If you've played Battlefield 3, you'll no doubt remember the thrilling jet mission, which, I'll have you know, has an actual name. It's called Going Hunting, it's the fourth mission in the main campaign, and it puts you in the army boots of Lt. Jennifer "Wedge" Hawkins for a stunning airborne battle in the stormy skies of the Persian Gulf. It's arguably the most memorable mission from Battlefield 3 and one of the series' most celebrated gameplay sequences overall.

Things is, while you can use the jet's shooty things to take down enemies, you don't actually get to fly the plane, even though that was the original plan. In a tweet, Battlefield 3 lead designer David Goldfarb said technical limitations prevented DICE from implementing "free fly" in the mission.

"We did want to make this mission free fly initially, it just wouldn't have been possible to make the assets and stay at quality, plus lots of player education debate," he said. "We wound up going 'fuck it just make an awesome cinematic jet experience' but def wished freefly happened."

Goldfarb ended up leaving DICE in 2012 shortly after Battlefield 3's release. He was with Overkill for two years after that, where he directed Payday 2, and since 2014 he's been creative director at The Outsiders, the folks behind the Doom-inspired rhythm game Metal: Hellsinger.

If you're a fan of Battlefield 3, you'll be happy to know: Battlefield boss says the next game is ditching Specialists and returning to modern day because 3 and 4 were the "pinnacle of Battlefield."

Let's say I warmed up to it. Black Ops 6 is as remarkable as the series can be – we especially appreciated its fluid movement mechanics in our Black Ops 6 review – but I didn't think about it at all when it released late in 2024. I associated Call of Duty with the boys at my middle school, chocolate milk spouting out of their noses at lunch.

I felt like Call of Duty wasn't for women. Or, not for women like me, who are nervous, slow beginners with horrifyingly average aim. Anyway, I'd seen videos of girls talking to their teammates over voice chat, and it usually ended in flaccid commands to "make me a sandwich," or the kind of sexual depravity you find in a Paul Verhoeven movie. Thus, my association with boys at lunch snorting dairy.

It's appropriate, then, that my bedroom meet-ups with Black Ops 6 began with a boy.

Smooth operator

When my boyfriend told me he was going to start playing the FPS, I thought he was kidding. Like, do I even know you anymore? Are you going to spend $30 on the bong gun and forget about me?

Worse than that, while I certainly associate my favorite games – including Bloodborne and American McGee's Alice – with bloodshed, Call of Duty's inherent worship of military barbarism always crossed a line of being too real for me. Why should I play a video game that delights in force, in nationalism, in individualism when I'm constantly subjected to the queasy same on the news? Play should be liberating, not indoctrinating, right?

I think that's true, still, but I can't deny that Call of Duty worked its sleazy magic on me. I started getting sleepy ideas around 3 AM. I've been learning to live with insomnia, a condition that waxes and wanes with my nervousness around things like success and online multiplayer.

My boyfriend's interest in Black Ops 6 came at a critical period in my coping with insomnia, when I was sort of at peace with the idea of tossing and turning, though being tranquilized seemed a lot more relaxing. While I wrestled with my fear of staying awake, I'd peek over the covers at the guys holding SMGs on my boyfriend's computer.

The muffled sound of machine gun fire and gruff victory announcers – "All mission objectives met," "They never stood a chance," and so on – finally became so repetitive, I started thinking of them as a white noise machine.

After falling asleep enough times to mechanical keyboard clicking and grenade bursts, I began looking forward to my boyfriend's late Call of Duty sessions. I'd ask him if he was going to play Black Ops tonight, or if I could watch his matches, too, and get soothed by their visuals. Black Ops 6 is impeccably smooth and wet-looking, like rain on the window, except it sometimes involves a sniper using a skin that makes them look like a handsome dragon.

As my boyfriend raged against losing and cheaters , I became more attuned with this bizarre side of Call of Duty that older games in the series ignored for army grit.

Braggy Americana – that's what I hated about Call of Duty. But, from the comfort of my bed, I started learning that I was working from an outdated model. Black Ops 6, like the equally monolithic Fortnite, instead indulges in the fact that it is an online service with mass appeal. Behind my boyfriend's shoulder, I saw players blowing themselves up on purpose, or scooting around on the floor like a pissy dog to celebrate their match victory. There's an emote that does a slide whistle sound as your character pulls a thumbs up into a sneering thumbs down.

It's ridiculous. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, the game with a reputation of raising blood pressures, features hardly any blood. It's actually reliably absurd, so I now think of it as a shortcut to dreaming. Though, part of me worries that my new indifference to Call of Duty's macho guns and gall means the propaganda is working. But I've realized it's better to trivialize what scares me than let it win.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Season 2 brings back a beloved game mode fans have been begging for, but all I care about is a practically meaningless bug fix.

Warning: Spoilers for Far Cry 5 ahead

Planting the Seeds

The best thing about Far Cry New Dawn is the familiarity of it all. In a world untouched by the ravages of humanity for 17 years, New Dawn offers a startling premise: the Seed family we spent an entire game fighting was right all along, and life as we knew it has ended. So did that make Far Cry 5's protagonist, Rook, the real bad guy for trying to stop cult leader Joseph from saving humanity?

Well, New Dawn sees us step into the silent shoes of another everyman, the Security Captain, tasked with liberating Hope County from a new kind of tyranny. With the Seed family largely ousted and the Cult of New Eden (nicknamed the Peggies) contained in the North, the Twins and their Highwaymen have moved in to make life hell for the recently emerged survivors. The rest of the game feels like classic Far Cry: liberate bases, collect and upgrade your guns, and befriend yet another animal with a curiously cute name for such a brute. Horatio the hog, you are my best friend. It's still a guns-blazing good time of an FPS, as is completing smaller side missions to level up faster, but I think New Dawn benefits from trimming the fat and playing through the main missions almost exclusively.

The side material can feel superfluous at times, distracting us from the post-apocalyptic politics of the region that makes New Dawn such a strong narrative experience to play off the back of Far Cry 5. It also feeds into the key game design element that makes New Dawn feel more like a DLC: there are no territory leaders to dispatch across the map. Rather, Cap is on a mission to gather recruits – some new, some returning – to build up the fledgling community of Prosperity and rebel against the sisters' regime.

In between bursts of play, I take stock of its comfortably average aggregate score on Metacritic and am reminded of how niche this game fills. As we said in our Far Cry New Dawn review, "if you liked Far Cry 5, you’re sure to find Far Cry New Dawn thoroughly satisfying." Being so intrinsic to one another, it's certainly not going to have the same impact for anyone who skipped the fifth mainline entry in the series. But it's Joseph Seed himself that makes New Dawn such a joy to play for me – and when I'm confronted by the Peggies in the game's middling acts, I'm elated to learn that the tortured prophet is out there somewhere, waiting for me.

Sins of The Father

Joseph is one of the most prolific antagonists in the Far Cry series. I'm not going to spoil anything for those who are still on the fence about New Dawn, but what I will say is that it reveals the many layers of his madness, and that makes it a must-play for any lore fiend.

I consider Joseph Seed one of the most intriguing and best video game villains of all time, even before New Dawn proved him to be more of an antihero than all-out bad guy. Right from the off in Far Cry 5, I found it hard to hate the guy. His calming, soft spoken demeanor can come across as textbook cult leader manipulation, professing a disarming amount of love and understanding amid all the religious zealotry, but it's an entrancing charm brought to life through excellent writing and voice acting. Even the way his followers revere him as The Father makes sense; Joseph appears to genuinely care about each and every member of Eden's Gate, and his relationship to the cult seems even deeper in New Dawn.

At the same time, he is unpredictable and immediately untrustworthy for it. That emotional seduction is what makes his attempts to recruit Rook in Far Cry 5 so compelling, and Ubisoft must think so, too, because Joseph has now featured in three Far Cry games: Far Cry 5, New Dawn, and a Far Cry 6 DLC which digs into the backstories of the series' iconic host of bad guys.

For me, New Dawn really comes into its own when The Father is returned to us and we're reminded of why any of this matters at all. It's a small consolation prize for your Far Cry 7 patience as the publisher whittles through all the other upcoming Ubisoft games on its plate, but here's your sign to take advantage of both sister games being on Game Pass this month and get lost in the American wilderness. Say hi to The Father for me.

Here's how we rank the 10 best Far Cry games.

The tidbit comes from the publisher's most recent Q&A call following its latest fiscal report where EA CEO Andrew Wilson was asked about how an unusually busy year could affect the shooter. EA just said it plans to launch the next Battlefield before April 2026, but that's apparently not set in stone.

"I do believe that this year might be a nuanced year relative to competition," Wilson explained, probably referring to mammoth upcoming games like GTA 6, Borderlands 4, Fable, and Doom: The Dark Ages, which are all slated to launch during EA's upcoming fiscal year. "There may be some things happening in the year that may cause us to think differently about our launch timing. We have [a fiscal year 2026] launch window that the team is targeting. We believe the game will be great and ready at that time. But if we got close to that time frame and believe that this wasn't going to be a great window for us, then we would take a look at what an alternate window might be that would give us the appropriate time, energy and player acquisition opportunity for this Battlefield to be all that it needed to be."

GTA 6 alone is going to act as a black hole in the industry, sucking up an unbelievable amount of player time, attention, and money - so any other new online games will probably want some breathing room away from Rockstar Games' next goliath. Though, EA still seems very confident about what it's cooking up.

"We've invested more in this Battlefield than any Battlefield before," Wilson said. "We have four studios. We've had a meaningful amount of time. We're looking for this to be the biggest Battlefield we've ever made, and we, of course, want to make sure that we launch that into a window where we can deliver on the full promise of what Battlefield can be, and grow the community to a level that is commensurate with the size of the game that we're making."

EA's isn't alone in feeling a little trepidatious, however. Last year, Xbox said it hadn't announced many firm release dates for its biggest games because, of course, the elephant in the room was that no one wants to go up against GTA.

EA isn’t exaggerating, either - check out our Big in 2025 list to see the 50 most anticipated games of the year.

"EA unveiled Battlefield Labs," the company notes in its latest financial report, "a new initiative allowing player-driven testing and innovation ahead of the franchise’s expected fiscal year 2026 release." FY 2026 for EA runs from April 1, 2025 through March 31, 2026, so that narrows down Battlefield's release plan to a solid 12-month window.

Actual information on this new Battlefield game, which still doesn't have an official title, is still pretty hard to come by. The game's in pre-alpha and Battlefield Labs sign-ups will soon give fans an early taste, but given how long EA titles like Skate 4 and Project Rene have been in testing, that was no clear indication of an imminent launch. At least now we have a clearer picture of when the game's coming.

One other thing we know about the new Battlefield is that it's in development at no fewer than four different studios, with traditional series developer DICE taking the lead on multiplayer and underlying game systems. The studio line-up will be a bit bittersweet for racing game fans, though, as Need for Speed and Burnout developer Criterion is fully committing to work on Battlefield. But hey, at least Criterion is helping to bring the campaign back to the series.

These are the best Battlefield games of all time.

BungieLeaks helpfully flagged the original season pass calendar on Twitter. I was confused when I booted the game up myself and saw no date attached. It turns out this countdown really was deleted. There are several accounts and posts reporting the same end point – 161 days, 22 hours from now – but there's no trace left in-game.

This obviously raises a few questions. Has Bungie revised its plans? Is July 15 not set in stone? Was Bungie not ready to reveal the launch date for the next expansion, codename Apollo, which will kick off the game's next saga, codename Frontiers? I've reached out to Bungie for clarification.

It was previously announced that Apollo would launch in the summer, ringing in a new release cycle for Destiny 2 that will see two "medium-sized expansions" released each year, paired with two "major updates" in each half of the year. The second Frontiers expansion, codename Behemoth, would come in winter 2025. A July launch would fit Apollo's summer window, though mid-July is likely a bit later than players were hoping. (I say that, but I'd wager plenty of players are happy to wait a bit longer if it means sticking the landing.)

The Heresy season pass does notably still confirm that Act 2 will arrive in 34 days, while Act 3 is 55 days out. That would be March 11 for Act 2 and April 1 for Act 3, rounding up to the nearest weekly reset.

Assuming this July 15 Apollo launch date was more than a mistake or placeholder, this suggests we'll be living in Act 3 for several months, just as we did with previous expansions which ended up delayed. That's a few more questions for the pile: assuming this date was accurate, will Apollo stick to it or slip deeper into 2025? And will this mega-season see an Into the Light-style content drop to help refresh it? As Act 1 gets off the ground, it's unclear for now.

"Oryx is back": Destiny 2's final Episode takes the MMO to the site of the iconic Taken King expansion for a Coil-inspired roguelite mode, and also Star Wars armor.

At 2:20pm ET, the official Bungie Help account confirmed that, "as part of the investigation into today's server and stability issue, we will be bringing Destiny 2 offline shortly for maintenance." The most recent update, at 3:13pm ET, confirms that "we are bringing Destiny 2 back online. Players may be placed into a queue while we continue our investigation." I can smell the servers sizzling now.

This all started shortly after reset time rolled around earlier today. "We’re currently investigating stability issues and a rise in various error codes, including PLUM," Bungie Help advised, understandably raising alarms after the litany of technical issues that Destiny 2 has faced in the past few months.

Shortly afterward, the account added that "we're investigating an issue where surges were mistakenly re-enabled in Raids. Note, today's server and stability issues are our top priority to fix. We appreciate your patience while we continue our investigation." It wouldn't be a Destiny 2 content launch without some unintended features coming back like a stain on the couch you thought you'd bleached out of existence.

