This is your friendly reminder that Microsoft is set to close its Xbox 360 digital store on 29th July – that's next Monday – so you have just a few days left to make the most of those last discounts on some of the best Xbox 360 games of the generation.

Microsoft announced a raft of discounts on Xbox 360 digital games back in May. Whilst some games will live on via other platforms and services – including Microsoft's comprehensive backwards compatibility system – there are a handful of games that will disappear from sale forever. So, if you've ever fancied one, now's the time to pick it up.

X user Kalyoshika has shared a list of the games/DLC that "will not survive", as well as "a couple of games that are going from cheap, easy-to-get digital copies", to "impossible-to-get, expensive, piracy only, jump-through-hoops to play".

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This is your friendly reminder that Microsoft is set to close its Xbox 360 digital store on 29th July – that's next Monday – so you have just a few days left to make the most of those last discounts on some of the best Xbox 360 games of the generation.

Microsoft announced a raft of discounts on Xbox 360 digital games back in May. Whilst some games will live on via other platforms and services – including Microsoft's comprehensive backwards compatibility system – there are a handful of games that will disappear from sale forever. So, if you've ever fancied one, now's the time to pick it up.

X user Kalyoshika has shared a list of the games/DLC that "will not survive", as well as "a couple of games that are going from cheap, easy-to-get digital copies", to "impossible-to-get, expensive, piracy only, jump-through-hoops to play".

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Elden Ring publisher Bandai Namco has "called out" Elden Ring fans struggling with the dfficulty by suggesting they "level up your Scadutree Blessing".

In a brief message posted on social media platform X, Bandai Namco US said simply: "This is a suggestion".

"The best advice coming straight from the source," said one Tarnished.

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One of those rare clarifying moments in my life came when I was told that the whale in Moby Dick didn't symbolise anything. Or rather, it didn't symbolise any one single thing in a fixed and coherent way. The whale might symbolise a handful of things, and those things might contradict one another and you'd just have to live with it. Also the whale was simultaneously a whale - no just or merely a whale, because there is never anything "mere" to be had when a whale is involved.

This was a brilliant thing to learn, and I still think about it often. Symbolism and things like that were very exciting when I was first learning about art and literature, but the danger, I guess, is that they become binary, a kind of substitution cypher. If the whale is a single thing, then Moby Dick is a puzzle that can be solved and we can all move on to other things. But it's not a single thing. It contains multitudes, to borrow a handy phrase from a contemporary of Melville. This frees it and sets it loose in the wild oceans of the mind. It is forever a thing of inference and speculation, of contradiction and dark wonder.

I may have written about this before. No bother. At the moment, anyway, these thoughts very much remind me of Elden Ring, which is getting a DLC this week in the shape of Shadow of the Erdtree. Inference and speculation, contradiction and dark wonder. I have my own relationship with Elden Ring, as I do with almost all FromSoftware games. I have played them a bit, some of them really quite a bit, and always enthusiastically. And then I have inevitably stalled on a skill issue or a simple matter of cognitive overload: too many threads to keep track of, so when I step away for a week or two, further progress becomes unthinkable. But this is only part of my relationship with these games, and it may actually be the weaker part. I love FromSoftware stuff and I think I love it passionately. I just love to talk about it, think about it, and most of all hear about it.

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The rumours were true: Bandai Namco has confirmed that Dragon Ball Sparking Zero will indeed release in October – 11th October, to be exact – and it will feature a day one season pass.

Bandai Namco also took the opportunity to announce four different editions – standard, digital-only deluxe, ultimate, and premium. While all will give you the base game, you'll need to purchase a deluxe, ultimate, or premium edition to get the three-day early-access period, season pass, and season pass bonus of Summon Shenron.

The season pass includes the first three DLC packs, which appear to include over 20 additional characters. There's also the now-prerequisite sweetener for anyone looking to pre-order the game ahead of its October street date.

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Supermassive Games has delayed the release of Little Nightmares 3, saying it needs "a little extra time to prepare".

In a statement posted to X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, the Dark Pictures developer said that "as much as [it] can't wait for you to return to the Nowhere", "quality is a top priority" and that's why it's decided to "shift the release of the game to 2025".

"Ever since the announcement of Little Nightmares 3 at Gamescom last year, we've been thrilled to see our community buzzing with excitement and anticipation," the team said.

