GamersHeroes Sunday, May 25, 2025 5:30 PM Cute, co-op chaos awaits players with the release of Infogrames and Sand Castles Studios' co-op platformer Bread & Fred for both GOG and the Epic Games Store. The post Co-Op Platformer Bread & Fred Now Available for GOG and Epic Games Store appeared first on GamersHeroes. |
GamersHeroes Sunday, May 25, 2025 2:59 PM Making its debut at today's OTK Games Expo, Winter Crew, CMD Studios, and Holysoft Studios' handcrafted 2D MetroidVania Fallen Tear: The Ascension has been announced. The post 2D Animated MetroidVania Fallen Tear: The Ascension Announced appeared first on GamersHeroes. |
GamersHeroes Sunday, May 25, 2025 12:03 PM Looking to test your might at Fire & Ice RGX 2025? Hosted by Sacramento Ultimate Events, get ready to throw down at Smash Ultimate, Smash Melee, Rivals of Aether 2, and Street Fighter 6 and win big! The post Tournament Schedule at Fire & Ice RGX 2025 Revealed appeared first on GamersHeroes. |
PCGamesN Sunday, May 25, 2025 3:04 PM What are the best laptop games? PC gaming isn't always done at a desk, reclining languorously on an ergonomic leather throne, gazing upon a gaming monitor the size of your front window as hundreds of snazzy LEDs light up your peripheral vision. As anyone who has attended a LAN can attest, hauling your heavy box of tricks around is not for the faint of heart (or arm, or back) and so you might be feeling resigned to taking a break from gaming in the event life takes you on a trip away from home. Don't do that. Never stop gaming. Take your laptop with you and play games on the train. Play games on the beach. Play games in the laundry cupboard as you hide from your relatives. We'll guide you through which low spec games for laptops you will be able to run, and which won't cause you endless frustration trying to control them with a trackpad. If you're looking for a new setup, then check our hardware guide to the best gaming laptop. Continue reading Best laptop games to play in 2025 MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Genshin Impact codes, Genshin Impact character tier list, Genshin Impact leveling guide |
PCGamesN Sunday, May 25, 2025 3:02 PM From Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown to Nine Sols, Animal Well, and many more besides, we've been spoiled by great Metroidvania games in recent years. Making a fresh appearance at today's OTK Games Expo, Fallen Tear: The Ascension is an upcoming action platformer that's very much caught my eye. Boasting absolutely beautiful 2D art design, a giant world inspired by Elden Ring and Breath of the Wild, a clever JRPG-style party system providing mid-combat assists, and a soundtrack crafted by Dark Souls composer Motoi Sakuraba, this is one for your Steam wishlist. MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best Metroidvania games, Best JRPGs, Best platform games |
PCGamesN Sunday, May 25, 2025 3:28 PM May 25, 2025: There's a new Bubble Gum Simulator Infinity code to mark UPD 5. What are the latest Bubble Gum Simulator Infinity codes? We've scoured Discord, Twitter, and every other social platform the game uses to find new BGSI codes you can use to score some easy freebies. Get the edge in your bubble-blowing adventures by staying on top of new code drops before they expire. If you're a big Roblox fan, check out the latest codes for other huge games on the platform. We're always on the lookout for new Blue Lock Rivals codes, Blox Fruits codes, and Dress to Impress codes just a name a few. In fact, we have well over 100 Roblox games we're constantly scouting for codes. Continue reading Bubble Gum Simulator Infinity codes May 2025 MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best Roblox games, Roblox promo codes, Roblox music codes |
PCGamesN Sunday, May 25, 2025 1:01 PM It's a good time to be a fan of The Elder Scrolls. Oblivion Remastered has brought the classic Bethesda RPG back into the mainstream, and we've recently seen a major update for the Tamriel Rebuilt mod. Now comes another big reveal - a new 20-minute gameplay demo for giant fan project Skywind, which aims to recreate Morrowind in the Skyrim engine. It's been two years since we last got a full showcase of this nature, and it's looking very impressive, demonstrating the likes of underwater combat and new spells. In even better news, the team tells PCGamesN it's seen a "significant" rise in interest lately as more people offer their support. MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Elder Scrolls 6 release date, Best Skyrim mods, Best games like Skyrim |
