The undeniable overlap between Pokemon and Palworld has dominated discussion around   the survival game's record-setting launch , and   with actual, straight-up Pokemon mods already   working to replace the lovable, legally distinct Pals, the game's budding modding community is drawing a line in the sand to hopefully ensure "that Nintendo's lawyers don't nuke all of us."   The Palworld Modding Community Discord, linked at the top of the newly formed and rapidly growing PalworldMods subreddit, is distancing itself from Pokemon mods for the sake of the mod scene as a whole. In a statement posted to Discord this morning, server admin Archery 100 writes: "Hey y'all, I'm sure many of you have been seeing all the content regarding the Pokemon mod for Palworld. While the memes and such are hilarious, the mod alone hosts a giant risk to the community and we'll need to take precautions so that Nintendo's lawyers don't nuke all of us with liti

  Think of your favorite video game character. Picture them in your head, remember their stories and the actors’ performances that made them stick with you long after you put the controller down. Maybe you’re thinking of Astarion from  Baldur’s Gate 3 , whose actor Neil Newbon recently won the  Best Performance award at the 2023 Game Awards . Or maybe your mind went to your favorite iteration of  Link from  The Legend of Zelda  franchise, who has stayed with you over the years with each new game in the series, despite never speaking. Remember that everything you love about that character was created by a team of writers, artists, and actors who combined their immense talents to bring that hero, villain, or companion to life. Nvidia, the company responsible for many of the graphics cards in high-end PCs, announced an AI-powered NPC generator called Omniverse Avatar Cloud Engine alongside AI tech company Convai  last year . It attempts to emulate the same writing, acting, and animation t

  While  Final Fantasy 7 Remake  remains mostly faithful to the original game, it still introduces a handful of new elements and characters along the way. Most of the  new characters  only play small roles but are able to stand out in big ways. The best example of this is Roche, an unhinged SOLDIER who performs ridiculous motorcycle acrobatics from the moment Cloud meets him. Roche fans are in luck as the character seems to make a comeback in  Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth . Square Enix’s latest trailer for  Rebirth  is short, clocking in at just one minute. But at the 20-second mark, you can see Roche riding his bright red motorcycle for a split second. Until this point, we’ve had no way to know whether Roche would ever appear again. Roche appears in Chapter 4 of  Remake  when Cloud and Avalanche break into a Shinra warehouse. However, we never see Roche again past that chapter aside from a small little cameo in the Episode Intermission DLC. Seeing confirmation that Roche will return is gre

  It's been a rocky start for Rocksteady's Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. After an   initial leak , the game was   officially announced by the studio   in August 2020, though this arrived in the wake of   sexual harassment accusations . Since then, the game was delayed, the studio's   co-founders left , and   reports of a battle pass   became a hot debate. Last year we finally got a look at the game in action during Sony's PlayStation State of Play, but the reaction was somewhat negative and   once again it was delayed . More recently, an alpha tech test took place in December but spoilery footage   swiftly leaked . "It's always disappointing when you have leaks. I think it's unavoidable in this day and age," Suicide Squad game director Axel Rydby told me at a preview event for the game. "The short answer is that it's a bummer, but at the same time, we know that the game is really good. And we know that it's a very unique game. Ev

  Activision has claimed that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is seeing record engagement levels compared to its predecessors. “Thank you for a historic launch,” it said on Tuesday. “Just two weeks in, MWIII has already set records with the highest engagement in the new Modern Warfare Trilogy!” According to the publisher, the game has seen “more hours per player overall” than 2019’s Modern Warfare and last year’s Modern Warfare 2. It also called the game’s Zombies mode “the most engaging third mode in MW history”, and said campaign players have put in “more time per player in MWIII then the previous two instalments”. What’s probably more telling than the game’s engagement stats is what hasn’t been announced – sales figures and revenue generated. Activision has traditionally been quick to publish sales figures when new series entries have performed relatively strongly, although Modern Warfare 3 has tough footsteps to follow in. Modern Warfare 2 topped $1 billion in sales in 10 days, maki

  Alan Wake II   is a fantastic game. It tells a twisted, serpentine story of paranormal murder, shifting realities and demonic possession, with two brooding investigators at its core. Developers at Remedy Entertainment are masters of mood and   Alan Wake II  is their latest showpiece, highlighting the studio’s eye for psychedelic terror and complex mysteries. This game is packed with monsters, ghosts, cults, Old Gods, rock operas and mind-bending perspective swaps. And on top of all that, its character models and set pieces are absolutely gorgeous. Even though it just came out at the end of October, it’s no surprise that   Alan Wake II   is nominated in multiple categories at The Game Awards, including Game of the Year. There’s a lot more than clue-gathering going on in  Alan Wake II . The game regularly mixes full-motion video with CGI in a way that doesn’t feel silly or contrived; set in a universe of broken realities, the visual styles bleed into each other like alternate timelines

  Great horror RPGs are more difficult to find than you might think. Despite clever innovations like the sanity stat, role-playing designers still tend to favor swords and sorcery over everything else ( just ask sci-fi fans ). That doesn’t mean there aren’t some perfectly scary RPGs out there, though. Whether they feature raw psychological horror or more traditional werewolves and vampires, there’s plenty of spookiness to be found in the role-playing genre. So on this, the spookiest day of the year, here are five great RPGs to play on Halloween Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines Troika was an RPG studio that was aptly named. Led by Fallout developers Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky, who would later go on to work on The Outer Worlds, Troika produced a trio of classic RPGs – Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, The Temple of Elemental Evil, and Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. Bloodlines was barely more than half a game when it launched, rife as it was with bugs and hidden con