Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Many moons ago in the early ’90s, I grew up with a copy of the Nintendo Power strategy guide for Ninja Gaiden II. That excellent tome contained bios on all of the game’s enemies, and I recall being entranced by one in particular: a gourd-like axe-wielder named Pumpkin Head.

Fast forward 35 years, and Pumpkin Head returns as one of the many villains in Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, a spirited revival of 2D Ninja Gaiden lovingly crafted by The Game Kitchen. More specifically, he shows up in the first stage to chuck an array of blades at new hero Kenji, who wears a blue costume that’s only a few degrees removed from series protagonist Ryu Hayabusa’s classic attire.

Frankly, Ragebound is the best that 2D Ninja Gaiden has ever been, sprinting a delicate tightrope between homaging the past and offering something new.

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What’s that I hear? Tinkly piano and the crashing of waves. Oh, it’s Hollow Knight: Silksong‘s first major expansion, which devs Team Cherry have just announced will be coasting up to the shore some point next year. It’s called Sea of Sorrow, and as such looks to contain plenty of somber staring into the splashy swell.

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Today sees the release of the Arc Raiders Cold Snap update, which douses the popular sci-fi extraction shooter in glittering snowfall. Ah, how gorgeous the flakes twinkling above the Spaceport gantries. How beautiful the frozen lakes of Dam Battlegrounds. It’s definitely a mite nippy all of a sudden, though, isn’t it? Best take shelter in that bunker before your fingers and toes turn Uncommon green and Rare blue.

Oh dear, there’s another player inside that bunker and she won’t let you in. Still, perhaps if you start shouting the patch notes through the door she’ll relent out of curiosity? Very good, let’s begin.

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I do not know if a black hole is something we should feed. Ostensibly they are things (anti-things? I’m not a black holeologist) that I would like to be far away from, given what I’ve heard. And yet here I am, having tinkered around with the demo for A Game About Feeding A Black Hole, which is a game about feeding a black hole, left with the feeling that this is not only a thing I can do, but find tranquility in.

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Truth be told, I haven’t played all that many games this year, who has the time! There was one I couldn’t miss out on, however, which was Silent Hill f, the first properly new entry in the series for many years, and one with some pedigree behind it, Higurashi and Umineko writer Ryukishi07. I ended up reviewing it for this here site, and liked it very much then, and perhaps more now. There were some great lessons to be learned, and in a recent interview, Ryukishi07 put some of those lessons into succinct, quite lovely words.

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Right, shall we try again? Marathon! A game that was technically meant to be out by now, but is very obviously not out right now, is now a game that has a release month (no date, Bungie don’t appear to be ready to share that one yet). That month is March, 2026, which I’m assuming has been chosen so that PlayStation manage to release one of their many promised but mostly cancelled live service games before the tax year wraps up.

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If this is a single flavour of genre that, if you put a gun to my head and forced me to pick a favourite, I would say is my favourite, it’s probably body horror. There are a seemingly infinite amount of ways to project images of devolving flesh and altered bodies into your eyeballs, many of which I find strangely relatable, occasionally comforting. Graft, the next game from the studio behind Battletech and the Shadowrun series, does none of that for me, but its first gameplay trailer successfully twisted my guts into a collection of pretzels, so it’s doing something right (though perhaps avoid the trailer if you’re quite squeamish).

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Who’s that I hear coming down my chimney? Why, it’s… Megabonk’s “Spooky” update? No, that doesn’t sound quite right to me either, and yet it is in fact the truth of this world. As you’ve probably already gathered by the name of the update, this is one that was meant to be out for Halloween, but developer Vedinad needed a touch more time for it.

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Stalker 2‘s getting a bunch of new quests just in time for the holidays, with an update dubbed Stories Untold sending you off to investigate a mysterious headache-inducing radio signal when it arrives tomorrow, December 16th. There’ll also be a new hub area in the Burnt Forest and a new suppressed rifle for you to fiddle with as you chill by the campfire.

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Embark have released the Arc Raiders Cold Snap update, which douses the popular extraction shooter in glittering snowfall. Ah, how gorgeous the flakes twinkling above the Spaceport gantries. How beautiful the frozen lakes of Dam Battlegrounds. It’s definitely a mite nippy all of a sudden, though, isn’t it? Best take shelter in that bunker before your fingers and toes turn Uncommon green and Rare blue.

Oh dear, there’s another player inside that bunker and she won’t let you in. Still, perhaps if you start shouting the patch notes through the door she’ll relent out of curiosity? Very good, let’s begin.

Read more