Steam’s latest Next Fest has begun, and we’re jumping in head first like we did last time by trying out a few demos to see what the future of strategy games has for us. Last time we brought you some early thoughts on Wartales, and now we’re kicking things off with a brief look at Starship Troopers: Terran Command.

I’m a massive fan of the original '90s film (although the book was a bit highbrow for my sci-fi sensibilities), but even I recognise that its under-utilisation as an IP is mainly down to how unique that same film was. The bombastic score, the over-the-top characters and action, the fact that it didn’t take itself too seriously… It's no wonder that subsequent attempts to bottle that magic have kind of fallen flat.

Enter Terran Command. It’s the first Starship Troopers videogame since the 2012 mobile spin-off Starship Troopers: Invasion - Mobile Infantry, and before that there was the 2005 game simply called Starship Troopers. It’s published by Slitherine and created by the same studio that brought you hardcore WWII war game Order of Battle. Let’s set expectations early: based on the demo, this is easily the best Starship Troopers game ever, but that bar is pretty low, and this still may not tick all of the boxes.

You're probably well aware by now that New World, Amazon Games' just-launched fantasy MMORPG, is very popular. Since its September 28 debut, it's seen enormous player counts and some pretty hefty in-game queues as a result, with congestion-easing solutions like server transfers on the way soon. Now, the New World team has announced that it's bringing in some more changes to help address congestion from another angle - this time by cracking down on AFKing.

New World already has a built-in AFK timer which boots players out of the game after a period of inactivity. It's not clear how long this is set at, exactly, though sites like RPS report that it's thought to be around 25 minutes. However, in a new forum post, community manager HardcoreHenry reveals that the team has "seen a lot of frustration around individuals who may be artificially remaining active enough in servers to avoid the automatic AFK mitigation that is built into New World".

The community manager says that the MMO's devs "certainly agree that this is not acceptable behaviour, especially when there are droves of individuals who are waiting patiently to get into a world", and explains that the team has put together a new solution to "identify and action against bad faith AFK players".

The end of the 2021 League of Legends patch cycle nears, LoL fans. League of Legends patch 11.19 - the second of the MOBA game's two pre-Worlds patches - has left the testing grounds for (live) pastures new, and it's now 11.20's turn to make its debut on the PBE for a fortnight of tinkering and test-driving. So, let's dig into it and see what's coming.

So far, we've got some suitably spooky new skins coming up, just in time for Halloween. There are six new styles from League's Bewitching alternate universe line this patch, with lucky champions Fiora, Nami, Poppy, Syndra, and Yuumi getting their own skins, while Morgana gets her Prestige Edition Bewitching skin with 11.20. You can check these out in the New Champion Skins section below to see the splashes and skins in action.

As for balance changes, this patch we've got gameplay updates for Amumu, Darius, Shen, Hecarim, and - well - a good ol' handful of champs. We also know that Rengar will be hanging about for some more testing, though there's no set release patch for his changes just yet. You can catch the latest details on all these changes in the relevant sections below.

The first PC-specific details for Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy game - which is out later this month - have been revealed by Square Enix. The game will support all the latest Nvidia RTX enhancements - but most interestingly, even if users don't have a card with these features, they can stream with all of them on GeForce Now instead.

Guardians of the Galaxy is out on October 26 and has been pretty well covered in general, such as the fact that it's a more linear action-adventure rather than an epic spacefaring RPG like Mass Effect and that it won't have any significant DLC or especially microtransactions.

However, one thing that hasn't really been mentioned so far by Square Enix is what Guardians of the Galaxy will be like on PC. The publisher has finally released a new tech trailer, as part of this weekend's Tokyo Game Show, that highlights all the significant graphical features PC users can enjoy - even if Square Enix still hasn't released the minimum and recommended specs for the game.

According to a new report, Konami is looking to revive three of its major franchises - Castlevania, Metal Gear Solid, and Silent Hill - with help from external developers. These would include a "reimagining" of Castlevania series and a Metal Gear Solid 3 remake.

This is all according to a report by VGC, which says that multiple "publishing sources" at Konami have told them of various projects in the words. Rumours of new Silent Hill games have been doing the rounds for a while now, for starters, with The Medium developer Bloober Team specifically not denying that it was working on a Silent Hill title.

However, it's the other two franchises that are more interesting. VGC's sources report a "reimagining" of Castlevania is on the way from Konami itself, with support from local Japanese studios. The Castlevania Advance Collection just launched a couple of weeks ago, so hopefully that's an indication that Konami is more open to reviving the franchise - as the last proper Castlevania, Lords of Shadow 2, was way back in 2014.

