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Latest Reviews
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
Rollerdrome Review - Skate Or Die
When I was losing hours to Roll7's latest side-scrolling skateboard platformer, OlliOlli World, I never said to myself, "I wonder what this would be like if my skater had a gun." Roll7 obviously did, though, and the result is Rollerdrome. Though it makes departures from the skating games that Roll7 is known for, Rollerdrome nails what's most important about them: it's an easy game to play that makes you feel awesome while you're playing it.
Rollerdrome is similar to Roll7's other titles in that
Rollerdrome is similar to Roll7's other titles in that
OlliOlli World: Void Riders Review - Extra Dimensions
OlliOlli World is a delightful skateboarding game, an excellent culmination of what developer Roll7 established across two previous games of its super-fast, trick-infused side-scrolling platforming series.
Outriders: Worldslayer Review - Pleasantly Altered
With an expanded endgame, new difficulty tiers, and new story content, Worldslayer adds a lot to Outriders, even if none of the additions are mind-blowing.
Sonic The Hedgehog 2 Review - Almost Supersonic
The Sonic sequel is more disjointed than its predecessor but makes up for it with strong humor and fun character dynamics.
Stranger Of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin Review - Chaos Incarnate
There's a lot of meme potential in Stranger of Paradise thanks to its willingness to be aggressively confusing, but fun, varied combat carries its most WTF moments forward.
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Latest Work
Destiny 2 Martyr's Retribution God Roll Guide
Wave-frame grenade launchers are among the best guns in Destiny 2 for killing lots of enemies quickly. Martyr's Retribution, a new grenade launcher added with the final act of the Echoes episode, expands your arsenal with a Solar entry into the group. The Martyr's Retribution god roll is a great PvE weapon, thanks to perks that give it great Solar synergy and help keep you alive when things get hairy. Here are the rolls you'll want to chase throughout the last few weeks of Echoes.While you're at...
Fanatical's Superstars Collection Bundle Lets You Grab Some Big-Name Games On The Cheap
Fanatical's aptly named Summer Superstars Collection bundle includes some serious heavy hitters among the 31 games on offer. Customers can customize their bundle with games like Death Stranding, The Elder Scrolls Online, Fallout 4, Devil May Cry 5, Resident Evil 3, and more, including a selection of solid indie titles as well. And like Fanatical's other bundles, the more PC games you pick up from Fanatical's list, the lower the price you'll pay for each of them individually. The bundle starts at...
Winter Burrow Is Like A Cozy Take On Don't Starve
After years of refinement, crafting and survival games have developed a pretty effective formula: You're dropped into a place where you gather sticks, you use the sticks to make an axe, the axe lets you cut down trees, and before long, you're making a whole shelter and advancing up a tech tree and making more and more complex gear, mastering the wilderness around you.Winter Burrow doesn't stray from that formula--at least, not in its first 20 minutes. But while it feels very similar to other sur...
Destiny 2 Speleologist God Roll Guide
The final act of Destiny 2's first content episode, Echoes, brings a refresh to both its activities and your arsenal. Speleologist is a new Solar machine gun that makes a pretty decent alternative to Fixed Odds from the Duality dungeon, allowing you to dump a lot of damage on tough enemies or take out a lot of little ones very quickly. The rapid-fire frame machine gun offers a 900 RPM fire rate, which mean it'll fire a lot of ammo very fast--and it's great for clearing out enemies in a hurry, es...
Destiny 2 Chronophage God Roll Guide
Echoes Act 3 adds a few new guns to Destiny 2, including Chronophage, a new Void trace rifle that's built for disintegrating enemies. It's a solid alternative to some other, tougher-to-get trace rifles, like the Rise of Nightmare raid's Acasia's Dejection. The Chronophage god roll is especially good in PvE, with a few perks that are great for synergistic Void builds to keep you shielded and happy as you zap your way through hordes of opponents.The launch of Echoes Act 3 adds Chronophage to the e...
Destiny 2 Chorus Of One Guide: God Rolls And How To Get The Exotic Auto Rifle
The launch of Echoes Act 3 has added new gear to Destiny 2, including a new Exotic weapon called Chorus of One. To get it, you'll need to complete a new Exotic mission as part of Act 3's story, which will unlock the ability to craft the Void auto rifle and adjust its perks. That'll require multiple completions of the mission, Encore: Overture, over multiple weeks, however.The Exotic mission has just launched, and we're working to bring you everything you need to know about Chorus of One: How to...
Funko Fusion Puts Funko Pop Haters' Voices In The Mouth Of Its Villain
For years, the Lego franchise has dominated a specific space for licensed action-platformers, taking the essence of properties ranging from Star Wars to Harry Potter and transposing them into a goofy video game setting. What makes the Lego games fun, apart from their players' affinity for colorful blocks, is the lighthearted tone inherent in translating the stories of various movies into toy form.Funko Fusion has a lot of surface similarities with Lego's takes on video games, and the main one is...
Towerborne Uses Deep Combat To Modernize The Side-Scrolling Brawler
Towerborne is a pretty drastic departure from the Banner Saga series, developer Stoic Studio's impressive set of story-driven strategy games. But even with just a short look at it, it's easy to see some of the familiar Stoic DNA in Towerborne. It carries a beautiful art style that recalls a hand-drawn aesthetic, similar to Banner Saga, and that gives it a powerful vibrancy.I played a short demo of Towerborne at Xbox's recent Gamescom event in Los Angeles, which gave a very quick look at its mome...
Ara: History Untold Combines Civilization With An Unexpected Dash Of Battle Royale
Grand strategy games are a bit too big to demo. Building from a single settlement and a couple of farms into a vast nation is a time-consuming process, and even playing tens of early game turns can only show you so much. Even with that being the case, though, a little time with the opening of 4X game Ara: History Untold suggests a sprawling entry into the genre that brings along some new ideas that focus on offering lots of different paths for creating a thriving civilization.I played about an h...
