After seemingly finding its own final destination with its 2011 movie, the series about the wonderfully vengeful death (itself) is back with Final Destination Bloodlines. Warner Bros.' YouTube channel just released the first trailer, and it looks like this might be a return to the best days of the series.

There are a few things making me feel hopeful for this one. First off, the production values look tight, and the film is finally unbound from the awful Avatar-era need for death scenes that only ever look kinda good in 3D.

Also, it feels like the movie wants to build mind-boggling amounts of tension that will likely culminate in gory deaths, but gory deaths that could happen to anyone. The last three films in the series faltered, in my opinion, for not realizing the amount of fear this series managed to create in our minds for everyday objects and events, opting instead for absolutely ridiculous kills that also looked like crap.

Those last three films also veered away from tinkering with the formula. This time around, we're looking at a different concept: a bunch of people who are being hunted by death not because they survived death's first design but because they were never even supposed to exist as far as death is concerned.

Another good reason to look forward to Final Destination Bloodlines is Tony Todd, who shot all the scenes as the legendarily ominous William Bludworth before he passed away in 2024. Whether it turns out great or barely better than 2009's The Final Destination, Bloodlines is both a new and fitting closing chapter for Tony Todd's career.

Final Destination Bloodlines hits the theater on May 16.

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Controversial skater and Jackass personality Bam Marger will make a return to the iconic series, and there's an awesome reason behind it.

Margera had, up until now, been absent from the list of skaters present in the upcoming Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4, but according to the latest episode of The Live Club skate podcast, Margera will be indeed making a return, and because the Birdman himself insisted on it.

As caught by VGC, the podcasters explain that Tony Hawk himself called Activision and said that they were going to put Bam in the game. The game was already done, but Hawk was unflinching and had the studio fly Bam in last minute to get his body scanned to be in the game.

“The game was already done," host Roger Bagley explained. "Tony called up Activision and was like, 'hey, we’re putting Bam in the thing,' and they were like, 'hey, we can't'. He goes 'no, you’re gonna do it,' and basically made them fly Bam back out there to get body-scanned and everything else, and get him back in the game.”

Who is Bam Margera?

Bam Margera is a skater whose DIY CKY movie series paved the way for mainstream success with MTV's Jackass and its films, as well as his spin-off series, Viva la Bam. In recent years, Margera's longstanding struggle with drug and alcohol addiction has forced him out of the public eye and larger projects and even led to production of the latest Jackass installment, Jackass Forever, moving on without him.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 will be released on July 11 for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Switch, and PC; Collector's or Deluxe edition owners will get early access starting July 8. The game will also feature cross-platform multiplayer, and launch day one will be on Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass.

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The title of the worst game of all time is always up for debate, but it's hard to deny Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing's favoritism. Fortunately or not, anyone unaware of its legend will get to confirm firsthand when it hits Steam in the near future.

"Get ready for some brake jamm'in, CB talk'in, convey roll'in action across America!" the Steam description reads. "From Portland Oregon to Miami Florida, you'll be hauling loads and trying to stay one step ahead of the law as you climb into your Big Rig for non-stop driving action. And if that's not enough, you'll also be able to race your modified Rig on one of 5 different tracks for the ultimate driving rush as you crush the competition and set a new track record!"

And yet, Big Rigs is barely even a game. There's no collision, for starters. There's also no real way of even losing a race -- your opponent doesn't even get to start their rig. And the racing physics are not even non-existent -- they're something weirder.

To give you a proper idea of just how busted this game is, just know that driving in reverse will get you higher speeds than driving regularly. There's no speed limiter when you're going in reverse, meaning you'll go fast to the point of breaking reality, stretching the size of your rig to fill the entire map, and then instantly win as your rig inevitably stretches over the finish line.

Fans today probably know Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing best after a popular Angry Video Game Nerd episode, but the game's "popularity" originally skyrocketed following Gamespot's scathing review that gave the game an "Abysmal" rating of 1/10. Gamespot's review came accompanied by a video review — something exceedingly rare back in 2003 — that remains one of the funniest pieces of gaming media in existence.

Gamespot's review remains a gem worth reading, but if you only have time for one takeaway, let Alex Navarro's words linger in your mind, "Just how bad is Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing? It’s as bad as your mind will allow you to comprehend".

No new features appear to be coming to this release, either; the Steam page boasts four trucks, four "unique" routes, and a whopping three "intense levels," the same meager offerings from the game's original release.

No pricing info or firm release date is available as of this writing, but Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing is slated for a Q2 2025 release.

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In the era of leaks, the Pokémon Company managed to drop the major announcement that Pokémon TCG Pocket's next themed booster pack, Shining Revelry, is about to feature the fan-favorite Shiny Pokémon.

The trailer gives us the first look at shiny versions of the popular Charizard EX and Lucario EX. It also shows, among others, Wiglett, Pachirisu, and Varoom. The new expansion will also feature Red and Iono trainer cards from the Paldea region.

New special EX Deck missions with new rewards will also be available soon.

Pokémon TCG Pocket fans are hyped but fear of getting overwhelmed

Whereas many fan communities live in desperate need of new content, fans of Pokémon TCG Pocket fear that developer Dena is giving them too much at too brisk a pace.

It turns out that a good thing like a surprise reveal may not be that cool when your players don't get the time to ready up their economies for the new content.

The Pokémon Company had also previously announced the revamp of the game's controversial trade system, which will remove the game's trade tokens, but players are yet to feel optimistic about that feature.

What are shiny Pokémon?

Originally introduced in Pokémon Gold and Pokémon Silver, shiny Pokémon are simply shiny-looking versions of already existing 'mon. They are way rarer than their regular counterparts, so their introduction to the game added an extra level of hype for collectors and completionists.

And the good ol' Pokémon TCG is getting a new Team Rocket expansion

If you're a fan of the Pokémon card game and have yet to get into the mobile version of the game, we also have cool news for you. Have a look at the first two cards to be revealed from the upcoming set, The Glory of Team Rocket.

The new Team Rocket set will feature 98 normal cards, which will include the Pokémon belonging to Team Rocket as well as those of Giovani, the leader of Team Rocket. Together with Heat Wave Arena, the Team Rocket expansion will form Destined Rivals, the new Pokémon TCG set.

Shinning Revelry will become available on Pokémon TCG Pocket on March 27, and the ranked season will begin on March 28. The changes to the trading system will arrive later this year. The Glory Of Team Rocket will come out on May 30.

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Most enemies from Dark Souls, Elden Ring, and Bloodborne would naturally fit in any medieval-themed horror story simply for how easily they'll tear you to pieces after you make one simple mistake during combat.

Still, some have such uniquely off-putting looks that they deserve to be observed in very well-guarded cells in the video game museum of grotesquerie. Let's look at the gnarliest-looking monstrosities in this series, and check out if they're perhaps even worse than they look, shall we?

10. Nightmare Apostle (Bloodborne)

Ok, I'll start off simple. Don't ask me for sources, but 40% of the human population is afraid of spiders, and 50% is terrified of them. Even those who aren't probably wouldn't like them ten times our size. Spiders don't need anything other than sheer scale to be some of the scariest things in existence, but Bloodborne does you one better.

The Nightmare Apostle's room is a horror masterpiece because as soon as you enter it, you see a bunch of huge spiders hanging from the ceiling, and you just know they're going to drop to ambush you, leaving only the "when" as a mystery.

I won't spoil it, but this is one hell of a memorable encounter that would elevate any full-on horror game or film.

9. Great Feline (Dark Souls)

The case for the Great Feline is the exact opposite of the one from the entry above. Mostly everyone loves cats — especially people who have ever been in contact with the internet — but this isn't a regular cat. This isn't even like a lion or a tiger, big cats that might — even when they don't want to — eviscerate you with ease.

Something about these huge roided-up cats just looks wrong — intentionally so. They're clearly sick and, sadly, capable of equally sick moves that will immediately obliterate any poor fool wasting time wondering if the game features any secret way of petting them.

8. Glow Worms (Elden Ring)

Did you know that Australia has actual glow-in-the-dark worms? I've been haunted by that knowledge for many years. Still, I've always enjoyed the solace of knowing Australia is so far away from where I live that it barely even counts as a real place.

Miyazaki isn't ok with us feeling safe, so he brought Glow Worms closer to everyone by putting these things in something more real than Australia to most: Elden Ring. What the hell even are these things? They don't really do anything other than just creepily stand there and use their bioluminescence to prevent players from forgetting they share reality with them — but they're really good at that.

7. Deep Accursed (Dark Souls 3)

Even though the Deep Accursed features various creepy elements in its design, the scariest thing about him is how his ambushes provide jumpscares worthy of the best horror movies out there. The Souls series is known for its ambushes, but there's being ambushed by everything else, and then there's being ambushed by this grisly, long-legged, shiny-eyed beast.

The Deep Accursed is great at scaring the player like a huge predator would scare a tiny rat. He rarely shows up in the game, but as soon as he's dropped from the ceiling to get you the first time, your era of nonchalantly entering new rooms on Dark Souls 3 without fearing for your life will be over.

6. Monstrosity Of Sin (Dark Souls 3)

I don't know if one of the artists was trying to come up with the most off-putting thing they could come up with for Dark Souls 3, then asked their colleagues to come up with a fitting name, or if FromSoft's name-giver came up with the most egregious name for a beast and then the artists did a wonderful life realizing that vision.

The Monstrosity Of Sin has a human-like body, but at the end of every single one of his limbs, there's a hand with way too many fingers. Even its head is a gigantic hand — also with too many fingers. That would've been enough to earn it a place on this list, but this head/hand is also covered in eyes or strange parasites that produce a type of goo you don't see anywhere else in the game.

This is one of the rarest enemies in the game, and that's probably because the developers were well aware that one encounter would probably be enough to ensure no player would forget about the Monstrosity Of Sin.

5. The Beggar (Bloodborne)

It should come as no surprise that Bloodborne populates most entries on this list, and that's because it features all horrors of all kinds. This guy doesn't feature a suspicious number of eyes, tentacles, or any goo-secreting organ, but he's a walking, talking, stalking, blood-spitting red flag.

The afflicted beggar presents himself as but a skinny guy covered in blood and in need of your help. The problem here is that when we first encounter this man, he's munching on a human corpse. Yarhnam is already a place where consuming blood is the norm, so can you really blame them for giving this man the benefit of the doubt? Who's to say what the consensus on cannibalism is in this god-forsaken, elder god-invaded realm? That's what the main character is likely thinking while they interact with this man, all the while the player controlling him is probably petrified by what he's witnessing.

Then, surprise, surprise, it turns out that any suspicions would be correct, and the Beggar reveals himself to be a figuratively and literally huge monster. Still, its original appearance more than would've sufficed to grant him a place on this list.