The release of Half-Life: Alyx back in March 2020 was heralded as a great step forward for VR games, but - due to cost, space, or other reasons - a lot of people couldn't play it, which is sad considering it's the first Half-Life game from Valve since 2007.

There have been a number of attempts to create a VR-free mod for Half-Life: Alyx, but all have been a little janky and not much fun - if they have worked at all. However, while it's not out yet, the simply titled Half-Life: Alyx No VR Mod (thanks DSOGaming) has been showing off the best progress - and this week's update is the most startling yet.

It's the first progress update in several months, but the mod is coming together nicely - to the point where, if someone wasn't told Half-Life: Alyx was a VR game they wouldn't even notice. There's no word yet on how the game controls without the mod, but it seems to offer simple mouse and keyboard controls - with a twist.

Dota 2's biggest event of the year, The International 2021, kicks off in just a few days - but it's losing a major part of the show. Valve has announced that the show will no longer have a live audience and all ticket sales have either been refunded or cancelled "to ensure the safety" of everyone involved.

The International 2021 will take place in Bucharest, Romania from October 7 until October 17. The show in 2020 was cancelled due to the pandemic and the 2021 event was previously meant to run in August in Sweden - until Swedish officials decided that eSports didn't count as an "elite sporting event" so wouldn't offer visas.

The relocated event in Romania this month is still going ahead, but Valve has confirmed that members of the general public will not be able to attend in person - due to "the continued rise of Covid rates in Romania" and "new local restrictions in Bucharest" that might put the safety of attendees at risk.

Looking for Genshin Impact codes? MiHoYo’s charming open-world game is notoriously addictive, and if you’re anything like us, you’re constantly on the lookout for more Genshin Impact primogems and other goodies.

Gathering currency in Genshin Impact can be quite the grind - while you can earn mora and primogems by completing quests such as daily commissions, an injection of extra funds will always be gratefully received. Fortunately, the developers occasionally send out free gifts in the form of codes that can be redeemed online.

These Genshin Impact codes are released periodically. They frequently appear in MiHoYo’s special programs that reveal information about future updates coming to the game soon, but are also released to celebrate milestones or to coincide with promotional events. Most codes also only work for a limited time - so it’s a good idea to redeem them as soon as possible in case you miss out. Codes can only be redeemed once per account. Here are all the current Genshin Impact codes for October 2021, and how to redeem them.

Illfonic, the developer behind Friday the 13th: The Game and Predator: Hunting Grounds, is apparently working on a Ghostbusters game as its next big franchise title. The most recent game in the franchise was 2019's Ghostbusters: The Videogame - Remastered, and that was a re-release of a ten-year-old game - so fans are long overdue for a new one.

Considering the enduring popularity of the Ghostbusters franchise, to say nothing of the new movie Ghostbusters: Afterlife out this year, it's surprising there haven't been more games released. The 2016 movie got a terrible tie-in, Planet Coaster got Ghostbusters DLC, and we're still expecting the Fortnite crossover. Out of all of them, Ghostbusters: The Videogame is still the only worthwhile full game release.

Hopefully that'll change, as it looks like Illfonic is working on a Ghostbusters game - which will presumably be multiplayer if its previous games are anything to go by. This news comes thanks to Illfonic's co-founder Raphael Saadiq, who let it slip during a recent podcast interview.

The community around FromSoftware games is voraciously curious. Soulsborne games are pulled apart and inspected for clues about their ambiguous lore. Cut content is reinstated and character models are explored from new, sometimes horrifying perspectives - mostly in the pursuit of knowledge, sometimes to highlight the incredible craftsmanship that goes into making games, and, every now and then, just for a laugh.

There are several figures who do this noble work, but few have been as impactful as Zullie the Witch. Zullie's channel offers a peek behind the curtain across the series, showing where enemies hide before spawning in, poring over character models from angles you can never view in-game, and unmasking mysterious NPCs. Occasionally they'll also release a horror show of monster close-ups, or reveal absurd bugs like Frampt's face turning into pure nightmare fuel when you jump-attack them. There's never any voiceover, just a few minutes of Cheat Engine experiments with some jaunty background music.

We spoke with Zullie about their mysterious name, how they got started messing around with Dark Souls game files, and their plans for the Elden Ring release date.

One of the most popular mods for Warcraft 3 back in the day was Legion TD, a fantastic tower defence game that was second only to the all-powerful DOTA in terms of popularity. Now, 12 years and over seven years of full development later, standalone sequel Legion TD 2 has launched on Steam.