Those stability issues have seemingly been resolved enough to let players in. Anecdotally, people do seem to be getting into Destiny 2 without a staggering queue time and staying in, though your mileage may vary as launch day continues.

"Oryx is back": Destiny 2's final Episode takes the MMO to the site of the iconic Taken King expansion for a Coil-inspired roguelite mode, and also Star Wars armor.

There's no official title or release date for the new game, but the teaser video makes clear that it's a traditional new entry in the Battlefield series. DICE is leading development on multiplayer and the underlying game systems, while Criterion - best known as the studio behind Burnout and Need for Speed - is expanding its support role and focusing on a single-player component.

The devs make clear in no uncertain terms here that "campaign is back" this time around. Motive, the studio behind the Dead Space remake, is also aiding in development of the single-player campaign and working on multiplayer maps. Ripple Effect, the longtime Battlefield support studio and descendant of the office that made the original Medal of Honor, is working on "an experience that is really going to open Battlefield up to a whole group of new players," but there are no details on what that experience is just yet.

This new Battlefield game is in "pre-alpha," but it's far enough along for the devs to give us about 10 seconds worth of gameplay footage. The footage shows off a whole lot of impressive destruction, and appears to confirm that we're returning to a modern, grounded setting.

A series of community test under the moniker Battlefield Labs will get underway shortly. Battlefield Labs sign-ups are already live, though be aware that invites are limited and the test will be under NDA. "We will start by testing the pillars of play, like core combat and destruction. Then transition to balance and feedback for our weapons, vehicles and gadgets, ultimately leading to where all these pieces come together in our maps, modes, and squad play," the devs explain in a Discord post.

"And yes, we will be testing Conquest and Breakthrough, the heart and soul of our all-out warfare experience, but BF Labs will also be a place to explore new ideas and fine-tune and improve Battlefield pillars like our class system (Assault, Engineer, Support, and Recon) to create deeper more strategic play."

EA has increasingly come to focus on community playtests to help shape new games like Project Rene and Skate 4, and given the tepid response to Battlefield 2142 it's no surprise the publisher wants to make sure it's getting things right with the next entry in the FPS franchise.

Take aim at all the best FPS games.

Sign up For Battlefield Labs now

To sign up for Battlefield Labs, you need to follow this sign up link and log in with your EA account details, before being taken to the next stage of the registration process. At the time of writing, there is a virtual queuing system in place with tens of thousands of players trying to sign up, so you'll need to be patient and keep track of where you are in the queue. When it gets to your turn, you'll have 15 minutes to enter the EA website and provide your details. Note that registering will not guarantee access to Battlefield Labs, as EA have said that "Initial invites will be limited to a few thousand participants with servers located in Europe and North America. Over time we'll invite tens of thousands more with support for further territories."

What is Battlefield Labs?

Battlefield Labs is a new initiative from the collective Battlefield Studios teams working on the next title in the series, to test fresh ideas and experiences with players so they can be worked on and refined before release. Under a non-disclosure agreement, those players selected to participate will playtest and feedback on all elements of gameplay, starting with core combat and destruction before moving on to vehicles, weapons, maps, game modes, and even iconic elements such as the class system.

For now, the best place to stay up to date with everything is to join the official Battlefield Discord, where much more information and work-in-progress updates will be posted.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Giving credit up top, it's cool to see Ubisoft doing some maintenance on its back catalog, and the timing couldn't have been better with Far Cry New Dawn coming to Game Pass on February 4. The FPS update should be available to download any minute on PS5 and Xbox Series X. Bravo, Ubisoft.

Now for the funny part. Ubisoft announced the 60 FPS update in a plain ol' tweet, which seems fairly proportionate to the weight of the news, give or take. That said, it seems Ubisoft had originally planned to give the reveal a little more oomph but then realized that wasn't possible.

"Well… this wasn’t how we planned to announce this," reads the tweet. "A 60 FPS update is coming to Far Cry New Dawn on Xbox Series X|S!"

OK, cool, great, but here's the rub. In order for Ubisoft to roll out the 60 FPS update, it had to "temporarily" disable FPS Boost, and before it did that it had to let everyone know it was going to do that... which would've spoiled the surprise element of the 60 FPS update. Basically, it seems like at the very last minute, some engineer had that realization and had to nervously cross over to Ubisoft's marketing team with some pretty unfortunate news.

"Yeah, you know that YouTube video you've already filmed and scheduled to go live in, like, five minutes? Oh, and the blog post? Yeah, neither of those are happening," is what I can imagine that conversation looked like.

Ubisoft did confirm in a follow-up tweet that the PS5 version of Far Cry New Dawn is also getting the 60 FPS update, but its FPS Boost equivalent, Game Boost, isn't affected, I'm assuming because it doesn't work with Far Cry New Dawn.

Anyway, yes, I hope that good and funny news sets the vibe for your whole weekend.

Here's every new Ubisoft game in development that we know about.

Overwatch 2 always seems to be steeped in some kind of controversy - sometimes deserved, mostly not - but the latest round of criticism came from support hero Lucio's Cyber DJ legendary skin that was included in the in-game store via the Cyber Fiend bundle, which also featured a futuristic Widowmaker skin, for roughly $28. 

It was a cool outfit, so what's the big fuss about? Well, less than a day after some players dropped cash for the skin, Blizzard announced that the Cyber DJ cosmetic would be available as a free Twitch drop alongside an Overwatch 2 Spotlight event set to reveal "groundbreaking PvP gameplay changes."

The whole kerfuffle seems to have been a big mix-up between departments, though. "There was an unfortunate error where we released a shop bundle that included the Cyber DJ Lucio skin in our shop while also announcing this skin as an exclusive skin for Twitch Drops in our Overwatch Spotlight announcement blog," the community team wrote on the game's competitive subreddit. "We've refunded anyone who has purchased this skin."

To sweeten the pot, the team is also including a new Flirty Flare skin for Baptiste as an exclusive drop for next month's Overwatch Spotlight. "We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate our community for alerting us of this. See you on February 12!"

Blizzard's upcoming event comes after genre newbie Marvel Rivals has been eating its lunch for two whole months. Popular streamer Ninja recently proclaimed that "Overwatch is dead and gone," though opinions are split as fellow Twitch star Shroud argued that Overwatch is "absolutely a much better game" than Marvel Rivals. Here here.

Hopes that Overwatch 2 will fully return to 6v6 matches are raised as the playtest is extended thanks to “continued player interest.” 

Doom mods pretty much fuel a subculture of their own. Doom modders have gotten the game working on everything from a pregnancy test to a printer, and mods include everything from new maps, entirely fresh campaigns, and surrealist horror tributes to long-lost friends. Now, one mod gives us a look at the near future - or the very distant past in the Doomiverse.

As per PCGN, released in early access this week, Doom Darkfall is a mod for Doom 2 that's essentially a "port of the Doom: The Dark Ages weapons into classic Doom, trying to match the official gameplay closely," available on ModDB. (How many Dooms is too many Dooms for one sentence?)

Of course, modders haven't yet gotten their hands on The Dark Ages' new suite of deadly toys, but Doom Darkfall's using all of id Software's marketing materials as inspiration. That chainsaw shield? Here, and it bounces off surfaces as it would in the final game. That contraption that squishes skulls and shoots their sharp pieces back out at underworld enemies? Here, too. Medieval architecture? Here. And even some enemy models and glory kills are here, as well. 

If you'd rather wait for the full game, it looks like you're in for a treat. Id Software chief Marty Stratton recently said Doom: The Dark Ages is the studio's "biggest" game yet and a "dramatic expansion of our world."

In the meantime, don’t miss a single exciting release with our new games of 2025 and beyond release calendar.  

In a recent livestream, reposted elsewhere on the internet, Ninja, who has 19 million subscribers on Twitch, delved into why he thinks "Overwatch is dead and gone" after Marvel Rivals' mega-popular launch. "Just in general, the Overwatch 2 launch was just abysmal - it was an update," he said, before also mentioning the canceled PvE mode that was used to justify the '2' at the end of the title.

"I mean, it's just so unfortunate," he continued. "Here's the thing... [Marvel Rivals] already has a new map coming, which is incredible. Second, they have so much lore, and so many heroes, and villains, and anti-heroes. They have enough for updates for, like, the next 10 years." 

Marvel Rivals is, at least, promising to add new playable characters and maps at a much faster rate than Overwatch 2 has been. Director Guangyun Chen said upcoming Marvel Rivals characters would be coming every six weeks, in contrast to Overwatch 2, which adds a new hero every second season. Though I don't think Overwatch designers need comic book source material to fuel the next decade of updates because, y'know, they've already been expanding Overwatch for nearly 10 years with something called imagination.

"Overwatch is dead" is, no matter how much you love to hate the game, a pretty hyperbolic statement, though. Blizzard Entertainment just teased "groundbreaking PvP changes" coming to Overwatch 2 very soon, and many of its best ideas are still inspiring Marvel Rivals in both its limited-time modes and hero movesets. 

Famed Marvel Rivals pacifist begs the developers to reverse their accidental 22-points worth of damage they inflicted: “It’s a No.” 

Seriously, Blizzard keeps using that word. In a blog post titled "groundbreaking PvP gameplay changes coming," the devs say that "in 2025, Overwatch 2 is going to be packed with groundbreaking changes to the PvP experience that will be unlike anything you’ve seen before." Such major changes, in fact, that "it’s going to take more than a blog or a developer update to let you know what we have coming this year."

The Overwatch 2 Spotlight will broadcast February 12 at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm GMT via YouTube and Twitch. "Not only we are looking at incredible changes how the game is played, but you’ll get a glance at new heroes, new maps, and even more content coming this February and beyond," Blizzard says.

While some players have been perhaps a bit too eager to dance on Overwatch's supposed grave, Overwatch 2 has certainly struggled to find its footing, leaving the door wide open for a game like Marvel Rivals to steal the spotlight. Recently, Blizzard has begun to experiment with things like a return to 6v6 action and a full-on Overwatch Classic mode, and it seems the devs have more in mind as they work to recapture the hero shooter's best days.

It's time to stop calling Marvel Rivals an Overwatch 2 killer now that its features have already surpassed it.

The fix is buried deep in developer Treyarch's patch notes (and, as far as I can tell, not listed at all in its Season 2 announcement), but it should repair "an issue where final placements were being incorrectly calculated" and "an issue where the Winner’s Circle would not consistently display the Top 3 players," Treyarch says.

I don't understand why no one is outside my window playing a tuba and getting shot out of a cannon. This is an ignore-your-family, parade-in-the-streets-with-confetti-guns-type patch, right? Why isn't anyone else freaking out?

Before this apparent fix, for months, Black Ops 6's free-for-all mode was pestered by a bug that made winning a match worthless. Players discovered that, despite ranking in a match's top-three winner's circle with the most kills, Black Ops 6 would splash an infuriating "DEFEAT" graphic on their screen and disrupt their win-loss ratio. These players wouldn't show up in the winner's circle spotlight at the end of a match either, so no one could see their cool emotes, like the one where they go "shhh."

The winning losers were confused, too. "I got 0 kills," a Redditor writes in one of many threads on the issue. "Absolutely zero. And somehow I won the game??? How."

It wasn't fair, and it was bad for morale – in a game like Call of Duty, where even third graders are verbally abusive and the coolest skins look like they belong in a gumball machine, you need all the morale you can get. I'm thankful that, now that the free-for-all bug is supposedly fixed, we are free.

Call of Duty season 2 brings back Gun Game and a fan-favorite Zombies weapon we haven't seen in 10 years.

Oryx looms over the Heresy lead art, but the late Taken King's role in the Episode remains to be seen. The main cast is filled out by Hive expert Eris Morn, weird stuff enthusiast Drifter, and the slightly Taken-ified Sloane. The Dreadnaught itself has been warped by one of the Echoes that have defined the ongoing epilogue arcs, but some areas still feel just like home.

Alongside the Sundered Doctrine dungeon coming February 7 and a big Trials of Osiris overhaul, Heresy features a new core activity called The Nether. Bungie says it wanted to build on the rewards and roguelite elements of previous activities like the beloved Coil, turning The Nether into a still rogue-ier mode with no health regen or ammo drops, draftable boons that buff your stats and alter abilities, and randomized encounters and objectives. You have way more base health and your healing perks will still work, but they'll be severely nerfed. You're also limited by revive tokens, so I'm just hoping that this Nether health economy play actually works well and isn't super frustrating in high-end difficulties.

The rub is that you can play The Nether solo or in a group of three, either jumping into an easier patrol mode, the baseline matchmade version, or the harder advanced version. Harder versions will spit out more loot, and Bungie stresses that clearing the whole activity is the best way to get rewards, seemingly addressing feedback about it being loot-optimal to dip out of previous activities after a few rounds.

Destiny 2 community lead DMG also fielded feedback on Episode 2's fiddly tonic loot system and repetitive narrative delivery. Heresy, it seems, will make it easier to target and acquire specific guns, and Destiny 2 purportedly has some new narrative tech to break up the helm-holo-helm-holo routine that players are mighty familiar with by now. Heresy also seems to have a larger injection of new guns, hopefully offsetting the underwhelming loot pools of recent Acts.

Heresy is rounded out by a big Arc subclass shakeup, some long-awaited Stars Wars collab armor, an assassin-themed Void Hunter aspect, and craftable weapons coming to the reprised Vault of Glass raid. Grind the Vault of Glass for, I don't know, the millionth time? I told you it must be a day that ends in Y.

