HoYoverse just hosted a sizeable Honkai: Star Rail Special Program, revealing more than just the game’s next major update. Version 3.8 was the big highlight, of course, with the new release arriving soon, on December 16-17 depending on your server region.
Hello and Happy New Year - is it okay to say that now? I'm not sure where the cut-off point is. Some people still have their Christmas trees up. We had ours out before New Year. Welcome back to What We've Been Playing! Or as I like to call this particular edition of it: What We Played Over Christmas, because it's been a couple of weeks since we've talked.
Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian has changed its stance on generative AI following backlash faced at the end of last year.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 developer Sandfall underestimated just how much players would engage with the game's various sidequests and optional content, and as a result of this extra grinding would find the final boss fight a tad underwhelming.
We've been hearing rumblings of a full-blown remake of Assassin's Creed: Black Flag for the longest time now. After Skull & Bones' troubled development, those current-gen assets could boost the production of such a project, so the idea never sounded too far-fetched. We've yet to receive official news on it though. Now, a new Raid: Shadow Legends event has got hungry Assassin's Creed fans all hot under the collar.
Kazutaka Kodaka is one of the most recognisable names in the games industry for those who really enjoy anime-inspired visual novels. Recently, he led The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy's development, and the his name may be familiar to anyone au fait with the Danganronpa series. But the creator's journey to get back into the world of game development wasn't exactly a straight line.
The Duffer brothers, creators of Stranger Things, have said the final battle of the TV series was partially inspired by Baldur's Gate 3. Matt Duffer was apparently playing the game while devising the showdown.
Toshiyuki Itahana, character artist for the Final Fantasy series, including games like Final Fantasy 9, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, and Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail, has left Square Enix.
There are a few series staples you can expect from Final Fantasy: a guy called Cid, moogles, chocobos, that lovely arpeggio motif in the music, and… surveys? If you've been reading this site for a while - or, indeed, following the Final Fantasy series - you'll know that Square Enix likes to lobby the fanbase to hear our thoughts about the series' identity and future.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 developer Sandfall will focus on what those at the studio personally think is "cool" for its next game, rather than feel any pressure to focus on what anyone else thinks it should do.
43.8 million player votes later, the winners of the 2025 Steam Awards have been announced, with Hollow Knight: Silksong securing top prize, Game of the Year.
It's a big year for gaming anniversaries. There are five massive series that turn 40 years old in 2026 - The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Dragon Quest, Kid Icarus, and Castlevania - whilst Sonic the Hedgehog turns 35, and Persona and Pokémon both turn 30. There's probably a lot of celebratory stuff coming over the next 12 months, but let's start with a franchise we know is getting some attention this year before anything else: Persona.
It's been another strange, difficult, and yet somehow also brilliant year for video games in 2025. Triple-A releases have been sparse again, compared to the boom times of old, with a great big GTA 6-shaped hole left in the final few months of the year. And yet once again, every gap left by the established order has been filled twice over with something brilliantly new.
2025 has gone by in a flash, hasn't it? Well, apart from the days I've spent tabulating all your Game of the Year votes and presenting the results here - that has felt like an eternity and I think has given me permanent neck pain. But, let's not worry about that. I'm sure you'll agree it was worth the sacrifice.
A guide writer talking about how her favourite gaming related moment of 2025 was uncovering secrets? Who saw that coming… Seriously though, let me tell you about a little downside of my job: if we're covering a game, or considering doing so, I have to spoil everything for myself for planning purposes. End-game boss? Spoiled. Every collectible location and what happens after you've collected every magic hat or whatever? Spoiled. Plot twists, because I might as well go all in at this point? Spoiled. If I don't learn it before the game comes out, I'll certainly know about it shortly after release thanks to research. (I learned what happened to Zelda in Tears of the Kingdom via Google Trends. Google bloody Trends.)
Hello and welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've been playing. This week it's not about what we've been playing, but what we hope to be playing on Christmas Day (you're reading this now, but we wrote this back in June or something as we plan ahead).
With Baldur's Gate 3 and its gang of rowdy adventuring mates in the rear view mirror, Larian are hoping to improve a couple of aspects of how they handle companions going forwards - a process that'll likely kick off in Divinity. In particular, the development of deeper relationships between party members and a more subtle build to the moment when the player's relationship veers into deeply horny territory are on their list of learnings.
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".
We've all been there. You're at the end of a game, you've done all of the side quests, you're strong as hell, finally read to take on the final boss, confident you can finish this quest you started 30-100 hours ago. Only to find that the fight is a piece of piss because, whoops! You overlevelled yourself by too much. This was seemingly the case for a number of people in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and now the game's lead designer Michel Nohra has expressed some regret for those who had that experience.