4. Chaos Eater (Dark Souls)

When you look at the Chaos Eater from afar, he looks goofy. When you get closer, his multitude of eyes combined with his pervy tentacles will make you realize he's one of the creepiest-looking entities in the game. When you let him get too close, you'll realize that every step towards this thing was an obviously dumb mistake.

I, like many other innocent players before me, originally imagined the Chaos Eater would get his nourishment by sucking things up through his tentacles. Nasty, but it's even worse than that, it turns out.

The Chaos Eater is closer to a human than I thought, as he also chews on his food just like we do. Unfortunately, however, I went on to learn that instead of jaws, his head serves as the home for a rotating teeth-covered hell pit that he loves feeding players to.

3. Grafted Scion (Elden Ring)

This cobbled-together monstrosity is the very first thing we face on Elden Ring — the classic FromSoft boss that exists solely to put players in their place — and that's reason enough for it to populate the nightmares of many players. Still, that's far from the worst thing about it.

The Grafted Scion is composed of the bodies of many deceased adults — already not great — but upon closer inspection (or simply by looking at the head), you'll see how it also features the limbs of many children. If you thought the worlds of games were dark but at least kind enough to protect children by not featuring them at all, then I apologize for dispelling that illusory wall in your mind.

2. Winter Lantern (Bloodborne)

The later segment of Bloodborne isn't as challenging as its early and middle sections — except for the part where we have to deal with this thing. The Winter Lantern is such a masterpiece of enemy design that even though it doesn't look threatening on a physical level — and it kind of isn't — one glance is all it takes to inform your brain that you're about to have a bad time. You'll get the idea that this thing is terrifying just from looking at screenshots, but nothing beats looking at it in motion, killing you simply by existing and looking ugly.

This is like if Naughty Dog had a slider for creepiness when making the infected from The Last Of Us and accidentally turned it up to 11.

1. Brain of Mensis (Bloodborne)

The Brain of Mensis is number one and it isn't even close. If the Winter Lantern terrorizes you, this should affect you in a way we don't even have words to describe yet. In essence, the Brain Of Mensis is a gigantic Winter Lantern, an entity powerful enough to ultimately kill anyone in its line of sight — and it's very good at looking.

On top of its tremendous power, the Brain of Mensis is also the gooiest and most eldritch monstrosity we've seen in FromSoft games, an amorphous mix of giant eyeballs and what looks like decaying brain matter.

The optional segment, when we finally come face to brain with this thing, features no combat or any sort of deadly trap, yet it remains one of the most eerily memorable moments in gaming.

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Assassin’s Creed Shadows began getting crap for “historical inaccuracies” before it was even out. Back then, I remember chuckling at the notion that the series about reliving genetic memories via a sci-fi contraption was getting that kind of scrutiny, and I can't help but laugh at it now.

Regardless of what it gets right and what it portrays with a completely acceptable — and welcome — degree of artistic license, Shadows definitely got one detail correct, and that’s the usage of the Portuguese language. I marveled right at the start of the game when Yasuke — then still going by the name of Diogo — and his masters began not only speaking Portuguese but the period-accurate continental version to boot.

Even better, the Jesuit priests accompanying Yasuke show way more fluency, whereas the actor playing Yasuke displays a nuanced unease with his words. This is caused not by his lack of knowledge but by his decision to seem uneducated to his captors.

In comparison, last year's otherwise excellent show, Shogun, merely has characters say that they’re speaking fluent Portuguese — in English.

That's Ubisoft clearly taking the time and putting money into historical accuracy — in a way that'll fly over the heads of 99.5% of the people playing the game — but you cannot deny that it's there. I only caught this because I'm Portuguese and because I'm not used to my language getting this kind of treatment in media, so it's guaranteed I'll miss so many other brilliant examples of attention to detail in the game.

I don’t remember Shogun catching crap for not having their Portuguese and Portuguese-speaking characters speak the actual language, and I won't pretend to wonder I don’t know why.

Why are people hating on Assassin's Creed Shadows?

Right at the start of the controversy, we quickly learned from an actual Japanese historian from Japan — not from the country of Twitch or YouTube — that Yasuke, the black man that the Portuguese brought from Africa, was, indeed, a samurai. It shouldn't have even gotten to it, but it did, so that should've been it.

Still, the complaints continued in a way that would lead anyone to believe they're less about video game fans' historically low thirst for historical accuracy and more of a dog whistle some grifters have been using to convey a combo of racist and misogynistic talking points. Now that the game is out, we can assert that these voices were even more wrong than we'd thought.

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MercuryStream, the studio behind bangers such as Metroid Dread and Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow, has finally lifted the veil from Blades Of Fire via a fantastic gameplay reveal.

I've seen enough to say I want to play it, but I understand how others have immediately drawn comparisons to the newer God Of War games and the Souls series. I believe a better look into the context of the studio behind the game will likely leave you assured that there's no lack of originality at play and perhaps even blow your minds.

Regarding the allegations that Blades Of Fire looks too much like God Of War, I gotta say that the biggest similarity is how Kratos' favorite weapon is, well, a pair of flaming blades. Aside from the similarities that will inevitably come in a game about cutting down monsters in a fantasy setting, Blades Of Fire seems like it is trying to be its own thing.

It's when it comes to the comparisons with the Souls series that I think things get really interesting. It's true that the combat looks "Soulslike" — or GOWlike — because that reboot definitely took a page from the Souls book. Still, MercuryStream is composed of veterans from Rebel Act Studios, a defunct studio responsible for one of the most slept-on titles of all time:

Blade Of Darkness, originally known as Severance: Blade Of Darkness is a dark medieval fantasy title from 2001 that received excellent feedback from players and critics but that failed to sell enough to even keep the studio afloat.

In case you don't know, I’m quite fond of the Souls series. That’s in large part due to how FromSoft's games immediately reminded me of Severance, the magnificent game that laid out many of the elements that made Dark Souls resonate with players. Massive areas inspired by a nightmarishly corrupted European medieval setting? Check. Wide variety of weapons and specific move sets? Check. The possibility of complementing your melee combat with long-ranged options? Check. But, more importantly, the need to keep your stamina in check to avoid getting killed by the measliest of enemies? Definitely Check. Severance didn't invent stamina in games, but it's the first title where smarts will have to accompany even the strongest of fighters at all times if they're to prevent dying in ridiculous ways.

If you look at their gameplay videos, you'll see how BOF seems to be playing exactly like a modernized and more complex version of Severance would, and that's just fantastic. Another thing you'll see that Blades Of Fire has that you don't see in either Elden Ring or GOW are combos that work more or less like they do on Tekken, yet another awesome staple of Severance. Also, Blades Of Fire also puts a lot of emphasis on severing the various limbs of your opponents. I don't need to tell you where that's coming from, but I will, because it's glorious.

I'd be abusing the power of my nostalgia goggles if I were to claim that Severance was as far ahead of everything else as Dark Souls was upon release. Still, Dark Souls might not have even existed without Severance. It's only fair that Mercury Stream now gets to make use of everything all other studios built upon Severance's foundation to help them create the spiritual successor imaginable.

Interestingly, Sony's bigwig Shuhei Yoshida infamously also thought Demon's Souls was crap when he first got to play it, resulting in Sony scrapping plans to publish the game in the West. Had Demon's Souls not grown immensely in this part of the world through organic word of mouth, Dark Souls simply might've never come to be. With a deserved extra push, who knows how far Severance could've gone?

Here's hoping Blades Of Fire gets luckier than its predecessor when it releases for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on May 22.

The post Blades of Fire isn’t a Dark Souls clone, it’s the spiritual successor of the game that inspired the souls genre. appeared first on Destructoid.

We just got a really good first look at CS: Legacy, the fan project that fully remade the classic Counter-Strike 1.6 experience with updated graphics, and I can't wait to try it out.

If you love Counter-Strike Global Offensive but can't help but reminisce about the good old days of 1.6, then you should really give this one a shot. CS: Legacy features all the hallmarks of the OG CS: the skins — yes, the true 1337 crew is back — the HUD, the sound effects, and a selection of maps clearly made by fans are all present.

Missing the little details, such as that incredibly gruesome headshot animation that sends blood and brains flying all over? You're in luck! You can see a serious amount of care was applied here as even the animations were carefully remade to look like a mix between the classic and something a modern-day game would have. Everything was remade from the ground up using Valve's Source Engine SDK 2013 to guarantee the highest fidelity to the core 1.6 experience but with modern looks.

When Half-Life 2 came out, Valve released Half-Life: Source, a basic update of the original game containing nearly no visual upgrades, and Counter-Strike: Source, a visual and gameplay update of Counter-Strike 1.6 that most didn't like. Valve would later make up for the lackluster CS: Source with the excellent Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, but the original Half-Life remake blunder would only be fixed by a bunch of fans who came together to create Black Mesa. That game always had me wondering how a CS 1.6 remake could work if done by fans, and the results seem very promising.

CS: Legacy was made by the team responsible for the beloved CSPromod, so I'm betting we can be pretty optimistic about this one. CS: Legacy will become available at an undisclosed date in 2025, and it will come out featuring 5 absolute classic maps: De_Dust2, De_Train, De_Nuke, Fy_Pool_day, and Aim_map.

If you'd like to help develop CS: Legacy, you can do so via the CS: Legacy Patreon page.

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To accompany the just-released NVIDIA RTX Remix featuring DLSS 4 and RTX Neural Shaders, we can soon visit the classic horror level from Half-Life 2 featuring the complete RTX package. Technically, it looks great, but do we like it?

The remaster was made by Orbifold Studios, a community studio that clearly cares about the game. I love seeing Valve and NVIDIA not only allowing the existence of remasters such as these but straight-up promoting them via their official channels. Still, many fans likely won't be pleased by this trip down memory lane.

We don't go to Ravenholm RTX

Ravenholm looks very well-lit in RTX, probably too much so. Like, the game itself looks spectacular — especially for something that's over two decades old. Still, this is absolutely not the vibe we got from the original Ravenholm — and likely not what the devs had intended it to feel like when sending us in there.

Ravenholm is the most unique of all the locations in the two mainline Half-Life games. It was meant as a peculiar palate cleanser, one where the game would make a turn to full-on horror territory for one level, and people loved it. To this day, Ravenholm is one of the most well-remembered areas in the history of FPS games. Fans love it because it manages to perfectly adapt Half-Life 2's smart puzzles to this hellish survival horror-esque scenario. We know Valve also thinks Ravenholm is special because they've talked about it at length, but because they heavily featured it as far back as Half-Life 2's first gameplay reveal to showcase its excellent usage of the game's (then) new physics prowess.