"If your cake is trash, nobody wants to eat it": At a tough time for Destiny 2, Bungie drops an Exotic mission promising vampire vibes, a cool shotgun, and a finale with bite.

In an interview conducted by PC Gamer at a recent preview event, studio chief Marty Stratton spoke about the team's approach to creating The Dark Ages' game world, specifically noting the sheer scale of it. "It's the biggest for us ever, for sure," he explains. "It's a dramatic expansion for our world. And what's amazing is you get a glimpse of it. It takes you to some unbelievable locations."

In a separate interview, creative director Hugo Martin acknowledges that the game world is at times akin to a "sandbox," and a core part of the game's progression is exploring that world. "[The levels] fold back in on themselves. You're constantly unlocking the space, and through exploration, you're gonna be able to make yourself more powerful," he explains. "Exploration is a huge part of the game. I would say it's a more expanded, linear experience with a greater emphasis on exploration."

Following 2016's Doom and 2020's Doom Eternal, expectations for The Dark Ages are, understandably high. But with a few months to go until the game's release, Stratton doesn't seem to be feeling any pre-release nerves. "I can't wait for people to get there," he says, of the game's world, "because you just walk around and the exploration part is not only great for finding those upgrades and the secrets and all that kind of stuff, but the world that you're exploring is like nothing we've done before."

Whether or not this upward trajectory continues into the future remains to be seen. The Dark Ages will not be the end of the series, according to Martin, though that will likely depend on how this year's instalment fares upon release.

Check out some other games to look forward to in our list of new games for 2025.

Speaking with PC Gamer during a recent preview event, Martin reveals that The Dark Ages isn't a conclusion of any kind despite standing as the third entry amid the series' more modern titles. "It isn't designed to be the end of something," explains the director - but that doesn't mean that developers are ready to look ahead of the medieval twist on Doom just yet. "Genuinely, sincerely, we're really just focused on this right now."

The lead asserts once more, however, that The Dark Ages won't be "a period on the end of a sentence." In fact, it sounds as though there's likely quite a bit more still to come down the line - from Martin himself, too. "I like making Doom games," he admits. "I wouldn't have a problem doing this for a long time." It's unsurprising to hear, with Martin having been at id Software since 2013 when he first joined the studio as art director.

There's no telling what direction Doom will take after The Dark Ages, though, or if any future titles will be as unique as the 2025 entry with its controversial sprint option, shield saw, and perhaps most importantly, its new medieval setting. Between all of the massive demons and the "cybernetic, fire-breathing dragon," however, I'd personally argue there's more than enough to keep us occupied until another shiny Doom shooter swoops into the limelight.

Need even more to look forward to? Here are some of the biggest new games for 2025 and beyond.

"We also have sprint in the game now," creative director Hugo Martin told media in a presentation ahead of the game's appearance at Xbox Developer Direct. "Your general walking speed is pretty fast. That's what's interesting - in many ways, the game is actually faster, but because it's more grounded and the control scheme is streamlined, it doesn't become more complex or overwhelming."

Doom has always been known for its lightning-fast basic movement, going all the way back the 1993 original. The one exception the that rule was Doom 3, which traded blistering action for slower-paced horror vibes. Part of that new focus included the introduction of a sprint button, complete with limited stamina that'd see you run out of breath if you spent too long running from monsters. The Dark Ages seems to be taking a much different approach to sprint, treating it like an expansion on the speed the series is known for rather than a limitation.

"This is Doom through and through," studio director Marty Stratton continued. "Truly, it feels like a Doom game. It feels like a different take on Doom, but going back to the originals, there's a lot of that. And the shield bashing, the speed at which you move through the environment is incredible."

"If in 2016 you felt like Bruce Lee on a skateboard with a shotgun," Martin concluded, "this time you're going to feel like a silverback on a hoverboard with a giant sledgehammer."

These are the biggest new games for 2025 and beyond.

The multi-platform release means that the long-awaited sequel to 2020's Doom Eternal will be one of the first titles from an internal Xbox studio to launch simultaneously for Xbox Series X and PS5, alongside PC and entrance into Game Pass. This is all part of Microsoft's emerging strategy to launch its titles on rival platforms – with Grounded, Sea of Thieves, Hi-Fi Rush, and Pentiment making the jump last year.

Where Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal were focused on an unrelenting push-forward approach to combat, Doom: The Dark Ages is built around the concept of stand and fight – wielding a mediaeval arsenal to battle against bigger hordes of marauding demons than ever before. There's wider playspaces, more reactive Glory kills, a suite of new weapons, and the ability to parry monstrous foes with a shield that doubles as a chainsaw… you know, everything you want from a new Doom game. 

The decision to simultaneously launch Doom: The Dark Ages on Xbox and PlayStation – rather than stagger the launch, as we're seeing with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on PS5 (scheduled to land at some point in 2025)  – was confirmed at the Xbox Showcase in 2024. At the time, Xbox head Phil Spencer told IGN: "Doom is definitely one of those franchises that has a history of so many platforms… It’s a franchise that I think everyone deserves to play. When I was in a meeting with [Marty Stratton, id Software studio director] a couple years ago, I asked Marty what he wanted to do, and he said he wanted to sell it on all platforms. Simple as that."

Looking for something to play while you wait? Check out one of the best FPS games, many of which are some of the best games on Game Pass right now. 

In a new trailer and accompanying blog post, the full breadth of new content coming in Call of Duty season 2 is laid bare. The three new maps coming to the main multiplayer mode include an Avalon crime boss's penthouse in Bounty, a shifty black market used car lot in Dealership, and a stolen yacht in Lifeline Strike. Comparatively, things are a little quiet in Warzone season 2 as Treyarch dedicates its resources to gameplay tuning and quality of life stuff, but Activision assures "a full selection of content is still accessible."

There's also some new Big Guns, rewards, and limited-time events coming in Season 2, but that's not going to be surprising at all is it? Let's talk about the new stuff that's eliciting YouTube comments like: "HOLY PEAK," "WE'RE SO BACK," and "EXCUSE MEEE."

Literally all of those were posted in reaction to the appearance of the Ice Staff at around 1:04 in the above trailer (timestamp). The Staff of Ice, as it's officially called, first appeared way back in 2012's Black Ops 2 in the Zombies map Origins alongside other elemental staffs like the lightning, fire, and wind versions. Only the Staff of Ice is seen in the trailer and it's the only one Activision confirmed in the blog, but it's possible we'll see the other variants crop up eventually.

Zombies is also getting a new map called The Tomb, which is an ancient and, naturally, cursed dig site that'll take you through some catacombs where I'm sure everything will be totally chill and relaxed. Actually, I can't even make that joke because I'm obligated to tell you Mimics, the shapeshifting buggers that have been deceiving and killing Call of Duty Operators since Black Ops Cold War, are returning in Black Ops 6 season 2.

Elsewhere in the Season 2 update is the long-awaited, oft-requested return of Gun Game, a free-for-all mode where all players cycle through the same set of 20 weapons by, you guessed it, killing people. You get what's on the tin, essentially.

Call of Duty: Season 2 kicks off next week on January 28.

Find out where we ranked your favorite in our list of the best Call of Duty games, and be sure to let us know how much you agree in the comments.

How to link your Twitch and Bungie.net accounts to get Twitch Drops

To get Destiny 2 Twitch Drops, you need to have your Bungie and Twitch accounts linked which you do by following these steps:

• Log into Bungie.net. This obviously needs to be account that you use to play Destiny 2.
• Click on your account icon in the top-right corner to open a sidebar menu, then click on Settings.
• Click on Account Linking in the menu list on the left then find the Twitch section and click on Link Account.
• Log into your Twitch account if you haven't already done so.
• Click Authorize when prompted to link your accounts.

How to unlock Twitch Drops in Destiny 2

Now that your accounts are linked, here are the Twitch Drops you can get in Destiny 2 and how to unlock them:

• Golden Hour emblem: Subscribe to any channel broadcasting Destiny 2. Available from January 20, 2025, to January 31, 2025.

Once you've met the requirements for the above Twitch Drops emblems, you should be notified that the reward is ready to be claimed. Once you've claimed it, the relevant emblem should automatically unlock on your Destiny 2 account, and you'll be able to find it in-game under the Flair menu within your Collections. If a reward doesn't appear, try checking your Partner Rewards under Code Redemption on Bungie.net as you may need to claim it from there instead.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

We suggest to Bryan Wynia, studio creative director at Tripwire Interactive, that players come to Killing Floor expecting something very specific with its 5-squad, wave-based survival. So how does the team go about iterating on those recognizable foundations while also offering something new? "One area we focused on early were the enemies. We wanted to bring back some of the classic threats but elevate them to provide players with a new challenge. We gave them new attacks, new abilities, and new ways to navigate to players. For example, the Husk having the ability to use his jet pack to attack flanks really causes you to keep your head on a swivel."

Squad fall in

Wynia continues: "As zeds and enemies became more challenging, we had to provide the players with new forms of movement, weapon-mods, and a variety of tools to now handle these threats. It also changed how we developed our maps. We are able to think more vertically due to the enhanced zeds and new player movement."

The new forms of movement Wynia is referencing is perhaps most evident in the returning 'Crawler' enemy type, which is no longer restricted to floors and walkways, instead crawling (that's what they do, after all) over walls and ceilings too, often in large numbers. There's plenty of deliciously twisted imagination on show in the horrors that scuttle and lurch towards you, and the game's metal-augmented monstrosities are even more horrific than before.

Wynia explains: "We really want to communicate the difference between a zombie and a zed. The goal was to show players and fans that these are bio-engineered killing machines. Created in a factory or lab with the only goal of killing you! We just revealed the re-imagined Siren. Visually we want her to remind you of the previous design yet show how Horzine [a biotech company responsible for the outbreak and release of these monsters, called 'specimens'] has upgraded her to be this ultimate weapon capable of causing massive destruction and death. The contrast between the pale flesh and cold metal helps create a horrific abomination of science and engineering."

But it isn't just the Siren's new look that's gotten Wynia keen for you to meet her in-game. "I’m really excited for players to hear her as she enters the battle as well, it is pretty intimidating. Our audio team has done an excellent job at creating unique audio elements that help define the character of each zed and build that sense of tension."

So why now? Why not just make another update for Killing Floor 2? Wynia has a simple answer: "Killing Floor has a long history of updates post launch. From exploring new maps to utilizing a variety of new weapons. These updates have given players new experiences and challenges that add to the fun of fighting waves of zeds. After the team worked on a variety of Killing Floor 2 updates as well as Maneater we were excited to explore what the future of Killing Floor could look like. We had a variety of new tools and tech that would allow us to make an even larger and bloodier sequel. We also wanted to explore new experiences, new stories, and expand the world of Killing Floor."

The gameplay footage released so far looks super-satisfying, with every shot drenching the floor in reflective, very wet-looking blood. But its biggest pull is arguably deeper than the violence. Wynia suggests a deeper reason for the series' chokehold on players: "The combination of horror and co-op creates something that players really enjoy. We often talk about Killing Floor being at its best when you are just barely surviving. It causes this sense of tension and excitement so you end up having fun if you have destroyed all the zeds or died a horrible death in the process. It’s similar to a haunted house or roller coaster with this really dramatic pacing."

The game is coming not only to PC but also to Xbox Series consoles and PS5, so look out for more soon. We certainly will.

See what else lies ahead with our roundup of upcoming horror games.

There have been "over 136,000 Ranked Play account bans since the mode launched," according to a new blog post. Notably, these are indeed account bans - the devs say they're not making use of IP bans "because they tend to take action against entire groups within a range that aren’t problematic. For example, a college campus or internet café would be swept up in an IP-based ban wave when only a single machine was targeted."

The devs note that they've implemented "new detection and warning systems for Spam Reporting," but say that spam reports don't actually work against targeted users because "our system does not consider more than one single report from a player versus another." That is, of course, "despite what cheat developers are telling players when they try to sell their illegal software."

In Season 2, which launches January 28, the devs are planning a "major" update to the kernel-level anti-cheat driver that's already live in-game. This will come alongside improvements to "detections and systems" both client-side and server-side. Sometime past the release of Season 3, the devs also plan to launch a "multitude of new tech" including a "brand-new system" aimed at separating legit players from cheaters.

"We’re not slowing down in our mission to shut down cheaters whose only mission is to ruin the fun for everyone else," the blog continues, "and we’re confident that the combination of the updates above, as well as ongoing improvements to our detection systems and Activision’s continued legal actions against illegal cheat sellers, will provide a demonstrably healthier gameplay experience going forward."

Looking for the best Black Ops 6 guns and loadouts? We've got you covered.

Fortune's Run boasts a "Very Positive" rating overall on Valve's platform, with fans detailing how the shooter is "brutal and fantastic" in their reviews. The game has also steadily received updates from Team Fortune, the duo behind its development. According to the lead dev's new post, however, it's likely that Fortune's Run will remain as it is for some time: "I have some stuff going on I need to make public as it's going to interrupt development."

The dev continues in the update titled "Extremely Sad Depressing News," revealing that she won't be able to work as she's going to prison. "I've been sentenced to prison for the next 3 years. It's a long story, but I've lived a very different life before I was a game developer, and I wasn't living very well. My case is about 5 years old now," explains the lead, "I have been going through the legal process the whole time I've been working on this."

