Kotaku Friday, January 9, 2026 9:55 AM
Enjoy immersive, smooth gameplay for all your favorite titles. The post Samsung Goes All-In on Odyssey Gaming Monitors, 32″ G50D Series Hits an All-Time Low at 42% Off appeared first on Kotaku. |
Kotaku Friday, January 9, 2026 9:31 AM
The My Mario toys are being marketed toward parents with children too young to pick up a Switch The post Nintendo Markets <em>Mario</em> Toys With Mom Whose Thumb Is A Medical Miracle Or AI Slop appeared first on Kotaku. |
Kotaku Friday, January 9, 2026 9:17 AM
Save 20% on this 'piece of junk' Star Wars Millennium Falcon set from LEGO for a limited time. The post LEGO Restocks the Star Wars Millennium Falcon at a Record Low for Another Clearance Run appeared first on Kotaku. |
Kotaku Friday, January 9, 2026 8:57 AM
The Divinity maker elaborated on controversial comments about gen AI from last year The post <i>Baldur's Gate 3</i> Maker Says Next RPG Could Have Gen AI Assets As Long As They're Created With 'Data We Own' appeared first on Kotaku. |
Kotaku Friday, January 9, 2026 8:25 AM
There are also plans to help streamers avoid stream sniping The post <i>Arc Raiders</i> Devs Say They Have Big Plans To Stop The Current Wave Of Cheaters appeared first on Kotaku. |
PCGamesN Friday, January 9, 2026 8:00 AM The Crimson Desert map is twice as big as Skyrim's open world, but Pearl Abyss is more focused on packing it with activities and surprises. |
PCGamesN Friday, January 9, 2026 7:12 AM Also including Asus' backlight strobing ELMB-Sync tech for ultra low motion blur, the ROG Strix XG259QNG is a steal at this price. |
PCGamesN Friday, January 9, 2026 7:07 AM Where Winds Meet update 1.2 introduces new story content, boss battles, and events to Everstone Studio's free-to-play Wuxia open-world game. |
PCGamesN Friday, January 9, 2026 6:59 AM Kicking off a landmark year for the co-op shooter franchise, The Division 3's executive producer says it is "shaping up to be a monster." |
PCGamesN Friday, January 9, 2026 6:23 AM League of Legends Demacia Rising is a brand new, city builder-esque minigame that's focused around Lux, but you can't play it right now. |
Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed Friday, January 9, 2026 9:48 AM  This is proving to be one of the worst weeks of my life, for various reasons (no, not because Jason Schreier is mad at me). In my time of need, I open the magic portal of escapism and find Pathologic 3 looking back at me like a poison toad. |
Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed Friday, January 9, 2026 9:23 AM  Larian CEO Swen Vincke has provided an update as to how the studio are planning to go about handling the use of generative AI in the making of Divinity. In an effort to alleviate concerns, the newly decided plan is to avoid using it in any capacity as part of the concept art development process. In general, Larian are aiming to ensure any in-game generated assets in their games come from models "trained" on data Larian already own, rather than risking the charge of creative theft or actual copyright breach. |
Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed Friday, January 9, 2026 8:00 AM  Manor Lords and Terra Invicta publishers Hooded Horse are imposing a strict ban on generative AI assets in their games, with company co-founder Tim Bender describing it as an "ethics issue" and "a very frustrating thing to have to worry about". |
Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed Friday, January 9, 2026 7:32 AM  The regular modpocalypses which tend to erupt when a fresh update for a game comes down the pipeline - an especially terrifying prospect if it's an older game and the tweaks/additions aren't something you're happy to temporarily switch back to vanilladom in order to enjoy - may now be less of a ballache. Well, at least when it comes to the Steam Workshop, which has just had new version control pipes welded to its pulsating metal frame. |
Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed Friday, January 9, 2026 7:00 AM Rally Point: Unorthodox. Complex. Laborious. Not just XCOM again. Of course I love USC: Counterforce  What did you do while recovering from your big medical thing, Sin? Well. Loath as I am to talk about myself ("lol. lmao." - Combative New Ed), I... don't know? There was some Ultima Underworld, some workers, some resources, some Pagonians pioneered. But in the dimensionless vortex of first-time-off-since-2020, I think I did... nothing. The lists barely moved. Except, finally, for a game I struggled with last year. A strange game, easily punished, as all turn-based games must be for dolt reasons, for not being bloody XCOM. USC Colon Counterforce is more like old XCOM, aka UFO. But it's not a recreation of that, nor of Aliens, its other obvious inspiration. It diverges as much as it reminds, and makes some mistakes in a way that we all must, when pursuing our own identity instead of an impression of someone else's. I wish I'd given it a second chance sooner. I wish I could shake everyone and say "This! This is the way! There is more than one path, if you just look for it! Yes, the one before you stumbled. But look at it it. See the admittedly weakly-named USC, and its bruises. It is beautiful. It is itself". |
Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed Friday, January 9, 2026 5:38 AM  Following the parliamentary debate of the Stop Killing Games campaign's petition to the UK government last year, a group of Green Party members have announced plans to propose an amendment to the party's policy which would "compel" its MPs to support the campaign. |
Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed Friday, January 9, 2026 5:35 AM Free bad dating sim Don't Stare makes me want to play an Elder Scroll where NPCs object to your gaze  The self-explanatory Don't Stare is both a gamejam creation I enjoy for itself and also, an idea I'd love to be incorporated into any number of first-person RPGs. Here is how the latter possibility might work: you are bandying insults with the Demon King ahead of the final battle. You've got some solid bantz going, but there's a note of awkwardness, for the Demon King has very large, protruding ears, and you can't stop looking at them. Such biteable tubercles! Such luscious lobes! The more you stare, the more agitated the Demon King becomes, till at last, he flees in tears before you've exchanged a single blow. And that, young Chosen One, is how we first defeated evil many decades ago. I understand the Demon King has had some plastic surgery since. |
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Siliconera Friday, January 9, 2026 9:00 AM
When Polytron Corporation released Fez, we'd never really seen anything like it. A game that uses perspective to solve puzzles and make progress and shifting between 2D and 3D? Later, we'd see Superliminal and Viewfinder play with how we see things changing how the world works. Cassette Boy is a game in that same vein, only blinding The Legend of Zelda style action-RPG elements as we rotate our viewpoint to change the rules of the world. It's also just as clever as many of these other games I've mentioned, and I hope this indie gets the attention it deserves.
Cassette Boy begins with our avatar being addressed by a sparkling entity. It cryptically explains that the moon is gone because our character wasn't looking at it. This being explains that perspective is everything, and illustrates examples showing that objects, entities, and buttons can disappear if you can't see them. As such, it's now up to you to recover the Moon Fragments to restore them to the sky.
While Cassette Boy is a The Legend of Zelda-like in some ways, it really prioritizes puzzles and experimenting with our view of the world in a way I appreciated. After the opening introduction and acquiring a sword, we're given the ability to use the shoulder buttons to rotate the world. In town, it means getting access to houses where you couldn't previously see doors. More importantly, it means opportunities to start "hiding" enemies, switches, and blockades to make progress to different areas or turning the world fast enough to cause squares to pop up to provide opportunities to reach higher areas or damage foes. So as some of the earliest examples, there'll be a situation where you rotate 90 degrees to completely hide a huge slime you couldn't otherwise defeat at that point to slip past to the next area in a forest. For one boss, you rotate the world 360 degrees as quickly at the switches that will make a piece of ground pop up when the opponent is about to get near to damage it five times to win. You stand on a switch to open a door, then rotate the world to block it so you can then move and safely go through the doorway. In one situation, you move a box to a point where you need to rotate 360 degrees to lift yourself and the box up so you can jump.
Keep in mind, these are the earliest kinds of progression. In a true The Legend of Zelda and even Metroidvania type of fashion, Cassette Boy also eventually encourages returning to past areas or temporarily blocks off access to certain spots by hiding them behind a type of "trick" you haven't learned yet. So you might see a shrine in the first forest you can't reach yet or an area of town blocked off, but need to wait until you can see things the right way to get to that new place. These come in the forms of cassettes for the headphones you acquire early on that help you "focus" to change the way you see the world.
Yes, I mentioned a shrine. Like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, there are portals to brief shrines in Cassette Boy. If you gain access to one of these optional spots, you'll be posed with additional logic puzzles. I've never seen any combat-related ones in my time with the game. Each one I encountered seemed to build upon my knowledge of my abilities in ways that sometimes challenged me a bit more than the typical puzzles encountered when searching for bosses holding Moon Fragments. Which is good because, while the combat isn't terrible, it does feel like closer to the earlier The Legend of Zelda NES and Game Boy games. The melee attacks with the sword didn't have the sort of responsiveness and combos as some contemporaries, and aiming with the bow and arrow can be a pain even after you get used to knowing how long to hold it to shoot it proper distances.
