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Things aren’t sounding so hot over at Grand Theft Auto 6 developer Rockstar right now. Yesterday, a report came out from Bloomberg (paywalled) that a number of employees have been allegedly fired, with the UK’s IWGB Game Workers Union claiming it was an act of union busting. Two-Two, Rockstar’s parent company, have denied this allegation.
Sure looks like Arc Raiders is off to an alright start, ‘ey? Success doesn’t mean there’s any rest for the wicked, i.e. a live service game, however. Just yesterday, only a day after launching, developer Embark Studios revealed their Arc Raiders roadmap for the rest of 2025. It’s light on details, but does offer a good outline for what you can expect at the very least.
It’s often pointless to wish a game series would come back once it’s been thrown on the great pile of dormant names. I try, and regularly fail, to stop myself yearning too forlornly for a new Midnight Club, a new Motorstorm, or a new Burnout.
Mostly because it means that when a game like Wreckreation comes along, there’s a temptation to go into it with lofty expectations inflated by a rose-tinted longing for something the game more than likely isn’t. Despite drawing plenty of elements from the anarchic arcade racer and the Criterion credentials of devs Three Fields Entertainment, Wreckreation isn’t Burnout, coming home after all these years getting takedowns in the wilderness.
Europa Universalis 5 is a forever game. Insofar as you might be able to play this grand historical strategy forever, but also because – my god – it takes forever to play. After a mere 45 hours of conniving, trading, battling, and scratching my head at menus, I have just about scraped my way through 150 years of Neapolitan history. I have yet to come across a single pizza with buffalo mozzarella on it, but there are approximately 250 years left to find one. This is the blessing and curse of a typically dense playthrough of Europa Universalis. Paradox’s trademark blend of intricate geopolitical clockwork, hands-tied confusion, and “one more year” compulsion is all here. You just need to set aside a few centuries to enjoy it.
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Brethren! Cease your prattling and pick up your GameCube controllers. It is time to start playing Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem at an unhealthy velocity, while funding lawyers to uphold the legal rights of LGBTQ+ people in the USA.
You head down to the pet shelter in Fortnite. It’s full. Woof, says one invincible banana dog, I barely see my owner because they wanted me to be a banana dog who regularly changes colour. Alas, this cannot be, so they’ve had to spend their V-Bucks on a small army of invincible banana dogs in a variety of hues. You try to cheer up this Sidekick by telling them that their owner can at least change their name and hat at any time. It provides little comfort.
Existing PC vampires of Seattle, you should now have access to the expanded wardrobe Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 devs Paradox and The Chinese Room have rolled out for Halloween. The free update’s fresh hairstyles, makeup styles, and eye colours were only on offer to folks who started fresh saves initially, something that it turns out wasn’t intentional.
Onion Games have released the English language version of Stray Children, a “bittersweet, fairytale RPG” I hadn’t heard of till Oisin wrote it up in June, and then became very excited about.
Created by Onion Games, the developers of Moon: Remix RPG Adventure, Stray Children takes place in a world of kids besieged by monstrous adults. The kids live in a stronghold, while the adults, aka Olders, roam the landscapes beyond, each “carrying the heavy load of their own inadequacies, self-doubt, and all of the grievances that grown-ups gather”.
Apex Legends is rolling out its Season 27 update next Tuesday, November 4th, and RPS has been furnished with an overview of its meatiest rejigging work. I haven’t playtested this megapatch so unlike with Season 25, I can’t say from experience how any of these changes will get you killed. Still, since it tweaks my favourite map, my favourite playable Legend, and my favourite hovercar, I feel uniquely qualified to declare without evidence whether they’re good or not.
I’m not that keen on extraction games like Arc Raiders. The last two I played at length were Tom Clancy’s The Division (specifically its Survival mode), which features possibly my favourite videogame piles of trash, and Hunt: Showdown, which features possibly my favourite (i.e. the absolute worst) videogame spider. I just don’t see the point of a loot commute, even with other players around to add spice. Still, I do think I’ll spend more time in Arc – out now on Steam, EGS and the Microsoft Store – after losing a few hours to a pre-release multiplayer session last week. Amongst other things, it has an enticing buried city and a neat sliding mechanic.