Ravenholm also served as a great showcase for lighting by featuring an unnerving lack of lit areas. It used to be dark and scary, the place "you don't go to." Now it looks almost inviting, which probably isn't ideal for a horror level.

I'm sure many of the options will be customizable, meaning that we'll probably get to tweak RTX Ravenholm to be scarier, but I just don't get why they'd decide to show it in what looks like daytime.

Still, I'm glad that it exists because it doesn't replace the classic mode and is a neat addition that might bring in new fans. Also, I'm pretty sure the rest of the game can look fantastic through the RTX lens. For now, you'll be able to experience Ravenholm RTX on March 18.

The post Half-Life 2’s Ravenholm just got the full RTX treatment, and it’s more weird than scary. appeared first on Destructoid.

As the Sony PlayStation 2 remains the highest-selling console of all time, it should come as no surprise that it's home to some of the best-selling games in video game history.

It's also received a wildly interesting collection of offbeat, strange, bad, and sometimes great games that, for one reason or another, never sold very much and are now extremely rare and valuable. Let's look at the PS2's biggest rarities, shall we?

10. Wild Arms: Alter Code F

The remake phenomenon is in full swing nowadays, but the concept of game remakes isn't as young as many would like to make you think.

Wild Arms: Alter Code F is a rich PS2 remaster of the original PS1 Wild Arms, featuring heavily updated 3D graphics and new characters. Despite its awesomeness and name brand, its success didn't quite carry over to the new version. Was it because people were unimpressed by the upgrades? Because they'd simply rather try out new stuff instead of going for a shinier version of something they knew? Because publisher agetec's masterplan was to have the rarest games on the system (you'll see what I'm talking about)? Who knows. Whatever the cause, nobody seemed too confident in Alter Code F, as it didn't even come out in Europe. The result is a rare classic that's worth over $300 nowadays.

9. .hack Quarantine

.hack was a very popular RPG series back in the heyday of the PS2. Even before the release of World Of Warcraft, .hack was already telling a tale regarding the possibly negative influence a super-popular MMORPG could have on the populace.

.hack Quarantine served as the culmination of the four-game series, but, likely due to the rule of diminished returns, .hack Quarantine ended up becoming a harder title to get than the other games in the series. Though it's not the most expensive game on this list, it's quite peculiar to find a game from a once-popular series at over $300.

8. Obscure

Don't let the name fool you. ObsCure's original take on survival horror saw us play as a team of teens trying to survive a mysterious monster attack on their high school, and it proved surprisingly popular upon release. Still, ObsCure came out just a year before Resident Evil 4 took horror games — and a large part of the gaming industry, really — in a new direction, so ObsCure ultimately lived up to its name. You can get an unused copy of ObsCure for a little over $330.

Interestingly, ObsCure got a sequel in the end, but copies of ObsCure 2 are far more common than those of the original game.

7. Echo Night Beyond

This is one of the few titles on this list that I only learned about when researching, and there's a reason for that. Echo Night Beyond, a sci-fi tale where the player's choices matter, only featured a very small print run, and, even out of it, relatively few copies ever got sold.

Nowadays, Echo Night Beyond is one of those games that mostly just collectors know of and care about, even though it's seemingly not bad at all. I'd love to give it a try! Too bad I'm not about to shell out the internet's minimum asking price of $300.

6. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

This is a surprising entry because Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, the original remake of the first Silent Hill game, was actually quite a hit... on the Wii. For some reason, even though the game caused a huge splash on Nintendo's console — and Sony's consoles are the place where more Silent Hill fans tend to inhabit — Shattered Memories' PS2 version had a very limited print run and its copies are now perhaps just as elusive as the titular town itself.

Even though it's part of an extremely popular game series, you'll be lucky to get a copy of this game for less than five hundred bucks.

5. Haunting Ground

Unlike Shattered Memories above, Haunting Ground doesn't carry the name of a huge franchise, but it's still the spiritual successor to the once-popular Clocktower series. This one's rarity might be due to mismanaged marketing — sometimes you should really make use of your brand names, Capcom.

Haunting Ground's apparent lack of commercial success might also have come about due to the game releasing right about when the paradigm-shifting Resident Evil 4 was coming out, so that's already two ways in which Capcom might've accidentally caused Haunting Ground to become one of the rarest and — at over $700 for a new copy — one of the most expensive games on the system.

4. Blood Will Tell

I don't know about you, but I always find it so appropriate when the rarest games belong to the mystery or horror genres, and the PS2 has that in spades. Blood Will Tell is a cult classic from Sega where a samurai teams up with a thief to — I kid you not — retrieve parts of the samurai's body.

Despite its grisly premise, that's not why Blood Will Tell has become so rare. It is just not that good of a game and was also probably too niche to become a mainstream hit, so it became a cult classic — and, at over $500 for a new copy, a very expensive one at that.

3. Marvel vs. Capcom 2

Plot twist time: games belonging to popular franchises don't tend to show up on these lists, even more so when they're extremely good and popular.

To this day, Marvel vs. Capcom 2 remains one of the most talked-about fighting games of all time. Still, its PlayStation 2 version is exceedingly rare and expensive. Why? Because of copyright shenanigans between Capcom and Marvel that took place shortly after the game's release, the game had a limited print run. That's why you may have to shell out $900 if you want a sealed copy of Marvel vs Capcom 2 today.

2. Rule of Rose

If you're a video game collector, Rule Of Rose likely pops up in your mind dozens of times a day. Another horror classic that became the stuff of legend, this time likely because its psychological horror elements were deemed too insidious and thus prevented the game from even getting distributed in most places. While it's true that Rule Of Rose features some rather disturbing themes, I'd say none of it justifies turning the game into a cursed artifact.

Rule Of Rose initially sold most of its very limited stock, so any sealed copy is expected to set you back by over eight hundred dollars.

1. Kuon

Here it is, the final boss of rare PS2 games. Kuon is, guess what, a survival horror game. This time, however, we're not talking about a game that owes its rarity to disturbing themes that prevented uncourageous publishers from localizing the game and trying to sell it overseas, but rather just bad marketing.

There are no surprising or even possibly haunted elements to this tale. Kuon only ever had a very limited print run and barely had any marketing from US publisher agetec — which you probably only know from this list because, well, it was seemingly way more discrete a publishing company should ever be. Still, they inadvertently managed to create the legend of Kuon, whose new copies sell for over $1,100 now, so congrats, I guess.

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We just got an unexpected first look at Project [C4], a new game that the Estonian studio describes as “a new mind-warping espionage RPG that blends player introspection, deep character-driven dialogue, and high-stakes encounters steered by dice rolls.”

In C4, players will be able to consume psychoactive substances in the hopes of better navigating a shady and complex geopolitical narrative, but these may also prove to be their downfall.  “Players must steel themselves with whatever comfort they can in order to survive the violent canvas of the real.”

This is all very exciting, should you not know the messed-up history of the studio.

Had this reveal taken place shortly after the release of the extraordinary Disco Elysium, everyone would have likely been extremely enthusiastic about C4. Unfortunately, too much shady stuff has transpired since then for fans to be more than cautiously optimistic about anything new coming from ZA/UM.

As you might have heard, the execs at ZA/UM have been notoriously severing ties with the people behind the original game. First, they had head writer Robert Kurvitz, co-writer Helen Hindpere, and head artist Martin Rostov leave the company "involuntarily", then proceeded to get rid of an undisclosed but considerable percentage of its staff. Argo Tuulik, the last Disco Elysium writer, eventually also ended up losing his job and is currently in a very dire situation.

ZA/UM's mismanagement has caused such a leakage in talent that we can barely even count the number of supposed Disco Elysium successors currently in development by ex-members of the studio. That's not, however, the most immediately egregious thing about C4. That's how, despite their actions — actions most are aware of — the studio still rides the coattails of Disco Elysium on this promo.

The only positive highlight right now is the beautiful art by Anton Vil, the artist behind the original Disco Elysium's magnificent thought cabinet.

The post ZA/UM, the studio that made Disco Elysium then fired its core team, has announced a new game riding its tail. appeared first on Destructoid.

Google AI overviews suck ass. I'm talking about the text that Google now displays at the top of the page after we hit enter on a search query.

This is not text that an advanced form of artificial intelligence came up with to satisfy our needs. It's text that Google's Gemini AI conjures based on data from some website it deemed useful. Getting data of a website of scientific renown would probably do the trick, but the AI is scraping data off of all sorts of dubious sources.

At worst, the Google AI overview will give you solid advice on how to efficiently end your life while telling you it's giving you advice on anything else. At best, it gives out the correct information but does so by scraping data off of a website and causing the author of the piece to not get their due click revenue should the text on display suffice to satisfy the user's curiosity.

For example, if Google happens to scrape Destructoid for an answer to the question "Is Google AI overview good?", I'd be ok with it because getting Google to display "Google AI overviews suck ass" would be fantastic. Still, the prospective reader could miss out on the chance to read this piece, possibly have a laugh, and convince my overlords to keep on giving me money.

I previously wrote a guide on how to bypass Google's AI, but there's a new technique that's way easier and funnier. Turns out you can do away with Google’s awful AI overviews simply by introducing curse words in your query.

So, instead of asking about the "best time to plant tomatoes", ask "best f*cking time to plant tomatoes", or "f*cking best time to plant tomatoes" (Without the *, of course).

As posited by Ars Technica, this might be because Google's Gemini AI tries to avoid swearing at all costs. Just use your curse words in a way that doesn't change the meaning of your sentence, and avoid hateful slurs as your profanity hack words of choice, because c'mon. Follow those simple steps, and you'll be making your experience on the Internet and the Internet itself a better place in the funniest way possible.

So yeah, that's right — the people who taught you never to curse back when you were a kid either had no idea how weird the world would get one day — or have been on the machines' side all along.

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Staircase Studios AI is the world’s first AI movie studio — if that’s even a thing — and has recently uploaded a 5-minute presentation of The Woman With Red Hair, their first tentative movie, on YouTube.

The studio also uses the preview to show how this isn't just the "work" of some guy just asking ChatGPT to come up with moving images. Staircase Studios AI talks about employing top animation talent from ex-Pixar, real actors, as well as real writers. That's right, that awful title was not something an AI came up with, though that might be because The Woman With Red Hair is the title of a pre-existing story.

Actually employing artists and actors to combine them with AI shenanigans to make films might seem to solve one of the biggest problems with the technology— how it bypasses compensating the makers of the art it scrapes to come up with the hell-in-motion types of imagery it's known for. Still, even if that's truly solved, one serious problem remains, and that’s AI's inability to make something that doesn't look unbearably alien and gross.

What the people making AI movies don't get

Rotoscoping is a technique seen in some animated films and TV shows. In its most common form, it requires you to shoot a scene in live action, then draw the outlines and paint over the actors to make it all look like an animated movie.