The popular Warcraft 3 mod Legion TD released around 2009 and inspired both StarCraft II’s Squadron TD and Dota 2’s Legion TD: Reborn - and also possibly autobattlers like Teamfight Tactics and DOTA Underlords. Back in 2016 developer AutoAttack Games - including the same two-person team that made the original, along with a couple of new developers - launched a successful Kickstarter to make a standalone sequel.

After an extended period in early access, Legion TD 2 has finally got its full release on Steam - and it's been rated 'Mostly Positive' from around 2000 reviews. The tower defence title features a single-player campaign alongside PvP multiplayer with 2v2 and 4v4 matches, including eight player parties.

With a peak concurrent player count that shows no signs of slowing down, it's safe to say Amazon's New World is making waves. But before you brave the long queue times or even begin to browse the server list, consider adjusting New World's settings so you can squeeze every last frame from your gaming PC when you finally step foot in Aeternum.

On the surface, New World's system requirements don't ask for much. In fact, Amazon recommends a decade old Intel gaming CPU or first generation AMD Ryzen processor, accompanied by a seven-year-old graphics card to scratch your 60fps itch at HD. Although this sounds like a low barrier to entry, this is an MMO and you need to prepare for how busy the settlements can sometimes get - especially as there's no shortage of people knocking at the door to get in and worlds are constantly full to the brim with players.

Since you don't have Nvidia DLSS or AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution to help with the overhead, you'll need to turn to the myriad of options at your fingertips if you want to avoid any major dips at a decent resolution.

We're still a long way from the release of The Elder Scrolls VI but in the meantime, The Elder Scrolls Online is in the middle of wrapping up its year-long Gates of Oblivion event - and is preparing for the release of its next expansion, Deadlands, which will launch on November 1.

It was revealed prior to the release of the Gates of Oblivion expansion earlier this year that players would spend "a lot of time" in the Deadlands towards the end of the event - which we now know was because Bethesda was planning to follow up the Oblivion chapter with a proper Deadlands expansion at the end of 2021.

As revealed in the year-end stream to Gates of Oblivion, The Elder Scrolls Online: Deadlands will launch on November 1 - with the free Deadlands Prologue chapter being available now. Simply grab the quest "An Apocalyptic Situation" for free from the in-game Crown Store and find out more about Mehrunes Dagon's latest nefarious scheme, which leads directly into next month's expansion.

Update - October 4, 2021: This story has been amended to reflect that the news was announced by publisher FNCPR Ltd, not Tanglewood Games.

No Time To Die - the last James Bond movie starring Daniel Craig - is out now in UK cinemas, and Bond's creator Ian Fleming is appearing in a game for the first time. Curiously enough, though, it'll be in next year's John Carter: Warlord of Mars rather than a Bond game - despite Fleming having no connection to the franchise.

John Carter: Warlord of Mars was announced earlier this year as a first-person action-adventure game and was supposed to get a Kickstarter in April, but that seems to have been postponed. The game is reportedly set to be released in May 2022.

The game will be mostly set on Mars, but will also contain opening sections set during World War 2 - as the story has been updated so John Carter is now a captain during WW2 rather than the American Civil War, and gets sent to Mars/Barsoom thanks to an experiment by the Nazis. The man in charge of the operation, publisher FNCPR Ltd has revealed, is none other than James Bond's creator Ian Fleming.

It's Halloween month and a new indie horror game has been announced, and it's something a little different - and terrifying. Choo-Choo Charles from Two Star Games is a game about maintaining a train and using it to fight an evil murderous clown-faced spider-train that wants to eat you. It's Stephen King's It meets Thomas the Tank Engine.

Every time a game gets released with mod support, the first thing that gets added is a Thomas the Tank Engine mod - it's like a running joke at this point, but some are scarier than others. Two Star seems to have taken this murderous train concept and mixed it with the final clown-spider form of Pennywise in Stephen King's It - with a bit of another lesser-known King monster in there too, Charlie The Choo-Choo.

As for the game itself - which is available to wishlist on Steam with a release date of Q1 2022 - Choo-Choo Charles is a first-person horror game set on an island where players are continually stalked by the spider-train Charles.

The Suicide Squad movie director James Gunn has revealed that NetherRealm's Injustice 2 inspired a key piece of the movie's marketing - Harley Quinn's red and black outfit, which appears on all the posters despite it only featuring in the movie for a few minutes.

It was reported earlier this year, after the first trailer released, that Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) would be wearing an outfit in The Suicide Squad based on her look in the Batman: Arkham games - according to James Gunn. In retrospect, this may have been an error on director James Gunn's part, since the outfit is blatantly Harley's from Injustice 2.

