Gaming

Pokémon TCG Pocket is about to turn two years old at the end of this month, and with that developers DeNA are announcing a bunch of changes that are coming to the mobile game. Alongside word that there will be new ways to get hold of the animated Immersive Cards, a way to build meta decks in-game, and a much-needed improvement to trading, there comes the very welcome news that the release cycle of new sets is finally due to slow down and become less overwhelming. It might seem an odd complaint that PTCG Pocket is releasing too many new sets and gorgeously drawn cards, but if you’ve tried to keep up with the game over the last two years you’ll understand. Every month comes a whole new collection of packs to open, each coming with full-art cards of varying rarities to collect, and new abilities that up-end the battling scene. It has become exhausting to keep up with no matter how you approach the game, creating a severe FOMO effect. Slowing down this cadence sounds like a splendid idea, allowing more time to catch up with collecting recent sets, and slowing the rapidity of the changing meta.

Over the years, Critical Role has featured plenty of romances across its Dungeons & Dragons campaigns and one-shots. These include the angst-ridden yet sweet love between haughty noble Percival Del Rolo and strong-willed ranger Vex’ahlia in Campaign 1, and the intriguing will-they-won’t-they dynamic between warlock Fjord Stone and the bubbly tiefling cleric Jester in Campaign 2. Critical Role cast member and co-founder Laura Bailey takes center stage in both romances, and it’s easy to see why. Bailey isn’t afraid to challenge character dynamics, whether her character is tricking a hag with a magical cupcake or slicing and dicing her greatest enemy. However, Bailey completely changed the game when she kickstarted a unique romance in Campaign 3.

In addition to the main campaign and traditional experience in Dragon Quest Monsters: The Withered World, Square Enix confirmed the different online multiplayer modes and offline Battle Arena options. The former has casual and more competitive options, along with rewards for taking part in them. The latter involves standard battles and a Wrangler’s Gauntlet that is a roguelike mode with self-contained situations and characters used in runs that task players with surviving 50 battles. Recommended Videos The online multiplayer in Dragon Quest Monsters: The Withered World supports cross-play and involves the casual Online Joint Battles for up to four players to come in with their teams of three and reserves, the Private matches with custom rules, and the Ranked Matches. The Online Joint Battles is notable for the rewards people get for winning, including eggs that can hatch into monsters. The Hub also has a Wranglers Society with matches, a roulette wheel with prizes, and an Online Shop that rotates its stock regularly.  As for the offline Battle Arena in Dragon Quest Monsters: The Withered World, that features a traditional fight in addition to the roguelike Wrangler’s Gauntlet.

Posted: Oct 16, 2026 5:00pm UTCNot since 2013’s Call of Duty: Ghosts launched on the Wii U has a mainline COD game appeared on a Nintendo console. 2026’s Modern Warfare 4 is breaking that 14-year dry spell by releasing on Switch 2, and I got to play a couple of missions from the campaign to see how it fares. I won’t lie, my expectations were low – Call of Duty is always on the cutting edge of graphics and performance, and Nintendo’s latest isn’t intentionally built for that. And yet, I came away pleasantly surprised by what Digital Legends, the Activision studio dedicated to this version of MW4, has achieved from a technical standpoint. For my full review of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, I played on PC, which provided a useful benchmark for what the most ideal version of the game looks like. Of course, when placed side-by-side with the Switch 2 version, you’ll immediately notice the difference — it looks stunning on PC and runs like a dream, as you’d expect. But, shifting over to Switch 2 didn’t offend my eyes quite like I feared it would.

These are our impressions of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4’s campaign. Reviews of DMZ and multiplayer will follow. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4's campaign has been set an unenviable task: tie the bow on a seven-year-long series of stories I’d politely describe as “uneven.” To its credit, it handles this challenge well, delivering a genuinely exciting string of missions that are great when they focus on what is new, rather than getting bogged down in the past. It’s the best Modern Warfare has been since its 2019 reboot by quite some distance, and a reminder of how good Call of Duty can be when the people making it are given time to cook. This collection of blockbuster sequences that has clearly been built from the ground up as a single-player experience is in stark contrast when compared to 2023’s woeful Modern Warfare 3 campaign, arguably the low point of the entire series. A mishmash of multiplayer maps mixed with slivers of near-incomprehensible story, I don’t envy Infinity Ward having to pick up from where it left off.

