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2023 has been Warhammer 40,000: Darktide's strongest year, and the game will end it on a high note with yet more content. Darktide, of course, finally came out on Xbox in 2023, and launched its biggest update ever.

That patch overhauled the class system, added new content, streamlined certain elements, and improved performance. But Fatshark wasn't done.

Sometime afterwards, the developer announced The Traitor Curse, a two-part update that would itself bring new content, add features, and more. The first part of the The Traitor Curse came out on November 14, and the second part arrives sometime this month.

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A date has finally been revealed for the Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer. Fans won't have to wait long, as it's set to drop on December 5. That's just 4 days until we get our first look at GTA 6 folks.

The news was broken via the official Rockstar Games Twitter account, which posted a simple image featuring the Rockstar logo and the reveal date. A tiny tease, but enough to set the internet on fire.

For those eager to watch it as soon as it goes live, it's is set to release at 9AM ET. That's 6AM PT, and 3PM CET. As such, American fans will have to get up nice and early to catch it as it goes up, whereas us Europeans can thankfully just tab out from work to give it a watch.

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With Street Fighter 6, Capcom nailed it. The mood of the series, the visual look, the balance. Its online modes are sublime, and the company finally found a template that works for single-player. It’s one of the best games of 2023. But before its release year is out, Capcom is threatening that reputation with silly over-the-top monetization.

To be entirely fair, it’s important to note that Street Fighter 6 has been monetized with optional cosmetic items since its release. This has included things like gear for your player-created avatar character, stickers and other add-ons for photo mode or to adorn your online player profile, costume colors for the main cast, and regularly rotating ‘Fighting Pass’ content that lets you unlock premium rewards through playing.

All of this has been relatively fairly priced and pitched. It costs you extra, but at no point over the last six months have I felt like Capcom’s been gouging me, and I’ve been all-in on every battle pass and the like.

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The game line-up for Evo Japan 2024 has been revealed, and it includes a nice mix of both expected favourites and some of 2024's most anticipated fighting games. This will likely be the first major international tournament for Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, Under Night In-Birth II Sys:Celes, and Tekken 8.

These new releases will star alongside some beloved favourites including Street Fighter 6, Guilty Gear; Strive, King of Fighters 15, and Street Fighter 3: Third Strike. That last one may snatch your attention as the odd one out, but it makes sense for Evo Japan. Japan, after all, is a country where the game still has a ripe competitive environment, with exceptionally exciting events still taking place there.

Evo Japan - the Eastern spin-off of the largest fighting game tournament in the world, Evo - first kicked off back in 2018. While it took a break during the Covid-19 lockdowns, it has recently made a grand return as a massive stage for communties and players unable to make the expensive trip over to Las Vegas for Evo. It's historically been a great place for high-end gameplay across the featured games, as well as a nice way of spotlighting Eastern talent.

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Valve has released Steam Link on Meta Quest 2, 3, and Pro headsets. Steam Link is a free app that lets you stream games from your Steam library to another device. In this case, you'll be able to stream SteamVR games to your Meta Quest headset wirelessly.

While you previously could do that, you needed to jump through a bunch of hoops to get it going - no more!

While anyone can download the Steam Link app on their Meta Quest headset, there are few things to keep in mind. First, you'll need to have your PC connected to your router through a wired connection. The router also needs to be able to support at least a 5GHz WiFi connection for the headset.

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It's clear Diablo 4's Season of Blood has been a success, both thanks to the many quality of life, wide-reaching changes it brought to the game, as well as the new content itself.

We may be deep into Season 2, but Blizzard is already sharing some tiny details about its broad goals for Season 3, as well as a few specifics.

One of Season 2's bigger additions is the Blood Harvest event. Blood Harvest is a recurring in-game event that covers a certain portion of the map. It ties into the season's theme of vampirism and its effects on Sanctuary, but it's effectively also a version of the existing Helltide event.