According to the dev, her sentence is set to begin in February: "I have finally been found guilty and sentenced, and I'm going away next month. It's a shame, but it's the consequences of my actions. I was a very violent person and I hurt a lot of people in my life. Unfortunately, the sentence isn't going to help with that at all, but I guess we all know that." However, the lead dev's situation doesn't necessarily mark the end of Fortune's Run.

"So the game isn't TOTALLY dead," she states, "but unfortunately due to even further bad things happening, it's unclear what will happen." As described in the post, the other developer recently stepped away from the project entirely as "she was no longer interested in game development." Without her available to take the helm for the next few years, the lead says "development will be completely interrupted until I'm released."

When she's released, Future's Run could launch out of early access: "There's a chance that if you wait a few years I'll be able to cap off the release. In fact, there's not very much content left to work on, I've been making stubs and prototypes of the missing levels in my spare time." The dev then concludes her announcement by assuring fans of the shooter that she's "extremely passionate" and will "do my best" to "finish it."

Itching for something new to play? Here are the best FPS games around right now.

Per its old Steam page, the Classic Offensive mod aimed to "recreate the 1.6 vibe" in CS:GO, but in a new statement shared on Twitter, the team says that it "received an automated Steam Support message" about the app's retirement after it submitted its build to Steamworks. "This is devastating as we've worked on the project for almost eight years now," it states.

"We do not understand what happened, we went through Steam Greenlight back in 2017, talked to legal to know if this was possible for us to release on Steam," it continues. "We even discussed with some of the developers on different Valve projects, and they have been very cooperative in helping us figure out the means of release back then."

The team claims that it followed mod release guidelines and "requirements and recommendations to the letter," which it says was "sometimes even to the detriment of the quality of the mod." It adds, "We feel like we were treated unfairly and have been blinded by our own passion for the game, as many other projects did before."

On Twitter, the dev who started the creation of Classic Offensive in the first place, @ZooL_Smith, has given a few more details on the situation. After the project "reached top position on Greenlight," Steam's now defunct program that let the community have a voice on what could come to the platform, "Valve started contacting us, specifically people from their legal team, where they started looking into the project and potential issues for being added to Steam." In Classic Offensive's case, that included its original name (once Counter-Strike: Classic Offensive), as well as mentions of other Valve IP in its maps, which it dealt with. 

Back to the present, and the team is faced with a response claiming that the mod is "not a good fit for Steam" after apparently waiting since November for an "additional review" of the mod. What's more, the response states that the app "cannot be reused." One ray of hope remains as @ZooL_Smith says other modders have previously received the same message and "sometimes it's just a mistake Steamworks employees do, and it can be reverted."

Hopefully for the Classic Offensive team, that can happen here – @ZooL_Smith says "It's awful, and this is why I hope nobody else should get in this situation." An old version of the mod is still available on ModDB, but notably isn't the final product that the team had spent so much time on. 

For more games like Counter-Strike, be sure to check out our roundup of the best FPS games.

"Halo meets Portal was a pretty good tagline for a team that had no marketing budget," he says, chuckling. "But we want to build our own path with this sequel. We don't want to just be the 'Halo meets Portal' team. Those games were obviously a huge inspiration, we're not shy about that, but Splitgate 2 needs to be its own thing."

Live service mentality

Fairly radical changes have arrived as a result. There's a clearer, more consistent visual identity; a refined approach to manoeuvrability and momentum; maps with less overt verticality, and more grounded gunplay infused with a class-based faction system to lend the experience greater definition. "We looked at what Splitgate did really well, that fans really loved, and at the areas where we felt it fell short – where we weren't able to sustain longevity."

The essence of Splitgate's gunplay, portals, and movement were aspects 1047 Games wanted to preserve. But key revisions reflect a desire to "make a game that's here to stay for years to come" rather than an experience which "has its moment and then fades." Factions are one element where Proulx says Splitgate 2 is vying to include "meaningful variety with a purpose", with the class-based structure "allowing us to not only cater to different playstyles, but allow for a meta to form that can evolve over time."

1047 Games is honest in its self-appraisal, that it didn't grasp the complexities of managing a live-service in the modern era. Perhaps that should come as no surprise, given the studio's humble origins. "Splitgate started off as a school project. I co-founded this studio with a friend of mine in a dorm room. The Splitgate team was under 20 people. A small team, with a small budget. We had a lot of raw talent and passion, but we were very inexperienced," he says. "I think the biggest thing I learned from Splitgate was the importance of Live Ops."

"Our short-term retention was world class, up there with the top shooters," Proulx continues. "Players would come and play Splitgate for about four weeks, have a good time, leave a good review – we're 92% positive on Steam – and then they would run out of things to do. Games like Apex Legends, Call of Duty, Fortnite, Valorant would have big updates and players would go back to them. The biggest lesson learned is how key this part of game development is; figuring that out and being able to move quickly is just so important."

Whether Splitgate 2 can stand the test of time is unknowable. But what's clear is that the free-to-play shooter is moving in the right direction. Four-versus-four action that's tight and precise, dazzling in moments where fast portal placement can lead to awe-inspiring aerial kills. Multi-dimensional combat remains Splitgate 2's strongest identifier, but there is still balance to be had in its interplay with new class-based abilities and powers.

Still, in spite of the challenge, Proulx remains confident: "My plan for success is to keep listening to the community, hire amazing people, build amazing things, and do it quickly. Being able to listen to the community and stay lean, it's something we're in a unique position to deliver on. The team is around 175 now and growing, but we still have that scrappy startup mentality," he says. "At the end of the day, we're just a bunch of gamers having fun."

"We didn’t make the game of our dreams": Splitgate 2 is a AAA FPS built to "last a decade or more" using everything the first FPS couldn't be, all in Unreal Engine 5

That developer is associate designer Danny Nanni, who normally handles abilities but jumped at the chance to work on his first Exotic weapon. Other members of Bungie contributed to its design and creation, of course, but Nanni was at the forefront.

"I definitely took a lot of the inspiration and sensibilities that we have on abilities," Nanni tells GamesRadar+, "and when there was an opportunity for me to work on the weapons team for this release, they were like, 'we need somebody who wants to make a vampire shotgun.' And I'm like, yes please. I don't know anything else. Please let me make that."

The result was Slayer's Fang, an oddball, magazine-fed shotgun that specializes in precision damage but triggers scattershot, target-seeking Void crystals that can apply the Weaken debuff. It's also packing innate anti-Overload Champion tech (which sadly can't stack with this season's anti-Barrier shotgun Artifact perk). Shotguns face inherent limitations in difficult Destiny 2 content because getting into shotgun range might get you killed, but especially after recent PvE buffs, the weapon type has found some places to shine. Slayer's Fang slots right in there, especially when paired with builds like Gyrfalcon Hunter and No Backup Plans Titan. For Warlocks, random Void nonsense is still working just fine for me.

"The vampire hunter fantasy is what sort of drove the whole design from the get-go," Nanni says. "The use case, I think, is to get a kill on a smaller guy and then go boss hunting, or beast hunting in a way, because once you get that first kill, the gun really powers up. And there's some uniqueness here too – instead of firing a bullet, our play here was, what if it was firing a Void crystal, sort of like a stake through the heart?"

The strange firing pattern of Slayer's Fang brings a few tricks to the table. The ricochet shots bounce more when you have the on-kill buff active, and it gets better in a group. "It's not written anywhere, this is a secret that players will discover probably, but if you get a kill, you spread the buff to everybody that is also using this gun," Nanni confirms.

As a cherry on top, Slayer's Fang got a special bit of flavor text calling back to a Destiny 1 Exotic called Voidfang Vestments. Lore heads may remember that Exotic's entry: "You will dream of teeth and nothing else." It's no coincidence that Slayer's Fang reads: "Fear neither dreams nor teeth."

"As this is the vampire killer gun, I wanted the flavor text to be a reference to that," Nanni confirms. "It's an homage back to D1 and we were able to tie that in. It was just an idea I had, and the narrative team, we were able to make that swing.

I asked how Slayer's Fang will compete with Conditional Finality, a dual-element Exotic shotgun that's so good me and my friends just call it The Shotgun. It turns out it has more secrets up its sleeve. "It's tuned to be a little bit better against Fallen and Scorn," Nanni says. "There's a secret little bonus there for this gun that I'm sure players will discover in time.

"If you really want to lean into Weaken and Overshield and those kinds of survivability tools, this'll be the shotgun for you and it will highly synergize inside of those kits," he argues. "And I think that synergy is very valid. But also, because of its range as a slug shotgun, there's boss DPS implications here that Conditional Finality can't compete with because it's not designed for that. ... There's definitely different use cases there. We don't want to ever invalidate someone's choice. Conditional Finality is your favorite weapon? That's awesome. We respect that. But I think there's some enticing opportunities elsewhere for you to apply to this gun."

Slayer's Fang also faced the immense challenge of following up Choir of One as a Void special Exotic. Choir has barely left my hands since it came out, and Nanni says it was his favorite weapon through the Final Shape dev cycle, so he knew his weapon had a lot to prove. "I was like, I gotta live up to this, especially as my first gun," he recalls. "So I think it will live comfortably next to it. They're so different ... and I love that there are different builds that they support."

All that being said, I also asked about Bungie's approach to power budget with new Exotics. When is it time to drop a meta-breaker?

"A lot of it depends on where we want to go with the meta at the time," Nanni begins. "You know, we like to have our seasonal themes and our seasonal meta. A lot of that's highlighted in the Artifact. For instance, this season, we had a huge Stasis push, right? And so, one of the things we did was, Salvation's Grip got a catalyst. It's time, Stasis season, let's get Salvation's Grip out there. So I think it depends a lot on what our direction is at the time.

"Sometimes if there are certain builds or play styles that we see other teams working on, like if I'm on abilities and they see my balance pass, they're like, maybe we want to do an Exotic that matches into what we're working on on abilities, or [vice-versa]. We may try and match that. A lot of synergy and teamwork goes into deciding, well, is the meta stale? Do we want a new king of the hill, or is it time for something like a pass on older stuff to see if there's a new synergy we can highlight, or a quirky one? It's really just a lot of collaboration, monitoring what's going on in the game. All of us in sandbox play the game a lot."

"If your cake is trash, nobody wants to eat it": At a tough time for Destiny 2, Bungie drops an Exotic mission promising vampire vibes, a cool shotgun, and a finale with bite.

Game design leans more towards classic Doom, while retaining the technological benefits of the modern games. As creative director Hugo Martin told GamesRadar+ earlier this year, "If you were an F22 fighter jet in Doom Eternal, this time around we wanted you to feel like an Abrams tank. It means you're more powerful and grounded. [...] We're making strafing-to-aim a thing again. You'll be weaving between projectiles, just like you did in the original Doom, to deliver that Super Shotgun blast to the chest… It almost creates this three-dimensional 'shoot 'em up' puzzle that you're weaving your way through."

Doom patrol

The medieval war between good and evil is not going well. The puny mortals are losing the fight against the denizens of Hell. Badly. They've had to fall back on the ultimate weapon, their last, best hope; you. Id Software is doing everything it can to ensure that you feel like that ultimate weapon. Enemies will be numerous and unrelenting, but you'll be given the tools that you need to carve your way through like the unstoppable force that you need to be.

One thing that immediately marks The Dark Ages as a departure from the last few games is the Shield Saw, which will be your constant companion throughout the adventure. The trailer shows it being used to stun and rush towards enemies, but there's even more to it than that. You can, as you'd probably expect, block attacks; but there will also be melee weapons that work in conjunction with the shield for combo attacks, and you'll even be able to parry projectiles with it. The Shield Saw will be an even more integral, and far more adaptable, tool than the chainsaw was in Doom and Doom Eternal.

Then there's that change to the rhythm of play, and the loss of verticality in the environments – though it's perhaps more accurate to view it as an expansion of the possibilities of ground-level combat. Not only did Martin make the bold claim to us that the weapons will be "the most powerful you've ever held in a Doom game", but you'll be facing greater hordes of enemies than ever before ("It feels like, tech wise across the board, we've been empowered to make our best game," he said). Throw in huge projectiles that are easily seen but not so easily avoided, and you'll have more than enough to strafe between and instantly react to on the ground.

Celebrating the roots of the series means that we'll be seeing redesigned versions of classic enemies such as the Mancubus and Revenant, and of course the signature super shotgun will be on hand to blow demons apart. There are plenty of new additions to look forward to, though. In addition to brand new enemies, you'll be given an era-appropriate flail as well as the Shield Saw… and then there are the gigantic weapons of war you'll get to play with.

Remember the final boss of Doom Eternal? The huge Icon of Sin, that only went down after a long, multi-stage fight that saw you taking shots at it from down below? If only you had a towering mech that allowed you to punch something that big in the face. Well, that's exactly what Doom: The Dark Ages will be giving you, in the form of the Atlan. As if that wasn't enough (and let's face it, it is), you'll also get the chance to ride the huge Mecha Dragon, flying through the air with ridiculous firepower at your disposal. The next Doom is promising a lot, and we can't wait to see how it delivers.

Doom: The Dark Ages will release in 2025 and be available day one on Microsoft's on-demand gaming subscription service, making the FPS a prime contender for one of the best Xbox Game Pass games.

Before the mission's release, I spoke to several developers at Bungie about the making of Kell's Fall, its headlining shotgun, the impact of the latest narrative beats, and the surprising intricacy of the playable Scorn organ – the Scorgan – at the core of this vampire keep. We also discussed community sentiment, player fatigue, live service challenges, and the catch-22 of time-gating content. Kell's Fall isn't the biggest Exotic mission ever, but it is a stylish and deceptively layered space with enough secrets to – hopefully – keep us invested for a little bit.

