Chrono Trigger's Story Is Simpler Than You Remember, But That's What Makes It Great
Slapstick Comedy Movie Hundreds Of Beavers Is As Much Video Game Let's Play As Bugs Bunny Cartoon
How Pacific Drive Pulls Off Being Unnervingly Spooky And Relaxingly Chill All At Once
Why Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's Ending Doesn't Really Matter
Video Game Industry Layoffs Are Worse Than Ever. How Did We Get Here?
In Spider-Man 2, Spider-Cop Is A Big Reason Why Peter Parker Must Step Aside
Alan Wake 2 Is About The Pain Of Realizing You Might Not Be Good Enough
The Ins and Outs of Time Travel: 'Quantum Break' vs. 'Back to the Future'
Reality Check: What Is The Real State Of Blockchain And NFTs In Video Games?
'Gods Will Be Watching' Punished Players, So They Punished The Creators Back
Ted Lasso Season 2 Isn't In A Slump, It's Building To A Breakdown
Gotta Go Fast: How Sonic the Hedgehog Transcended Video Games to Become an Icon
How Destiny 2 Unexpectedly Became A Game About Dealing With Trauma
'Guitar Hero Live' is That Dream Where You're Unprepared For Class
Destiny 2 Grasp Of Avarice Dungeon Is Hilariously Salty About A 7-Year-Old Exploit
eSports Ain’t Easy: Inside the Everyday Grind of Pro Gaming
Crash Bandicoot Back—Is the Video Game Industry Out of Ideas?
Latest Reviews
Slitterhead Review - Surface Tension
Third-person action game Slitterhead often presents a pretty compelling front. At first, it sounds like an out-there horror game with an inventive approach to gameplay. You play as a formless spirit that can possess humans, hunting vicious monsters capable of imitating normal people. Those creatures explode from the heads of their human bodies to reveal their true forms when discovered.As cool as all those words clearly are, Slitterhead never reaches the promise of its premise, apart from a few...
Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 Zombies Review
The best part of any Call of Duty game's Zombies mode is how it facilitates panic. The longer you play the round-based horde mode, in which the undead stream toward you from all directions, the tougher it becomes, and before long, you're sprinting around the map, trying desperately to stay alive as crowds of corpses shamble after you. Your only chance is to stop and fire away to thin out the approaching wave of undeath, hoping you don't run into any huge mutated monstrosity while your back is tu...
Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 Multiplayer Review
There's an argument to be made that speed is what makes Call of Duty multiplayer feel so good. As a franchise, the CoD games are great about getting you into the action as quickly as possible. When you shoot opponents, they tend to go down fast; when you die, you can be back in the fight in about a second. With Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Treyarch leans into the speed of the franchise in just about every respect, starting with some meaningful adjustments to movement systems and ending with map de...
Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 Campaign Review
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 remains my favorite of developer Treyarch's contributions to the long-running and sometimes formulaic shooter franchise, because it's the one that takes the most wild swings. It mixes traditional Call of Duty linear levels with a top-down, real-time-strategy-like experience that lets you move troops around the battlefield and then zoom down like a gunslinging ghost to possess any one of them and do the fighting yourself. It also logs your choices, your successes, and yo...
Uzumaki Anime Review - Junji Ito Adaptation Adds Intensity As It Spirals
Among all of Junji Ito's vast body of horror manga work, Uzumaki manages to be the most unsettling. Many of his stories concern elements of building dread, encroaching madness, and beautifully off-putting body horror, but few combine all three to the same effect as Uzumaki, where the concept of a spiral pattern infects and mutates the inhabitants of a small town in myriad awful ways.Adult Swim's anime adaptation of Uzumaki focuses on that unsettling feeling in its premiere episode, which was pro...
Alien: Romulus Review - Structural Imperfection
"Get away from her--you bitch," a character stutters in a relative monotone, turning an iconic moment from Aliens into a somewhat more halting, slightly funnier one in Alien: Romulus.What compelled director Fede Álvarez to include this moment in Romulus is anyone's guess. It's a line that makes no real sense in context, it's out of character for the person who says it, and there's no particular reason to use that particular word on this particular alien monster. In Aliens, when Sigourney Weaver'...