PCGamesN Sunday, May 25, 2025 12:29 PM Star Citizen is a game that feels, at times, difficult to approach. The colossal space MMO is vast and filled with players who in many cases have been invested since the first Kickstarter campaign more than a decade ago. Indeed, even the playable game has now been in early access for seven and a half years, and that's a lot to catch up on. Squadron 42 is designed as the more approachable counterpart, offering a cinematic campaign that boasts a list of names including Gary Oldman, Gillian Anderson, and Mark Hamill. It's currently penciled in for a 2026 launch, but new job listings have thrown up a fresh wrinkle. MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best simulation games, Best multiplayer games, Best space games |
PCGamesN Sunday, May 25, 2025 11:00 AM Humble is currently running a massive sale, and tucked away in there is a list of heavily discounted "handheld-friendly" games. Whether you've got a Steam Deck, ROG Ally, Legion Go, or any other PC handheld, these games all run great on the portable powerhouses. Featured among our picks from this sale are some of the best Steam Deck games ever released, with many still featuring in the top 100 games played over the last year. Better still, if you have a Humble Choice subscription, you can save even more. Whether you plan to play them on the best gaming handheld, such as the Steam Deck, or on a gaming PC with slightly older specs, you should be able to get these games running well. MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best graphics card, Best gaming PC, Best SSD for gaming |
PCGamesN Sunday, May 25, 2025 10:34 AM Sandfall Interactive's Clair Obscur Expedition 33 is no doubt a love letter to JRPGs. You'll find the DNA of genre classics like Final Fantasy, Suikoden, and Lost Odyssey all throughout the French studio's work, and that's by design. E33 is begging you to make connections to the games it's built on top of, and from my time with it, this only enhances the overall experience. When Expedition 33 first came out, there were a lot of comparisons to Atlus's own landmark RPG series, and now Sandfall's creative director Guillaume Broche acknowledges how much of an impact it had on development. In fact, Broche thinks Persona 5 might just be the best game ever made when it comes to style. MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best JRPGs, Best RPG games, Best story games |
Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed Sunday, May 25, 2025 11:00 AM  Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! I am still cross-referencing my way through Blood Meridian, both incredibly vivid prose-poetic alchemy of the profound and harrowingly mundane, and also a bit like if a bible ate a pulp paperback then shat out a second, stupider bible with at least twice the people getting severed dicks shoved in their mouths. I love literature so much. |
Siliconera Sunday, May 25, 2025 3:00 PM
Labubu basically ended up being the pop culture fad going into 2025, with Kasing Lung's The Monsters designs resulting in different kinds of merchandise based on the characters, and shockingly enough One Piece is a part of it. While the only one with plush elements are the 400% and 1,000% Mega Labubu of Chopper, with the hat being soft fabric, Pop Mart also released PVC, ABS figures of the Straw Hat crew. While I do think the ideal target audience for the collection is going to be people already interested in Labubu, the design and execution is such that I think people who love One Piece might be interested it for the depiction of some members of the cast.
Okay, so to start, the Pop Mart The Monsters One Piece collection is a blind box situation, but it is possible to avoid getting repeat characters by making sure you only get Labubu figures from the same box. This is because each unopened box includes a full set of 12. However, the caveat is that this set is actually made up of 13 total, as the secret one is a Gear 5 version of Luffy. Odds of getting it are 1/144. So most likely someone will just get the full, standard crew of Straw Hats or those considered allies in a box. It basically covers up through the Whole Cake Island Arc, if you don't count the Gear 5 figure.
In terms of style and size, the characters are all very uniform. This does mean they aren't realistic and to scale in any way. Like Chopper being the same size as Franky sort of proves that. However, there is about the same care and effort put into each one, which I appreciated. Their poses all seem realistic and based on attacks or actions in the anime and manga. The standard Luffy one is about to unleash Gomu Gomu no Mi. Sanji is in the midst of a Diable Jambe attack. Nami comes with a (removable) Clima-Tact in the midst of an electrical attack. There are special uses of glossy paint or transparent parts for certain effects, such as Franky and Robin's sunglasses. Also, when characters arrive, the packing involves foam for more delicate parts, such as Usopp's slingshot, Jinbe's ponytail, and the neck of Brook's guitar, to ensure they aren't damaged in transit. All of the bases are also individual Berry coins with specialized parts to ensure they grip characters properly. So while Zoro's coin has no parts, there are pegs on ones for folks like Sanji and slats that fit into Jinbe's geta.
