game use light as part of its puzzles in quite the same way before. Read more

PC Gaming March 18, 2025 Oisin Kuhnke

Counter-Strike modders are remaking the classic shooter, and they're using Valve's official Source Engine SDK to do it

There are two shooters that I imagine will never die, because they just seem to hang on despite being incredibly old and plenty of other games coming out in the mean-time: Team Fortress 2, and Counter-Strike (both Valve games, funnily enough - they've clearly got the Source (sorry)). Counter-Strike 2, which came out back in 2023, is the most played shooter of all time on Steam in fact, but even now the original game is still pretty popular. There's literally more than 16,000 people playing it right now. And though it might not be official, a group of modders have come together to remake the 1.6 version of the game. Read more

PC Gaming March 18, 2025 Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

New Cities: Skyline 2 update reduces homelessness and makes it easier to track, alongside new difficulty modes

Cities: Skylines 2 has a new patch that makes a raft of changes to the Paradox city builder's UI and systems such as traffic and garbage, while adding two new Easy and Normal difficulty modes and ten 'birthday parks' to celebrate the first game's 10 year anniversary. The developers have also made some "quality-of-life improvements related to homelessness". That's "quality-of-life" in the vacuum-sealed software development sense of the simulation being nicer to operate, rather than quality of life in the sense of having a roof over your head. I would probably have gone with some slightly less dystopian phrasing, Colossal Order. Read more

PC Gaming March 18, 2025 Brendan Caldwell

Assassin's Creed Shadows review

Assassin's Creed is for magpies. These stealth action adventures constantly dangle some glittering side hustle to distract you from the winding road of the main story. They are "while we're here" games. In town to kill a guy who dishonored your family? OK, but there's a viewpoint nearby, so let's go while we're here. Oh look, there's a wild heron to sketch along the way, let's do that, just while we're here. Hm, squint past the bird and look, a bandit camp full of wood and gunpowder and other useful resources for building your own hideout. Better murder everyone and steal their rocks (while we're here). Assassin's Creed Shadows is another marathon of distraction. A reliably Ubisoftian tourist trap that sequesters you in a hedge maze of history with a packed itinerary and a disregard for the time constraints of adult life. I found the storytelling dull and the combat as sticky-fingered as ever (at least to my grizzled, Sekiro-adoring hands). But it gets a pass from me on the strength of its atmosphere alone, not to mention the commitment to its setting of Sengoku-era Japan, and its impressive (if sometimes overwhelming) scope. Read more