Once Human review: "Like a crawling bus, its more original elements hide dull and generic ones"
Once Human offers a world full of strange creatures that's refreshingly unique in the survival MMO genre, but that world is populated by derivative gameplay and boring combat and never matches the potential of its premise.Why you can trust GamesRadar+
Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about our reviews policy.The most iconic image to come out of Once Human is a mutated, insectile city bus. Instead of wheels,...
Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about our reviews policy.The most iconic image to come out of Once Human is a mutated, insectile city bus. Instead of wheels,...
Destiny 2: The Final Shape Review - Becoming Legend
It's impossible to think about The Final Shape without the context of the last 10 years, the seven other Destiny 2 expansions, and the four original Destiny expansions--plus the vanilla campaigns that came with both games. This eighth Destiny 2 expansion is, to some degree, the culmination of the somewhat haphazard decade-long journey that the first game spawned, in which Bungie has continually tried experiment after experiment in gameplay, adjusted and recalibrated its storytelling, and worked
Destiny 2: The Final Shape Review-in-Progress
It's impossible to think about The Final Shape without the context of the last 10 years, seven other Destiny 2 expansions, and four original Destiny expansions, plus the campaigns that came with the releases of both games. This eighth Destiny 2 expansion is, to some degree, the culmination of the somewhat haphazard decade-long journey that the first game spawned. And while the story itself hasn't always been consistently building toward a conclusion, there's a clear, mostly positive evolution ac
XDefiant Review
XDefiant is an FPS with an identity crisis. This arcade-style arena shooter pulls characters and locations from various Ubisoft games, and it feels a little bit like a lot of different things as a result: It's fast and twitchy in a way that’s similar to games like Call of Duty, but has class abilities that might put it closer to something like Overwatch. It’s got fast respawns and faster deaths, but offers objective-based modes that prioritize teamwork over straight killcount. That combination o
Fallout (Amazon Show) Review - Of The People, For The People
Capturing what makes the Fallout series endearing as a TV show is a tall order. So much of the experience relies on the sense of discovery that comes from wandering the Wasteland. You may enter a subway tunnel on a whim and encounter a city made up of people who think they're vampires, or meet a guy who is also a tree. Whether it's speaking with the leaders of factions about their values and deciding whether they're your values, or just sneaking around a supermarket overtaken by murderous robots
Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile Review
Successfully bringing well-known console video games to phones and tablets requires hitting a very specific balance. You want the mobile version to feel like the same game people already like, while acknowledging that using a touchscreen device usually means playing for a short period of time on something that's not designed for games. Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile is a pretty ideal demonstration of hitting that balance — it maintains all the most important elements of the PC and console Warzone
Rise Of The Ronin Review - Long-Term Investment
If someone tells me a game takes several hours to "get good," my immediate feeling is that I will never play that game. Who has hours to waste waiting for the good part of anything when there are so many other games to play? But my opinion of Rise of the Ronin changed drastically over the course of my 50 hours of playtime--in the first five or 10 hours, I didn't really like it. By the end, I was planning to dive back in to clear out side quests and replay key moments to see how the story might c
3 Body Problem Review - Unpredictable
Content warning: This review includes discussion of, and 3 Body Problem includes depictions of, self-harm.