I also mentioned that certain people feature extra accessories. as accents, and you could honestly sort of pose them with or without them. The One Piece characters with extra parts in this The Monsters Labubu figures line are Law, Nami, Sabo, and Sanji. Out of those, I feel like you could honestly display any without their extra accent or weapon, though with Nami it's a bit of a stretch. Her Clima-Tact, the fire on Sanji's foot, Sabo's pipe, and Law's Kikoku are all separate parts, in some cases with additional paint jobs or translucent elements. All of them fit well into the figures' hands, so they are pretty stable once in place for display. They're nice little accents that set the characters apart, and I sort of wish Robin came with extra hands to showcase her Devil Fruit ability since she is in a pose that suggests she is using it.
Honestly, the Labubu Robin figure is the only one in the One Piece The Monsters set that I didn't really like. Yes, it is cool that she has translucent sunglasses on her head. However, her pose isn't as expressive as other characters, the nature of it means we don't see as much of her costume as the the rest of the set, and it generally doesn't feel as detailed. Everyone else has a lot more personality to them, which I appreciated.
The funny thing is, I actually think the Brook one is one of my favorites even though it features no real The Monsters or Labubu accents. There are no signature ears. The skull doesn't feature the pointy teeth in place of the standard ones. The only thing that suggests he's part of the line are the proportions. Even so, it really just looks adorable and very true to the character, and I appreciate that.
Okay, scratch that. My actual favorite is Franky. I really don't care about the character when he shows up in One Piece games or other adaptations. He's just sort of there. But I do appreciate how the Labubu figure version of him in this The Monsters line features a little bit of articulation. You can move his arms up and down, and I really like that extra bit of whimsy.
People's mileage may vary when it comes to the Pop Mart The Monsters One Piece figures of characters as Labubu. The designs are well-thought out and made, I will say. And some of them are especially neat due to extra accessories or posing elements. They are quite cute and, since there is the One Piece connection, they'll be relevant even when the fad wears out. Especially in the case of the extra cute Franky, Brook, or Chopper ones. I do wish maybe some characters had a bit more to them, like Robin, but in general they're fun.
The Monsters One Piece figures that turn characters into Labubu are available in single blind boxes or in a full box of 12. The anime is streaming on services like Crunchyroll and Netflix. The live-action adaptation is on Netflix. Viz Media handles the manga outside Japan.
The post The Monsters One Piece Figures Make Characters Labubu appeared first on Siliconera. |
Destructoid Sunday, May 25, 2025 4:04 PM
We all need to relax sometimes. Whether you're days away from a school exam, recently got married, or got into an argument that ruined your day, there are limitless reasons for sitting back, playing some fun games for a night, and returning to life's usual grind.
Thankfully, there are hundreds of games out there that you can start and play in one night. Here are ten of our top picks for the most chill, relaxing games you can finish in one night to end your day on a high note.
Untitled Goose Game
I'll just say it now: Untitled Goose Game is one of the funniest games I've ever played. Few things are more entertaining than playing as a goose who wants nothing more than to cause chaos in a small town. From honking at random pedestrians to stealing their sandwiches, there's nothing you can't do during its six-hour story. It's even multiplayer if you want a friend to tag along for the ride and double your playtime.
Journey
It's time to go from a goofy, cute game to one of the most stunningly beautiful options on this list with Journey. The game has you, a mysterious and unknown being, exploring the ruins of an abandoned civilization in hopes of reaching a mountain's summit. There are secrets and twists to be found along the way, with the main storyline taking around two to three hours to complete.
Townframe
Townframe is an adorably simplistic puzzle game that lets you recreate scenes using people's memories. As folks around town explain their thoughts and memories to you, you'll use various tools you unlock during your playthrough to recreate a scene of buildings and forests to satisfy their requirements. This one is one of the shortest on this list, clocking in at around an hour and a half to finish, making this a perfect choice if you only have a couple of hours to game and want something short and sweet to play on your PC.
Unpacking
Unpacking is a puzzle game in which you, well, unpack things. Starting in one room, you'll initially unpack a couple of boxes before traveling around your house and beyond to decorate the rest of your living space. With a runtime of about four hours, Unpacking's story is both inspiring and heartwarming, tugging at your heartstrings as you progress.
