Few games commit to building an alternate reality like Vice Undercover. Much of the game is played on the fictitious Amigo OS, an amalgam of Windows 3.1 and early Apple operating systems with a dozen built-in applications, a boxy media player, and even a persistent Clippy pastiche with all sorts of eager advice for you. But this isn't a starry-eyed trip down memory lane—it's a "narco-thriller" where you poke around...

The FromSoftware aesthetic is best summed up by the famous quote from Dark Souls director Hidetaka Miyazaki. When presented with an early, gross and gribbly design for the Undead Dragon in Dark Souls, Miyazaki returned it with the comment that it should be more dignified, saying, "Can't you instead try to convey the deep sorrow of a magnificent beast doomed to a slow and possibly endless descent into ruin?'"At some...

The videogame discourse cycle does another lap, racing past "videogames are too easy" and "singleplayer is back" and hitting the straight of "videogames are too expensive" one more time. This time Borderlands 4 is the game, $US80 is the potential price, and Randy Pitchford found himself at the head of the pack after saying that "if you're a real fan, you'll make it happen" and pointing out that "Game budgets...

The race to make the next great extraction shooter continues apace. While Bungie takes its big swing with a Marathon revival, newer outfit Embark Studios has been quietly working on a competitor: Arc Raiders, a third-person PvPvE shooter with the bones of Escape From Tarkov, the approachability of Gears of War, and the keen architectural eye of Swedish game development.This time last year, Marathon was the presumptive representative for the...

When confronted with a new MMO where the best blueprints and resources are hidden in a sprawling and deadly PvP zone, a lot of players have one important question: "So, what if I'm not into PvP?"Rest assured, you'll still be able to visit the 'deep desert' endgame zone of Dune: Awakening. According to Funcom, as shown in today's livestream, while the deep desert is almost entirely PvP, there is a...

Last year, I reviewed a new liquid cooler with a screen on it. It's called the Hyte Thicc Q60, and it comes with a 5-inch screen powered by an ARM chip and running Android. I had two main thoughts at the time: 'this is a novel idea' and 'this is absolutely ridiculous'. Little did I know that a year later, I'd be walking around the showfloor at Taiwan's top tech...

What came before the iPad baby? Well, with both parents working various IT systems jobs throughout my youth, in my case I was always destined to become a desktop gremlin. Hastening that descent were a number of games, but the accessibility of 3D Pinball for Windows – Space Cadet was the one that probably annoyed my folks the most. First packaged alongside Windows 95, there's no need to dig out...

These are heady days for Tamriel Rebuilt, the 24-year-old Morrowind mod that aims to build out—in a brilliant and fanatically lore-friendly way—all the parts of the titular province that Bethesda didn't get to. The team has just put out Grasping Fortune, its ninth and biggest expansion, which adds in a humungous new landmass to explore that includes Narsis, the capital city of Morrowind's merchant House Hlaalu.Sitting down for a chat...

Need to KnowWhat is it? A co-op action RPG battle royale hybrid set in the Elden Ring universeRelease date May 30, 2025Expect to pay $40/£35Developer FromSoftwarePublisher Bandai NamcoReviewed on RTX 5090, Intel Core i9 12900K, 16GB RAMMultiplayer YesSteam Deck UntestedLink Official siteIn the fight against Elden Ring Nightreign's riff on Mothra, I never expected it would eventually touch down and mount the head of its partner, a giant stick bug...

It's fair to say that Elden Ring Nightreign appeared somewhat out of the blue, as it was only announced last December. Perhaps even more surprising are its co-op, rogue-like gameplay and procedurally generated worlds, aspects that most (if not all) of FromSoftware's games eschew.But that's what we've got, so if the thought of an Elden Ring 'Lite' appeals, you'll want to know how well it runs, yes? Especially given that...