Adapting Liu Cixin's science-fiction novel, The Three-Body Problem, is no small feat. The sweeping story leaps across timelines and bounces between the perspectives of a number of characters. All that goes to convey big ideas about physics and astronomy in the context of a mystery full of strange occurrences. Netflix's series adaptation of the story, 3 Body Problem, succeeds because it tak
Adapting Liu Cixin's science-fiction novel, The Three-Body Problem, is no small feat. The sweeping story leaps across timelines and bounces between the perspectives of a number of characters. All that goes to convey big ideas about physics and astronomy in the context of a mystery full of strange occurrences. Netflix's series adaptation of the story, 3 Body Problem, succeeds because it tak
Shōgun Review - Game Of Ronin
Ever since Game of Thrones came to an end back in 2019, I've been itching for some expansive medieval political intrigue. FX's adaptation of Shōgun, James Clavell's 1975 novel, provides exactly what I've been craving. It widens its view of the original story, which follows a fictionalized version of the adventures of the first Englishman to reach Japan, to put a greater emphasis on the dangerous political world that man finds himself trapped in. This new adaptation of Shōgun is all about the mac
The Inquisitor Review
Video games can be great vehicles for mysteries. The idea of gathering clues, questioning witnesses, and giving dramatic speeches where you stun an array of suspects with your intellect makes for an exciting fantasy. But lots of games stumble trying to fit the inherently open-ended, red-string-connecting fantasy of the detective into traditionally linear story structures. The Inquisitor is a game like that — it starts with the compelling concept of playing as a medieval church cop hunting a vamp
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Review
I fell in love with Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time way back in 2003, when it helped redefine 3D action-adventure games with its clever rewind ability enhancing its environmental puzzles and fast, acrobatic combat. But while the aughts saw a bunch of sequels with similar elements, none ever quite hit the same heights as The Sands of Time – and the 2010s were a parched desert for the series. But like an oasis, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown finally nails what I loved about those classic Pri
Lego Fortnite Review
Surprising absolutely no one, Fortnite and Lego snap satisfyingly together like a couple of plastic construction bricks. Combining the building creativity of Lego sets with Fortnite's expansive and often gorgeous island playgrounds is a smart match that creates an approachable yet fairly deep survival game. But while it streamlines a few of the more cumbersome aspects of the genre, Lego Fortnite also has the distinct feel of an early access game, trading as much on its future potential as its cu
Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora Review - The Good Blue Man Group
Before starting Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, I was reminded of what I think of when considering any open-world game: Killscreen's review of Fallout 4 by Chris Breault, and the opening line, "Here comes the trashman!" Breault discusses an experience of constantly picking up and covering yourself in the garbage scattered around that game's massive world. It's a description that feels highly applicable to most open-world games--huge, but full of refuse that you spend endless hours picking through
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Zombies Review
Like a lot of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, this year’s Zombies mode has undergone what might be described as a "Warzone-ification," forcing its traditional PvE elements into a larger, more open map. But as popular as the Warzone side of Call of Duty (or in this case, the extraction shooter mode, DMZ) might be, mixing it together with Zombies has had the effect of diluting both.
The Talos Principle 2 Review - Machine Learning
Video games often deal with the end of the world and thinking about how cool it might be. Like, sure, it sucks that most everyone has to die horribly for the end of the world to take place, but those of us who survive might get to shoot evil marauders or rotting mutants or giant bugs. Or maybe there are evil marauders, rotting mutants, and giant bugs who are trying to bring about the end of the world, and you can shoot them to prevent it. In any event, the idea of finding fun settings that let y
Skull Island: Rise of Kong Review
Here's the thing about King Kong: He is not just an ape, he's a giant ape. Skull Island: Rise of Kong is bad for a lot of reasons, but the main one is it's a game that lets you play as an iconically large gorilla and somehow manages to make him feel exceedingly average.
Lords Of The Fallen Review - Dark Slog
There are a lot of elements that might be said to define Souls-like games, but high on the list has to be the genre’s particular approach to pacing. As a group of action-RPGs, they’re defined first by periods of growing, ratcheting tension. You fight through long areas filled with tough enemies, with each one dropping "souls" that you can spend to level up your character, which you risk losing if you die before you reach a safe place where you're able to spend them.
Following the build of tensi
Following the build of tensi
Thymesia Review - Hunter Homage
A lot of games have drawn inspiration from the works of From Software, with varying degrees of success. While many developers look to emulate that high degree of challenge that comes from the likes of Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro, they often miss the fact that it's From's thoughtful, tight gameplay and deliberate encounter design that makes these games fun, not just a punishing difficulty. Thymesia, a 3D action game that draws heavy influence from some specific From titles, manages to stri
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Latest Work
Hollow Knight: Silksong — 8 ways it evolves the side-scrolling formula
It’s been a really long wait, but Hollow Knight: Silksong, Team Cherry’s sequel to the beloved side-scrolling search-action game Hollow Knight is finally here. The game introduces a whole lot of changes and additions to what made Hollow Knight great, expanding on both the formula of a classic and some key elements of the side-scrolling exploration-action genre in general.