Some films openly use rotoscoping as an artistic choice to give a peculiar taste to a tale. Richard Linklater is famous for applying this technique to Waking Life, a highly philosophical film with a dreamy vibe, or A Scanner Darkly, where rotoscoping helps convey the muddled psychic landscape inhabited by most of its characters. It works great there because, to put it simply, rotoscoping makes everything look wrong, or at least different from what real life should be.

Whereas Linklater puts it to great use, some others do it to cut corners. Animators caught rotoscoping are seen as cheaters by other animators. They're not really creating movement with their work but rather painting over someone else's motion.

At best, The Woman With Red Hair, and every single other "AI movie" that I've ever had to suffer through, looks like it has been rotoscoped by people who didn't understand the technique's strengths.

Whether or not the AI tool is using other people's work without paying them or using the studio's work to come up with its images, it's still just painting over someone else's art or reality devoid of any notion of intent. I can't blame AI for that, but I can scoff at the pros wasting time and money on soulless dreck that looks so much worse than any low-budget YouTube short I've ever seen.

The post The first AI movie studio just unveiled its first film. It looks exactly like you’d expect. appeared first on Destructoid.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft is arguably the most influential master of horror to ever have lived. Though oftentimes plagued by tragically regressive views and sometimes written in a rather infuriating way, his works remain ever-fruitful in inspiring other writers, filmmakers, and even video game devs who thought we wouldn't notice.

As the man seemingly had already shed most of his more unlikable beliefs by the time of his death, I believe it fair for us to remember his best works, even if only to help inspire horror writers or developers looking for a serious bout of inspiration — we know it works.

10. The Call Of Cthulhu

The Call Of Cthulhu is about a detective's ill-fated investigation of an eerie and mysterious cult. This synopsis seems like the most clichéd of plots right now, but that's only because of its immense influence.

Though it's easily the most famous tale by Lovecraft, The Call Of Cthulhu is rather far from his best. That's not to say it sucks, but rather to state just how great some of his stuff is. Also, newcomers will likely be disappointed to learn just how little Cthulhu does in the book, despite being the poster boy of all things Lovecraft. That's not Lovecraft's fault, though, but that of the people who needed to find a cool figure to promote his stuff.

9. The Thing On The Doorstep

The Thing On The Doorstep tells the story of a man who may not be who (or even what) he says he is. It's a riveting mystery tale about a man desperately trying to tell a truth that might prove too strange to believe.

If you're into stories about possession and believe tales of demonic possession influenced by Christianity have become stale, then you should probably give the original a try.

8. Dagon

Before we began exploring space, our very own seemingly bottomless seas were just as scary — if not more — than the dark skies above. Dagon is a tale of a man adrift at sea that perfectly mixes the natural horrors anyone would experience in such a scenario with the otherworldly torments Lovecraft is known for.

Dagon is a fantastic story, though one that should come with a trigger warning for its themes of suicide.

7. At The Mountains Of Madness

At The Mountains Of Madness is about a geologist's attempt to prevent a team of scientists from going on an expedition to Antarctica that will inevitably unleash upon them horrors beyond what their human science can prepare them for.

Are you the kind of person who cringes at seeing tourists blissfully risking their lives to take pictures at the top of snowy and life-threatening mountains? Then this is the one for you.

6. From Beyond

From Beyond tells the story of Crawford Tillinghast, a brilliant scientist who goes too far in one of his experiments and then has the people around him inevitably deal with the consequences.

This is one of the most common tropes in Sci-Fi literature — even in Lovecraft's body of work, really — but this is more or less where it started, and this is where it's done the best. Tillinghast's search for other dimensions and the discovery of what horrors plague them remain some of the best examples of "Fear Of The Unknown" literature.

5. The Dunwich Horror

Despite the unrelated name, The Dunwich Horror is actually a much more compelling "Cthulhu mythos" tale than The Call Of Cthulhu.

It's a better, more compelling, and more straightforward tale that begins with the investigation of a very peculiar family that naturally takes a turn into more otherworldly and horrifying territory.

4. The Rats In The Walls

If Lovecraft's prejudiced views do in any way shape or form cause you pain, then The Rats In The Walls is definitely not the tale for you — but mostly for a stupid simple reason. That reason is a cat in that story, which is named after a racial slur. That really sucks, especially in a story supposedly about rats, where a cat is always going to be important.

If you manage to ignore that ridiculously stupid name, The Rats In The Walls is one of the most thrilling and riveting mysteries ever written, one that will keep you guessing and want you to know more every step of the way until you reach its tremendous closing act.

3. The Shadow Over Innsmouth

This is the story of a man who travels to investigate an eerie town thought to have been ruined by the government only to find out things are worse than anyone could've imagined. The Shadow Over Innsmouth provides a welcome breath of fresh air for detective stories and is likely single-handedly responsible for the "mystery town" trope seen in classics such as Twin Peaks.

Don't let the title throw you off. The Shadow Over Innsmouth — not The Call Of Cthulhu — was the basis for the spectacularly underrated Call Of Cthulhu: Dark Corners Of The Earth video game.

2. The Whisperer In Darkness

If you read The Call Of Cthulhu and end up feeling overwhelmed, then the Whisperer In Darkness might just be the one for you. Though it's not a remake in any way shape or form, It's a similar tale of investigation, and a much better-told one at that.

The Whisperer In Darkness is not the deepest of Lovecraft's tales, but it's the most horrifyingly fun and arguably the most likely to get others hooked on his writing and mythos.

1. The Colour Out Of Space

The Colour Out Of Space tells the tale of a man who's either going insane or dealing with the beginning of an alien invasion — long before stories of alien invasions were a thing. Instead of little green men, flying saucers, or robot tripods, this man has to contend with a lifeform capable of emanating an incomprehensible color.

When combined with the overall quality of the tale, the brilliant and possibly even dangerous concept that might bring readers to the brink of madness as they try to conjure a new color in their minds makes this a truly transcendent tale.

The Colour Out Of Space has been adapted to movie format on two different occasions, one making use of extremely vibrant colors, the other in black and white, and both rock.

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Monster Hunter Wilds is finally out and is already an all-timer when it comes to how many people it has drawn in for the hunt.

To put things into perspective, Monster Hunter Wilds was already a massive hit merely 35 minutes after release. At that time, Wilds was already twice bigger in terms of concurrent players than Monster Hunter World had ever been, which had its all-time peak at 334 thousand concurrent players. Monster Hunter Rise, the title that succeeded World, was also a hugely successful title, but it topped at a lower 231 thousand concurrent players.

But that was roughly 10 hours prior to the writing of this piece, so basically old news when it comes to an event of such magnitude in the gaming world. Right now, Monster Hunter Wilds is clocking in at over 1.2 million players, after an all-time peak of over 1.3 million.

Those are awe-inspiring numbers, especially considering that it also requires a really powerful PC to run. In fact, that seems to be the game's only problem right now, as many are complaining about serious performance issues, even on very high-end machines. So, if doubts regarding how well your PC will run Wilds are the only thing holding you back from hitting buy, then you should probably wait a little longer till Capcom fixes these issues — it's not as if the game is in dire need of your money to warrant a sequel. That said, it is a fantastic title well worth looking at.

On top of the PC, Monster Hunter Wilds also released on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, where we can right now only assume it's already doing pretty fantastic numbers.

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Monolith, the legendary studio behind all-timers such as Blood, Shadow Of Mordor, Condemned, and Alien Versus Predator 2 was recently shut down by the overlords at Warner Brothers. Many people lost jobs, but GOG is trying to at least save the studio's games as part of its preservation initiative.

The CD Projekt Red-owned platform has already announced it'll add F.E.A.R. and its two expansions to its game preservation program, and, as of right now, you can get the GOTY winner for just one dollar. GOG has also disclosed the plans to save as much of Monolith's catalog as possible, which is awesome, but one title threatens to remain impossible to get.

I'm talking about The Operative: No One Lives Forever, an FPS that rocked the world of shooters in 2000 with its fantastic gameplay and story, but that has since become unavailable for purchase.

Think of a mix between Perfect Dark and a '60s 007 James Bond throwback — so, like a serious and equally awesome version of Austin Powers. If you're lucky enough to have played it upon release, you might think this is Monolith's crowning achievement. Still, you'd have a hard time making others believe so because, first off, nobody knows what you're talking about, and second, no way that a studio or publisher would allow for a highly profitable game to no longer be put on sale for reasons no one understands, right? Wrong.

Because it turns out that the reason why you were never able to purchase No One Lives Forever digitally is that seemingly nobody knows who owns the rights to it, and untangling the thread would simply prove too much of a hassle.

For the longest time, fans and even Nightdive Studios, known for its high-quality remakes of beloved classics, have been trying to rescue NOLF from the endless copyright limbo it has resided in for the past many years, but to no avail so far.

Here's hoping GOG finds out how to finally bring back this classic that so many would certainly love to experience for the first time.

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Lara Croft is one of the most recognizable fictional characters in the world, and she has totally earned it. Still, her games have put her in a myriad of absolutely ridiculous situations that would easily derail the career of any other popular gaming hero.

Let's look at the dumbest moments in the Tomb Raider series, shall we?

Lara Croft kills the same guy in two different games (Tomb Raider and Tomb Raider Chronicles)

In Tomb Raider Chronicles, Lara intentionally causes the unarmed henchman Pierre to plunge to his death. That's bad already because killing defenseless comic relief goons is bad, but the main problem here is how it breaks the Tomb Raider timeline.

Why? Because Lara also kills Pierre in the original Tomb Raider — as she should, because he's shooting at her in that game. So, when you begin playing Chronicles, you assume it takes place before the original game because Lara is up against henchmen who don't survive the events of the game. Fans asked the devs what the hell had happened and got the most hilarious response imaginable.

One of the devs explained that Pierre's segment on Chronicles wasn't a prequel and was actually supposed to take place after the original. The funniest part of it all, however, is that neither option would ever make sense because people tend to only ever die once. So, why did this happen? Well, the developers explained that they just didn't bother with the series' continuity.

The devs destroyed Lara's origin and made it weird (Tomb Raider The Last Revelation)

For the first three games in the series, Lara's background and reason for becoming a survivalist was a plane crash that killed both of her parents and forced her to fend for herself.

Then came The Last Revelation, which features a tutorial segment in Cambodia where Lara is learning her survivalist ropes from an old mentor even before the crash and death of her parents. This not only sh*ts on the cool pre-established origin story but also makes it weird because what kind of still-living parents would let their teenage daughter fly to a dangerous and remote location with a creepy old dude?