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Batman Arkham Knight arrives on Switch today as part of Batman: Arkham Trilogy and its performance has already been put under the microscope. While the overall picture seems okay-ish, you might want to get ready to spend lots of time on foot.

Following its delay from the originally targeted date of October 13 to December 1, the Trilogy was always going to have a spotlight (possibly one with a bat-signal imprinted on it) trained on how well it renders superhero action on Nintendo’s handheld. Especially since the announcement of that delay said: “More time is needed to bring players the best possible experience on Nintendo Switch.”

Now, videos showing off how Arkham Knight runs have begun to pop up on the net and the verdict is well…mixed. YouTuber Cycu1 has posted a couple of these, with one being designed to show off how the graphics compare to the PS4 version of the game, while the other concentrates on testing how well it sticks to the 30 frames per second mark it aims for.

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Pedro Eustache - better known as 'Flute Guy' by watchers of The Game Awards - has announced that he'll be making a return to this year's show following a much-loved performance back in 2022.

Teasing the appearance via his personal Twitter, Eustache whipped out a slick flute solo before declaring: "Hi! Flute Guy here. A little secret - they called me back for The Game Awards this year! Yeah! So see you next week there." This is likely as part of the annual live musical performance, which features all of the games nominated for best score.

Unsure what all the hype was about? Well, during The Game Awards 2022, Eustache somewhat stole the show in an already lovely live performance with his bombastic and energetic style of playing. This was quickly and widely picked up by spectators at home, who chiseled the Flute Guy moniker into his Eustache's professional career forevermore.

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Baldur's Gate 3’s fifth patch came with a massive haul of updates and additions, but perhaps the one that’s got players most excited is a tiny new line that makes an Imp named Bing Bong canon.

Alongside fixing Astarion’s kisses and arming you with two new game modes - Custom Mode and Honour Mode - to try, the patch includes a playable epilogue set six months after the events of the game conclude. During this sequence, which takes the form of a final shindig at camp with your party, players have discovered that Larian has taken the opportunity to add in a line referencing a figure the game’s community can’t get enough of.

As spotted by a couple of players across Reddit and Twitter (thanks TheGamer), chatting with Shadowheart at the gathering will see her name drop a certain Bing Bong during a recap of the shenanigans she’s gotten up to with your Tav in the last little bit. “Well, there’s the visit to the House of the Moon, fending off Sharran assassins, that stray Imp that joined us - Bing Bong wasn’t it?”, everyone’s favourite princess muses, adding: “We’ve squeezed a lot [in] - and I’m glad I got to share it with you.”

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Video game comedy is as old as the medium itself. There were text adventures running on mainframes over forty years ago that were packed with gags, and even sophisticated meta humour about fantasy tropes. Ask any Old Git to name a genuinely funny video game and they’ll probably cite Monkey Island, maybe Conker’s Bad Fur Day, or perhaps The Stanley Parable if they’re a connoisseur. There are countless others. Half of them involve Tim Schafer in some capacity.

The vast majority of gags in video games are delivered in a way that is borrowed from other mediums. That is to say, you either read them or hear them spoken aloud. Jokes are often delivered in parallel with gameplay, but seldom as an expression of the medium’s fundamentals. Lethal Company may be one of the most pure expressions of comedy in gaming that has ever been conceived. It has excellent comic timing and a capacity for ambulatory based humour that compares to the likes of Rowan Atkinson or John Cleese.

And make no mistake: it’s designed to be funny in some very specific and crafty ways that go way beyond the emergent fun time laughs that can arise from any kind of multiplayer session with friends. Check out our latest video series above, in which we fail repeatedly to meet our sales quota, but are too busy laughing at the various comic misadventures, silly walks, and absurdist situations (all this effort for a brass bell? Seriously?) to really be all that cut up about our shocking lack of progress.

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A free update is available today for Payday 3, and it reimagines two classic heists: Cook Off and Turbid Station.