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Společnost FromSoftware zčistajasna vypustila nový trailer na hru Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, první a poslední rozšíření pro akční RPG s otevřeným světem.

Vidíme v něm Miquella the Kind (Miquella Dobrotivého – bratra Malenie), který mluví o „svádění“ a „zradě“, z nichž „vzniklo Zlato“ a „zrodil se Stín“. Naznačuje, že událost dala vzniknout Lands Between a Land of Shadow.

Následovala neviditelná válka, jejímž motivem byl Messmer the Impaler, který vše spálil na popel. Zajímavé je, že jeden z nových bossů je vidět, jak se s ním pokouší bojovat, i když to zřejmě nedopadne dobře. Poté je vidět, jak Miquella všeho zanechává a vydává se do Země stínů, přičemž hráči se ho snaží následovat.

Otázek je mnoho, ale vzhledem k tomu, že Země stínů je prvním místem, kterého se Marika dotkla, může se zrada týkat i jí. To ukáže čas a vzhledem k tomu, že hra Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree vychází 21. června pro PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS5 a PC, se to brzy dozvíme.

Článek Trailer na hru Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree láká na neviditelnou válku a Messmerovu sílu se nejdříve objevil na GAME PRESS.

FromSoft has dropped a new tease about the "fearsome foes of unfathomable power" that await us when Elden Ring DLC Shadow of the Erdtree drops next month.

The image – which is about as hard to describe as the creature will inevitably be to beat – shows a muscular being with horned, uh, tendril things, a cracked golden mask for a face, and long grey hair flowing out of its right eye socket.

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Year three, at least, and I continue to play Dark Souls very, very slowly. Actually, that's not true. Sometimes I play in frantic bursts. At others I let it lie for months and months with no progress at all. I'm still relatively early on, deep in a dungeon that looks like the inside of someone's ear, about to fight a spidery boss. In Souls terms, I'm nowhere, a total novice. Yet I never would have gotten this far if it wasn't for bonfires.

Bonfires in Dark Souls are fascinating. In a game filled with incredibly good ideas, they may be my favourite incredibly good idea. They're actually at the heart of everything I love: I love the fact that in these games you move a little lens of available health around an incredibly deadly environment, always feeling like you're making progress, but simultaneously feeling like you're over-extending yourself. It's why progress feels so illicit: I got this far, but I'm sure I'm about to die in amongst all the new things I'm seeing. Bonfires are at the heart of that system, because they provide the base you return to, they provide the network of bases, like handholds on the game's rugged cliff face.

I love the way the environment interlocks, too: the way you'll head off upwards or downwards, see some incredible stuff, and feel thoroughly lost. But you trust the game and you know that if you keep going far enough, if you follow a trail with sufficient patience, it will inevitably oxbow in some fascinating way and bring you back to where you started, but facing in the other direction. Magic! Absolutely magic, if you ask me, and guess what: bonfires are at the heart of all that too. In a game of loops and snarls and dangerous tangles, they provide clear junction points, a moment to rest and say: ah, I'm here. I'm somewhere.

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Xbox recently updated its Game Pass page, revealing three games that will be leaving the service soon.

Shredders, Ni no Kuni Wrath of the White Witch Remastered and Hardspace: Shipbreaker will all be removed from the Game Pass catalogue in the next two weeks.

If you want to keep playing any of these games once they have left the service, you will need to purchase them. Game Pass members will get a 20 percent discount.

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Hidetaka Miyazaki didn't envision originating an entire genre. Yet such is the popularity of the Dark Souls games - right up to the more recent Elden Ring - that they've become collectively known in the gaming community as Soulslikes. That's shorthand for games with calculating combat, high levels of challenge and repeated death, though this is of course reductive of the awe and grim majesty Miyazaki's games evoke.

Soulslikes are everywhere now. From indie games utilising specific mechanics, to larger projects specifically trying to out-do FromSoftware at its own game. That's testament to the influence of Miyazaki's work, though he remains humble when discussing his oeuvre with me ahead of announcing the release of Shadow of the Erdtree, Elden Ring's upcoming major expansion.

"We certainly didn't come up with the term Souslike and we didn't envision it as a new genre or a new term for the industry," he tells me. "So of course when it first started cropping up... we were very surprised.

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