Lara has a license to kill until she doesn't (The entire series)

Tomb Raider: The Angel Of Darkness begins with Lara running from the cops for a murder she didn't commit. This murder takes place inside a Parisian apartment without any witnesses present. Still, Lara has to spend a large part of the game running away from the police. That's a very strange state of affairs, given how the previous games in the series had seen Lara, a popular figure in that world, going on killing sprees in densely-populated cities such as Rome, Venice, Cairo, and London without facing any sort of repercussion.

Lara kills to prove her innocence (The Angel Of Darkness)

While on the run from the cops, Lara goes to steal an artifact from the Louvre. I think that's the opposite of what an archeologist is supposed to do, but this time, she's trying to prove her innocence, so I'll give her that.

Too bad she then kills the poor innocent guards working at the Louvre, which, again, I think is the opposite of what a person who's been framed for murder should be doing.

I guess she was originally meant to use a non-lethal option, but the game's messed-up development didn't give the devs enough time for such mechanics.

Lara kills a bunch of innocent people in pretty nasty ways (The entire series)

Most of her killings are understandable — in video game logic, at least — as it's either their deaths or Lara's. What's weird is how so many of these games feature cutscenes where Lara just murders some possibly defenseless people, which the game plays as a pretty cool thing, actually. What the hell is up with that?

One of Lara's big claims to fame was the murder of bigfoot (Tomb Raider)

Do the people who came up with the concept for Lara Croft and Tomb Raider even have the faintest idea of what an archaeologist is supposed to do? I'm no expert, but I'm certain they aren't out there hunting cryptids. That's not the notion you get from the original Tomb Raider. It's a blink-and-you 'll-miss-it moment, but the scene where Lara is introduced to villain Natla shows a magazine cover where Lara is stepping on Bigfoot's corpse.

So yeah, remember that whenever you're playing Tomb Raider, you're entering a world in which Bigfoot isn't real but only because world-famous preservationist Lara Croft has already made him go extinct.

Lara Croft doesn't know how to use an elevator (Tomb Raider)

Please watch the cutscene above and tell me if you've ever seen anyone use an elevator by cutting the cable, grabbing it, and hoping it would take them to the top without getting crushed against the ceiling? You could say that she's doing that to infiltrate the villain's lair, but then why not just do it in a sneaky and not extremely dangerous way?

Also, what kind of elevator do you enter from the outside of the building?

Lara Croft drowns... skeletons (Tomb Raider The Last Revelation)

I bet you thought I was going to mention Lara murdering another innocent in another extremely vile way, but no. This time, she's only murdering what should already be dead — albeit in an extremely dumb way.

I don't care that skeletons shouldn't be able to move — I'm completely ok with the idea of them being controlled by otherworldly entities — hell, isn't that the case with Lara herself? Still, I draw the line at skeletons that die because they cannot breathe with the lungs they don't have. And you know what makes this even sillier? The fact that the series would spiritually double-down on this for its next entry:

Killing cyborg with gas (Tomb Raider Chronicles)

If modern times have taught us anything, it's that we should probably curb our enthusiasm regarding all things automated. Tomb Raider Chronicles, however, came out in the earliest of the early 2000s, a time when we could still have fairly hopeful dreams about robots and AI without sounding utterly delusional. Weird, because that's the game where Lara somehow fills a room with noxious gas to kill a robotic bodyguard, and it totally works.

I don't doubt for a second that any of the so-called visionaries of the 2020s would think a robot who needs to breathe — and that can die from inhaling anything other than oxygen is a great idea, but it just doesn't make sense in that game. Still, big props to the developers of the remaster, who award you with the "Gassassin" achievement for this.

Lara died so that the developers could live (Tomb Raider The Last Revelation)

Spoiler warning: Lara Croft dies at the end of Tomb Raider 4.

Sure, we don't see her death, but the developers will have no problem clarifying that they really intended for the character to die there. They did so because the incredibly demanding development of these games was destroying their lives, and they probably thought this would put an end to their torment. It didn't. They had to come up with another game the following year, just like they had to in the previous three years of the series.

Even worse, the developers also had to come up with a half-assed reason for how Lara came back to life, then scrapped the cutscene showing her resurrection, which left players with no real explanation as to what the hell had happened there.

The post 10 dumbest moments in the Tomb Raider series appeared first on Destructoid.

A surprising number of games nowadays feature some degree of AI usage. If you are against this practice and fear you might be helping it proliferate by unwittingly spending your money on such titles, then I have good news.

Steam asks developers who want their games for sale on the platform to disclose any instance of AI in their making, but it doesn't feature the option to filter out all games using AI. SteamDB, however, is not so kind to them.

If you head over to SteamDB.info/tags, you can now search for the AI Content Disclosed tag under Uncategorized. Clicking on it will immediately show a list of all the games on Steam that have disclosed their usage of AI.

Even better, you can filter all games with AI content from your searches. It's a new feature, so SteamDB currently allows you to use it right at the top of the page by clicking on the underlined "AI generated content disclosures".

I hope that message stays at the top of the page forever, but it might go away at some point. If that happens and you want to use the feature while performing a search, you can look to the right side where it says Tags, search for "AI disclosed", and click on (exclude) in front of it. This will filter out any game with disclosed AI content from your search. Alternatively, you can add &tagid=-1368160 to the end of your URL to automatically filter out these titles.

This is a great feature, though it doesn't necessarily catch every single instance of a game using AI. The developers can simply choose not to disclaim it and hope for the best. Still, Steam's policy requires all games using the tech to do so, so any game caught using AI without letting Steam and its buyers know will hopefully face serious consequences.

At the time of writing, there are just over 6,000 titles on Steam featuring disclosed AI Content. These titles range from the extremely popular Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 to indie hits such as Outlast Trials and Liar's Bar. The usage of AI on these titles can vary greatly, but it's certainly there and certainly worthy of you at least frowning upon them should you end up falling for their charms.

The post How to filter out Generative AI games with SteamDB appeared first on Destructoid.

After the remake of Silent Hill 2 proved one of the best and most lucrative endeavors in the history of both Konami and Bloober Team, the two companies have just announced the renewal of their commitment and a joint new project.

"Our collaboration with KONAMI has been incredibly fruitful, and the success of SILENT HILL 2 speaks for itself. By sharing knowledge and experience, we have been able to create high-quality production together. Of course, we can't reveal too many details at this time, but we are confident that fans will be just as excited about our collaboration as we are. We can't wait to share something truly special with players when the time is right."

This just goes to show how fast tables can turn and how a little bit of support can do wonders. Back when Konami announced that the Silent Hill 2 remake would be headed by Bloober, fans panicked not because of how scary it looked, but because nobody trusted Bloober to helm such a project. Bloober had been in the psychological horror game for a while, but none of the studio's games ever really hit the mark on either the psychological or the horror fronts. Then, Bloober owned up to its past mishaps and honestly asked players to give the team a chance. The result was one of the most memorable games in recent memory.

Maybe because they finally hit the mark with the remake, or simply because the team had wanted to move on for a while, Bloober announced the desire to move away from the psychological horror genre. It has since announced Cronos: The New Dawn, which looks fantastic.

We still don't know what Bloober + Konami are up to other than that it'll be based on one of Konami's existing IP. I don't know if all the money and praise will pull Bloober back to remake another Silent Hill title for Konami, do their own take on Silent Hill, or, if they'll perhaps get to remake something else, something involving, say a lot of solid gears made of metal. In any case, and I never thought I'd be saying this: I'm looking forward to it.

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Achievements are a mainstay of modern gaming, even if you're the kind of gamer who doesn't want a magnificent scene interrupted by a popup saying "Achievement unlocked: lord tearjerker".

I generally loathe achievements, though that might be out of yearning for a time when games did achievements discreetly. If you happen to be ancient enough to recall, the Tomb Raider series of games was one of the first to feature some sort of non-point-based achievements, which came in the poignant form of archeological secrets discovered.

The original Tomb Raider games did achievements right

Sure, the first game had secret achievements in the form of med packs and ammo clips that didn't really make much sense in the context of undiscovered tombs. Still, Tomb Raider 2 fixed that by including dragon-shaped artifacts. They were useless for gameplay purposes but did a great job of making players feel like an accomplished entertainment archeologist, which is the term I use to describe movie and video game archeologists who steal stuff instead of doing an actual archeologist's job.

On top of hitting the mark on a visual and gameplay level, the Tomb Raider 1-3 Remaster nailed the spirit of the game, meaning it also upped the ante for the original games' achievements. The first remaster package brought in dozens of new achievements — some offer a neat challenge by being really hard to figure out, some are hilarious, and many are both. Luckily, the team at Aspyr behind the second batch of classic Tomb Raider classics (and the not-so-classic Angel Of Darkness), did it again.

The best achievements in the Tomb Raider 4-6 Remaster Trilogy

The remaster features 168 achievements of varying difficulty levels. Unlocking many of them is a straightforward affair, like "Finish the Cairo Chapter", for example, but it gets so much better.

The best achievements in a game about solving mysteries and finding stuff are those that require mystery-solving skills and then reward players with a hilarious achievement name.

Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation starts with a secret achievement named "What's Up, Doc?", which you get by lying down next to a skeleton. That's not a regular skeleton, however, but rather a skeleton donning a hat and a whip, so an obvious reference to Indiana Jones.

There's also "Self Defense Guide", which you get by tricking three scorpions and three jackals into getting killed by fire. Among other things, this trilogy is infamous for having Lara partake in various acts of unnecessary evil, so it's nice to see the devs daring players to do even worse.

Any average pun enjoyer will like "Blade Outrunner", which you get by avoiding getting hit by any pedestal blades.

The "This is fine" achievement probably requires no explanation, but you unlock it by taking the time to find all the secrets in a specific level despite it being on fire.

When it comes to mystery-solving, skill, and pure evil, it's hard to beat "Cooler than Henry". You'll unlock it by blinding three assassins, poisoning them, and then one-shot them in a row.

I'm also partial to "Prop with no purpose", which you get by grabbing Von Croy's glasses, provided it's meant a comment on the nature of achievements.

I don't much care for the name "Jason's Apprentice", but that's the achievement you get for drowning five skeletons in water — one of the most bizarre things to happen on any of these already pretty out-there games.

"Scarabicide" is the beautifully-titled achievement you get for running over a scarab with your motorcycle.

"Theomachist" is a really cool achievement you can get from doing a handstand in front of a bunch of statues.

Then there's the very darkly-comedic "High Five to Maahes", which you get by obliterating five enemies with one grenade.

Lastly, TLR features an achievement called "Oops", which you get from breaking every destructible item in the game. Now that's video game archeology done right.

Tomb Raider Chronicles begins with "To the Envy of Venus", which Lara naturally gets by showing off with a handstand in front of a gate.