The Legacy Heists allow you to relive these classic missions.

Cook-Off and Turbid Station (Murky Station in Payday 2) have been reimagined to fit the recently launched title and to improve how the heist works with the new feature set of Payday 3.

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All signs point to superhero fatigue becoming more and more real with every passing month, but Amazon’s two relatively recent comic book properties have been doing great, actually.

We’re talking about The Boys and Invincible, both of which are more mature takes on the genre and have enchanted millions of viewers worldwide. The uniqueness of the former might be starting to wear off though.

Variety revealed on Tuesday that The Boys is set to expand its universe once again, this time with a spinoff series set in Mexico, after the huge success of Gen V, which was essentially season 3.5 of The Boys (not a knock against its quality, which was fine). Sources say that Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer (Blue Beetle) is attached to write, with Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal joining the regular producers behind The Boys universe as executive producers, under their La Corriente del Golfo banner. Moreover, they could have roles in the show if their schedules work out.

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Larian Studios has released Patch 5 for Baldur's Gate 3, and it's rather large.

The update clocks in at roughly 30GB and requires approximately 130GB of free space to install.

If it comes to pass that you do not have enough space to install the update, Larian suggests uninstalling Baldur's Gate 3 and re-downloading the patched version.

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Last year's Chainsaw Man anime was a little bit divisive amongst fans. Some didn't like the Western cinema influences, others felt it needed to be more chaotic and colourful, but I personally disagree on both counts. One thing most people do seem to agree on, at the very least, is that the soundtrack is killer. I'm not talking about the infinitely repeatable opening, and the 12 different endings to be clear here, I'm talking about the show's score from composer Kensuke Ushio. It's sometimes serene, at other times frenetic, often offering an otherworldly feel that feels fitting for a show set in an alternate realities 1990's. And if like me, you're a lover of Chainsaw Man's OST, I really think you should check out Boogiepop and Others, a show that just so happens to feature Ushio's handiwork.

It's a little hard to pin down just what Boogiepop and Others is about. On the one hand it's about urban legends, often revolving around the titular Boogiepop. On the other, there are characters who are clones, some that have strange powers or abilities, alongside plot threads involving mysterious, secret agencies, as well as aliens. The thing that's safe to say about Boogiepop, is that it's odd, but with a name like that you could probably guess that already.

The 2019 anime is based on a 1998 light novel of the same, though it borrows stories from various subsequent books. Being based on a piece of media from the 90s, despite releasing right at the end of the 2010s, it manages to retain that decidedly 90s feel to it that a lot of anime doesn't have these days. I think it has a lot to do with the show's use of colours and contrast that clinches that feeling, going for a more realistic palette over anything particularly eccentric.

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Yorkshire Tea fans, it's finally time to blend your love of a good cuppa with gaming, as the iconic brand has a pair of controllers on offer.

Do you have a spare £150-£300 and fancy a brand new PlayStation and or Xbox controller? Can't stop drinking tea? Yorkshire Tea showed off a pair of snazzy looking controllers yesterday in the style of the tea brand's boxes designed by POPeART, and I've honestly never seen a stranger controller (yes, I'm including Resident Evil 4's chainsaw controller). Each one costs £150, which is pretty steep even by the PS5 and Xbox's standards, though Yorkshire Tea is aware they'll be out of most people's price range. Typically a DualSense or Xbox Series controller will set you back around £60, so they're more than twice as expensive.

"Sorry they're not cheaper!" reads a tweet from the official Yorkshire Tea Twitter account. "Believe it or not we're not making money on these. It's a small run of a Popeart custom design which we originally pondered just making one of as a marketing thing, and then thought: what if we actually make them available to buy?

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Coming out of The Marvels, the vast majority of fans agreed that Iman Vellani’s portrayal of Kamala Khan aka Ms. Marvel continued to be one of the brightest spots of the post-Infinity Saga Marvel Cinematic Universe. Now, it appears her charming performances have earned her another lead role which was hard to predict.