Some fans noticed that The Suicide Squad actually featured NetherRealm Studios in the "thank you" section of the end credits, which was theorised as possibly having a connection to Injustice 3. However, James Gunn has finally revealed the simpler truth regarding Injustice 2's connection to The Suicide Squad and how the game inspired the iconic look of Harley Quinn.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has praised the success of its recently released MMO New World, which is getting a lot of praise despite players having some major launch issues with the game. However, Bezos has harsh words for previous Amazon games such as Crucible - labelling them "failures and setbacks".

Amazon Game Studios' first MMO New World released earlier this week and has been an immediate success, breaking player count records all over the place but suffering as a result - players are still facing long queueing times, but fortunately Amazon promises to sort those out soon by adding extra servers. It's the complete opposite to Amazon's previous game Crucible, which was shut down for having too few players not long after launch.

Entrepreneur and Amazon chief Jeff Bezos took to Twitter to praise the team at Amazon Game Studios and New World's release, saying "after many failures and setbacks in gaming we have a success" and "so proud of the team for the persistence."

Steam's user reviews debuted in 2013, and have since become an important component of Valve's PC games platform. But reviews have also become a big problem - perhaps not for Valve so much as the developers trying to get their games noticed in a catalogue that now includes more than 30,000 titles. Angry users can bombard a game with negative reviews for reasons that have little or nothing to do with the game itself, lowering its discoverability and potentially dooming it to financial failure. So, what if they actually worked?

The first big problem with Steam reviews is the one they share with professional reviews: aggregation. Sure, there's a certain appeal to the idea of looking at a single number that neatly summarises a huge set of opinions about a new game, but crucial information and context is lost when even one review is reduced to just this, let alone many of them. A critic hasn't spent 30 or more hours playing and thinking about a game simply to generate a number between one and ten in their head. There are reasons for each score, and each outlet assigns them in its own way. It's simply not possible to capture those nuances in a number, much less a Metacritic aggregation of dozens of such scores, which may reflect wholly different standards and methods of criticism across sites.

Similarly, while many Steam reviewers also put a lot of time, thought, and effort into the evaluations they post, the only meaningful metric is the one generated by the aggregation of all reviews posted about a game. That can be 'mostly positive', 'overwhelmingly negative', or whichever descriptor Valve has assigned to the particular ratio of positive to negative reviews the game has received.

The latest trailer for Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin - the action-RPG reimagining of the first Final Fantasy by Team Ninja, the creators of Nioh 2 - has revealed the game's release date as March 18, 2022, but it'll also be an Epic Games Store exclusive on PC. We're still not getting a demo, either.

Square Enix revealed Final Fantasy action game Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin at E3 back in June - which quickly became a meme thanks to main character Jack's boring appearance and his obsession with the word "chaos". It also got a PS5-only demo but was confirmed for a PC release.

During the publisher's Tokyo Game Show stream, Stranger of Paradise got a new trailer that finally confirms the game's release date for March 18, 2022 on all platforms - even last gen. Funnily enough, Jack now actually looks like a Final Fantasy character, and the word "chaos" doesn't appear at all - although "darkness" gets a bit overused. It's possible that Square Enix might have heard about the meme.

Paradox has just cancelled multiple games you've never heard about. The publisher has announced to investors that it's put "several unannounced games" on the chopping block to "focus resources and expertise on its proven game niches and projects that better meet the company’s requirements on returns and risk".

The company has written down the value of these projects at around 135 MSEK - or just over $15 million USD. Paradox still has 15 games in development, including Victoria 3, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2, and console versions of Crusader Kings 3 and Shadowrun Trilogy. The remaining unannounced projects include a mix of original games and sequels.

"Paradox Interactive was born and raised in strategy and management games," CEO Fredrik Wester says in a press release. "It is where we have our heart and our mind and we are passionate about making games that our players can enjoy over a long period of time. Therefore we have sharpened our pipeline further to ensure that the projects with the highest potential have the resources necessary for the best possible development."

By most accounts, Sonic Mania is the best thing to come out of the venerable series in ages - an excellent tribute to the old games led by members of the fangame community. Several members of that team announced their own studio, Evening Star, back in 2019, and now we've finally got a few details on what they're making.

"Evening Star is currently working on our debut title, a fully original 3D action platformer game powered by our Star Engine", the devs say on the newly-updated official site. The Star Engine is built to efficiently support "non-photorealistic rendering techniques", and "can be seen as the high definition companion to the Retro Engine" used to build Sonic Mania.

