Gaming

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!

Willa Rowe is a contributing writer at Polygon, covering games and entertainment. She is a New York-based journalist and critic whose work has been featured in Kotaku, Digital Trends, the A. V. Club, GamesRadar+, and more. She also co-hosts the Girl Mode podcast. The Pokémon developer seems to be putting its action RPG on the back burner

It'll also let you suck down a Draught of Mind Rebirth Quick! Hit left scratch ear! Hit down rub belly! Slap right bum pats! Annnnd you've died because you failed to parry a paw coming for you with the force of a vampire's claw. This is how I assume things will go if I boot up The Blood of Dawnwalker once its 1.1 update debuts. Devs Rebel Wolves, in their infinite wisdom, claim to be set to add in "directional animal petting" as part of it.

Publisher Acclaim and developer Wabisabi Games will soon release a demo for Y2K-style extreme snowboarding game HYPERyuki: Snowboard Syndicate for PC via Steam, the companies announced. A specific date was not announced. “The extreme sports games in the golden age of the late 90s and early aughts had something special,” said Acclaim director of publishing and strategic partnerships Marc Anthony Rodriguez in a press release. “The speed, the banger music, the outrageous tricks, all pure fun. HYPERyuki captures that spirit immediately. Wabisabi is building something with its own identity, and every new reveal gets more ridiculous in the best possible way. Acclaim is proud to be part of this journey and can’t wait for players to experience it with a new demo soon.”Here is an overview of the game, via Acclaim:AboutHYPERyuki: Snowboard Syndicate is developed by Mexican indie studio Wabisabi Games (RKGK / Rakugaki). Inspired by the fast-paced gameplay and stylish excess of classics like SSX and Jet Grind Radio, the game delivers a modern take on white-knuckle arcade-style snowboarding. Key Features Challenge – Think you have what it takes to impress?

ZA/UM, the controversial studio behind Disco Elysium: The Final Cut, has confirmed that its next CRPG will launch on Switch 2 on 3rd November 2026. Zero Parades: Director's Cut is the studio's second outing and was released on PC in May of this year. The Director's Cut, which launched as a free update for owners on PC earlier this month, features several key improvements, including re-recorded English voiceover and a revamped inventory system.

Sam Hill is a news writer at Polygon covering gaming and entertainment. He's a Portland, Oregon–based journalist known for covering gaming, the outdoors, national parks, tech, food, and internet culture. He has written for a range of publications including Outside Magazine, Boston Magazine, Vice, the Seattle Times and Digital Trends. The trial includes every multiplayer map and mode, with a new season and a Dead Space crossover

Elijah is a freelance news writer at Polygon. He was an associate editor at The A. V. Club and Paste, and has been featured in outlets like Game Informer, Fanbyte, Unwinnable, and more. He loves media in all forms, from fighting games and horror flicks to slow cinema and visual novels. He's from the Greater Boston area. Released in Early Access in 2015, the survival crafting game Stranded Deep has built a strong following over the years, with over 20K Steam reviews alone. If you’re a fan of the genre and are looking for something to play this weekend, now might be a good time to give this one a try: it's free to play on Steam until 1 p.m. ET Oct. 19. Stranded Deep is an open-world multiplayer game where you play as a plane-crash survivor trapped on an island in the Pacific Ocean. You can chop down wood to build impressive huts and other structures. You can also craft spears, axes, bows, and (somehow) spearguns, making it easier to hunt fish and giant crabs. Your hunting, cooking, and crafting skills level up as you use them.

Ken Kutaragi practically willed the PlayStation into existence against the wishes and judgment of many others at Sony. His tenacity paid off. Decades after the PS1 launched, the PlayStation brand is dominant in the world of high-end console gaming. But the discs that propelled the platform to success are not long for this world, and Kutaragi thinks the death of physical PlayStation games makes sense. “I understand that physical discs have become a metaphor for ‘owning’ games. I really understand that mentality,” he told VGC in a new interview. “But nobody thinks [physical media] is necessary for a networked device like a smartphone, for example, because people feel that they will keep their content. So it’s a mentality.” He continued, “I really understand [why some people are upset], but I don’t think it’s economically reasonable. Maybe it’s a mentality issue.” Despite Sony’s commitment to killing off discs in 2028, many die-hard PlayStation fans aren’t letting go without a fight. Part of that is nostalgia and sentimentality.

Back when Apple Arcade launched in 2019, there was a resounding belief among gamers that the mobile gaming service wasn’t long for this world. After all, it was released during a time when major tech companies like Google were trying — and failing — to muscle their way into the gaming market any way they could. Seven years later, Apple Arcade hasn’t gone anywhere, and Apple itself hasn’t slowed its broader gaming efforts either. Between courting major publishers like Capcom to release their games on Mac to launching a proper gaming app, it’s clear that Apple still has its sights set on being a major player. The latest example of that came this week as Apple launched an App Store event dubbed Indie Games Week. The week-long initiative saw Apple welcoming games like Vampire Crawlers to iOS and announcing an ambitious mobile version of No Man’s Sky. At the center of that push was Carson Oliver, the new head of App Store Worldwide following Phil Schiller’s sudden departure from the role this past August. The fact that one of his first acts in the role was spearheading an indie gaming showcase hints at where Oliver’s priorities might lie.