There's also the hilariously cruel "Fail Compilation", which you get from watching all of Lara's failures on the young Lara level.

One of the funniest achievements in the entire series is "Gassassin", which you get by killing a guard with gas. Why is this so funny? Because the guard is a robot. Good thing this achievement isn't optional otherwise it would prove pretty hard to guess for many.

Tomb Raider 6 features an achievement called "Darwin Awards", which you get by finding all the silliest ways to die, and thus is something I have no idea how to unlock since this game features infinite dumb ways for Lara to perish.

There's also the hilarious "Chococollection", which you get by collecting all the chocolate bars in the game and eating none.

One of my favorites is "Snake Eater", whose description reads "Why are you still here? Just to suffer?". That's a brilliant double reference, this time to the Metal Gear Solid series, as well as to the lackluster state in which the game was released. You unlock it by climbing a long ladder that takes you to a large area with nothing for you to do.

The Angel Of Darkness culminates with "I Feel Stronger Now", which you get from beating the game. This is a brilliant reference to the infamous phrase that Lara says whenever she "levels up" and I believe a welcome congratulatory note to anyone resilient enough to beat that game. Do you know why I believe that? Because the achievement for beating the game in New Game+ is called "Never Again".

You can now achieve all of these on Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered on PC, Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.

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The last few years have reminded people that board games are one of the best ways to spend time with friends and future enemies. Sadly, board games aren't the cheapest pastime, so it's best to pick something with both replay value and mass appeal.

So let's look at ten board games that will appeal to pretty much anyone.

Monopoly

Whenever you ask people born in the '80s or '90s about their best memories playing board games, chances are they'll remember dominating a random game of Monopoly. This game is basically a get-rich simulator and will make you feel smart and deserving of said riches.

On top of being a great game, Monopoly also provides an excellent lesson in how capitalism sucks. Yeah, despite passing as praise for the current system, Monopoly showcases how everything is fun and games while everyone has a fighting chance, but also how everything goes down the drain when one player inevitably hoards all the money and property.

One Night Ultimate Werewolf

One Night Ultimate Werewolf brings a welcome twist to the Werewolf formula. You no longer need a storyteller, as a companion mobile app will do that job and allow everyone to have a special role in the game.

Also, no more games that will go on for way too long, as, just like the title states, everything will be done in one night. Say goodbye to the frustration of almost winning after trying to convince your friends you were a good guy for an hour. All in all, One Night Werewolf provides a great alternative to the classic game — and doesn't prevent you from using the cards to set up a game of the classic if that's more your thing.

Whether or not you love the classic Werewolf or Mafia game, you should give One Night Ultimate Werewolf a shot.

Scrabble

If you're reading this, there's a very high probability that you like words, so the most famous wordplay board game ever is a no-brainer.

Make use of the letters at your disposal to make words and earn points. It's that simple. Still, Scrabble has been a mainstay at the top of the board game pile for so long because its random design prevents you from ever playing the same game more than once. Scrabble remains incredibly fun even when someone cheats, as few things beat the joy of telling a friend that "xxxavier" isn't a real world.

Battleship

War is a part of our history that we cannot get rid of, so we might as well enact it in the least violent and funniest way possible. I'm willing to change my mind, but right now the best way to achieve that is through Battleship, the game where two friends or enemies take turns going head to head while guessing the position of each ship of the enemy's navy.

If you ever feel like Battleship's ability to remain fun is starting to run dry, consider replacing the ships with shot glasses. Don't care about alcohol? Even better — you can fill the glasses with the spicy sauce of your choice. Happy warring.

Clue(do)

Ever wanted to flex your detective abilities on your colleagues? With Clue (or Cluedo outside of the US), you can do so without interfering with an actual criminal investigation. As expected, Clue has players gathering all the clues or relying on their gut (guesswork) to find out who the murderer is. It's extremely fun, as the game is designed so that everyone remains close enough to the truth to remain competitive till the end.

Cluedo's only downside is that it might get a bit same-old at some point, but it remains the best detective experience in video game format until it does.

Pandemic

Unlike most other games on this list, Pandemic provides a cooperative experience where you and your friends unite in the hopes of preventing a Pandemic from eradicating humankind. Honestly, it's one of the most enthralling games ever made.

Pandemic is one of the most recent board games on this list, but it's unlikely to exit the top ranks anytime soon. It's no accident, though, as Pandemic became a huge thing even before, well, you know what. It has since spawned a number of highly successful expansions, as well.

Catan

Catan is all about expanding on its peculiarly shaped landmass faster and better than your opponents. If that sounds simple, that's because it is, but it's in no way a detractor from the game. Catan, like most great games, is easy to learn, hard to master, and guaranteed to provide fun every step of the way.

If you're looking for a game where you can win by conquering the world (of the game) by non-violent means, then Catan is the game for you.

Gloomhaven

Do you love Dungeons & Dragons, or happen to like the idea, but find the original game missing something? Then perhaps Gloomhaven is the game for you. If you want the adventure, but not the roleplay elements, then Gloomhaven's co-op take on tactical combat might be your game forever. Yes, forever, as the daunting and pretty pricey box isn't just for show.

Gloomhaven holds hundreds if not thousands of hours worth of rich gameplay for anyone looking to team up with their friends to go on a monster murderin' spree.

Blood On The Clocktower

If you are into social deduction games, betrayal, and murder then Blood On The Clocktower is the game for you. Launched in 2022 after a successful Kickstarter, BotC dared to expand upon the potential of Werewolf to create the best and most complex social deduction board game in existence.

It's a bit expensive, but there's nothing better if you're looking into enjoying a complex adventure filled with drama and tension among friends.

Brass: Birmingham

Brass: Birmingham is currently the highest-rated game on Boardgamegeek dot com, and there's a good reason why. It's one of the most complex and enthralling games about surviving, building, and growing your business in the incredibly competitive times of England's industrial revolution.

If you find yourself loving Brass: Birmingham so much you hate needing to find people to play it with IRL, then you'll be pleased to know it also exists on PC, via Steam.

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Though in many ways similar to the original Elden Ring, the upcoming standalone expansion Elden Ring Nightreign looks different, causing some to fear it might pale when compared to the rest of FromSoftware's works.

Prolific Elden Ring Youtuber Zullie The Witch has released a video showing things are actually going pretty well — at least when it comes to bosses — as FromSoftware seems to have once again messed with the formula and perfectly adapted it to the game's new core system.

Nightreign is primarily meant as a cooperative experience. This means the boss experience could be hindered because the original bosses would easily be outsmarted and obliterated by a team of three thinking minds. Either that or the studio could be forced to buff the bosses into absolute sword sponges that would make their encounters fun for no one.

That's not the case, as Nightreign features an evolved boss experience, one with the co-op factor in mind. In short, the new boss encounters featured in the beta feel less like typical Souls bosses and more like bosses from an MMO that require Souls knowledge and skills to beat. Boss encounters won't necessarily feature just one enemy but rather a main enemy accompanied by soldiers or wave spawns that will require players to adapt their approach to battle.

One of the Souls series' greatest achievements was the reinvention of the video game boss. Out of nowhere, the tired trope of the simply bigger enemy waiting for you at the end of the level became one of the most memorable parts of the game due to the mechanical complexity and variety of FromSoft's bosses. Also, they now could be popping up anywhere.

Nightreign aims at a different Souls experience, one focused on a kind of co-op play also inspired by Battle Royale and Roguelite titles. If that sounds confusing, that's probably just a sign that FromSoftware is again seriously tinkering with our conception of games, and that seems like a good thing.

Elden Ring Nightreign comes out on May 30 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

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As Amazon takes complete control over MGM's James Bond, 007 fans are beginning to despair over fears that Bond will become trapped in a streaming series certain to put the character's potential to waste.

Let's try to clear our minds of such terrible thoughts as we look at what video game characters could not just do Bond's job but actually play Bond in a live-action movie adaptation better than anything Amazon could pull off.

Liquid Snake, from Metal Gear Solid

Every casting executive would probably go mad at you for suggesting this instead of Solid or Big Boss, but they'd have to hear us out.

First off, he’s the British one. Secondly, we know he's a fantastic actor due to his terrific Master Miller Impression. Lastly, this dude has a serious inferiority complex that could benefit from stardom. He’d become a nightmare to all of those around him, sure, but he'd become an even better James Bond.

Then you could hire Solid to play Bond's evil American brother to get the kind of chemistry you couldn't get without the presence of real bad blood.

Also, he is blond, like Daniel Craig, which is the hair color people most associate with Bond nowadays. How the tables have turned for Bond hair, eh?

Codename 47, from the Hitman series

Even though he's a master of stealth, there's plenty of photographic evidence that 47 can rock a tux. He's also a master of disguise, pretending to be anybody he chooses, so I'm just going to have to guess he can act as well.

The only big elephant in the room — I'm sorry to remind all of my follicularly challenged friends — is the fact that he's bald. Still, do you know who else was bald when making all of his 007 movies? Sean Connery — yes Connery wore a hairpiece in all of his Bond movies — so 47 could either do the same or go natural and give the character a fresh and shiny new look.

47 would play an excellent Bond in the vein of Daniel Craig in Casino Royale, so long as the pay is high enough to prevent the accidental death of one of the studio execs and 47's sudden disappearance.

Dante, from the original Devil May Cry

I always felt Dante was way more James Bond-like than other video game characters that people more easily associate with the character. He might even be better than Bond at his job, as every single one of his games features a new female main character who doesn't dump him while the credits are rolling.

Dante is suave and would kill it with the one-liners. I've never seen him wearing a tuxedo, sure, but I must assume his outfit is the Demon Hunter version of one. Also, the white hair could perhaps prove an excellent makeover for the character.

Now, just make sure you tell the casting director we're talking about DMC1 or DMC4 Dante. Devil May Cry 2 Dante is an empty shell of a character, Devil May Cry 3 is too obnoxious young, Dante from DMC is probably the least-popular character in gaming, and DMC5 Dante sure looks like he needs some rest.

Geralt Of Rivia, from The Witcher 3

Ok, let's face it: Geralt is already what Bond would become should a Bond villain somehow succeed in banishing him to a medieval fantasy setting. We never see him wearing a tuxedo, but we do see him wearing a bunch of fancy suits at various parties on Witcher 3 — or no suit at all — and he always manages to pull them off. A simple black suit should prove no big stretch.

Geralt's looks somehow only ever get better with age, so this one would probably prove a great pick for longevity. Why get Henry Cavill to play Bond, when you can get the character who made you feel like Cavill could play the role?

Lara Croft, From the original Tomb Raider games

If Amazon is ever to consider gender swapping, then this is absolutely the way to go.