The devs say they have a publishing partner lined up, and more details are coming "soon". (They're also looking to do some hiring, if you're in the market for a development job.) Sonic Mania director Christian Whitehead is serving as creative director and lead engine architect.

Over the course of September, we learned quite a bit about one of Total War: Warhammer III's new factions, Grand Cathay. We've gotten a hint at the strategy game's unit roster and met Cathay's two legendary lords, the celestial dragons Miao Ying and her brother Zhao Ming. A new trailer that debuted today provides a look at how they'll all work together in a massive siege.

In the new trailer, the forces of Chaos march against a fortified city built into the base of Cathay's Great Bastion, a mighty wall hundreds of miles long that protects the nation's northern border from nomadic tribes and, more importantly, the daemons who live in the Chaos Wastes. Cathay's forces take to the field to meet them, and the new clip shows off some of the faction's coolest new hardware and magic.

One of the cool things we noticed was a magic user casting a spell that appears to have deflected an incoming volley of missile attacks on a nearby formation of infantry. Another spell summons a whirlwind that lifts up a large Chaos unit, spinning it around before slamming it into the ground.

Satisfactory Update 5 will be available in the game's experimental branch later this month, and unlike previous releases, this update will focus less on new manufacturing buildings, and more on expanding the basic build options. The devs are holding back a lot of details for the public release, but we do know one thing for sure: we're getting some impressively catastrophic train wrecks.

Update 5 will bring train signals that you can use to manage when your trains are running. Naturally, doring that poorly will cause trains to collide, and as you can see in the trailer below, that means a fantastic display of vehicular carnage. It's just… it's beautiful.

You'll see Update 5 hit the experimental branch on October 26, and the full release onto live servers is expected to come about a month later. The devs have broken down some of the other features that'll be in the update in previous blog posts, but in brief, you can expect a load of new cosmetic build pieces, an easy quick swap option between similar object types, and an easier way to build foundations.

After a few dozen hours in New World I still feel like a stranded traveller, newly washed up on the beaches of Aeternum. I’ve managed to skirt the mammoth queue times for long enough now to get a feel for Amazon Games’ foray into the massively multiplayer genre, and that feeling can pretty much be summed up with a shrug and a ‘...yeah, it's alright’. Will New World scratch that itch you’ve got in the back of your brain for a new MMO in a pretty world filled with life and stuff to do? Definitely. Will you be gasping in awe wondering how Amazon managed to reinvigorate the genre? Probably not.

Friends have asked me about New World’s mechanics during my playtime and I’ve found myself giving a disclaimer every time. The combat feels good for an MMO. The crafting is rewarding for an MMO. The world is gorgeous for an MMO. Sure, the more grounded combat is definitely a nice addition, but on the whole there doesn't seem to be much setting New World apart from its contemporaries other than its admittedly very pretty setting and aesthetic.

I haven’t had much opportunity to experience PvP combat so far other than a couple of duels - not many players are flagged for open-world combat on my server - so PvE is the only real chance I’ve had to try out New World’s action-combat system. Other than the odd bit of server lag, it feels pretty tight, and the experience varies dramatically depending on which weapon you're using. The greataxe’s swing is meaty and impactful, but somehow the greathammer’s size belies its range - it feels like you’ve got to get close enough to touch your opponent's eyelashes. The bow feels meek and lacklustre, but the rifle fires with a satisfying pop and little plume of gunsmoke that other players can see around you. My current favourite weapon is a high-level hatchet I found in a crate, which has a hefty strength bonus. I felt swift and nimble darting around flailing with my swings as my friend aimed headshots with his rifle. Each of New World's weapon types are leveled separately to your main level, so you’re encouraged with your introductory loot drops to try out a few.

SCS Software's trucking simulators have had robust support from modders for ages, including a massively-multiplayer online mode with TruckersMP. Official multiplayer support came to American Truck Simulator and Euro Truck Simulator 2 earlier this year, and while that implementation is quite different than the one modders built, it offers its own key advantages. Soon, those advantages will include support for even more mods.

Mod support for the Convoy multiplayer mode will go live in patch 1.42 for both ETS2 and ATS, and it's already available for testing in an open beta. As of this update, the server browser will now show you which - if any - mods are required for a given session. If they're available from the Steam Workshop, you'll be able to download them directly via an overlay without even needing to exit the game.

"We expect a majority of popular modifications to work from the get-go with this update, however, there may be some compatibility issues with others," the devs say in the announcement. There are some minor caveats, too - many sound mods will only play for local users, for example, so you won't be able to impress your friends with your custom truck horns.