Destiny's vampire

Bungie's wanted to do something with vampires for a while. With Kell's Fall, that vision comes across with Castlevania and Splatterhouse flare, Forsaken's Fikrul acting as our Dracula and the Barons returning for, surely, one last act. Magic mirrors, hidden doors, and undead hordes complete the look, with a huge spiral staircase for good measure. Activity designer Willie Cheng says they wanted to integrate the illusion and deception baked into vampire tropes and legends, turning away from the "definitely well-explored" blood and stakes, and imagining things like the mission's alternate mirror world and a "rogue's gallery" of devious allies. One of Fikrul's trusty rogues, the Trickster, has a chance to appear in other boss encounters – one of the ways Bungie wanted to add greater variance to Kell's Fall, alongside things like random braziers tied to puzzles.

"We're looking for ways to add variety without just building a ton of content that is linear," Cheng says. "So we're looking for these different ways to build permutations into each run so that the second, third time that you go through the basement dungeon area, you're not always looking for the same stuff. That sort of stuff is more sustainable to build."

"I think it's doing more than what we've done in the past," Kisko continues. "Supporting those replays week over week. Episode 2 does not have the time-gating, like you mentioned, and so the player can really play it at their leisure." The value here, he reiterates, is the ability to take things as you want and dip into more activities in a session.

"When we're thinking about how we support this new paradigm, I think it's through that variety, and we've learned lessons from previous episodes and seasons as well. And I think we are applying that through the variety and surprises in the Exotic mission that we're doing now."

A world without time-gating

A recurring theme with this Episode and the rollout of Kell's Fall has been Bungie's decision to do away with time-gating to see how it feels. This was a later pivot in the Episode 2 plans, and we've seen the good and bad of it. We are free to eat the whole cake at once, but inevitably there's a chorus of "wait, that's it?" when we run out of cake in one sitting, sometimes quite abruptly. This is true of the Episode model itself to some extent, too.

"The challenging thing with the new model is, players have clear expectations about what things were in the past in terms of how they interact with the vendors, or what the pacing of the story is, or the amount of content," says senior design lead Tom Farnsworth. "And with the Episodic model, there's Act 1 and it's all focused around Onslaught. Act 2 is all focused around [Tomb of Elders], and Act 3 is focused around the Exotic. And I think some players are going to appreciate that, and others are going to feel like they have smaller chunks to focus on initially, versus having them all to play with later.

"Those are some things that we're gonna have to look at and be like, is this the right model? What are the tweaks we can make to that going forward? I think live service gameplay models are literally one of the hardest challenges. I think you can look out in the broader game industry right now, and it's rough out there, and I really feel for a lot of things going on in the game industry, and that's something that is going to be one of our biggest challenges. What's the right way to give players what they want and let them have agency of experience, while also finding what you were saying about the sustainable path forward?"

"You can't have any one part of the game bear all the weight of someone's engagement," Farnsworth continues. "If everyone's time is only focused on the Episode and not on playing the core game or other aspects of the release, they're going to feel like they're going to eat everything and be done. So I know going forward, we're going to be investing in as many areas of the game as we can to make sure that players have something to do for each mood that they're in, whether they want to engage with the story, or they want to engage with an Exotic mission, or they want to play the core game, or they want to play PvP. And I think that's the challenge, making sure that if players feel like they've gobbled up everything somewhere they've got something else they can hop over to."

"I would also add that this is in some ways a good problem to have," narrative lead Jerome Virnich adds. "Because this is only a problem if your cake tastes good, right? If your cake is trash, nobody wants to eat it and it's not a discussion at all."

Bringing an end to things

For all the doom and gloom going around, not entirely undeservedly, I think the cake is very much not trash. I've become an even more hardcore-casual Destiny 2 player since The Final Shape: I log in when there's new stuff to do or collect, or when my friends want to do a dungeon or raid or GM, and I let the game chill otherwise. (Playing other games remains the ultimate Destiny 2 hack.) And the new stuff is generally fun when it's new. On the narrative side, with Kell's Fall putting a bow on this Episode, Virnich says "our only goal is to have an Act that is emotionally resonant, that does justice to the world and the characters, and does right by their character arcs." On that front, I look forward to reading the responses to the handling of Eramis, whose resolution, anticipated since Beyond Light in 2020, was more of a redemption arc than I ever expected. Speaking of, there is a greater push for finality as Destiny 2 gears up for its next expansion, which is looking to be key.

"It was our desire to leave all of the characters pretty settled at the end of this Episode," Virnich says. "We had another hanging thread with Mithrax and the influence of Nezarec's curse on him, which plays big into this season, and then his relationship both with Eido, his daughter, and then also with Eramis, who has a different idea of Eliksni unity, of Eliksni nationalism, than Mithrax does. And so we really wanted to leave Mithrax, Fikrul, and Eramis in kind of a settled place so that we didn't have those threads flapping in the wind anymore as we turn our attention to some really exciting unnamed things in the future."

"There's always a tension between finding a satisfying button or bow to put on a storyline, and leaving oneself room to grow, leaving threads to pick up later on down the road," he adds. "Every time we do any single mission, every time we write any single script, we are always asking ourselves, where do we want to leave the player in relation to the characters? And sometimes we look back and I think we might wish that we had settled some things that we left open. And then other times we wish that we had left ourselves a little more room to maneuver."

The Scorgan

As you replay Kell's Fall and finish these character arcs, you'll find Scorn music notes scrawled on the walls. These may end up being a bigger lure for some players than the Act finale. Technical designer and Scorgan mastermind Ashley Baker explains that the castle's central instrument, its size and majesty crystallized by a fateful piece of concept art, is slowly repaired run over run. Players discover new notes and pipes are restored by some mystery character scurrying around the castle. "So if you're able to blast through the entire Act 3 story day one, you will have a fully fixed organ," she says.

I love when games make me bust out some pen and paper, and I get the feeling the Scorgan will do that. "You're trying to find the notes in different locations, and where they are in those locations and the order that they're in matches the order of a melody that can be played on the Scorgan," Baker adds. Some melodies may unlock secret passages while others might screw you over, and "then there's some extra, extra secret ones that, for our music-savvy players, if they can figure those out, they might find a couple extra reactions."

The Scorgan has a full octave for Guardians to play, with notes meticulously concocted from over a dozen sound layers. Senior music editor Adam Kallibjian tells me these sounds include a PVC trombone, a pipe organ from Sweden, light bulbs, sonar pings, and even some percussion from a Destiny 1 track dating back to the House of Wolves. The "broken" notes throw in an antique car horn and a busted cello. You'll hear Scorgan notes throughout the Episode 2 score if you listen for them – a little extra juice "that helps sell that vampire vibe," Kallibjian says. Baker expects and hopes to see players use the full-fledged instrument to write and play their own songs. Enabling that kind of user-generated content was central to the Scorgan's design, to the point that music theory and notation was woven into the Scorn runes.

Making it replayable

We are, of course, going to be playing through Kell's Fall several times to fully max out Slayer's Fang and polish off the story beats. It's the cornerstone of Act 3. Yet before it was even released, I saw some players expressing exhaustion over another mission grind loop. (There's valid criticism to be made of this delivery, but some Destiny 2 players truly seem to hate having to play Destiny 2.) Varied hazards and puzzles can help, but since I hadn't yet played the mission, I wanted to learn more about how Bungie is building activities to suit multiple playthroughs, especially in the context of the un-time-gated era we're currently in. Kisko points to the addition of Exotic missions to the player journey and how this affected their view of what these missions look like.

"It's this delicate balance of creating something that's not too hard but still holds onto the core essence of what players expect out of Exotic missions," he says. With Kell's Fall being the "tentpole" for this Act, Kisko says Bungie paid special attention to how follow-up runs feel while trying to balance hardcore and casual play patterns.

Kell's Fall has some depth, but for pure combat it is markedly easier than the likes of the Whisper or Zero Hour missions, especially in the boss fights. But Kisko says they're open to making demanding missions like those again. "I wouldn't say anything is off the table," he affirms. "And I know that in a game like this, variety is amazing. We never would want to push something like the idea of a Whisper off the table for those players who enjoy it. We did Hawkmoon, and then it was like, alright, let's bring Presage in, and we brought the version with the timer back in. Some people really like it, some people don't, and that's okay.

"Sometimes we're gonna cater to certain audiences more than others, and if it's not your cup of tea, that's fine, because the next release will probably have something more aligned to them. So all that stuff's on the table and we have a lot of vehicles to deliver those. It's not just the Episodes or the different Acts within the Episodes. We also have our future stuff that we're really excited about in Frontiers."

From Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree to Destiny 2: The Final Shape, the best expansions of 2024 breathed new life into old favorites.

As reported by Dexerto, Shroud defended Overwatch earlier this week during a Marvel Rivals stream, making it clear which one of the two he prefers. "Overwatch is absolutely a much better game, but you gotta remember that's like comparing a new game to an old game, like Counter-Strike to Valorant or something, you know?" Shroud says.

Continuing, Shroud acknowledges that it goes without saying that "a new game is going to be more exciting for people," but he thinks that people forget how damn good Overwatch was when it launched, from its visuals, to its performance, matchmaking, and the fact that "anyone could play it." The streamer adds: "That game took over the world. Don't ever disrespect the GOAT."

While Marvel Rivals is a ridiculously fun game, comparisons to Overwatch were always going to be unavoidable, just because of how similar the two games are in places. Certain movesets of characters in Rivals feel heavily inspired by specific Overwatch heroes, for example. Hell, it took just days for Marvel Rivals to see the return of Overwatch's worst meta, and combined with the fact that the shooter is full of insta-locking DPS players who refuse to switch, it really does feel like we've fallen into a portal back into 2016 sometimes. NetEase Games previously said it was "honored to be compared with some of the best games out there in this genre," even if it feels that it offers something unique overall. 

When you consider the recency of NetEase Games' new title, combined with a sprinkling of nostalgia for those who played Overwatch when it first launched, it's really no wonder that Marvel Rivals has become so popular when the base game is also a brilliant time. Hopefully, it'll continue to have what it takes to bring players in, and have the same longevity that Overwatch has been firmly holding onto since the first game's launch.

Hopes that Overwatch 2 will fully return to 6v6 matches are raised as the playtest is extended thanks to "continued player interest."

Machine guns, nail guns, bubble guns and more are all coated in blinding shades of antibiotic pink, as is the rest of Incolatus' Xbox 360 world. It looks like a church built out of sugar, full of lovely rosy archways, and, apparently, a lethally greedy mining company that wants to drain it of its sustaining force: Love. So you, armed with weapons and a modest flip phone, lay siege to the company's robots to spread Love one damage point at a time. 

"Do you have any idea how much shareholder value you just destroyed?!" a gruff voice whines in Incolatus' gameplay trailer.

But you can't stop killing! The faster you move in Incolatus, "the more damage you deal and the more you heal," says the game's Steam description. 

"Master a deep and flexible push-forward combat system to generate high Love scores and become the Cupid of death!" it continues. Do it fashionably, too; Incolatus, like recent breakout open-world cutie Infinity Nikki, includes dress-up game elements. Players can select custom fabrics for their gloves and colors reminiscent of nail polish shades in the FPS. 

Developer Funny Fintan Softworks promises a demo "very soon," and I can't wait to annihilate my retinas with shades of '00s Barbie pink. To me, it represents the kind of brazen girliness that has never before been seen in the FPS genre, which can be especially hostile to women players. Incolatus is also a welcome piece of evidence that being a woman in games doesn't always have to mean playing a cozy, fireside farmer. Other times, girlhood is an atomic bomb.

Doom: The Dark Ages gets 12 seconds of new footage as Nvidia shows off its souped-up DLSS 4 visuals.

And yet, for all the ways in which FBC: Firebreak appears to challenge the expectation of what a Remedy game can be, that same commitment to caustic action and creative storytelling is right there at the heart of it. "There's a sort of emergent magic that comes from sharing a game world with other people. Real people bring unpredictability and a unique type of storytelling to worlds that we simply can't replicate in a focused 'hero's journey' type of experience," says Kayatta. "So, while crafting those kinds of controlled and immersive single-player experiences remains a major focus for the studio, we thought it was finally time to expand the Remedy Connected Universe into shared spaces and brave something new."

Grab your gear

As a fearless first responder for the Federal Bureau of Control, it's your duty to delve into the depths of the Oldest House to tackle raging paranatural crises, restore order, and fight your way back to safety – the Hiss remain a powerful threat, years after Jesse Faden assumed command of the extradimensional headquarters in 2019's Control. Before deployment, you'll have a chance to select a weapon and customize your Firebreak Crisis Kit to ensure you have the correct tools, grenades, and support items required to thrive. If you're worried that FBC: Firebreak sounds like it's sticking too close to conventional co-op shooter models, you should know that this is still a Remedy game. Like the best Remedy games, it's willing to be weird when it wants to be.

Firebreak crews are cleared to carry paranatural augments, Altered Items which drastically impact your odds of survival. Then there's the decontamination showers, used to restore health and remove status effects. "FBC: Firebreak is a lot about crisis management and getting covered in stuff that you shouldn't be – fire, radiation, sticky notes. So if you want it off, then wash it off. Don't want a cold shower? Warm it up first. And saving water is essential. Cram inside the box with your team," teases Kayatta. "Believe it or not, the shower was one of the very first design elements that stuck. It's practical, improvised but professional, encourages teamwork, and taps into just the right amount of Bureau absurdity."