Another thing I appreciate about Cassette Boy is that it is a really minimalistic game. It relies about the same Game Boy style greenscale palette. While there are a few indoor area tile situations where this can be a lot when multiple designs are combined, it generally is really effective and eye-catching, while still making visual distinctions quite clear. Which is important since you do need to be very precise about positioning to solve puzzles. That's a little frustrating sometimes, especially when it involves ensuring a dangerous enemy is blocked or that a blockade is 100% hidden. But the design philosophy really adds to the experience.
Likewise, that comes a bit with the script. This is a rather simple game and doesn't feature a super intense narrative. There are some occasionally clever lines, though! And again, there is a minimalistic approach to it. For example, while there's not a lot of dialogue for NPCs, we will see reactions to certain events. This happens with our avatar's neighbor, Nell. Our protagonist themselves will also occasionally think about things happening, and those asides can be entertaining.
Cassette Boy is at its best when challenging you to rethink your perspective to solve puzzles in this The Legend of Zelda and Fez style adventure. There are times when it can really test you and make you think! The minimalistic design direction is also a highlight. However, some combat elements can occasionally feel finicky, especially when the bow is involved. It definitely can be quite clever, and it's well worth at the very least trying the demo if you also enjoyed games like Fez.
Cassette Boy will come to PCs via Steam on January 15, 2026, and a demo is available. It will also eventually appear on the Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
The post Review: Cassette Boy Experiments With Perspectives Like Fez appeared first on Siliconera. |
Destructoid Friday, January 9, 2026 7:11 AM
The South Park collab brings a host of new items in Fortnite, and you can get Kenny's Respawn Token on your adventures.
This is one of the best items to find, as it can revive you upon death. However, you'll first have to find it on the map. This guide will provide you with all the vital information required for you to obtain this unique medallion.
Table of contents
How to find Kenny's Respawn Token in Fortnite
The secret to finding Kenny's Respawn Token appears to be hidden in Cartmanland. This new POI has been added to Fortnite as part of the South Park collab. There are various mini-games that you can complete to win different loot.
If you go to the marked location on the image above, you'll find the Chaosblast mini-game. Start a round by pressing the white button. You'll need to shoot all the targets before the timer runs over. A couple of barriers will also be active, making it harder for you to complete.
If you complete the round successfully, you'll get a Kenny's Respawn Token, along with a bunch of loot. You can also get the token as random drops, but the rate of appearance appears to be extremely low.
How to use Kenny's Respawn Token in Fortnite
Once you're eliminated, the Kenny's Respawn Token will automatically activate from your inventory. A set of tentacles will appear from the top of the screen, pulling you into the air. The next phase will have you dropping from the skies, and the token will be gone from your inventory.
It's a fantastic item that can be immensely useful when you're playing solo. I am unsure as to how it works when you're playing in a squad. However, since the mini-game can be reset, all members in your party should be able to obtain the item and add it to their respective inventories.
The post How to get and use the Kenny's Respawn Token in Fortnite South Park appeared first on Destructoid. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Destructoid Friday, January 9, 2026 4:47 AM
Overwatch 2 players can enjoy the Showdown Shuffle mode as part of Season 20 events, and Blizzard has shared what we can expect.
The limited-time mode will go live a week after the mid-season patch, which was released on Jan. 9. This mode, as you might have expected, will be different from the traditional Overwatch 2 experience. At its core will be various modifiers that will be applied at random.
Table of contents
Overwatch 2 Showdown Shuffle event duration
Showdown Shuffle will be going live across all platforms on Tuesday, Jan. 13. Once the mode goes live, you'll find it in the Arcade playlist. The event will be available for two weeks. Unless Blizzard changes their plans, Showdown Shuffle will be available until Monday, Jan. 26.
All Overwatch 2 Showdown Shuffle modifiers
There are 12 modifiers that will be part of the Showdown Shuffle mode. The modifiers will activate randomly during a match.
There will be exclusive challenges that you can complete to win cosmetics, lootboxes, and Battle Pass XP.
The post Overwatch 2 Showdown Shuffle mode release date, modifiers, and more appeared first on Destructoid. |
WGB Friday, January 9, 2026 6:18 AM Avowed is set to launch on PS5 on February 17th, bringing updates like improved skill trees and a new 3rd person view, along with additional features for all versions. |
MonsterVine Friday, January 9, 2026 9:45 AM Baltoro Games, the studio behind Pixel Cafe and Urban Flow, has officially unveiled its next project: Moto Rush Reborn, a fast-paced arcade motorcycle racer set in a neon-soaked version of Neo-Tokyo. The game is an indirect sequel to 2019's Moto Rush GT, which sold over one million copies, and aims to reinvent the formula with […] |