July 2025

Ludicrous damage numbers are back in Diablo 4’s latest season and once again they’re so out of whack they can only be described as “infinite”. This time it’s sorcerers who can stack up so much bonus damage that the game spits out incomprehensible strings of digits when their attacks land. Monsters in the upper echelons…

Capcom has cancelled a developer presentation on performance and optimization in Monster Hunter Wilds that was planned to take place later this month at the 2025 Computer Entertainment Developers Conference, the Japanese equivalent to GDC (via Automaton Media). While Capcom hasn’t stated a reason behind the change, the lecture’s cancellation comes as Monster Hunter Wilds…

PC Gamer’s super-survivalist Chris Livingston called Vintage Story his “new survival game obsession” in 2024, noting that it “looks like Minecraft but is way more complex.” It wasn’t new new, having been in development since 2016, but it was new to him (and us), in part because it’s not available on Steam, and thus has…

Last month we reported on the somewhat-surprising news that an emulated Atari 2600 running the 1979 software Video Chess had “absolutely wrecked” an overconfident ChatGPT at the game of kings. Fans of schadenfreude rejoice, because Microsoft Copilot thought this was a chance to show its superiority to ChatGPT: And the Atari gave it a beating….

Last week, Krafton gutted the leadership level of Subnautica studio Unknown Worlds, and in a notably robust press release said that studio needed “renewed energy and leadership” to deliver the long-awaited Subnautica 2. The fan reaction was generally speaking one of total dismay, so much so that Unknown Worlds released an open letter over the…

I’m always very skeptical of attempts to tie particular themes in literature and film to some sort of ineffable national character. Surely nations are too strange, large and varied to be reduced to something quintessential and eternal. Surely they’re too much changeable beasts of history to possess any attribute that can endure and speak across…