Here’s a semi-spoilery look at what I’ve seen in Pharloom so far — we won’t talk about the story or any major developments...
Here’s a semi-spoilery look at what I’ve seen in Pharloom so far — we won’t talk about the story or any major developments...
Destiny 2's Power Grind Should Get Less Grindy In Renegades Expansion
Destiny 2's loot grind is getting some major changes in its next expansion, including adjustments to make more activities more rewarding and to make gear more viable in the game's new Portal activity scoring system.Bungie announced several of the changes in its livestream detailing the upcoming Renegades expansion, noting that many of them are responses to feedback from players in the wake of Destiny 2's Edge of Fate expansion. Several changes to the grind to increase players' Power level--the m...
Destiny 2's Festival Of The Lost Is Getting New Activities; Check Out The Armor
After several years of plundering Lost Sectors to kill pumpkin-headed bosses, Destiny 2 players will have some new spooky activities to complete when this year's Festival of the Lost rolls around.Bungie mentioned a few changes coming to Destiny's yearly Halloween event during its livestream detailing the upcoming Renegades expansion. Alongside the yearly drops of themed cosmetic armor and special weapons, developers mentioned both a new six-player PvE activity and a three-player PvP activity.The...
"The Humanity Is In The Writing," Destiny 2 Lodi Actor Says
Note: This post includes story spoilers for Destiny 2: The Edge of Fate. We recommend you finish the campaign before reading this article.Destiny 2 often uses expansions to introduce new characters and build out their stories. With The Edge of Fate, the first chapter of the new story arc Bungie calls the Fate Saga, the developer introduced a very new, very different kind of character, named Lodi. Your main point of contact in the expansion's destination, Kepler, Lodi has a deep, strange backstor...
The End Of Destiny 2's Fate Saga Is Already Known--And No, Lodi Didn't Kill JFK
Warning: This article contains spoilers for Destiny 2's latest expansion, The Edge of Fate. We recommend you complete its story campaign before reading further.Destiny 2's 2024 expansion, The Final Shape, was the conclusion of stories the game and its predecessor had been telling for 10 years--which means that its newest chapter, The Edge of Fate, is setting out on a new course. That puts The Edge of Fate in uncharted waters (or maybe uncharted space) as it lays the groundwork for a new story, a...
Tower Defense Gets an Upgrade in ‘IRON GUARD: Salvation,’ Available Today on Meta Quest
The fate of humanity hangs in the balance. A horde of deadly robots is streaming toward a base filled with people—and a handful of turrets and your tactical acumen are all that stand between them and annihilation. IRON GUARD: Salvation takes this familiar tower defense scenario and expands it, adding real-time strategy components and elements unique to VR to create a strategy game that spans multiple genres.
Skate: hands-on report
Fifteen years since its last release, the Skate series returns with an entry that turns a whole city into a skater’s paradise. The newest Skate is a free-to-play open world where you can take on a series of challenges, spectate other skaters, team up with friends, or challenge other players to throw down and trade tricks.
Electronic Arts pulled the curtain back on Skate with a hands-on preview of Early Access ahead of its September 16 release. I shredded and slammed across the city of San Van...
Electronic Arts pulled the curtain back on Skate with a hands-on preview of Early Access ahead of its September 16 release. I shredded and slammed across the city of San Van...
Square Enix's Fantasian Neo Dimension Drops To Lowest Price Yet
Fantasian Neo Dimension is on sale for its best price yet for Nintendo Switch and PS5 at Amazon. Normally $50, the rarely discounted turn-based RPG is up for grabs for only $30. Fantasian is one of a handful of Square Enix-published JRPGs currently on sale at Amazon.The enhanced console and PC versions of Fantasian launched last December, but the turn-based RPG originally appeared on iOS and macOS as part of the Apple Arcade library back in 2021. To this day, it remains one of the best role-play...
