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
In Alan Wake 2, Remedy Refreshes The Multiverse Idea By Making It A Villain
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
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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
10 Years Later, Alien: Isolation Still Benefits From One Vital Design Decision
Even a decade after its release, Alien: Isolation remains a standout experience.It's a monumental example of adaptation in video games, thanks to the fact that developer Creative Assembly was packed with fans of Ridley Scott's 1979 film, Alien, and an incredibly tight, detailed focus on the fidelity of the movie's setting. It also set a bar in horror game design, with the alien operating on a set of reactive artificial intelligence rules that made it terrifyingly unpredictable and unstoppably le...
Avowed Is Full Of Discoveries And The Freedom To Find Them--Or Not
Much has been made about Avowed's approach to its setting, the Living Lands, and the fact that it is not an open-world game. Instead, Avowed's world is made up of "open zones"--large geographical areas that are interconnected with other large areas, much like a previous game from developer Obsidian, The Outer Worlds.At least in the first of Avowed's areas, that means that Obsidian has put a focus on making sure that the entire space provides interesting adventures. Whether you're chasing side qu...
Avowed Is Full Of Discoveries And The Freedom To Find Them, Or Not - GameSpot Preview
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Oppenheimer 4K Steelbook Preorders Restocked At Walmart, Releases Next Week
Director Christopher Nolan's 2024 Best Picture winner, Oppenheimer, has been available on 4K Blu-ray for almost a year--but if you missed out the steelbook case at Best Buy last year, you have another opportunity to get a similar one at Walmart. A new Oppenheimer 4K Steelbook Edition releases November 19 exclusively at Walmart. The first batch of preorders sold out a few weeks ago, but you have another chance to preorder it now for $34.50. The main selling point of this edition of Oppenheimer is...
Preorder Horror Comic Harrow County And Extend Spooky Season
If you're feeling the post-Halloween blues and feel like keeping the spooky vibe alive a little longer, you might want to check out the Eisner Award-winning Southern gothic comic series, Harrow County, which is getting a new hardcover omnibus edition later this month. The Complete Harrow County launches November 26, and you can preorder it from Amazon at a discount. The Complete Harrow County (...
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 Campaign Safes Guide: Where To Find The Safe In Every Mission
GameSpot may receive revenue from affiliate and advertising partnerships for sharing this content and from purchases through links.
As you play through the Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 campaign, you're going to want to grab all the cash you can to buy upgrades that can power up your character with a variety of useful perks. Finding that cash can prove troublesome, however--money is scattered haphazardly through missions and often in small amounts, unless you can find and open safes....
As you play through the Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 campaign, you're going to want to grab all the cash you can to buy upgrades that can power up your character with a variety of useful perks. Finding that cash can prove troublesome, however--money is scattered haphazardly through missions and often in small amounts, unless you can find and open safes....
InFlux Redux is a marble puzzler remaster 11 years in the making
Physics puzzle game InFlux was first released 11 years ago, and since then, it's been remastered three separate times. It's just that not one of those remasters has ever been released.
That's about to change with InFlux Redux, which developer Joe Wintergreen calls "a remaster of a remaster of a remaster." It takes InFlux from Unreal Engine 3 to Unreal Engine 5 and adds all-new assets, lighting, and physics code—a complete overhaul of original that released in 2013.
InFlux, the work of Wintergr...
That's about to change with InFlux Redux, which developer Joe Wintergreen calls "a remaster of a remaster of a remaster." It takes InFlux from Unreal Engine 3 to Unreal Engine 5 and adds all-new assets, lighting, and physics code—a complete overhaul of original that released in 2013.
InFlux, the work of Wintergr...
Build A Halloween Playlist Of Thriller Games With Two Fanatical Bundles
Spooky season is hitting its conclusion, which makes this a great time to take advantage of a couple of Fanatical bundles that offer a bunch of spooky games. The Prestige Build Your Own Bundle: Thriller Edition and Winter 2024 Build Your Own Supreme Collection bundles can provide you with horror, thriller, and action experiences, making them a great vibe if you're looking for something to do on some dark nights.Fanatical's Prestige Collection - Build Your Own Bundle: Thriller Edition is the scar...
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...
Destiny 2 Arcane Embrace God Roll Guide
Destiny 2's Festival of the Lost brings a few unique weapons to the game alongside its spooky season-themed activities. New this year is Arcane Embrace, a one-of-a-kind shotgun with a new archetype that fires two slugs with each pull of the trigger instead of one. Especially with its god roll perks, it's an extremely powerful option for leveling tough enemies or dealing boss damage.Arcane Embrace is only available during the Festival of the Lost and only from specific sources. Here's how to get...
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
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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...