Image: ActivisionNearly 13 years since Nintendo gamers last had the chance to answer the Call of Duty (2013's Ghosts on Wii U, RIP), Activision has finally redeployed this storied series on Nintendo platforms. Given the technical gulf between Switch 2 and competition, not to mention PC, the cynical among us might have read Microsoft's agreement to bring the series to a Nintendo console day-and-date with other platforms and expected a compromised, box-ticking Switch port. Something patched up and pushed out with reduced player counts and missing modes, technically running on the handheld, but barely.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Hellraiser: Revival. The first five minutes of Hellraiser: Revival will make your eyebrows high-five the ceiling. It opens with a BDSM-flavored sex scene complete with piercing and blood and a veritable buffet of sex toys scattered around the room, then evolves into a gory example of what hooks and chains can do to flesh. If you're sweet and innocent you might want to clutch some pearls, but to Clive Barker fans like me it's a signal that Revival is committing to the spirit of the author and director’s sexy subversion rather than watering it down. And I'm not an easy woman to please. The original Hellraiser movie rewired my brain when I saw it as a teenager (yes, I have a therapist), and Barker's Books of Blood volumes are in my top five reads of all time. I was bracing for disappointment, but that opening proved that Revival wasn't going to shy away from the body horror or sex that runs through Barker's work. The Hellraiser world is one of horrible and hedonistic extremes, so trying to avoid either would be like trying to swap Beyond Meat patties for prime rib.

Retroware has released a new gameplay trailer for side-scrolling beat ’em up game Toxic Crusaders. Here is an overview of the game, via its Steam page:AboutWhen the evil Dr. Killemoff attacks, only one team of hideously deformed creatures of superhuman size and strength stands between him and his plans for global pollution: the Toxic Crusaders, earth’s last, greatest and ugliest hope for survival! The hottest heroes of 1991 return for a radical, radioactive beat ’em up for a new era, featuring awesome action, crushing combos and more toxic waste than you’ll know what to do with! It’s Clean-Up Time! Choose from seven playable characters, including Toxie, No-Zone, Junkyard, Major Disaster and Headbanger (who would technically count as two characters if they could only agree on something)—plus, for the first time, play as Toxie’s musically “gifted” girlfriend Yvonne, and the mother of all mothers, Mrs. Junko, Toxie’s mom! Battle across seven disgusting levels rendered in beautiful full-color pixel art as you defend Tromaville from hordes of Radiation Rangers, mutated thugs and zombie chickens.

Drunken Goddess Reflex to get limited-access showing instead In what I suspect is the start of a trend, assuming it isn't one already, the creators of Drunken Goddess Reflux have yanked a planned public demo partly because they're concerned about people using generative AI to clone their game and release a copy before they even launch.

Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or download here Hey, y’all! Sid, Tim, O’Dell, and Kristen are back this week to talk about some of the spooky games they have been playing, how 2026 may go down in gaming history, and titles we’ve missed. Plus, Tim interviews Jeff Negus, Narrative Director, Infinity Ward, for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4.

After leaking last month during the big Steam/Exophase achievement dump, we have our first look at Shrek 2: Remastered, which is bringing the four-player co-op game to modern consoles. This reveal, ironically enough, also came from a leak, but this time it’s Xbox’s fault for accidentally posting its store page up too early. The listing includes multiple screenshots, a pre-order trailer, and a lengthy description of all the new features and updates coming to the 2004 platformer. The game is getting a facelift with “better textures, enhanced UI, [and] 4K resolution,” as well as new features like a Photo Mode and a Cheat Mode that lets you modify the game. It will support both local and online co-op, so if you’re getting your kids into Shrek ahead of Shrek 5 next year, you can play it with them, or if you have nostalgia for the original game and want to play it with your friends and siblings who live far away, there’s an online option. I played Shrek 2 when it came out and I was surprised how much of it came back to me when watching the trailer.

