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Helldivers 2 Feels Like A PS3 Game In A Very Good Way

Arrowhead Game Studios’ third-person co-op shooter Helldivers 2 has had a rough launch. It’s been plagued with server issues, progression problems, and more, and after several rapid fixes failed to fix things, studio CEO Johan Pilestedt issued an apology to players.

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The Essential Helldivers 2 Settings To Change Before Dropping In

Third-person cooperative shooter Helldivers 2 recently landed on PC and PS5. Featuring intense, chaotic gun fights against alien threats across the galaxy it’s proven pretty popular—so much so that you might be struggling to get into a match right now due to server load. Assuming you can get into one, I’ve rounded up…

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Immortals Of Aveum Proves It's A Grim Time For Single-Player Games

In 2024, AAA games are often built around the idea of continuous revenue streams with microtransactions and live-service elements. Perhaps it’s corporate delusion that makes leadership think a needlessly large budget makes for a better game, but making adequate money back on a big-budget blockbuster to satisfy the…

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Dungeons & Dragons' 50th Anniversary Brings Back Vecna

Dungeons & Dragons turns 50 this year, and as you’d expect, Wizards of the Coast is marking the anniversary with big announcements—some of which look to the tabletop roleplaying giant’s rich past. Announced today: six book releases, upcoming gaming events, and brand collaborations that run the gamut from “makes sense”…

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Six Months On, Starfield's Player Count Shouldn't Matter

2023 was a year of amazing games, but Starfield was not one of them. The spacefaring role-playing game from Bethesda was supposed to be the next Skyrim, but bigger. Garnering mixed reviews and player reactions, it quickly became clear that Starfield would not reach the heights of Bethesda’s best work. Now, less than…

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Deus Ex Owners To Adam Jensen Actor: Stop Talking About The Character

Actor Elias Toufexis is probably most famous for his role as the gravelly-voiced cyborg Adam Jensen, the protagonist in Eidos Montreal’s Deux Ex prequel games. He loves to talk about the character and his possible future, but according to Toufexis, the studio that owns the franchise would rather him not talk about…

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Spiritual Successor To SSX Was In The Works, But Not Anymore

There is one video game series that will forever loom large in my mind, and it is SSX. With no new entry in the extreme snowboarding franchise since its 2012 installment, it seems like there is little hope for it to ever make a comeback. Which makes it all the more depressing to hear that we could have seen the series…

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Overwatch 2 Just Killed One Of Its Most Famous Hero Combos

Overwatch 2 is bringing a lot of sweeping changes in its season nine balance patch, and some of them are controversial. Between giving every hero a passive self-heal and every character getting a health buff across the board, Overwatch 2 feels like it’s shifting from a team-based shooter into one that values hero…

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New Report Suggests The Games Industry Is Failing LGBTQ Players

I’ve known that representation in games mattered ever since that day in 1987 when I finished Metroid and discovered that intergalactic bounty hunter Samus Aran was that rarest of things (for the time): a cool female video-game protagonist. I loved playing as Mario, or Link, or any intrepid hero, but I was particularly…

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Someone's Playing Doom On Sound Waves

Welcome to another installment of “What Weird Thing Has Someone Ported Doom To This Week?” This time, it’s a user on Reddit who has translated the game into an audio signal that can be displayed by a spectrogram.

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Upcoming Game Delays Release To Avoid 'Busy' February

The Thaumaturge, an upcoming narrative-focused, turn-based RPG, was planned to launch in just a few days on February 20. However, the game has now been delayed until March as the developers and publishers hope to avoid a “busy” February and give the game more “breathing room.”

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Twisters Is A Sequel To The Best Movie Of All Time, Not A Remake Of It

During Super Bowl LVIII, a teaser trailer dropped that baffled a lot of viewers—it wasn’t the Despicable Me 4 one making fun of AI, but an action-packed Twister teaser. The trailer showcased the July 2024 movie starring Normal People’s Daisy Edgar Jones and Top Gun: Maverick’s Glen Powell as storm chasers. It featured…

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Yellow Paint Is Once Again Breaking People’s Brains

Last week, thanks to the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth demo, some old video game discourse returned and overtook social media: The use of yellow paint to mark certain in-game objects or ledges. All it took was a now-viral tweet of Cloud climbing some yellow rocks in the new demo and a comment about how yellow paint was a…

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Xbox Will Share Big News On Thursday…Via Its Podcast

After over a week of swirling rumors that have sent the Xbox community into meltdown over the future of the console and its exclusive games, the company is ready to clear the air on what’s to come. The Xbox Twitter account posted today that it will be releasing a special edition of the Official Xbox Podcast on…

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The 31 Best Super Bowl LVIII Commercials, Ranked From Solid To Iconic

Super Bowl LVIII, with its thrilling overtime finish and luxury box shots of Taylor Swift and Blake Lively, has come and gone, and so now we must honor those generous corporate patrons who shell out millions so Tom Brady can stay on television. This is all we have, for the staff of The A.V. Club has spent far more…