Get A Big Discount On Ash Vs. Evil Dead On Blu-Ray Just In Time For Halloween
Director Sam Raimi's Evil Dead films are the epitome of cult classics, and thanks to their mix of high camp, ridiculous gore, and some legitimate scares, but it's undoubtedly the pitch-perfect performance by star Bruce Campbell as series protagonist Ash Williams that secured the trilogy as celebrated part of horror movie canon. That said, Cambell's best performance as Williams might be in the 2015 TV series Ash vs. Evil Dead, which continued the story of the chainsaw-handed demon-slayer and his...
Silent Hill 2 Remake Secrets: 20 Easter Eggs You May Have Missed
Silent Hill 2 Remake faithfully includes a huge amount of material from the 2001 original, from dialogue to notes you can find scattered throughout the game, and also adds a whole lot of interesting additions. Some of those additions seem to suggest that the remake is more than a remake, and is actually something of a sequel to Silent Hill 2. Others appear to expand on the original story and provide additional elements of symbolism and strangeness informing what's happening to protagonist James Sunderland.
Destiny 2's Festival Of The Lost Offers Superblack Shader And A New Way To Get Exotic Class Items
Destiny 2's next seasonal celebration, the Halloween-themed Festival of the Lost, will offer new ways to get some highly sought-after rewards. The annual event is bringing a means to get its best piece of armor, the ability-combining Exotic class item, that allows you to skip the (excellent, but potentially arduous) two-player Dual Destiny mission. The Festival of the Lost will also see the return of Superblack, an all-black cosmetic shader players haven't been able to get in the game since the...
Fallout PC And Console Games Are On Sale For Fallout Day
October 23 is Bethesda's Fallout Day--a yearly celebration of the game series marked by the day the bombs fell in the Fallout universe. In celebration, the Fallout games and DLC are on sale at multiple online retailers, making today the perfect time to fill out your collection with these beloved post-apocalyptic RPGs. Fanatical and GOG have some of the best deals for PC players, though you'll also find select Fallout titles on sale at Humble and Steam for as much as 75% off. If you'd rather go w...
Alan Wake 2: Lake House DLC - Control 2 Teaser
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Severance Is Finally Coming Outie On Blu-Ray, And You Can Save On Your Preorder Now
Severance Season 2 now officially has a release date and a trailer, which means Apple TV+ subscribers will have more of the series to enjoy come January. But even if you don't have Apple TV+, you can now see what all the fuss is about, thanks to the show's first season finally releasing on Blu-ray. Severance Season 1 is now available for preorder at Amazon, and it has a pretty nice discount to boot. Severance was GameSpot's pick for the best TV show of 2022. The sci-fi series is set in the near...
Humble's Atari Bundle Features All 10 Recharged Classics And Atari 50 Celebration For Only $20
Early Atari games helped define video games as we know them with classics like Centipede, Asteroids, and Missile Command. For the legendary company's 50th anniversary in 2022, it released Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration, a compilation of more than 100 classic titles, and updated Recharged versions of a bunch of titles that looked to bring them into the modern gaming era. With the Humble Atari Recharged Retro Revival bundle, you can get a bunch of Recharged classics along with Atari 50--a l...
Alan Wake 2: Lake House DLC - All Computer Passwords For Hard Work Trophy/Achievement
GameSpot may receive revenue from affiliate and advertising partnerships for sharing this content and from purchases through links.
As in Alan Wake 2 and Control, reading various files and bits of correspondence in Alan Wake 2's Lake House expansion is key to understanding the story and the mystery at the chapter's heart. A lot of that correspondence is hidden on computers in the Lake House, a Federal Bureau of Control research facility where the DLC takes place, and if you want...
As in Alan Wake 2 and Control, reading various files and bits of correspondence in Alan Wake 2's Lake House expansion is key to understanding the story and the mystery at the chapter's heart. A lot of that correspondence is hidden on computers in the Lake House, a Federal Bureau of Control research facility where the DLC takes place, and if you want...
New Steam Deck Game Bundle Includes A Bunch Of Great Games For $3 Each
Valve's Steam Deck has done a lot to expand handheld gaming--you can enjoy a whole lot of different kinds of games on the Deck, including many that would previously have been impossible to play without a much bigger PC or gaming console. Fanatical's latest bundle, the Build Your Own Play on the Go Bundle Premium Edition (Fall 2024), is packed with games that are great for playing while traveling and are all Steam Deck Verified. The Build Your Own Play on the Go Bundle includes 15 games, includin...
This Brotherhood Of The Wolf Collector's Edition 4K Blu-Ray Is A Howling Good Deal
Brotherhood of the Wolf is a 2001 werewolf movie set in the 18th-century French countryside, and it feels a bit like a movie take on some aspects of Bloodborne--it pairs some great practical monster effects with some swashbuckling action and even a little martial arts choreography. It's highly regarded in the werewolf movie pantheon, and with spooky season upon us, it's a great time to take advantage of Amazon's massive discount on the Brotherhood of the Wolf Collector's Edition 4K Blu-ray, whic...
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