In the MMOs where I spend most of my time, big achievements tend to be things like guilds completing a raid before anyone else, or being the first player to hit max level at the start of a new expansion. And as impressive as some of these feats are, they are still part of the largely linear journey that most players will eventually experience. Pax Dei, a “social sandbox” that’s launching in early access soon, is doing things differently.

Mainframe Industries want to make a world that “does not feel like a journey”, says game director Reynir Hardarson. There are no levels or classes, so you don’t progress from level 1 to level 60. “It’s more of a place where you live in it.”

You find some land to call your own, or maybe join a clan and build a house, inn or shop in a village,…

Since the series’ earliest days on the humble MSX, one of the big inspirations behind Metal Gear has been John Carpenter’s Escape from New York. Protagonist Solid Snake gets his callsign from Kurt Russell’s character Snake Plissken (a link that would later be solidified when Snake uses the codename Plisken in MGS2), as well as his general bearing and attitude and equipment, while later games will make the Snake connection even more obvious with the addition of a Plissken-style eyepatch.

So Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima is obviously a fan. From Metal Gear Solid onwards Snake would be voiced by David Hayter (until Kiefer Sutherland was cast in MGS: GZ and MGSV: TPP) but that seems to have been a somewhat fraught relationship, with the actor revealing that even before that s…

Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League has endured a torrid road to launch. In April, the game was delayed to February next year, after its State-of-Play presentation two months prior saw a tepid response from audiences. The more recent Story and Gameplay deep-dive showed greater promise, but since then the Internet has been flooded with leaks revealing important details about the game. 

While we won’t go into detail about what was leaked, if you want to go into Suicide Squad completely clean, best stop reading now. The leaks began in earnest following a closed alpha tech test in November, revealing the game’s opening, emote dances, and specifics regarding its skill trees.

Since then, dataminers have been sifting through the files made available through the test, pullin…

Bungie has finally confirmed the long-rumored delay to Destiny 2: The Final Shape, the expansion that will conclude the long-running Light and Darkness saga. The studio said today that the expansion “needs more time to become exactly what we want it to be,” and so it is now set to arrive on June 4, 2024.

“The Final Shape is the culmination of the first ten years of Destiny storytelling and, for Guardians everywhere, countless hours spent together,” the Destiny 2 dev team said. “We want to honor that journey, so we’re taking the time we need to deliver an even bigger and bolder vision, one that we hope will be remembered and treasured for years to come.”

Season of the Wish will start as scheduled on November 28 (that’s tomorrow) and will be extended to run until the lau…

Correction 10/15/23: An earlier version of this article speculated that the mod reused Goblin faces already in the game. The mod’s usable faces are actually custom work by mod creator Tripsadin.

Let’s be real, the weird, vaguely villainous and nonhuman fantasy races in RPGs are the most fun way to play. Half-Orcs, Dragonborn, Tieflings, they’re just more fun, especially in a game as reactive as Baldur’s Gate 3. It’s felt like only a matter of time until modders started opening up options for BG3’s unplayable NPC races, and modder Tripsadin has implemented playable Goblins with their mod, Whispers of the Fey – Goblins Race.

The mod adds Goblins as a character creation option, with custom faces created by Tripsadin, and according to comments on the Ne…

In case you hadn’t noticed, the holiday run-up has officially begun, and it’s the time of year when every company begins its relentless assault on your newsfeed and email inboxes with as much whimsy and good cheer as it can muster. While for many this is something of an unwelcome barrage of forced bon-homie, there is the occasional bit of holiday marketing that elicits a genuine smile. 

As far as that goes, we’ve always been partial to the holiday tradition of the Windows ugly sweater, and the good news is the 2023 version has just dropped and by ugly sweater standards it’s virtually tasteful. 

Look at it. The majesty. The nostalgia. The wave of good will and sentiment that washes over you as you remember a simpler time, when taskbars were blue, Windows ha…

Which one is 7 Days to Die again? It’s the zombie survival game where every seven days a rampaging horde arrives to mess up everything you’ve made? Sounds like Brisbane on the weekend. 

I remember hearing 7 Days to Die is one of the good ones actually, but since it came out at the peak of my period of “being a bit sick of  all these zombie games, especially the early access ones” I never gave it a look-in. “I’ll wait until it leaves early access, then I’ll check it out,” I thought. And then I didn’t think about it again until now, when developers The Fun Pimps announced 7 Days to Die really is about to hit 1.0.

They won’t be moving on to another project, however, saying, “The Fun Pimps have and will continue to support 7 Days to Die development with a majority of t…

Diablo 4 is now in the wild, and Blizzard has announced it is the fastest-selling game in the company’s long and storied history. To give that some context, this thing has sold faster than the likes of Starcraft 2 and Overwatch (as well as its own predecessors) though what that actually means in terms of hard numbers remains a mystery for now, with Blizzard opting for vagueness amidst the celebrations. The press release says Diablo 4 “is Blizzard Entertainment’s fastest-selling game of all time, with Blizzard’s highest pre-launch unit sales ever on both console and PC”.

The game has been greeted with a bunch of perfect review scores (PCG’s review remains in-progress until we’ve had enough time with the launch game) and, while there are plenty of grumbles, a generally e…

If you’re bored of doing mundane things like “conquering settlements” in Total War: Warhammer 3, it sounds like the legendary lord being added to the Tzeentch roster in the upcoming Shadows of Change add-on might be for you. The Changeling is a shapeshifting daemon who, based on the latest Creative Assembly blog post, plays a totally different Total War.

We’ve seen other armies toy with infiltration mechanics before, particularly the skaven and Slaanesh, but it sounds like The Changeling leans in even further. After defeating a settlement, he’s got the option to insert a trickster cult, seemingly returning it to the owner as you would after sacking a town. Only not, because from then on the cult can either work to funnel money to The Changeling while spreading propaganda to influe…

Keep on scrolling and you’ll soon find yourself surrounded by all the Wordle help you could ever wish for. There’s a hint for the September 22 (825) game ready and waiting if you need it, and if you’re in danger of a complete wipe, today’s Wordle answer will soon set things right.

If Wordle gave out prizes for spectacularly missing today’s answer for far too long, I’m sure I’d be in the running for first place. Winning with just one guess left to go always feels like such a narrow escape, especially when those yellow letters refuse to flip to green for row after row.

Today’s Wordle hint

A Wordle hint for Friday, September 22

This common tool is used on people and animals to keep hair (or fur) neat and tidy, by artists to spread pigment on canvas,…