Lara Croft is arguably the most famous video game character in the world, and definitely the most famous video game character hailing from England — one of the many silly metrics Amazon is sure to care about. We know she has acting chops, and she's about as classy as one can be — for as long as she wants to be.

The reason why we need this to be the Lara from the OG games — not the reboot one — has nothing to do with the looks. It's because the original Lara was a cold-blooded killer. Like, she killed one hell of a lot of people — a lot of people that she didn't need to kill — and that kind of carefree attitude towards murder is very important for a Bond pick.

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The long-awaited Magic: The Gathering and FINAL FANTASY collaboration for MTG's Universes Beyond series has finally been revealed, and you can now claim as many packs as you want ahead of the set's release on June 13.

Yesterday, Wizards Of The Coast revealed how the iconic Final Fantasy summons would work on this collaboration. The company also revealed the cards of some of the most iconic characters in the history of the series. The most hype reveals so far, were those of Cloud and Tidus, who'll be part of the commander set.

These are the two main characters in the two most successful Final Fantasy titles so far, meaning Wizards would naturally be big selling points for this new set. Still, the company reminds players that the set features characters from every single one of the 16 mainline Final Fantasy series.

Among the reveals so far, my favorite has to be Jumbo Cactuar, a card whose special ability, "10,000 Needles," will annihilate anyone who doesn't find a way to stop it. What a beautiful way to celebrate one of the most ridiculous special moves ever seen in a game.

You can now preorder some items from the Magic: The Gathering — FINAL FANTASY set. Through Amazon, you can already preorder the Starter Kit, Play Boosters, Play Booster bundles, and commander decks, except the one featuring Cloud.

Bundles, Collector Boosters, and Commander Deck Bundles will likely become available to preorder anytime now. Prerelease packs are available for preorder at your local store.

The Magic: The Gathering — FINAL FANTASY will be released on June 13, except for the Gift Bundle, which comes out on June 27.

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Wizards Of The Coast's official Twitter account just revealed Summons will work as Enchantment Creature Sagas on the upcoming MTG x Final Fantasy crossover set.

One of the biggest questions regarding the upcoming set was the workings of summons, which could've appeared as various things, such as creatures or sorcery spells, but it turns out they're another thing entirely.

They’re Enchantment Creature Sagas, a specific type of pre-existing MTG enchantment that’s not permanent but holds immense power. Saga cards tend to feature three effects that will trigger effects in each of the three turns after their summoning and then vanish.

The Final Fantasy X version of Shiva, the one that'll feature on this collab, will tap an enemy creature of your choice for the first two turns, then unleash Diamond Dust, her famous Overdrive that will have her owner draw a card for each tapped creature their opponents control. Being an Enchantment Creature Saga means that on top of her saga abilities, Shiva also behaves as a regular creature for three turns before automatically going to the graveyard.

So, instead of working like Sorceries or Instant Magics, akin to how they behave in most of the games in the Final Fantasy series, the Summons from the MTG Final Fantasy set will behave more similarly to the Summons from Final Fantasy X. They'll stay in the game for a while, and not just show up for an attack before vanishing.

Popular trading card game Magic: The Gathering has been experimenting with several fantasy-themed collaborations via its Universes Beyond endeavor over the past few years. We've previously seen Dungeons & Dragons and Lord Of The Rings-inspired crossovers, and while those were pretty cool, I doubt hardly anything could ever beat the upcoming Final Fantasy x MTG crossover in terms of gamer hype.

Magic The Gathering X Final Fantasy releases on June 13.

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One of the reasons why many cheat in online video games is that there's usually little repercussion. You get one account banned, sure, but you can just come up with another one. Morgan "RepulseGod" Bamford wasn't so lucky.

Back in 2023, Morgan shared his account with another player, nicknamed Forbes, who'd go on to earn a pretty neat cash prize. Unfortunately for him, however, he was caught and disqualified, but that was still not enough to quench Epic Games' thirst for justice.

As spotted by Kotaku, Epic's retaliation for his attempt to qualify for the Fortnite Championship Series Grand Finals in 2023 ended with a lawsuit that forced Bamford to post a video admission of guilt on his own YouTube channel. Though the video is only 20 seconds long — perhaps the minimum length permitted by the lawsuit — it remains incredibly painful to watch.

Bamford wrote, “Cheating in tournaments ruins the fun for the players who earned their spot in tournaments, and I apologize to the Fortnite community for my actions,” which reads like something Epic PR had written for him.

Bamford concluded by saying he'd never cheat in Fortnite again, to which one user responded with, "No sh*t bruh you banned lmfao," with others voicing similar sentiments (and the same level of eloquence).

On top of the public humiliation, Bamford had to pay a monetary settlement, which included the prize money he'd won through his twisted alliance with Forbes. Epic will donate the money to the Child's Play charity. We don't know the exact amount Bamford had to pay for the settlement, but his Fortnite series placement had earned him $10,000.

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The second Tomb Raider trilogy and the third entry in Aspyr's grand Tomb Raider and Soul Reaver restoration effort is now out. It's time to find out if the developers treated this divisive batch of Tomb Raider games well enough to see them soar to never-before-seen heights.

In my review of the I-III trilogy, I discussed the great, the good, and the lackluster about the remasters — which was very little, it turned out. I could afford to do that as the three games were very similar. This time, however, I'm covering the base elements that carried over from the previous remaster trilogy, then doing a necessarily separate look into each of these three distinct titles.

Tomb Raider IV-V-VI Remastered review (PC [Reviewed])
Developer: Aspyr, Crystal Dynamics
Publisher: Aspyr
Released: February 14, 2025
MSRP: $29.99

Aspyr's remaster standard

The original remaster trilogy set the gold standard for what a modern remaster should achieve. Everything looks better courtesy of new models, beautiful new high-res textures, and improved lighting. Don't like the cool new graphics? No problem, as a toggle allows players to go through the entirety of the games looking like they did upon release.

The games also benefitted from allowing players to enjoy the game through the original control settings, or via a revamped modern control scheme and a bunch of quality-of-life improvements such as indicators of interactable objects.

Most of these improvements carry over to the second remaster trilogy, with some exceptions in the third game.

Now let's look at what makes each of the new remasters interesting.

Tomb Raider Chronicles Remastered

Though I'm going over Chronicles first, I must remind you that this is actually the middle entry in the second trilogy — Tomb Raider 5, if you will. I'm doing that not to keep up with the disjointed spirit of the trilogy but because it makes sense. Chronicles is a rather simple game, and the one closest to the original trilogy in terms of structure.

Chronicles was born out of Core Design's necessity to release one Tomb Raider entry each year. 5 years in, you can see how tired everyone was. The result is not a cohesive narrative but a collage of four different gameplay and story segments glued together via the thinnest plot thread imaginable.

Chronicles' original release felt like a B-side collection that Eidos sold as a new album. Two of the four parts play like middle-of-the-road Tomb Raider adventures. The first one, Rome, is easily the blandest of the bunch — the first bizarre choice for a game with no narrative obligations. The second one takes place in Russia and features some pretty decent claustrophobia-inducing action as Lara ventures into a doomed war submarine.

The two final segments, however, are where the little magic Chronicles has to offer lies. The third one has you play as a young version of Lara, one who's yet to be allowed to use her famous dual pistols — or any sort of weapon, for that matter. This forces players to engage the game in a completely different way, and, even though something's missing — not just the guns, some more mechanics to make things more interesting, perhaps — it remains a valiant effort in tinkering with the formula.

The final segment is easily the most memorable one. It has Lara breaking into a high-tech complex and using primitive stealth to steal an artifact from her mentor. You feel the Metal Gear Solid influence, and it has players using cool tech gadgets to mess with the enemy's advanced security system. It absolutely doesn't play as well as MGS — or even as well as the best regular Tomb Raider levels — but it is the most entertainingly daring deviation from the formula inside the two original trilogies.

Naturally, it also oozes the most try-hard Nu-metal "cool" you can only find on an original release from the early '00s.

Chronicles wasn't a great game at the time of release, and likely won't gain any new fans just because it now features the quality-of-life improvements Aspyr had previously put in the original trilogy.

Now, regarding the visual remaster work itself, Aspyr either did an even better job than it previously had or did the same job but wielded even better results as the 5th game's slightly superior tech allowed for it. I believe the latter is the case, and I intend to prove it in my next segment through screenshots that I believe will absolutely blow your mind.

Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation

Tomb Raider 4 was the first one to attempt a bigger deviation from the norm, and the one that got better results out of it.

Aside from a short tutorial set in Cambodia, The Last Revelation takes place entirely in Egypt. This is by far the largest game in the series, so the solo setting could end up wearing out its welcome quickly – but that doesn't happen courtesy of varied environments coupled with some pretty original challenges. TLR features some of the best temples, traps, puzzles, and overall locations in the entire series. It's also the first game to make each level less of an episodic thing by having most of the game be a huge hub area. That decision worked to make the game's scope feel even larger, though the hub lacks the beautiful interconnectedness we would later see in Dark Souls, which might make the big picture feel emptier and more disjointed than it should be — like Dark Souls 2.

Still, while this trilogy is weaker than the original one, I'll die on a hill defending that The Last Revelation is better than Tomb Raider 3 — In fact, make it a pyramid.

Even though this is definitely an inferior set of games, this trilogy looks even better than the previous one. On top of the field-of-view upgrade over the original, the remaster offers a much-improved skybox and that does a lot for this game, especially. The sky in the first remastered trilogy looked heaps better than the one on the original games — like, the OG Tomb Raider release didn't even feature a sky box — but The Last Revelation will hit you with one of the most beautiful skyboxes I've ever seen in a game. It's a thing of beauty that not even the best screenshot will do justice to, since what truly sets them apart is the movement.

Those factors add up to allow TLR to pull off scope incredibly well:

That's the Great Pyramid level, both still the greatest achievement in the series scope-wise, and the most interestingly daunting level in the game. Staying true to TLR's theme of playing with the formula, the Great Pyramid does away with any key-finding or block-moving mechanics. It just wants players to jump their way near the top. The problem? players will have to carefully analyze every block they decide to jump to, as picking the wrong one will cause them to fall all the way to the beginning, or their deaths — also, there are traps.

The Great Pyramid level was impressive back in 1999 and is somehow even more impressive nowadays — not enough games enjoy this type of scope these days. The callous inventiveness of this level would likely make even the maddest Pharaoh from the sleaziest Egyptsploitation movie feel so seen.

With all that, it should come as no surprise that TLR proves the perfect match for the remaster's photo mode.

And that's where things take a tumble.

Tomb Raider: The Angel Of Darkness

In the weeks leading up to this release, I wrote a piece called "How do you even remaster Angel Of Darkness?". Long story short, it's about my skepticism towards the concept of fixing a house with no walls via one single beautiful coat of paint.