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The Week In Games: Reignited Rivalries And More New Releases

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Lost F-Zero Games Recreated By Fans Are Now Playable

It’s been too long since F-Zero fans got a full-fledged new entry in the series (sorry F-Zero 99, you don’t count). And while the latest F-Zero news isn’t of that long-awaited next game, it might be even more fascinating for fans of the franchise. Thanks to the work of the F-Zero community, two lost games in the…

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Helldivers 2 Is Too Popular For Its Own Good

Helldivers 2, the third-person shooter that launched on PS5 and PC on February 8, is enjoying a fair bit of popularity. It rocketed to the top of Steam charts shortly after launch, and it quickly soared past God of War’s top concurrent player count to become PlayStation’s biggest PC launch. It’s so popular, in fact,…

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Report: Xbox Boss Tells Staff It Will Continue To Make Consoles

A new report claims Xbox boss Phil Spencer told employees that Microsoft has no plans to exit the console business. This comes during a large online firestorm around Xbox and its future following rumors that some big exclusives might land on PlayStation 5.

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PSA: FF7 Rebirth Spoilers Leak On Tiktok, Reddit, And Twitter

Watch out, Final Fantasy VII fans. It looks like clips and details about Final Fantasy VII Rebirth are starting to leak out onto the internet. If you’re looking forward to the game and want to go in without any spoilers beyond the incredibly spoiler-filled trailer Square put outat its PlayStation State of Play, log…

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Deadpool And Wolverine Trailer Sees The Return Of 'Marvel Jesus'

Marvel Studios is only releasing one movie this year—but, from the looks of it, it’s going to be unforgettable. That movie, of course, is Deadpool & Wolverine, which brings the R-rated, fourth-wall-breaking hero from Fox’s X-Men Universe into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Ryan Reynolds stars and, this time, he’s…

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Two Great, Bloody Action Games Are Hitting Game Pass This Week

This week love is in the air, but so are monstrous demons, brain-dead zombies, sword-swinging heroes, and plenty of gunfire. If you’re a Game Pass subscriber, you’ll be able to download 2020’s remake of Resident Evil 3 on February 13, and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night on February 14.

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25 Years Later, Final Fantasy VIII Is Still The Series' Best Love Story

From the moment protagonist Squall Leonhart is dragged onto the dance floor by a headstrong girl in the opening hours of Final Fantasy VIII, I knew it was love. I would grow to adore this game and appreciate it despite its flaws, and much of that was because of the central story of Squall and Rinoa. In the 25 years…

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FF7 Rebirth Director Teases A Happy Ending, With A Catch

If you’ve played the original Final Fantasy VII, you know the game ends on a bittersweet note. Sure, the day is saved by the remnants of the revolutionary group Avalanche, but as illustrated in the film Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, the gang is left to deal with a lot of residual trauma from their journey.…

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Valkyrae On The Family Plan, Working Retail, And How To Stream Authentically

Rachell Hofstetter always wants to do more. With four million subscribers on YouTube, the streamer known as Valkyrae has become one of the top women creators in gaming since she started back in 2015. Viewers can’t get enough of her bubbly personality and quirky antics, devouring her streams as she trash-talks in Valora…

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2018’s Best Co-Op Game Almost Made My Partner Dump Me

There is a lot of advice out there about how to maintain a healthy relationship with your significant other. Communicate effectively, set aside time to spend with each other, things like that. Having been in a relationship with my partner for nine years, I like to think we are pretty good at these things. Not much can…

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FF7 Rebirth, Xbox Drama, And More Of This Week's Hottest Takes

Hey, remember Foamstars? The Square Enix shooter from Summer Game Fest last year that everyone joked was a Splatoon clone? Well, it’s out now, and it turns out that “Splatoon clone” may have been a smidge too optimistic. Also, Team Green is going through it as we all wait on pins and needles to find out if Phil…

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Palworld, Persona 3 Reload, And More Of The Week's Essential Game Tips

This week we’re going back to school,collecting Pals, and being reborn—that’s a lot of stuff to do without some tips. Palworld, the breakout hit from developer PocketPair, got a handful of major bug fixes that will make your creature-collecting a lot easier. And Atlus’ recent Persona 3 Reloadrelease means you’ll…

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Xbox Exclusivity Chaos, Suicide Squad Leaks, And More Of The Week's Biggest Gaming News

It’s been a particularly notable week for gaming news, as reports indicated that Xbox exclusives like Starfield may be making their way to other platforms soon. That in and of itself generated enough rumors and speculation to fuel a week’s worth of news cycles, and we’ve gathered the details and the reactions here.…

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Taco Bell Held An E3-Like Event And It Was Weird

Hello everyone. Welcome to Friday. You made it to the end of the week. Congrats. I have a treat for you all: Taco Bell’s 2024 Live Mas Event. What’s that? It’s basically a Taco Bell mini-E3 complete with musical acts, announcements, and all the cringey moments you crave from something like this. Yes, if you guessed…

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