She recently talked to The Direct and was asked about her time working on Marvel Zombies, Marvel Studios’ first TV-MA (television's R-rating equivalent) animated project. News on this front had been scarce following the reveal of the show’s leading characters last year, so it was about time someone involved broke the silence.

Unsurprisingly, Vellani said the show was “amazing” to work on, but later revealed something more interesting: “And Kamala is kind of the center of the show. They described it to me, it's like, 'She's basically the Frodo of the story.' And I was like, 'That's amazing.'”

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Resident Evil 4 Remake fans craving those first person scares will be happy to hear the game's highly anticipated VR Mode is out next week.

Announced back in February, before the game even came out, Resident Evil 4 Remake's VR Mode is finally coming to PlayStation VR2 next week, December 8. The news was announced over on the PlayStation Blog, reminding us all that this new mode will be completely free, as well as offering a bit of a preview of how it will look. The launch trailer, which you can see below, shows the player taking on Leon S. Kennedy's first-person perspective, which is a little funny when you think about how the original game's third-person camera was hugely influential on games as a whole.

It has more of what you love; dual wielding pistols, exciting mine cart chase sequences, and chainsaw parries. And yes, of course all of the puzzles are from a first-person perspective too. Resident Evil 4 might not have as many scares as something like Resident Evil 7, but it still looks like it's shaping up to be a solid VR experience - and, best of all, those of you that have a PSVR2 will be able to try before you buy, as the VR Mode is getting a demo that doesn't require the full games. According to the blog post, this demo goes up to the end of the opening village section, and features the shooting range too.

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With all the Marvel Studios drama going on recently, chances are you don’t even remember a Thunderbolts movie is supposed to cap Phase 5 off. Monarch: Legacy of Monsters star Wyatt Russell is quite excited about it though.

At 92NY on Wednesday, Kurt and Wyatt Rusell sat down to talk about the ongoing Apple TV+ series which bridges the gap between Godzilla (2014) and Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) while also expanding the mythology of the entire MonsterVerse. But of course, since Wyatt is now part of the MCU after his part as John Walker aka US Agent in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, the conversation eventually led to Thunderbolts tidbits.

“I have confidence it’s gonna be good,” he said before also acknowledging the negative buzz surrounding Marvel Studios right now: “I know everybody is sort of on this Marvel train right now of things not going so well.” Indeed, 2022 already signaled a decline in interest, but it wasn’t until early 2023 - with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania - that things truly started to go downhill. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Loki have certainly been winners, but we can’t say the same about Secret Invasion and The Marvels. Both in cinemas and on Disney Plus, problems abound, and the Marvel machine is struggling to adapt.

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The Twitch streamer who conquered Elden Ring using their brain earlier this year is now using similar tech to take one a modded mage playthrough of Skyrim VR.

For those who haven’t had the pleasure of stumbling across a clip from one of Perrikaryal’s streams before, they’ve become known for taking on a whole host of games using a brain imaging device called an EEG. This handy gadget allows them to control the action using the electrical activity in their brain, which the EEG’s sensors pick up and allow to be used in a similar manner to the traditional controller inputs.

As alluded to, they’ve already beaten Elden Ring in this fashion, but the latest challenge they’ve decided to take on is arguably even more difficult and definitely more soul destroying. They’re taking on a modded mage playthrough of Skyrim while using VR in addition to the brain tech.

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Amazon has announced Prime Gaming content for December.

The big game for the month is Deathloop, making its debut on the service on December 7. Previously, skins and more in-game items were made available for the game but this is the first instance of the game arriving on Prime.

Other games for December include Akka Arrh, Aground, and SeaOrama: World of Shipping, all releasing on December 14. These games will be followed by Kombinera on December 21, and on December 28, A Tiny Sticker Tale and Asteroids: Recharged will become available.

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