Headlines

The Trump tariff pendulum swings back to ‘everything’s normal’ from ‘everything’s broken’ again, with computers and other electronic devices now exempt from even the steep levies on China

As reported by The Guardian, The Trump administration has announced, through the United States Customs and Border Patrol, that smartphones, computers, and other electronic devices/components will be exempt from the US’s chaotic and destabilizing new tariff regime. That even includes the steepest 125% tariffs on China. I’ve lost track whether we’re doing the tariffs, not…

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Marathon alpha test—how and when to play

Bungie’s taking a crack at the extraction shooter genre and so can you when the Marathon alpha test opens up later this month. Official launch day for Marathon isn’t until September this year, but it will be running an alpha and beta test before that. From what we’ve played so far, it’s all that Bungie…

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Bungie says Marathon is about losing all your gear but still having a great time because you ‘come out with a good story’

Bungie is finally opening up about Marathon, its shiny new extraction shooter that’s been under wraps since 2023. This is the legendary FPS studio’s first new game in eight years, its first non-Destiny project since the Halo days, and a reimagining of a series that’s laid dormant since the ’90s, so the collective hobby is…

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Bungie finally shows off post-Destiny extraction shooter Marathon, which will launch in September with signups open for a playtest this month

After all the cryptic teasers, brutal layoffs, and a thrilling, somewhat messy, not-quite conclusion to the story of Destiny 2, Bungie today finally laid its cards on the table with a livestream gameplay reveal of Marathon, its upcoming extraction shooter that continues the story of its mind-bending Doom-era series of Mac FPSes. For the full…

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After thousands of hours in Destiny I had serious concerns about Bungie’s Marathon reboot, but now I’ve played it my worry isn’t whether or not it will be good

Here’s the easy part: Marathon is an extraction shooter in which crews of three runners race against the clock, using 3D-printed cybernetic bodies to strip resources from a mysteriously abandoned colony on Tau Ceti IV. In your way stand teams of rival runners, robot forces left behind by the colony’s owner, the Unified Earth Space…

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Bungie hired an Oscar winner to make Marathon’s stunning 8-minute short, but only real sci-fi nerds will spot the cult movie that inspired it

Bungie finished today’s Marathon gameplay reveal stream with a surprise treat: An eight-minute animation that sets the scene for the game’s lore, and specifically how brutal life is for runners seeking to make their fortune on Tau Ceti IV. Or, more specifically, their frequent, repeated deaths. I actually saw the short just over a week…

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Atomfall hits 2 million players and 500K cups of tea drunk

Survival-action shooter Atomfall has lured more than two million players into its post-nuclear-disaster Britain, and they’ve apparently drunk 500,000 cups of tea while there. Which is not enough. Those are rookie numbers in the British tea drinking game. We need those numbers up to like three per person just to make average. That’s 6,000,000 cups…

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Neil Newbon definitely wants to play Astarion again, and if whatever studio that makes Baldur’s Gate 4 recasts him, he’ll totally ‘hunt them down and gut them like a fish’

I already feel preemptively sorry for whatever studio ends up making Baldur’s Gate 4. Imagine watching Larian put out an RPG as massive, impressive, and flexible as Baldur’s Gate 3, and having the license holder Hasbro say “another one of those, please!”. Now, as if following in the footsteps of one of the greatest games…

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