It's creative concepts like this which position FBC: Firebreak as one of the most promising online co-op games of 2025. The action appears fast and dynamic, with teamwork encouraged to combat massive waves of otherworldly enemies that are crawling across twisting, labyrinthian spaces. It's visually ambitious too, with Remedy's Northlight engine delivering the depth and fidelity to help give Firebreak definition in a crowded, volatile market. Necessary, given that 2024 proved that success is never guaranteed – where Helldivers 2 went stratospheric, Concord and XDefiant failed to take flight.

That's why Remedy is collapsing barriers around its 'mid-priced' shooter. There's commitment to cross-platform matchmaking, and a simultaneous launch across the two first-party subscription services. "This lowers the barrier of entry to try out the game, since millions of Game Pass and PlayStation Plus subscribers will have access. Of course, that's a bit scary because so many players will hopefully be there during the launch window, and we hope the game holds up," laughs Thomas Puha, communications director. "It also means there's financial backing and marketing support for the game from both first parties, which is crucial – especially as Remedy is self-publishing this game across all platforms."

FBC: Firebreak being self-published ensures that Remedy is able to return to Steam, following back-to-back exclusive launches onto the Epic Games Store. And with such a wide pool of potential players available as a result, the studio is keen to ensure that Firebreak is widely accessible. "We are pretty conscious of keeping the minimum required PC spec reasonable, and not going so high with the requirements as we did with Control and Alan Wake 2," says Puha. "We'll still have great graphics and visual effects, all that you expect from Remedy, but in a multiplayer experience like this, framerate is king as well as the responsiveness of the controls."

With Control 2 still a number of years away, it would be easy to view FBC: Firebreak as a stopgap. But I think that does it a disservice. Everything I've seen so far makes Firebreak look like an ambitious, luxuriously-crafted co-op experience – and one that is relatively disinterested in following modern live-service trends. A space where you can delve into the depths of the Oldest House with two of your buddies, battle your way through expansive landscapes and extraordinary threats for a few hours, and then log off without fear of falling behind in a wider battle pass economy. I don't know about you, but that's the sort of shooter I'm desperate for more of right now. 

"Right from the outset, you can do whatever you want. You can follow whatever lines of investigation that you want. Now, given that you'll be poorly equipped, some choices may lead to bad results," says Ryan Greene, art director at Rebellion Developments. "Eventually, maybe you'll understand what the cause of the accident was, and why it may have been hushed up. You'll meet a lot of characters along the way who will have their own angles on that too, and you're free to believe them if you want to. Even though we don't feed it to you in a nice, sequential way, our setup makes for a really rich story. It's kind of like one of those 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books we read as kids."

Into the wilds

Atomfall doesn't have a traditional quest system. It's one of the largest differentiators between this new Rebellion IP and Bethesda's Fallout. The studio – known for its Sniper Elite series, as well as its production of 2000 AD comic books – has been influenced by serialized storytelling which underpinned classic science-fiction. "We like to think of it as the X-Files in the Cold War Lake District," Greene laughs. "It can be difficult to wrap your head around what this game is. There are RPG-ish elements, but it's definitely not an RPG. Atomfall is a detective game. It's a survival game. There's weird stuff happening and you have to adapt to it. You have to talk, you have to research, and you might have to do violence."

There are no quests, only leads. Put another way, there are questions – a lot of questions, and few distinct answers. You awake in 1962, five years after the historic Windscale disaster, without any memory of who you are or where you came from. Leads intersect with one another, contest with, and ricochet off from one another; there's friction inherent to the storytelling as every character you encounter offers their own perspective on the world around them, and present their own leads that you can pursue, leading to different outcomes. Follow the leads you want to, disregard the rest – maybe you'll form a perspective of your own, and get some sense of how this radioactive quarantine zone came to be.

Rebellion has gone out of its way to remove all unconscious bias from Atomfall's story. There's no indication of your character's race, gender, or age; you're a true blank slate by design, an amnesic detective in search of answers. Leads don't cast judgment on a situation, only provide context, allowing you to follow your intuition and form a moral compass. As for how characters around you respond to your actions, well, results can vary. "There's a giant spider web of leads. There are situations where you might do something that befriends one person or upsets another, and there's loads of that happening all the time," says Ben Fisher, creative director for Atomfall. "We signpost that you've found a lead, but we don't tell you if you've lost a lead."

A journal full of lines of potential investigation, dead ends, and perceived misinformation is a key detail in Atomfall, particularly as no inhabitant of this world is safe. "Theoretically, you could play through the game by killing every single character and still find enough leads to uncover a route through the game and understand what's happening," teases Fisher. Greene tells me that there are around "five or six" core ending permeations within Atomfall, and that it's how you choose to pursue leads that will bring each into focus. "You can kill people at certain times of the game that will potentially sever a line to complete an ending," he says, with Fisher adding: "but there are also routes to reconfigure some of them by talking to certain characters, making smart choices, or bartering with traders for different information."

"We want players to question everything, to not trust anyone. We want players to make their own decisions, to adapt to their surroundings, and follow whichever leads they want to," says Greene. Atomfall is open-ended by design, then. Your ability to move through conversation routes isn't defined by underlying character stats, as it may be in a game like Fallout, but is as open-ended as the mission system. If I were to stretch to make a comparison, Atomfall may have more in common with L.A. Noire in this respect, with responses categorized by emotional markers such as 'curious', 'angry', or 'desperate' – giving you the space to play up (or conceal) certain pieces of information or pursue specific lines of investigation based on leads you have accrued so far. The demeanor of characters will change over time the further you submerge yourself within the world, so too can the populations of villages and towns depending on your aggression or apathy.

Follow your intuition

There's a lot to praise about Atomfall's world design. The Lake District in Cumbria setting is visually distinct from your typical American post-apocalyptic setting, with arid expanses swapped out for lush rolling hills and verdant horizons. It's a picturesque scene captured in the aftermath of an atomic incident. The setting has allowed Rebellion to indulge in some traditionally British high-strangeness, best evidenced by the decaying red telephone boxes strewn across the landscape. You'll hear the distinctive ringing tone from afar, a voice on the other end typically offering some sort of cryptic clue once the receiver is brought to your ear: "Oberon must die," the voice may say, before the line clicks dead, a new lead added to your journal.

"Part of the idea for this whole thing was this one time Jason had been out walking in some natural area," says Greene, recalling a story about Jason Kingsley, one of the enigmatic (and somewhat eccentric) co-founders of Rebellion who spends his spare time living as a medieval knight. "He heard this ringing, and there really was a phone box out there in the most unexpected of places. He thought it was the eeriest, weirdest thing, so we knew it would be super fun to get that into Atomfall, because it speaks to that whole English Weirdness vibe."

Atomfall has been in production for around six years, and the decision was made early on to set it within a series of sprawling, interconnected sandboxes rather than a true open-world. "That decision was partially made based on our existing technology at the time," says Greene. "It was going to be a little bit of a heavy tech investment, so we decided to go with this linked sandbox approach." This means that you'll have lushly decorated spaces to explore before encountering a loading screen to the next area, although Greene maintains that Rebellion is going out of its way to make the world feel consistent. "We really tried to make it feel like you're still part of a bigger world. Even if you're in one sandbox you can actually see the neighboring sandboxes around it."

Greene says that there's a whole "network of connections" linking these spaces to one another, encouraging exploration as you wander the wasteland following visual points of interest, and venture below the surface to explore mysterious, deadly military bunkers. Some ways may be blocked by locked doors, the keys accessed by locating it as part of a lead you're following or bartering for the key with a trader. "They might give you a bit of information on the side, or they might have a lead that they will literally trade with you," says Fisher.

As contact in the quarantine zone is cut off from the wider world, there is no currency in place. You'll need to barter with anything and everything you have in your small backpack; weapons and scrap, ammunition, and resources. Although you'll need to be conscious of a trader's predispositions – there are a variety of factions within the world, from pagan cults to military forces, and not everyone will be as willing to part with what they're holding as others might: a pacifist isn't going to see value in an old rusty shotgun, but a member of Protocol might. "We wanted this game to be multidimensional," Greene teases.

Tread carefully 

The non-linear approach to mission and narrative design also applies towards combat. Like Sniper Elite before it, Atomfall gives you multiple routes to approach an objective, and circumvent danger should you want to. Rebellion may be best known for creating first-person shooters, but the barrel of a gun is just one point of interaction within this world. You'll find weapons strewn across the landscape, and wielding a knife or cricket bat could be preferred given how scarce ammunition is – the cascading noise created by gunfire attracting a mass of unwanted attention, a challenge in a game world where even three or four enemies can prove to be insurmountable. "It's more like a bar brawl than a warzone," says Fisher.

You can only quickslot up to four weapons at any one time, and scouring the environment for crafting materials and ammunition will be a constant concern. Rebellion has engineered a light skill system, where military and survival manuals can be unearthed – and combined with a rare Training Stimulant material – to help improve core proficiencies in conditioning, melee, ranged, and survival. That said, the studio is taking a somewhat open approach to difficulty as well. "We don't have traditional difficulty settings, but play style settings instead," says Greene, explaining that the team is keen to support players in the ways that they want to play Atomfall. Fisher adds: "Because the game isn't just about combat we allow the player to choose different play styles that influence the amount of resource scarcity, the intensity of combat, and the amount of guidance for their exploration."

Rebellion believes that the most interesting way to engage with Atomfall is to accept the fine-tunings where "combat is brutal and intense, where exploration is open and unguided, and where resources are scarce. But we don't want to dictate that for people," says Fisher, "we want as many people as possible to play the game." That even extends to the way you can interact with perceived enemies; it's possible to disengage or avoid combat entirely, a small window of opportunity to walk away from a confrontation before blood is spilled, and you'll even see other characters attempt to back away from you too. "You are meeting characters who are doing their best to survive this situation," Fisher adds. "Nobody's right or wrong, they've just got different perspectives on what's happening. It's up to you to decide who you trust. We didn't want the world to feel like a gung-ho warzone, we want it to feel as if everyone is just as desperate for resources as you are."

Atomfall isn't what I was expecting it to be. Rebellion has struggled to separate itself from this idea that it's creating 'Fallout: Cumbria' but the truth is that the studio has set its sights on something far more creatively ambitious. The open-ended approach to combat and world navigation shares DNA with the Sniper Elite series, but the wider scale presented by Atomfall means that there's potential here for something quite transformative – unlike anything we've seen from Rebellion in its 32 year history. Layer the non-linear approach to progression, the potential for something quite special suddenly emerges onto the radar for 2025. "It's all about player choice," says Greene. "You're going to have a lot of options for things to do and see, and then you can piece them together in any order you want to make the story that you end up with. We're so excited to see how players engage with Atomfall."

This comes along with the reveal of Nvidia's shiny new GeForce RTX 50 Series graphics cards, the first two of which will be available on January 30, while another two will launch in February. At launch, 75 PC games, from God of War Ragnarok to Cyberpunk 2077, will support DLSS 4's Multi Frame Generation tech (which can boost frame rate by generating up to three extra frames per "traditionally rendered frame"), and Doom: The Dark Ages will also be compatible with this when it releases.

In a blog post, Nvidia confirms that the next Doom game will be "powered by the latest idTech engine," and when playing on a GeForce RTX 50 Series PC or laptop, it'll boast ray reconstruction (which basically creates extra souped-up ray-traced images) and path tracing, which will ensure "image quality and immersion in the game's expansive environments will be taken to the next level for GeForce RTX gamers." On top of that, DLSS Super Resolution will be included (which uses AI tech to output higher-resolution frames) and enhanced DLAA (Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing) to improve image quality. 

Frankly, the list of tech at play is long and rather complicated, but all you really need to know is that playing on a GeForce RTX 50 Series PC should ensure Doom: The Dark Ages looks super smooth. But just in case you needed any proof, 12 seconds of new footage has been revealed which briefly showcases some environments, which you can pore over below. Hey, it's not much, but it's something. 

Right now, Doom: The Dark Ages still doesn't have an exact release date – we just know that it's set to launch at some point this year across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. For now, we'll just have to play those 12 seconds on loop to pass the time.

Be sure to check out our roundup of new games for 2025 and beyond to see what else is releasing soon.

Starting today, the 6v6 playtest will be extended thanks to "continued player interest and excitement for the mode," writes game director Aaron Keller. He adds that "the 6v6 card will move to the Arcade. It will be available until midseason, then transition to a 6v6 Open Queue format - Min 1, Max 3."

This means each team will need at least one support, DPS, and tank, and can have a maximum of three people playing any one role. So, the most outlandish team compositions won't be very wild at all as you could only have three people in the same role, compared to the Wild West of the original Overwatch when you could have six DPS or five support and one tank.

The original Overwatch featured two teams of six players facing off against each other, and there was no role queue system. So if five people wanted to play DPS and one wanted to play support, well, it'd be a tough time for the support, but they could play that way if they wanted.

The game eventually did introduce a role queue in 2019, and when Overwatch 2 came out in 2022, it completely overwrote its predecessor and launched with the mechanic in place. So, it's been some time since anyone has been able to enjoy the bigger battles being offered now.

A lot of people replied to Keller's announcement asking for the mode to be made permanent or added to competitive play, showing there's still a lot of love for the old format. The devs did say last year that a return to 6v6 is on the table, so maybe if this game mode proves more popular than 5v5 they'll consider making the change.

