It’s been a long old wait since the (literally) explosive cliffhanger finale that capped off season one of the superb Arcane, and even knowing we’re getting season two this year, November still seems a long way off. To keep us going, Riot has seen fit to drop a trailer—though it really is only a tiny crumb of Runeterran sustenance. 

The 45 second clip gives us an extended glimpse of a moment we saw at the end of season one: mad scientist Singed enjoying some self-administered treatments in the shadow of one of his monstrous experiments. The final clear shot of the hulking figure, hung up from the ceiling by chains and with glowing mechanical parts incorporated into his form, seems to pretty much confirm an already well-established theory about the fate of fan favourite character Vander.

In season one, Vander overdoses on the supernatural drug Shimmer after suffering fatal injuries, and mutates into a monstrous creature, before seemingly dying saving Vi. Later,…

The bombing of Arasaka Tower in 2023 is a massive moment in Cyberpunk lore, and pretty much the key inciting event that makes the whole plot of Cyberpunk 2077 possible. No wonder, then, that the ground zero of the blast—right next to the new Arasaka Tower—is home to a sprawling memorial in stark, black blocks.

Except it turns out it wasn’t really meant to be there at all.

Chatting with PLAY Magazine, CDPR environment artist Krzysztof Kornatka mentioned that the memorial area was something “one of the directors asked for” while he was working on the Arasaka area of Night City. A simple “something to commemorate the explosion of the main Arasaka headquarters in 2023.” 

Kornatka got right to it: With one eye on the movie Demolition Man for inspiration, he set about creating the wide memorial area you can find in the game, made up of those sombre monoliths and part of the original tower’s lobby, effectively preserving it in amber. It was only later tha…

For an action RPG with five distinct classes, Diablo 4 makes it difficult to juggle multiple characters, especially when it comes to powerful late-game gear.

Currently, level 100 Diablo 4 characters can only find items with a level 100 requirement, which means they’re only useful if you have a stable of max level alts. Starting this week in season 1, however, the level requirements on Sacred and Ancestral items will be capped, allowing you to save them for other classes.

First mentioned in an interview with Gamestar and later clarified by associate game director Joe Piepiora on Twitter, Sacred items will cap out at level 60 and Ancestral items will cap out at level 80. That means that if you find a particularly good item on your level 100 main, you can save it for your other characters without having to grind tons of levels to equip it.

It’s not quite clear if the new level caps will persist when you imprint an high-level Legendary aspect on an item though. Right n…

Watch On

Good ol’ Geoff Keighley is back with another festival of games in LA—a sort of expo of electronic entertainment, if you will—and 2024’s Summer Game Fest livestream airs this Friday.

What time does Summer Game Fest start?

Summer Game Fest 2024 is on Friday, June 7 at 2 pm Pacific. That’s 5 pm Eastern, 10 pm in the UK. Find your time zone here.

Where can I watch Summer Game Fest?

You can watch the show live on YouTube  (embedded above) or Twitch. 

Here are some of the appearances that have been teased in advance of this year’s Summer Game Fest:

• Something from Remedy
• The new Skate game
• A Monster Hunter Wilds trailer
• “Special Capcom announcements”
• Dune: Awakening
• Slitterhead, the new game from Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama’s studio
• A Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 trailer
• Something from the makers of Thirsty Suitor

<…

JB Smoove—of Curb Your Enthusiasm and Saturday Night Live fame—is making and possibly even starring in an animated TV adaptation of High on Life, as reported by Deadline.

Smoove appeared in High on Life as Gus, one of the sentient guns who’ll yap away at you while you’re playing with it equipped. Personally I thought Gus was more amphibious than piscatorial, but Smoove told Deadline about his role in the game: “They told me I would be that I would be a fish that shoots… which makes perfect sense to me! As a vegan I feel a fish should have the right to defend itself! I mean right?!”

The TV show adaptation is being whipped up by Smoove’s production company Alternate Side Productions, alongside High on Life developer Squanch Games and agency Striker Entertainment. “[Squanch Games] invited me to join them in the gaming universe and now I’m helping them move into the TV world,” Smoove said. “It’s a case of game recognizing game! High on Life is wild, weird,…

An upcoming base-building RTS has an interesting twist: It’s zombie survival, but you can use map data imported from the real world. Infection Free Zone will let you establish and lead your titular zone in an area of your choosing. Like your hometown, for example.

Taking charge of your survivor groups, you’ll be able to form them into squads and work crews to start rebuilding civilization under your banner. At first that means a few things, like going house-to-house scavenging for supplies with your armed units while your civilians scuttle around for building materials. Later phases of the game promise to let you build walls, factories, science labs, and more.

A demo, out now, lets you play on one of a handful of real-world locales like Paris, Cambridge, and the like. The full version will let you play on any real city. There’s also a prologue version planned, an extended demo that will take about an hour.

The current demo is pretty limited, but the concept is fasc…

This isn’t quite the way I imagined an early access game about being a shopkeeper would begin, but long before I rang up my first customer threw rocks at cardboard cutouts of cowboys, dodged lasers fired by hippo statues, and survived a shootout with a crowd of evil thugs sent after me by a ruthless corporate overlord.

Yes, Saleblazers is a shopkeeping game. I promise! It’s just that it’s also an open world survival game with a story, so there’s a bit of shooting, ziplining, and anime-level betrayal before you get to open your own store.

Arriving on a mysterious island filled with rivers, trees, rolling hills, and citizens absolutely clamoring to do a bit of shopping, I named my character Shop Pop. I then discovered the fella who gives you the shop tutorial is named Pop Pop. So my game began with Pop Pop showing Shop Pop how to set up a Shop Plot. That feels like the basis of a children’s book.

I gathered bamboo by breaking open crates (crudely, by blasting them wi…