Minami Lane
Let's get into some strategy, shall we? Minami Lane is a shop management game where you create food recipes, flower bouquets, and more to make money and fill your villagers with joy. Although some management games are complicated when managing your expenses and staff, Minami Lane makes the entire process simple and easy to follow while remaining fun and exciting during its three to four-hour storyline.
Alba: A Wildlife Adventure
If there's one thing I truly love, it's helping wildlife. Alba: A Wildlife Adventure follows the tale of Alba, a young girl who arrives on an island in hopes of helping its local wildlife before a rich business owner comes in to transform the island into a resort. It has a short and sweet story, taking around four hours to complete. As a bonus, ustwo games, in collaboration with Ecologi, is planting one tree for every download of Alba: A Wildlife Adventure, letting you make a positive, real-world impact on the environment by playing.
Donut County
We've got a couple more goofy games on this list, with Donut County being one of the strangest and cutest I've ever played. Donut County is a short but entertaining experience involving you, a hole in the ground, swallowing up everything in sight for, well, reasons. There's no grandiose plot or gameplay mechanics at play here, making this an odd yet clever game you can complete in about two hours.
Duck Detective
Speaking of clever games, let's become a detective. Duck Detective is a game series where you, a recently divorced duck who's a little too tired of life, are investigating the disappearance of some salami. Why salami? Who stole it? Why is everyone so tired in this office? These are just a few questions you'll answer as you dive into this short but hilarious story.
The best part? There are two of these games. Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is your introduction to the series, with The Ghost of Glamping acting as a direct sequel. That way, if you finish one in one night and feel like you need more, you have another opportunity to solve some puzzles and see Duck Detective in action.
Loddlenaut
Let's jump back to wildlife preservation for a moment with Loddlenaut. In Loddlenaut, you play as an interstellar custodian who quickly discovers that the ocean is full of trash, oil, and other substances that threaten the lives of local sea life. Your job is to clean it up while saving local axolotl-like creatures from getting swept up in the mess.
This is one of the longer entries on this list, with playthroughs taking anywhere between four and ten hours, depending on how much time you spend looking at your surroundings and interacting with the little fish that swim around. Nonetheless, if you don't mind a longer experience or want something you can finish at night but have some extra replayability, Loddlenaut is a solid choice.
Gris / Neva
Last but certainly not least, we have another of the most visually and musically stunning games on this list. Gris explores a young girl's trauma through adventures into a painted world within her mind, with a ton of symbolism both in her mind's environments and her character design. It's beautiful in every way, with a short but fascinating story that'll immerse you within its first few minutes.
Another worth mentioning is Nomada Studio's most recent entry, Neva. Although the two games follow separate stories, their narrative styles, gameplay lengths, and aesthetics are similar. Neva focuses more on puzzle elements and combat than Gris' music and story depth.
What are your favorite short and sweet games you've played recently? Let us know in the comments below!
The post Feeling stressed? Here are some short, relaxing games you can finish in one night appeared first on Destructoid. |
Destructoid Sunday, May 25, 2025 3:52 PM
The walls are magnetic, the roads are too narrow, and the keyboard just isn't made for this thing. Such are the woes of the incompetent arcade racer, I suppose. Racing games have been an on-again-off-again thing for me in my adult years, mainly because a genre shift I saw in my teens really pissed me off. But now I went back on a whim to a golden oldie, and I finally saw the appeal.
Running in the '90s
We'd have to go back all the way to MS-DOS prompts to find my first racing game experiences (Screamer Rally at the tender age of three if you want to know), but we don't have that kind of time, so let's get into a quick car and rush straight to the next stage of the story. The Need for Speed games around the turn of the millennium—High Stakes and Porsche Unleashed—set the blueprint for what I'm still looking for in a racing game experience: fun cars, fun locales, and most importantly of all, a focus on tournaments.
Tournaments come with their built-in stories, after all. Who's doing well, how many points do I need, will I have to crash out that specific guy so I still have a chance to clinch the trophy? It requires multiple races, many laps, returning characters. And it's super fun.
Which is why I never really got the hang of the odd shift a few years down the line, where everything seemed to have been chewed apart into individual races and super-short sprints —for the NFS franchise, this began with Underground—with throwaway AI personas, very short events, little to no continuity between the competitions, and, most annoyingly, always starting from the back and having to work your way through a pack.