Marvel Rivals, a popular Overwatch competitor, is "not considering a role queue" according to creative director Guangyun "Guangguang" Chen, so if you're wanting to play a hero shooter where you've got a bit more freedom, it's your best bet. It is third-person, though.

In the meantime, here are the best FPS games you can get stuck into right now.

In a new report from Game File, journalist Stephen Totilo has shared the budgets of Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, Modern Warfare (the 2019 one), and Black Ops Cold War, all of which have reportedly been revealed by Activision's head of creative for Call of Duty, Patrick Kelly, in a court filing. 

Starting with Black Ops 3, Kelly reportedly claims $450 million was invested into the 2015 shooter's development costs over its lifecycle, while Modern Warfare saw a massive jump that took its lifecycle development costs above $640 million. The most recent of the three, Black Ops Cold War, also boasts the biggest budget, with over $700 million spent on development costs throughout its lifecycle. 

Although those numbers just kept getting bigger, unfortunately for Activision, sales apparently went down with each of those three entries. The 2015 FPS sold 43 million copies, while the 2019 entry's sales dropped to 41 million copies, and the most expensive of the bunch shifted 30 million copies. Obviously, none of those figures are to be sniffed at, but when you're spending that much on making a game, the more sales you can get from them, the better.

Game File reports that these are the largest development costs that've ever been reported by a major game company, and they are pretty wild to see – it's not often that full budgets are officially revealed like this. With Black Ops Cold War specifically, it might just be the most expensive game that we know of if you discount live-service behemoths like Genshin Impact, which was previously estimated to have racked up development costs of around $900 million and counting. Not long after Red Dead Redemption 2 launched, VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi estimated that Rockstar's groundbreaking action adventure could have cost up to $540 million including marketing, so if that's accurate, it's wild to think that Black Ops Cold War has surpassed it by so much. 

But how long will the FPS game be able to hold onto its crown? Chances are, probably not that long, just by virtue of the fact that everything is getting more expensive. Who knows, perhaps one of the newer Call of Duty games has already surpassed it, but those numbers haven't been revealed?

While you're here, be sure to check out our roundup of the best Call of Duty games you can play right now.

Beyond Citadel is the simply-named sequel to Citadel, the indie developer's first outing in the dystopian throwback series that obviously borrows from the original Doom and shooters of the same era. Weapons are centred in the middle of the screen. Enemies are in sprite form while you're surrounds are 3D. And it has the same speedy shooting that made Doom a household name. But, again, this time with an anime protagonist at the centre. 

"Beyond Citadel is an anime style retro throwback shooter inspired by the classics of the 90's, with realistic gunplay mechanics, anime violence and fast paced combat," the game's Steam blurb reads. "Fight your way through the heavily armed mechanical fortress and discover the secret that lies beneath."

"The Citadel, the last stronghold of mankind's resistance against the Apocalypse, has fallen. Humankind is now under the control of the Trumpeters of the Apocalypse, the leaders of the forces of the Apocalypse. The “Martyr” who is the last resort of the Seven Angels, the guardians of humankind, is led by a mysterious signal and sets out on a journey to overthrow the Trumpeters of the Apocalypse."

Beyond Citadel, which came out just a few days ago, currently enjoys a Very Positive rating based on over 300 Steam user reviews. "More guns. More blood. More guts. More movement mechanics. More, More, More," one review reads. "Having finished the game, I can say with utmost certainty that my faith in the ability of the developer to provide a unique and exciting game play experience was not at all misplaced."

For more recommendations, check out the other upcoming indie games of 2025 and beyond.

"I get a little chafed when I read online, and they're like, 'Hold on, these assholes took Spelunky when they could have taken Halo?,'" series creator Tim Miller said in a chat with Collider, before revealing that the team behind Secret Level actually did pursue Xbox's sci-fi franchise. "Man, you think that we didn't talk to Halo or something?"

Things get even juicier when supervising director Dave Wilson chimed in to reveal that the "creative director at id Software is a good friend of ours, and so are the folks at Microsoft" - so the creative duo decided to make a "big plea" to combine the two iconic shooters. "We wanted to make a Master Chief/Doom Slayer crossover episode, and I spent the whole weekend crafting this impassioned letter of my childhood."

If you've ever spent more than 10 minutes scrolling across Reddit, chances are you've definitely seen adoring fan art of the two icons ripping and tearing it up together. Sometimes they're smashing demons. Sometimes they're massacring aliens. Metroid's Samus sometimes makes an appearance. The two are even pitted against each other in fan fiction, a la Death Battle, ad nauseam. 

So the pitch makes sense. They're both the immortal faces of two of the most important shooters in history, they're both chunky space boys, and they're both cool as hell. Even the animation house behind the show, Blur Studios, has tons of experience with Xbox's FPS, having handled the cinematics of Halo Wars and Halo 2 Anniversary.  

But despite pitching the match made in heaven, the answer Miller and Wilson got was a plain and simple (and heartbreaking) "'Nah.'" It's not clear whether the rejection came from Doom makers id Software, Halo Studios, or the rights holder of both, Microsoft, though. Maybe that's a good thing considering how bad the PlayStation mash-up episode was. 

Master Chief and Doom Slayer shippers don't need to completely give up hope for a crossover just yet, though. Amazon Prime Video renewed Secret Level for a second season just last month, where it'll keep adapting more video games. "Of course, we begged for Half-Life," Miller also noted.

Doom: The Dark Ages is taking our beloved Slayer to a historical hellscape this year, meanwhile, a massive Halo leakage recently spilled 25 years of history onto the internet. 

"Lots to be thankful for in 2024," Halo Studios' senior community manager John Junyszek tweeted to usher in the new year. "After taking a step back to reflect, it's been great to see how much Halo Infinite improved this year. In a climate where games can be shut down with little notice, I'm happy that we were able to deliver so many player-requested features while also working on other future projects."

Junyszek goes on to call out the game's Forge improvements, that surprising third-person mode, new maps and weapons, fairer customization, and the return of a series favorite feature: Match Composer, which lets you queue for the exact modes you want in any given playlist. 

To catch you up, Halo Infinite had a stellar debut back in 2021 and even attracted more than 20 million players in its first few months, but things went downhill pretty quickly as 343 Industries (now in its Halo Studios era) struggled to fix what was broken, re-add missing features, or push out new post-launch content before most of its playerbase moved on. If 2024's taught us anything, it's that big publishers won't hesitate to pull the plug on a live service game if they can't immediately fund the next 30 generations of an executive's bloodline - look no further than Concord's shutdown - so in hindsight, Halo Infinite's relative longevity is somewhat surprising. 

But Halo Infinite entered 2024 as the full FPS package that was promised at launch, fully feature complete and fun as hell to play. And even though Halo Studios said support for Infinite would slow down more than a year ago, the shooter just got a throwback update that deletes sprint and adds classic maps in celebration of Halo 2's birthday.

In semi-related news, almost 100GB of classic Halo content leaked online over the holidays, including the famous 1999 demo from when the legendary FPS was a third-person Mac exclusive.  

The leaks are said to have originated from Halo Studios' (formerly 343 Industries) long-running collaboration with modding team Digsite, which has been excavating scrapped content and old files before adding them back into the classic FPS games. Halo 2's infamous E3 2003 demo was recreated and modded back into The Master Chief Collection just last month, for example, as was an Arbiter mission that never crossed the finish line two decades ago - all of which were reconstructed with official design documents leftover from the Bungie era.

That collaboration seems to have led to this week's massive leak, which includes unfinished and cut content from those old-school Halo games, as well as a long-lost demo from the series' brief time as a third-person shooter. Before Bungie joined Xbox's roster, Halo was first unveiled as a third-person Mac exclusive with a big Macworld demo from 1999 - that infamous demo is now fully playable on PC.

One former Digsite modder confirmed the leaks are real, but claimed that none of the current or former members of the team were responsible for the leakage. "For reference, myself and the recent departures actually didn't have access to some of these files like the debug DLLS," they tweeted earlier this week. "Wild this happened but, uh, Merry Christmas fellas."

Another Digsite member explained that they left the modding outfit because "half of us on the team couldn't afford rent or food staying on" on social media. "While we accepted these would be volunteer positions, our hard work continued not only without pay, but with basically no studio support or resources beyond our own backs," they tweeted. 

"It was made clear to us that [Halo 2] E3 was more successful than Microsoft expected, and they want us to deliver another release on that level, still with no pay, and no resources," they continued. "I do not believe the studio behind Halo will ever actually engage or support the legacy or community-interests of Halo with any sincerity or authenticity for multiple reasons, partially also why we quit... (Once again, we aren't the leakers.)"

Maybe now’s the time to reminisce with our list of the best Halo games, ranked. 

"We didn’t want to use Master Chief," Ensemble Studios' Dave Pottinger tells VideoGamer Podcast of its executive decision, omitting the character from the RTS because the game "needed you to care about everybody else. We thought as soon as Master Chief shows up, that’s all anybody’s going to [care about]," he explains. This means theories that Bungie snubbed Ensemble by withholding the Master Chief license – and that the publisher objected to the game's existence in the first place – aren't true after all.

Spinning off a series renowned for delivering some of the best FPS games of all time, Pottinger stressed how the strategy elements made it integral for players to keep an open mind in Halo Wars, and how a lack of Master Chief made fans less inclined to prefer the Spartans by default. Still, the choice to leave him out entirely was not taken lightly. Ensemble "had these conversations seriously with people internally and externally," said Pottinger, which left the studio with a new question to parse: "How can it be an RTS? Clearly, Spartans are the best unit. Our challenge is making Spartans not the best unit, but making them an equal option [weighed against] the other units. That’s what a strategy game is.”

Having a Halo game without Master Chief sounds like a misstep off the cuff, but when Pottinger puts it that way, it makes perfect sense. Given the cult status the humble RTS has achieved since its initially tepid 2009 reception, and how its popularity sparked a sequel years later from Alien: Isolation developer Creative Assembly, it seems Ensemble's gamble paid off handsomely. You're off the hook this time, Bungie!

From Wars to Infinite, check out the best Halo games from across the Xbox series.

If you're looking for a new FPS experience that's a little different to the other games out there, look no further than The Finals. As Embark Studio's FPS celebrates its first anniversary with the start of its fifth season, it's firmly cemented itself as one of the most exciting challengers in the hugely competitive shooter genre.

An FPS from a suite of Battlefield veterans, The Finals was always going to live up to its reputation as an excellent shooter. Even so, it's managed to become a more frenzied, imaginative shooter than almost anything else out there right now, thanks to a combination of its innovative ranked mode and its eclectic arsenal of weapons and gadgets.

Are you a little bored of the classic rifles, SMGs, and grenades that have dominated years of multiplayer FPS games? What if I told you that in The Finals, you can run into battle with a spear or invisibility cloak? Or that you could keep your opponents off the objective by using an anti-gravity device to hoist their goal into the sky? Or that you could deal with the pesky enemy hiding behind a wall by simply deleting that wall from existence? The Finals lets you play however you like - and I mean however.

The Finals also does one thing better than almost any game out there, let alone any FPS. Its destruction tech is genuinely industry-leading, allowing every player to destroy pretty much anything on the map. Is there a wall in your way? Blow a hole in it. Is the enemy team hiding out inside a building? Pull out some explosives or a sledgehammer and bring that building down on top of them. Between that chaotic destruction and the suite of movement tools at your fingertips, The Finals lets you carve your own path, ensuring that every game feels like a whole new experience.

An amazing FPS at launch, The Finals has only gotten better. Season 5 brings a whole suite of new additions, improvements, and features. Weapons, gadgets, sponsors, and a whole new map are just the start - new progression systems, social Clubs, and the silky smooth new 120Hz mode, plus tweaks to older arenas and game modes means that this is the best version of an excellent FPS. And with Season 5 out now, you've got an excellent excuse to jump in and see what you've been missing out on.

While that general sense of Marvel excitement is going a long way to attract interested gamers who may not have given a non-Marvel game a chance, the folks who are already getting hooked are looking toward the long term success of the game, especially in terms of character balance. Unsurprisingly, many players are already forming fairly crystallized ideas about who needs some adjustments, with some even citing comic book or movie precedent to show why certain characters deserve changes to better meet their expectations.

This all points to a crucial element of Marvel Rivals' success that absolutely cannot be ignored when discussing the idea of balance and character changes: people are already invested in the characters of the game. We know these heroes and villains from comics, movies, TV, and even other games, and we have expectations about how they should interact with each other and their environments. We understand how powerful they are and can be, even (and sometimes especially) in relation to each other.

Earth's Mightiest Heroes

In other words, the familiar hero power fantasy aspect of Marvel Rivals is crucial not just to the game's immediate success, but to its potential ongoing health as a competitive game. Right now, Marvel Rivals is thriving on its larger-than-life power levels and breakneck pacing, which feed directly into its superhero fantasy. Even a character with no superpowers like the Punisher is elevated into a more fantastic level thanks to his war-mech ultimate ability.

And while it can be frustrating to be on the receiving end of Jeff the Land Shark's hilariously absurd ability to swallow the up the entirety of both teams, or Iron Fist's notoriously brutal volleys of rapid-fire punches, mastering those abilities and engaging with the power fantasy they feed is a very serious part of what makes Marvel Rivals feel so fresh compared to its most obvious competitors.

The downside of this is that our familiarity with some characters can breed the feeling that they're actually quite underpowered in comparison to more 'meta' heroes. People WANT to fly around shooting repulsors as Iron Man. We WANT to smash things as the Hulk. We WANT to master the elements as Storm. And when we feel an incongruity in how these characters we know and love handle in the game, especially in contrast to other heroes who feel more able to fulfill the power fantasy that comes with them, it sticks out more.