A game can suffer from various types of problems, and AOD's original release is a perfect collection of all the problems other games have ever suffered from. An extremely tense development cycle resulted in missing elements, new elements that didn't work, and neglect toward the series' staple elements that prevented them from keeping up with the times.

The remaster does a brave job of restoring a lot of cut content. Some of it is useful; some of it is nice to see. It also does a commendable job of making the original control scheme somehow work better than the modern one. Still, the game remains too clunky for its platforming, gunplay, and melee action to feel anything other than highly frustrating. Missing a difficult jump is something that can occur in a Tomb Raider game. AOD's clunky controls, however, combined with the game's still-awful camera and level design, leave Lara looking like an untrained clown forced to perform acrobatics in a professional circus.

On the visual side, this remaster is surprisingly weak. Though AOD is the only game in the two trilogies made for the then-superior PS2 hardware, it ends up being the worst-looking out of all the remasters. Dare to guess which of the screens below shows the "Original" visual mode and which shows the "Remastered" mode?

Don't fret it. Even I know the answer only because I know which filenames I gave each screenshot. By looking at Lara's model from the front, it's easy to spot which is which. If you're looking at her while you normally would during gameplay, it'll be a guessing game as the remaster seems to do some upgrades, but also some downgrades. AOD's control scheme is also more complex, so it got me to sometimes accidentally toggle between the old and new graphics modes without noticing.

Overall, though it features some serious improvements over gameplay that will feel great for fans, the AOD remaster falls short of anything meaningful enough to allow this game to keep up with the times.

Anyone trying to play AOD for the first time via the remaster will likely go through as much pain as we all did back in '03, and I believe preventing that was the bar this remaster really needed to clear. Unfortunately, The Angel Of Darkness remains a poor experience overall, though this is definitely the best way to play it so far.

If you're a true fan of the series and you're just looking for a more playable version of this game, I'd recommend this. If not, however, then maybe skip on this remaster.

All in all, I don't blame the developers for AOD's shortcomings. This one was just too broken to ever fix. I find the other two remasters more than enough to justify the trilogy's asking price if you are a fan. If you aren't, then you're better off getting into the series via the first trilogy, or by giving the 2013 reboot a shot.

The post Review: Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered appeared first on Destructoid.

Various video game industry professionals have confirmed the passing of Victor Antonov, Half-Life 2's art director and the mastermind behind some of gaming's most harrowing cityscapes.

Antonov was born in Bulgaria and later moved to the US, where he received training at the Art Center College of Design in California, which he described as one of the harshest schools in existence. Antonov joined Valve in 2000 as the art director of Half-Life 2 and states that its development process and working with Gabe Newell was the best learning experience he ever had.

Half-Life 2 featured a huge shift to a more realistic neo-steampunk world design from the more gamey hallways of the original Half-Life, and a lot of that was owed to Antonov. He's the architect of the inhospitable City 17, the contrastingly beautiful seascape of Half-Life 2's Lost Coast DLC, and the co-creator of City 17's most iconic element, the Combine Citadel.

Many former colleagues have taken to social media to celebrate the man's fantastic contribution to video games. Dishonored's director, Raphael Colantonio, shared the regret of having never expressed how much admiration he had for Antonov, who was also the architect behind the beautifully dystopian Dunwall.

After leaving Valve for Arkane to make Dishonored, Antonov worked as an additional art director for Wolfenstein: The New Order and stayed at Bethesda to serve as a consultant on titles such as Fallout 4, Dishonored 2, DOOM (2016), and Prey.

On top of his brilliant and visionary contributions to gaming, Viktor Antonov will be remembered by the people he has worked with as a unique and remarkable human being.

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A mysterious cult classic from 1996, Drowned God: Conspiracy Of The Ages, just appeared on Steam out of nowhere. Let's look into why this is one of the creepiest games ever made and how this specific choice of date probably makes this the most cursed game release of all time.

What's special about Drowned God: Conspiracy Of The Ages?

Drowned God: Conspiracy Of The Ages is a point-and-click adventure title in the vein of Myst and Riven. Though not as revolutionary as the games that inspired it, Drowned God enjoyed good reviews, featured gorgeously eerie art, and even earned some award nominations back in the day.

Drowned God's most remarkable aspect, however, is its plot and the way it tells it. Drowned God is the brainchild of Harry Horne, an English writer and cartoonist who went by the pen name Harry Horse.

Long before directors Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick started toying with the idea of a horror movie that was actually real for The Blair Witch Project, Horse had already forged a manuscript to claim it was a secret document written by 19th-century poet Richard Henry Horne. The manuscript was filled with wild prophecies and eerie conspiracies that he'd later use to fuel Drowned God: Conspiracy Of The Ages.

Another remarkable element of Drowned God is its heavy use of conspiracy theories in its plot long before they became one of the most common things on the Internet. The plot revolves around subjects like the Greys, Atlantis, and the Illuminati, but at its core resides a tale about how humankind has evolved due to the influence of a superior alien intelligence — so yeah, History Channel's Ancient Aliens.

But that's not the scariest part about Drowned God

The truly messed-up dark part is how Horse and his wife both turned up dead under grim and unclear circumstances back in 2007. Obviously, once a man who’s known for a game about conspiracy theories is found dead, people begin theorizing about conspiracies. Still, the case doesn't need any external factor to look utterly bizarre.

Both bodies were found with dozens of stab wounds on them, with the couple's pets dead and mauled around the house. The authorities declared Horse the author of the killings; the only doubt remaining being whether he died in consequence of a suicide pact he made with his terminally ill wife or if it was a rage-induced murder-suicide. With all that, just how bizarrely tone-deaf is it that Steam has chosen — or accidentally allowed — for the game to be released on Valentine's Day, of all days?

The post Steam celebrates Valentine’s Day with the most cursed release imaginable appeared first on Destructoid.

We know the real driving simulator for bringing a deeper understanding of racing to the masses, but also the almost unreal challenges needed to prove our newly-acquired skillset.

The challenges in Gran Turismo vary from easy to very difficult, and anyone who wants to achieve all trophies will need to get ready for these devilish tracks.

10. Laguna Seca Raceway

Laguna Seca was first introduced in Gran Turismo 2 and got a lot of deserved hype for being a real-life track, but it came with a devious twist.

While Laguna Seca is far from being the toughest track in the game, it introduced players to the "corkscrew," an iconic corner that plays like the closest thing a driving game can have to a jump scare — this thing will wreck anyone who enters it unprepared.

While it looks like any other turn, it features a very specific drop in elevation at a very sharp angle that you cannot anticipate just from looking at the layout. If you've ever played on this track, I'm sure you haven't forgotten about your first time in Laguna Seca.

9. Autodromo Nazionale Monza

One of the most dangerous tracks is the one you think you'll beat easily. Finishing Monza is a piece of cake. Winning a race there, however, not so much.

Monza is as simple as a serious GT track can be. One meant to have players use their vehicles' top speed at all times, and that's the tricky part.

Will you know when to stop and turn before it's too late? Or will you cower and waste your speed too early on? Timing and mental fortitude prove the true challenge here, and one you should not underestimate.

8. Deep Forest Raceway

Deep Forest is a deceptive high-speed track. It looks simple, but it's filled with intricate corners that will prove race-ending for players who underestimate them by going too fast.

Deep Forest has been a staple of the Gran Turismo series since the beginning, likely because it provides the perfect entry point to players looking for a bigger challenge, and it has been made even harder in Gran Turismo 7.

7. Trial Mountain Circuit

Trial Mountain has been present since the OG Gran Turismo and has always proven a great filter. Being an original track allowed the team at Polyphony Digital to do whatever the devs wanted, and the devs wanted a trap for anyone who dared to underestimate its corners.

Trial Mountain is a relatively short circuit, albeit one featuring a large amount of corners in quick succession that might cause players to cower and go too slow or to go so fast they won't be able to avoid a wall. Trial Mountain is one of gaming's most demanding teachers when it comes to the art of quick acceleration and de-acceleration.

6. Cote d'Azur

Cote d'Azur might look synonymous with the good life, but Gran Turismo's remake of the real-life track will be anything but nice if you enter it expecting a vacation.

While Cote d'Azur doesn't feature turns that, once missed, will have you driving through miles of sand to get back on track, it's an incredibly tight track filled with hard turns that'll force players to drive cautiously if they are to avoid bumping against a wall whenever they move the steering wheel.

5. Fuji International Speedway

By looking at its layout, newcomers will probably imagine the Fuji International Speedway to be a piece of cake — that's how it gets you. While this is not an incredibly challenging track per se, it's a highly punishing one, where each failed turn will earn you a hefty penalty. Never underestimate this track, as the rather simple first and second thirds hide one of the most devious turn sequences in the history of the series.

Still, if you respect Fuji International Speedway and don't spend too much time staring at Mount Fuji, you'll probably do just fine.

4. Circuito De La Sierra

This real-life circuit from Spain provides a rather interesting challenge. On the one hand, it's a high-speed circuit, one that seemingly doesn't demand much foresight to be put into its corners, but it comes with a few traps.

Circuito De La Sierra is one of the lengthiest tracks in the game, making it harder to memorize all its turns. It can easily lull players into a sense of safety, then hit them with turn 36, a very dangerous corner that might cause various accidents. Furthermore, be extremely wary of this track if you're driving a kart, as it's infamous for sending them flying at various points across the track.

3. Circuit de la Sarthe (Le Mans)

The real-life circuit behind the most famous racing competition in history is naturally one of the most challenging in Gran Turismo.

What makes La Sarthe a true challenge is the varied types of corners it features and the reliance it will require of players to beat it, considering how the game uses this technically demanding track for extremely long endurance races.

2. Suzuka Circuit

Suzuka Circuit is one of the most feared not just across the Gran Turismo community, but across many racing game communities, and with good reason. In short, the Suzuka Circuit is a varied collection of incredibly devious low- and high-speed corners that will harshly punish anyone who doesn't clear them perfectly.

Just staring at this thing's highly confusing layout is more than enough to scare players, and I wouldn't blame them.

1. Nürburgring Nordschleife

Nürburgring was Gran Turismo 4's most interesting addition to the series' track roster, and it is yet to be topped — both in its magnificence and difficulty.

It's a monstrously long track based on a real-world circuit that features every nasty trick in the book. Its incredible length makes it feel like a combination of an endurance test and a high-speed corner course. Nürburgring is naturally incredibly hard to memorize and even more so to master. With over 150 corners, it's no surprise this is the track you need to beat in time trial to get the Super License in GT4.

Conquer Nürburgring and you'll be capable of beating any other track in the game — perhaps even in real life.

The post The Hardest Gran Turismo Tracks, Ranked appeared first on Destructoid.