Hands-on report: Resident Evil Requiem, Onimusha: Way of the Sword, and Pragmata
Capcom is storming Gamescom 2025 with three huge games set to release in 2026: Resident Evil Requiem, Pragmata, and Onimusha: Way of the Sword. I got a chance to go hands-on with all three to flee from terrors, hack robotic foes, and slice through demons. Let’s dive in.
With the ninth mainline Resident Evil game, on February 27, Capcom is set to return to where it all began: Raccoon City. Capcom’s announcement trailer focuses on FBI analyst Grace Ashcroft, and I played the demo from Resident...
With the ninth mainline Resident Evil game, on February 27, Capcom is set to return to where it all began: Raccoon City. Capcom’s announcement trailer focuses on FBI analyst Grace Ashcroft, and I played the demo from Resident...
Cat-Like Agility Makes You a Soccer Superstar in ‘Clawball,’ Launching Out of Early Access Today
If you know cats, you know they have roughly two modes: napping quietly and contentedly in a sunbeam while not bothering anyone—and the dreaded zoomies. It’s this second state that developer ARVORE Immersive Experiences taps into in Clawball, a game that matches the chaos of kitties with three-on-three soccer. Clawball is available for free on the Meta Horizon Store and leaves Early Access today, bringing a bunch of new additions as you channel your inner cat in both competitive games and casual hangs with other players.
‘Walkabout Mini Golf’ Launches All-New Tokyo Course Where ‘Neko Atsume’ Cats Await
The bustling streets of Tokyo are yours to explore as the vibrant, iconic city becomes a sprawling mini-golf course. Tokyo is the latest course developer Mighty Coconut is bringing to Walkabout Mini Golf, recreating its melding of traditional and modern Japan in VR, where you and your friends can see whose putting chops are tops.
15 must-play indies to mark 15 years of PlayStation Plus
For the past 15 years, PlayStation Plus has served as a welcoming home for indie games, connecting players with some of the most innovative, heartfelt, and personal experiences the world of video games has to offer. The PlayStation Plus Game Catalog (included with PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium memberships) puts a huge library of indie games right at your fingertips—but with so many games available, it’s possible for even some of the best to escape your notice.
As we’ve entered the 15th...
As we’ve entered the 15th...
Explore Childhood Friendship in ‘Hidden Memories of The Gardens Between,’ Launching Today on Meta Quest
Some of the most powerful video games are those that immerse their players in specific emotions, capturing experiences that are common to us all while presenting them in novel ways. Developer The Voxel Agents used the language of puzzle games to capture the way childhood friendships grow and blossom in its 2018 game The Gardens Between, telling a moving story without a single line of dialogue. With Hidden Memories of The Gardens Between, the studio expands and deepens that story with new elements and puzzles and a whole new presentation in VR—and it’s available today on Meta Quest.
Meta Horizon+ Strengthens Your Brain With Hand-Picked Puzzlers This Month
There are some games that worm their way into your brain, with mysteries and mechanics that become a growing obsession—and we love ’em. A good puzzle can be a great way to unwind or a way to flex your mental muscles, and you can take them to the next dimension in 3D with a set of games we’ve curated for Meta Horizon+ subscribers, available right now on your Meta Quest headset.
GOG Launches NSFW Game Giveaway "To Raise Awareness On Censorship In Gaming"
GOG launched a new website Friday where users can claim 13 games that have been delisted from other online sales portals for free. In a press release, GOG wrote that with the giveaway, it and the game publishers taking part are "taking a stand against the quiet erasure of creative works from digital shelves."GOG's giveaway--found at the URL FreedomToBuy.games, makes the games available for free to users for the next 48 hours. The titles are mostly sexually explicit and were recently delisted fro...
Construct a Chaotic Contraption in ‘Besiege VR,’ Available Now on Meta Quest
An army of sword-wielding soldiers bounces toward you over a field, while more stand waiting behind portcullises and atop stone parapets. But you don’t have an army. What you do have is a giant wooden cart with a huge spinning propeller attached to the front, ready to mulch up all those armor-clad troops and bring the walls of their fortress crumbling down—or to completely fly apart under the force of its own unbalanced mechanical power.