That imbalance is the big downside to the Marvel Rivals hero fantasy. And as with any competitive live service game, fans are already passionately discussing which characters need buffs, and which need nerfs (Storm and Wolverine in the former category, Hela and Iron Fist in the latter, commonly).

But any strategy for balance has to take into account the importance of the hero fantasy and the unique excitement of the game's bombastic power levels, lest the beloved Marvel IP that anchors the game become an actual anchor, weighing down the developers' ability to hone in on appropriate balance changes in the face of losing hero identity, or costing the players the experience they expect to have when they log into the game.

Perfectly balanced, as all things should be

Take, for example, the recent Helldivers 2 debacle in which one of the co-op PvE game's most popular weapons was nerfed not out of necessity, but to shake-up the game's meta (its prevalent strategic philosophy). To say the change was unpopular would be an understatement, to the point where some feel it hurt the actual playerbase of the game, as it took away what many players had come to see as a fundamental aspect of their core gameplay.

Or, to examine Marvel Rivals' most commonly cited competitor, Overwatch, we can look at the PvP hero shooter's recent changes to the divisive hacker character Sombra, which changed the function of some of her abilities and attacks at a core level. This in turn radically altered the game's meta, allowing a largely unpopular sniper-driven gameplay loop to develop around the character Widowmaker - a change that had eagle-eyed sharpshooters feasting and characters with less mobility and defensive capability eating the dirt.

At the same time, less drastic but repeated changes to a character (or characters) can wind up making them sticky wickets in overall game balance. To point to Overwatch again, the tank heroes Orisa and Mauga have become downright notorious in their difficulty to properly balance.

It's now a meme among Overwatch players that Mauga and Orisa both receive micro-buffs and micro-nerfs back and forth with each set of patch notes, with even incremental changes to the characters' numbers making them either obnoxiously prevalent in competitive games, or relegating them to a secondary, off-meta status - with no 'sweet-spot' that makes them competitively playable without being dominant seemingly in sight.

Fortunately, Marvel Rivals director Thaddeus Sasser already has his eyes on this dynamic in the game's search for balance, recently citing the aforementioned Helldivers 2 changes as an example of nerfs which the player base felt were harsh and uncalled for.

"Well, it's kind of the basics of game design that players do not like things being taken away from them, right?" Sasser stated on the VideoGamer podcast. "Sometimes it’s good to frustrate the player […] because winning all of the time is boring, so it's important to be able to lose, too and feel like you lost fairly and not be frustrated," Sasser continues, acknowledging that some changes can leave players feeling "like they lost because you took 'the thing' away, and that feels unfair."

While this does make me extremely hopeful that Marvel Rivals will be conscientious of the need to feed its hero fantasy and maintain its massive power levels, it does leave me still uncertain about what the game's actual approach to balance will be, especially when new characters start being added.

It's clear, judging just by how the conversation around the concept is going among players, that some level of balance changes are needed - and that fans will only be so patient in waiting for characters that are seen as problematic to be adjusted before resentment starts to set in.

Likewise, fans won't tolerate changes that take away what they see as the game's signature playstyle or features, so that balance will have to come with care given primarily to the core player experience of embodying a superhero with all the strengths and weaknesses that come with it.

Marvel Rivals is getting a Splatoon mode and turning Groot into a Christmas tree for the holidays.

Speaking to the Phase Hero podcast, Winderbaum says Jeff coming to the MCU is, like Thanos, inevitable, but he's remaining tight-lipped about where or when it could happen.

"You know it's coming! You know it's coming!" Winderbaum quips. "I can't say when, I can't say where. But we're all Jeff fans around here. Man is he fun to play!"

Yes - that's right - even Marvel executives are getting in on the fun with Marvel Rivals, which has already reached over 20 million active players since its December 5 wide release.

As for how Jeff could fit into the MCU, well, there's certainly a question around how he might appear. But his comic book origins could offer some clues, because he's got strong ties to a character who is already part of the MCU, and who is seemingly headed for a big team-up: Kate Bishop, the second Hawkeye.

In comics, Jeff is a genetically engineered creation of MODOK, who was adopted by Gwen Poole and the West Coast Avengers after they defeated the villain. Though Jeff lived with Gwen Poole for some time, more recent comic appearances have shown him now living with Kate, as she was the leader of the West Coast Avengers.

In the MCU, Kate is seemingly headed for a Young Avengers team up after being recruited by Ms. Marvel in The Marvels, so it's entirely possible Jeff could be part of that, if they wind up finding and adopting him. Heck, with Goose the Flerken already in the mix, it could be a full-on Pet Avengers team up too.

Learn all about the comic history of Jeff the Land Shark.

Back with a bang

In hindsight, it was clear I'd been falling out of love with the genre for ages. But that spark didn't reignite until the September release of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, which did things that I didn't even think possible with modern technology. Seeing thousands of scythe-armed Tyranids wash over the hive world of Avarax (and better yet, having to wade through them with a chainsword and gun) is some of the most fun I've ever had in a third-person shooter campaign. It was the amount of enemies on-screen and the way that you're encouraged to flow between shootouts and melee combat to survive, yes, but it was also the sky-scraping cathedrals and jungle battlefields that seemed to stretch into distant horizons.

It cut through to my core – a reminder of formative evenings spent in co-op campaigns with my brother, illuminated by the fuzzy glow of a CRT screen and scored with the furious button-clattering din that only children unleashed on controllers can ever muster. Gaming itself was still a novelty, and sitting on the floor before that boxy television was a worship of impossibilities – whether Duke Nukem on the Nintendo 64, or the Xbox 360's smorgasbord of Gears of War, Halo, and Call of Duty – that I ultimately charted my life from. Space Marine 2 is the first game in a long time to ever brush those memories, and by playing it, I'd unwittingly made the first step toward rekindling my passion for the genre.

It's fitting, then, that Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 launched just a month after Space Marine 2. The first Black Ops, released in 2010, was the last Call of Duty game I fell deeply for before leaving the series on hiatus for over a decade. I adored its setting – it's the reason I'm still so fond of The Rolling Stones and Creedence Clearwater Revival – and although Black Ops 6 had none of that '60s cool, it oozed the same arcade-y dynamism in its multiplayer. Since Black Ops 6 released, I've likely played it more nights than not. I'm a sucker for its weightless fun: there's no waiting for fights, no stakes, just one sugary hit after another. After falling out of love with hardcore FPS titles due to the time and effort they require, Black Ops 6 has been a much-needed baby step back into playing competitively.

But absence makes the heart grow fonder, and Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl was the ribbon on this year of rediscovery. Appropriately, it was the first Stalker game that sparked my interest in "realistic" FPS games. The genre's brutality – along with mundane features like having to eat and drink – created a level of immersion I'd never experienced outside of the best RPGs, with Shadow of Chornobyl's high stakes proving that shooters could be every bit as absorbing as their more adventurous peer. My first playthrough of Stalker 2 was riddled with bugs, but it was also every bit as harsh and unforgiving as the original trilogy. Bandits could be killed with a single well-placed shot between the eyes, but crucially, so could I. Quality ammo was scarce, and every long-distance trip through The Zone meant plotting a course that allowed for a place to sleep, repair my gear, and sell loot. As you can probably tell from my Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl review, it was a love letter to the grit and realism that drew me to hardcore shooters in the first place, a shot of adrenaline for my slumbering inner sicko.

Looking back, it's all rather poetic. But there was never a plan in place to rekindle my love of shooters, or find something I'd lost. These games just happened to arrive at the right time, quiet reminders of why I'd fallen in love with this genre in the first place. In the years to come, I think we'll see developers take note of this year's wins in particular, whether it's more co-op campaigns, mainstream titles getting weird with it, or outright harder experiences. Shooters have come a long way from those fuzzy CRT screen days, but 2024 has proven that we'll likely never run out of ways to make blasting things fun. Who knew?

Managed democracy wins out as Helldivers 2 leads our best shooters of 2024, with plenty of fierce FPS competition close behind

"Just before Christmas and New Year's, we are ready to present Patch 1.1," the developer writes on Steam, the first patch of its kind. It apparently impacts over 1,800 issues, starting with a much needed upgrade to the FPS survival horror game's NPC AI system A-Life.

NPCs should now no longer be able to suddenly spawn behind you or out of thin air, ending many players' frustrations with Stalker 2's unstable combat scenarios. NPCs won't appear so unnatural anymore, either (outside of their radiation tumors, at least). Improvements to a wide range of visual problems – including mutants flying like planes after being killed with a shotgun, or NPCs being unable to find their way through battlefields of corpses – make sure of that.

Along with NPC looks and behavior, GSC Game World also updated Stalker 2 by fixing 250 main mission bugs, 500 problems with visual effects like foliage and flickering, and it addressed 80 cutscene issues with facial animation, Haptic feedback, and missing NPCs. The developer made performance improvements through resolving some game freezes and FPS drops near bodies of water, too, and so many more alterations. If that doesn't make you feel like a kid on Christmas morning, I don't know what will. A glass of warm milk, perhaps?

In any case, GSC Game World knows its Patch 1.1 is a lot to take in. "We understand that the size of the patch is huge and the process of downloading will take some time," the developer explains on Steam. "We would like to thank you for your understanding, and we will work on this aspect as well."

From Dragon's Dogma 2 to Star Wars Outlaws, here's the best open world games of 2024. 

The Finals, Embark Studio's excellent FPS, has just entered its fifth season. As it celebrates its first birthday, we're here to tell you why you Season 5 is the best possible time to jump in if you haven't already.

First up, Season 5 makes The Finals bigger and better than it's ever been before. Each new season has brought new additions and improvements, and this is the best state the game's ever been in. New sponsors, new weapons, and new gadgets mean The Finals is more chaotic, inventive, and imaginative than ever before.

Next up, The Finals knows that any competitive game is best with friends, and Season 5 makes it easier than ever to play with your pals. The new Clubs feature makes it super simple to jump straight into the action with friends, and with extra XP and special progression paths, you've got no excuse not to bring a couple of allies along with you.

There are some fancy new changes in Season 5, but sometimes it's all about what you can't see. The devs have been busy tinkering all year, and in this new season, you've got improvements to older maps, tweaks to Ranked and Quick Cash game modes, and more Career Levels and Item Progression to unlock.

And that's before we get into the hardware - The Finals is now available on PS4 for those of you still fond of your last-gen machines. If you're a little more up to date, however, you'll be able to take advantage of the silky smooth 120Hz mode to improve your visuals on PS5, PS5 Pro, and Xbox Series X.

Last but not least is the real highlight of The Finals Season 5 - it's beautiful new map. Bernal is inspired by Mexico, which you'll see in its charming architecture and chaotic open squares, as well as the amazing mountain vistas that surround the arena.

Those are five reasons to check out The Finals with the start of its fifth season. But if that's somehow not quite enough, just remember that this is your best chance yet to catch up on one of the best FPS games out there. The Arena is calling - will you reply?

"It's obviously a bittersweet moment," executive producer Mark Rubin wrote on Twitter while sharing the update, "but I just want to say how proud I am of everyone on this team that did everything they could to make this game and all of its amazing content."

Earlier this year, publisher Ubisoft laid off a huge number of developers in its San Francisco office, where many XDefiant developers worked. Finally, earlier this month, it did what everyone imagined it would do and began shutting XDefiant down, a sad outcome Rubin attributed to the volatility of the game's free-to-play model in a separate Twitter announcement. 

People who downloaded XDefiant prior to its sunsetting will at least be able to enjoy the spoils of its new Frankenstein update, which takes pieces from several planned seasons and mashes them into one patchwork behemoth. 

Most notably, the patch introduces three new factions: strategic Assassins, then Wolves, who use stealthy drone attacks, and the brute-force cyber soldiers Blood Dragon. XDefiant's final update also features several new modes – including the Turbo XD super-jumping contest and one where you gather XP by facing bots – and an optional prestige system. 

"All of this and more are our last tribute to all of the hard-working people that made this game and to all of the fans who have been with us through this journey," Rubin continued on Twitter. "Not all journeys end well, but we can all be proud of what we accomplished."

XDefiant is shutting down as Ubisoft closes San Francisco and Osaka offices following "long journey" of free-to-play struggles, up to 177 devs impacted.

Written by Paul Allor with art by Luca Claretti, the Marvel Rivals Infinity Comic will run for six issues, which will be available exclusively through the Marvel Unlimited app. The app also includes a huge library of classic Marvel Comics along with an ever-evolving line of Infinity Comics that premiere first on Marvel Unlimited.

And if that's not enough incentive for Marvel Rivals players to log in to Marvel Unlimited, subscribers will be able to redeem a code for a special "Unlimited Appetite" spray for Jeff the Land Shark, the adorably divisive Strategist hero who has starred in multiple Infinity Comics himself.

Marvel is also crossing the gaming streams by offering up character sheets for the Marvel Rivals versions of 12 different heroes for use in the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game, along with a game map based on the Yggsgard Marvel Rivals map, and a new tabletop game mode inspired by Rivals' Domination mode. The heroes being adapted include Spider-Man, Hulk, Iron Man, Scarlet Witch, Black Panther, Luna Snow, and more. All that content is available now for free on the Marvel Multiverse RPG site.

The first chapter of the Marvel Rivals Infinity Comic is already available on Marvel Unlimited, with new chapters releasing weekly.

Marvel Rivals is getting a Splatoon mode and turning Groot into a Christmas tree for the holidays