Play the beginning of the story through the first half of Chapter 2. C#4R4CT3R has released a demo for Tokyo 1998-set lo-fi psychological suspense adventure Rain98 for PC via Steam, the developer announced. The demo offers approximately three hours of gameplay, covering the beginning of the story through the first half of Chapter 2. The full game is expected to be roughly 10 to 15 hours long. It supports nine languages. Alongside visual novel sequences and dialogue choices, adventure sections let players interact with heroine Reina Amehara and explore the streets of Tokyo in 1998. Mamiko Noto has also been announced as the voice of Kyoko Yose. Here are the latest details:■ Tokyo, 1998. A rain that never ends and a girl who wants everything to end.​

Now with improved graphics and new features. A Microsoft Store page for the unannounced Shrek 2 Remastered developed by Aspyr has gone live. The game is likely meant to be officially announced during the ID@Xbox Showcase on October 20, as Shrek briefly appears in the teaser trailer. News of a Shrek 2 remaster first surfaced during a large-scale Steam Achievements leak in September. Here is an overview of the game, via Microsoft Store:AboutJourney through the fairytale kingdom of Far Far Away from Shrek’s swamp to Fiona’s castle and everywhere in between, in a classic action adventure experience inspired by the DreamWorks Animation movie. Play solo or with up to three friends in cooperative play, take control of your favorite Shrek heroes as you smash, throw and kick your way against iconic characters from the franchise.

On October 10, Naruto’s original author and illustrator announced that a new canon manga titled Naruto: Shadow Rising is set to be released sometime in 2027. This is great news if you love Naruto. However, if you hate Boruto, it’s incredible news—or at least, that’s what some people would lead you to believe. Following Naruto: Shadow Rising’s reveal at NYCC, several posts online have attempted to twist the announcement into something else entirely: confirmation that Boruto, Mikio Ikemoto’s ongoing sequel to Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto, is officially no longer canon. Now, rumors like this aren’t usually newsworthy, but this one has started to get somewhat out of hand. A viral post on X with almost 5 million views, posted on October 14, claimed that Kishimoto outright stated that “Boruto is an alternate universe” in a 2024 interview. Another post on X stated that Kishimoto “officially confirms” Boruto is now non-canon, by using a video of the author from 2017. Obviously, these quotes have been taken wildly out of context—something one of the posters on X quite brazenly admitted to.

Publisher Balor Games and developer Stairway Games will release a Switch 2 version of simulation game Coral Island this winter alongside the version 1.4 update, companies announced. Coral Island first launched in Early Access for PC via Steam and Microsoft Store on October 11, 2022, followed by a full release across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam and Microsoft Store on November 14, 2023. Here are the latest details, via Balor Games:Switch 2 VersionNintendo Switch 2 players will soon be able to build the cozy coastal life of their dreams in Coral Island. Playing solo or with up to four friends in multiplayer, they can experience everything the island has to offer at their own pace: growing crops, raising animals, and getting to know a diverse cast of islanders. Along the way, players can cultivate Starlet Town, protect local landscapes, dive beneath the waves to explore the magical Merfolk Kingdom, and even find love and build a family. Version 1.4 Update The 1.4 “Kids Grow Up” Update opens a new chapter for Coral Island.

Season 2 of Wardogs, the multiplayer sandbox FPS currently blasting and/or politely driving its way through early access, introduced an un usual "social experiment" when it launched yesterday. In an attempt to rehabilitate the reputation of its Lonestar faction, a.k.a the infamous Blue Team, developers Bulkhead began granting bonus XP and cash – the latter being the upgrade-focused game’s lifeblood – to Blue players alone. The hypothesis, apparently, was that more skilled players would give Lonestar a chance, helping boost its dismal winrates and perhaps improve its tarnished image. One day in, then, how’s it going? “We were wrong. We fucked up,” says Bulkhead CEO Joe Brammer in a video announcing the bonus scheme’s immediate cancellation. Ah!