Xbox-Exclusive Avowed Is Like Skyrim Plus One Of The Last Decade's Best Sci-Fi Movies
A giant beetle charged toward me, and as it stepped into a big puddle in the center of the room, I snagged it with a burst of magical vines that appeared beneath its feet. Then I blasted the creature with one of my dual flintlock pistols--this one charged with electricity--which sent arcs down through the water, shocking a few skeletons that were joining the fray behind it. As they looked to overwhelm me, I unloaded with both my pistols, zipped a little sideways with a dodge, and clambered away...
7 Minutes of Towerborne Co-Op gameplay | gamescom 2024
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Sorry, Alien: Romulus, The Best Alien Sequel Is Still Alien: Isolation
There's something specific about Ridley Scott's 1979 movie Alien that makes it such an enduring classic. With the combination of its heavy focus on relatable, blue-collar characters, its dingy, lived-in capitalist version of space travel, and its stalking, unknowably malevolent creature, it creates a feeling that other horror movies have chased and tried to replicate again and again across the decades since its release.The latest attempt to recapture what made Alien so viscerally, singularly fri...
Dying Light: The Beast Announced With A Trailer Teasing The Return Of The First Game's Protagonist
Techland revealed Dying Light: The Beast, the latest addition to the open-world zombie series, with a new trailer that teases the return of the original game's protagonist, Kyle Crane, as its playable character. The announcement came with a trailer during Gamescom Opening Night Live.The trailer is light on details, but switches perspectives between a group of soldiers and an unseen creature that rips them apart--which, given what Crane says when he finally appears on screen, seems likely to be t...
Squid Game Unleashed Lets You Play In A Cartoonish Version Of The Show's Capitalist Hellscape
Netflix is continuing to willfully miss the point of its hit series Squid Game, turning a show about living in an unfeeling capitalist utopia into a funny game about completing obstacle courses. Squid Game Unleashed got a new trailer during Gamescom's Opening Night Live that makes the horrific and lethal children's games of the show look, well, pretty fun, honestly.The trailer shows the multiplayer title in action as players take on different versions of Squid Games' challenges, like playing red...
Black Myth: Wukong What To Know So Far
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Alien: Romulus - 24 Easter Eggs And References To The Alien Franchise
10. 20 Years LaterThe Alien movie timeline is a bit of a mess, thanks to the big time jump between the original two films--Aliens takes place 57 years after the events of Alien. Rook explains that Alien: Romulus is set between those two movies, 20 years after the destruction of the Nostromo. That puts the movie...
Alien: Romulus Shows It's Time For Alien To Abandon Its Canon
Warning: This article contains some light spoilers for Alien: Romulus.Alien: Romulus starts with something of a goofy premise. For 20 years after the events of the original Alien, apparently, the xenomorph-obsessed Weyland-Yutani Corporation has been searching for the Nostromo and the monster its crew brought aboard. When they finally find it, they discover the original alien that Ellen Ripley blew out an airlock at the end of that movie. Somehow, the creature survives, allowing the scientists t...
Who Is Maya Sundaresh In Destiny 2?
The end of Destiny 2's Episode: Echoes Act 2 finally reveals the identity of the Conductor, a new threat on Nessus who has taken control of the Vex on the planetoid for spooky and nefarious reasons. The community has long suspected exactly who the Conductor might be, and with the cutscene that played at the end of this week's story mission, we have our confirmation.Spoilers for the Echoes Act 2 story mission to follow, so stop reading now if you still haven't run through the mission.
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Destiny 2's Elusive Exotic Class Items Are Coming To Xur's Inventory
The inventory of Destiny 2's weirdest shopkeep, the squid-faced weekend vendor Xur, is about to change once again. Starting with an August 20 update, Xur's Exotics-focused inventory will also include the new Exotic class item available in The Final Shape expansion, which means it'll now be a little easier to get new rolls of the piece of gear to fill out your loadouts.The first time Xur shows up after the update, on August 26, he's guaranteed to stock the Exotic class item, Bungie said.Bungie an...
Splitgate 2 Excels At Feeling Like Its Own Thing
It's still a Halo-style arena shooter with portals, but what has surprised me most about Splitgate 2 is how much more there is to go with that idea. With its new iteration of the game, developer 1047 Games has dialed in elements that help build out the game's identity, complementing what was already there with some new additions that help Splitgate 2 feel different from most other shooters on the market.Ahead of its closed alpha, I played Splitgate 2 for about four hours, some of that with other...
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'...
The Book That Inspired I Am Legend Is Getting A New Edition For Halloween, And You Can Preorder It Now
I Am Legend follows the story of Robert Neville, the last human being on Earth, as he struggles to find the cure to a pandemic that swept through the human population. The thing is, while Robert's the last human, he's not alone--the pandemic turned the rest of the population into vampires. Neville is simultaneously working to save humanity and spending his days hunting the horrific creatures through Los Angeles. At night, however, the tables are turned, and he must hide from the vampire swarms h...
Fill Out Your Warhammer 40K Library On PC With This Monster Fanatical Bundle
The massive world of Warhammer 40,000 has seen a whole lot of adaptations into video games, covering genres from third- and first-person shooters to turn-based strategy. For the latter, Fanatical has the massive Build Your Own Battles: Warhammer 40,000 Battles bundle. It's full of PC games and DLC, giving you plenty of opportunities to wage war with games you can snag for as little as $2.50 each. You can get the entire bundle of games and DLC packs, 18 in total, for $45.The centerpieces of the b...
Black Myth: Wukong Everything To Know
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