Square Enix has never been shy about reissuing the Final Fantasy games in various forms. Pop into the digital shop on your platform of choice and you can find remastered or remade versions of many of the mainline entries along with a generous helping of spin-offs, too. We’re at the point where some of these games are remasters of remakes, even. You know what you won’t find a remaster of, though? Final Fantasy XIII. Not the original game, and certainly not its two follow-ups. It’s well past time for Lightning to return. Recommended Videos Depending what platform you’re playing on the original releases of the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy might still be available. That’s not nothing! However, the original Final Fantasy XIII is almost 18 years old now and could use a little extra love even on those platforms. There are also consoles like the Nintendo Switch 2 where you can’t find any version of the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy at all. It’s almost bizarre how invisible it has become when you think back to the period just before the game came out and how much hype it had upon release. It was also the first game in the series, and still one of the only ones, to have two direct sequels.

As I’m typing this, we’re in the final hellish days before the October 16 launch of TENEBRIS SOMNIA – the retro survival horror game with live-action cutscenes – coming at you from Andrés Borghi (The Black Heart) Saibot Studios (Hellbound), and published by New Blood Interactive. (FAITH: The Unholy Trinity, DUSK, Blood West). In Tenebris Somnia you play as Julia, a young woman who is having nightmares about her ex-boyfriend being torn apart by horrible monsters. Hoping to find some peace, she goes to his apartment to check on him. What she discovers is a world of horror that descends beyond her darkest dreams. What if the nightmares are real…?

Last week, we asked you to share your favorite looks from Marvel’s Wolverine using #PSshare #PSBlog for a chance to be featured. Here are this week’s highlights: NickVPgamer shared a glinting portrait in the Ultimate Red Suit

Ubisoft was apparently making another Assassin’s Creed game set in ancient China, except this one was a full-fat AC with a massive open world and a fancy umbrella weapon. According to a new report, the game was called Assassin’s Creed Destiny. Assassin’s Creed Jade will explore the same setting, targeting mobile. Destiny’s prototype footage appears to be aimed at modern consoles and PC instead. Destiny was reportedly set during 206 BCE, where the Qin dynasty made way for the Han dynasty after a brutal civil war. The game likely would have focused on Liu Bang’s rise to power. MP1st found the footage in developer portfolios. According to the report, the game was supposed to be a partnership between Ubisoft and Tencent, the Chinese conglomerate that owns huge portions of the games industry, including a 25% stake in Vantage Studios, a subsidiary that oversees some of Ubisoft’s biggest IPs. The footage shows a hooded assassin battling through a siege headed up by warlord Xiang Yu, before switching to greybox testing environments for combat abilities. There’s a spinning umbrella weapon shown at one point.

Patricia is the former editor-in-chief of Kotaku, where she spent a decade writing and editing. Prior to that, she served as the Culture Editor at Polygon, and as a reporter at The Verge. Hernandez specializes in Pokémon TCG, Nintendo, and offbeat internet culture stories. The popular free browser game is officially a horror experience now

Mega Drive mech strategy RPG originally released in 1992. Publisher Ratalaika Games and developer Shinyuden will release mech strategy RPG Vixen 357 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC via Steam on October 23, the companies announced. Originally developed by NCS Corporation and published by Masaya Games, Vixen 357 first launched for Mega Drive on October 23, 1992 in Japan. Here is an overview of the game, via Ratalaika Games:AboutOne day, a mysterious unit attacked the base of Slash Unit, who had been training to become the pilots of Vectors. But who are they…? Now, the battle begins again, with the secrets lie hidden!

Psychic Software have announced The Lich Wars, a standalone prequel for their widely acclaimed RPG The Necromancer's Tale. Widely acclaimed by me, anyway. I'm pretty wide, these days – the local Morrisons keeps doing discounts on 80-biccy packets of bourbon creams. I liked The Necromancer's Tale specifically for how it wove a whole RPG around the narrative dynamics of a single RPG class, with players performing rituals in each chapter to develop their morbid spellcraft, while managing the suspicions of nearby townsfolk. I also really loved its choose-your-own-adventure prologue. The Lich Wars sort of spins the prologue out into a full game.

I was already looking forward to upcoming tactics game Australia Did It , but now I've got another reason to do so: a hilariously expanded new name. In a fun turn of events, designer Rami Ismail has revealed a new subtitle has officially been adopted. Back in August, he posted a suggestion about the name that had been made as part of a localization report that turned out to be incredible. "One localisation report for Australia Did It returned with a note that the game's title won't work in their territory & suggested to instead use 'Australia Did It: End-of-the-World Railway Defence Business' and now I want that, like, globally," he wrote at the time. He subsequently asked fans to express their support for the name, in the hopes he could use it to convince publisher Mystic Forge to actually adopt the subtitle. And with this week's announcement of a release date, the news was confirmed, and the game will officially be called Australia Did It: End-of-the-World Railway Defense Business. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBFlZ8MmbFA The original, subtitle-less name was certainly memorable. Despite a sea of games coming out at all times that seek to push everything more than five seconds

Wardogs developer Bulkhead had some strong words to say about the rough launch of Season 2, admitting: "We f***ed up. "Season 2 saw the introduction of XP and cash bonuses for people willing to play Blue Team, in an attempt to polish Lonestar’s tarnished reputation. Unfortunately, the idea backfired as more experienced players quickly boosted their accounts on Blue. Usually it takes a while for players to unlock some of the deadliest gear, but the XP and cash boosts saw players quickly kitted out in the best armor and the most annoying weapons. "We were wrong, we f***ed up," Bulkhead CEO Joe Brammer said. "This was an experiment — we thought we'd have this in for about a week.” The boosts have already been removed in a hotfix. The cash and XP bonuses saw Blue Team go from the worst performing team to quickly dominating every match, attracting all the best players. The bonuses were 5% extra cash and 2.5% extra XP, but it was enough to attract the most try-hard players in the game. "The only comment that annoyed me is when people say, 'They didn't address the core issues [with Blue Team]," Brammer continued, talking about team spawn placement.