Sue me for expecting a bit of realism from the racing part of an arcade racer, but always starting at the back is stupid, or at least that's what it felt like to teenager me. Hello? Qualification, earlier tournament results, prestige, anything? Or even if it were random, at least sometimes it should shuffle me higher up the order? It was somewhere between ludonarrative dissonance and "let me run over the designers with my virtual car." And that was before they tried to tell terrible stories in these games. Oh, don't get me started on those.
Pulling away, then getting reeled back in again
All this was a big part of why I slowly drifted away from racing games, at least after the well of marathon Skype calls and late-night rally binges (and TrackMania sessions) dried up. (The only way I could stomach anything more simulation-y was to play it with friends.) Oddly enough, I did pick up the habit of watching Gran Turismo YouTubers, and they gave me a new appreciation for actual racecraft. Not that I'd ever try to replicate it, no, sir, those walls are still magnetic, and the roads are still too narrow, after all—but sometimes, I do get a hankering for a quick race or two nowadays, and I boot up something random like Grid Autosport from 2014.
And then, one night, I thought I'd go back to the original Race Driver: Grid from 2006, one of our jolly multiplayer haunts. I never played too much of the solo campaign—the design choices discussed above made it quite boring for me, after all—but hey, maybe it would be a bit of fun?
Turns out, it was a lot of fun, at least for a while.
Now, as a boring adult with no designs for "doing well" in racing games, I can see the appeal of this approach. A breakneck rush through the pack, desperate divebombs and terrifying turns, new cars and new surroundings over and over again. Ian Livingstone's excellent soundtrack also adds a lot to the experience, even if it only plays on very special occasions, and the radio chatter of the engineer and my teammate, however bland, sort of actually makes things feel more alive.
It also helps that the game eschewed a bit of realism for style, with exaggerated golden sun rays and a yellow tint over the whole world that evokes Deus Ex: Human Revolution somewhat, meaning it hasn't been ravaged by time as much as it could have been graphics-wise. Don't get me wrong, there are definite shortcomings—like, hello, I can see that the car in my peripheral vision doesn't have its wheelspin animated—but am I going to care, having grown up with MS-DOS prompts and crunchy pixel graphics? I was there when this game was on the cutting edge.
Going back from a later GRID game, the handling is quite forgiving but still not as much as some of the absolute arcade classics, making for a good mix for someone as incompetent as myself. But even if it were just nostalgia goggles, others are looking through them, too, saying that the original entry was the best the series has ever got, that it is a bona fide Codemasters classic from an era gone by.
Here's the kicker, though: you can't buy it on digital storefronts anymore. It was delisted at the end of 2016 from most major platforms, and while the series still lives on, it never again hit this blend that seemed to work so well all along and one that I only just now got to appreciate to the fullest. So I, for one, will be sure to hold on to my Steam copy if I ever want to go back to a gold-tinted morning in Le Mans, preferably at 400 kilometers an hour.
The post I went back to a classic racing game, and I finally realized what made it so good appeared first on Destructoid. |
Gaming Instincts – Next-Generation of Video Game Journalism Sunday, May 25, 2025 5:41 PM Adds a slew of changes. The post Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake Gets New Major Update appeared first on Gaming Instincts - Next-Generation of Video Game Journalism. |
Gaming Instincts – Next-Generation of Video Game Journalism Sunday, May 25, 2025 4:46 PM According to prominent leaker. The post The Next Nintendo Direct May Be Coming Next Month appeared first on Gaming Instincts - Next-Generation of Video Game Journalism. |
MonsterVine Sunday, May 25, 2025 5:00 PM Whisper Mountain Outbreak, Toge Productions' latest title that blends isometric survival horror with online co-op, announced today that the title will be entering early access on August 11th. Along with the announcement of impending Early Access is the announcement that a demo will be released today, accessible on the game's Steam page. Toge Productions, no […] |
MonsterVine Sunday, May 25, 2025 5:00 PM HoYoverse is turning up the volume with Version 2.0 of Zenless Zone Zero, "Where Clouds Embrace the Dawn," launching June 6 across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, iOS, and Android. The massive update marks the start of Season 2, introduces the all-new Waifei Peninsula, and celebrates the game's first anniversary with free S-Rank rewards […] |