In Besiege VR, your goal is to build powerful siege engines to smash through Medieval armies, castles, cities, and whatever else might get in your way, and it’s available today on the Meta Horizon Store.
In Besiege VR, your goal is to build powerful siege engines to smash through Medieval armies, castles, cities, and whatever else might get in your way, and it’s available today on the Meta Horizon Store.
Battlefield 6 — hands-on report
Battlefield 6 has made its debut, with Electronic Arts providing the first big look at its sprawling first-person shooter, including hands-on with its often-enormous multiplayer mode. I engaged the enemy across four of the nine maps Battlefield 6 will include at launch, which took us through a range of battles: from the vehicle-filled All-Out Warfare modes, to smaller, close-quarters battles.
Looks Like Destiny 2 Will Finally Take Guardians To Old Chicago
For years, Destiny 2 players have been wondering when the game would take them to a location teased way back before the original Destiny was even released: Old Chicago. With the release of its latest expansion, Edge of Fate, it looks like we might have at least a vague answer: soon.Echoes of Fate seems subtle on this point, at first. Though the story is set on Kepler, a new location flung way out toward the edge of the solar system, it deals a lot with time-bending looks back into the past, and...
Beat the Heat With a Scorching Summer Sale | Meta Quest Blog
With temperatures at their hottest this summer, the savings on the Meta Horizon Store are at their coolest. Take the plunge into new adventures with our Beat the Heat Sale,* keeping the Summer Fest ’25 party going with deep discounts of up to 50% off some of the best games, apps, and DLCs on Meta Quest. But while the days are long, this sale isn’t: the Beat the Heat Sale ends at 11:59 pm PT on July 20.
Build Your Perfect Zombie-Fighting Weapon in ‘REQUISITION VR,’ Available Today on Meta Quest
If there’s anything we’ve learned from movies over the years, it’s that when the dead walk the earth, there’s only one way to deal: Aim for the head. In multiplayer extraction game REQUISITION VR, you have all sorts of novel options when it comes to bonking, smashing, and slicing zombies, thanks to the ability to cobble together objects found in its world to create your own custom weapons.
Meta Horizon+ Brings Mischievous Fun with Friends and Multiplayer Madness This Month
Summer is sweltering, which makes this a great time to grab a few friends and dive into some goofy multiplayer fun with this month’s Meta Horizon+ offerings. The subscription service provides a ready-to-play library of VR and MR experiences you can download instantly, along with some exclusive deals, for only $7.99 USD per month*.
Destiny 2's Kepler Destination Has A Limited-Time Activity That'll Give You New Exotics
Destiny 2's new expansion, The Edge of Fate, is bringing a whole lot of new gear and activities, along with quality-of-life improvements to how you'll actually play and earn all that stuff. One big change is coming to how you'll earn the new Exotic armors coming to the expansion, at least for a little while, thanks to a new destination activity coming with the expansion.During its Edge of Fate livestream on July 1, Destiny 2 assistant game director Robbie Stevens mentioned--in pretty vague terms...
Myst, Riven Developer Cyan, One Of Gaming's Oldest Indies, Lays Off More Staff
Myst and Riven developer Cyan Worlds laid off an undisclosed number of staffers this week, adding to the list that began in March when it laid off 12 people, or "roughly half" of its team.Cyan announced the layoffs on Bluesky, where it also shared contact and expertise information about the employees in a running Google document the studio started with its last layoff round, with the intent of helping those staffers find new jobs. That document now includes the names of 14 staffers, suggesting t...
Blue Prince Doesn't Have A Satisfying Ending, But That's The Point
I had been playing Blue Prince for more than 100 hours before I felt like I truly understood what the game was really about.
The revelation came in the form of a journal entry, secreted away in a safety deposit box, hidden within the sometimes tough-to-access vault of the strange and shifting Mount Holly Manor. Reaching the paper requires...
The revelation came in the form of a journal entry, secreted away in a safety deposit box, hidden within the sometimes tough-to-access vault of the strange and shifting Mount Holly Manor. Reaching the paper requires...
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