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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is one of the biggest success stories of 2025 so far, and it seems like everyone loves the game. And of course, everyone is congratulating the team at Sandfall Games and Kepler Interactive, the publisher. But why is Bandai Namco posting a congratulatory message on social media?

I don’t know about you, but my mind immediately went to a potential collab. Bandai Namco wasn’t involved in the production of the game and isn’t even the publisher, so what’s up with the directed post? Are Verso and Maelle about to join the ranks of Tekken or something? Or is it just a nothingburger that I’m looking way too much into?

Why is Bandai Namco congratulating Expedition 33 like this?

The speculation comes from recent posts that Bandai Namco posted on social media. The company posted on several of its Southeast Asian channels and congratulated Kepler...

Ironwood Studios has rewarded those 1 million plus Pacific Drive players with their most substantial update yet with “Endless Expeditions”. Packed with new features and improvements headlined by the addition of Expeditions and the introduction of the Suspend feature, the update is further celebrated with a 40% discount for Pacific Drive on Steam until April 15 and PlayStation until April 23.

The Endless Expeditions update adds two highly requested features to Pacific Drive. For roguelite fans, Expeditions starts you in the garage with an ever-changing set of challenges and restrictions, generating new routes, and ramping up the difficulty to ensure that every journey feels fresh. You’re also now able to use the new Suspend feature to save your progress at any time, exit the game and return when you’re ready to pick things up again in the game.

Other additions in the update include quality of life improvements, such as upgrades to...

Seven months after reaching 600,000 in sales, Ironwood Studios’ Pacific Drive has claimed the lofty one million units sold milestone. Not bad for an indie developer which has a team of less than 20 staff. In addition, the team has also teased a new Dlc for Pacific Drive, referring to it as the “most substantial update” yet.

Since launching on February 22, 2024, Pacific Drive has received widespread acclaim from critics (including our own Luiz), and even had its rights acquired to develop a TV show by James Wan. That’s not to mention the game’s multiple awards and nominations. That includes four BAFTA longlist nods, a Game Developers Choice nomination for Best Debut and an Igf Awards nomination for Excellence in Design.

It’s also helped that Ironwood Studios has supported the title with three free content updates and cosmetic Dlc packs, along with the aforementioned fourth Dlc, which is set to launch “soon.

The finalists for the Independent Games Festival have been announced, and one title emerged as a key contender with five nominations. The titles include games from independent and solo developers worldwide who might otherwise be overlooked by the gaming community in favor of larger-profile games. The Igf takes place every year at the Games Dev Conference (Gdc) in March, but fans can get a sneak peek at the lineup of finalists now.

According to the Igf website, the chosen games were selected from a list of 500+ titles. Each game was decided by a panel of experts for the individual categories, "who chose the finalists after playing, discussing, and meticulously evaluating each of the games in consideration." Winners will be announced at this year's Igf presentation at Gdc, on Wednesday, March 19 at 6:30pm Pt.

All The Independent Games Festival Finalists A Few Titles Stand Out For Multiple Nominations

This year,...

2024 has been a landmark year for horror video games, from highly anticipated sequels like Sons of the Forest to the against-all-odds success of the Silent Hill 2 Remake. Whether it was triple-a or indie, physical or psychological, it seems like every major horror game had something new to offer this year.

Still, a select few games stood out among their peers, boasting immersive atmosphere, unrelenting frights, or fearless dives into the darkest parts of the human psyche. Based on Metacritic scores, accolades, and Screen Rant's own reviews, these are some of the best horror games of 2024.

Indika Is A Stylish, Surreal Iconoclast Metascore: 80

Brooding, atmospheric, and cinematic, Indika is a narrative-focused game that tells the story of a 19th-century nun with a unique set of problems. She's an outcast among the other nuns at her convent, she's grappling with a mysterious illness she can't pray away, and she's subject to frequent...

It wasn’t to be for horror fans last night at The Game Awards 2024. Despite having five nominations, Silent Hill 2 went home empty-handed, much like almost every other horror and genre video game. Team Asobi and Sony were the big winners last night with Astro Bot, which earned four awards, including Game of the Year.

Along with Silent Hill 2, the likes of Diablo IV, Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, Arizona Sunshine Remake, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 and Pacific Drive also missed out on winning in their respective categories.

The only horror title that took home hardware last night was Ninja Theory’s Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, which won for Best Audio Design and Best Performance for Melina Juergens‘ role of Senua. Genre winners included Helldivers 2 for Best Multiplayer Game and Best Ongoing Game, Frostpunk 2 for Best Sim/Strategy Game, Baldur’s Gate 3 for Best Community Support,...

The 2024 Game Awards are airing tonight!

The Game Awards recognizes excellence in the global video game industry, as selected by a global jury of over 130 media publications and influencer outlets.

The ceremony will be streaming live everywhere from the Peacock Theater on Thursday, December 12, with the pre-show kicking off at 7:30 p.m. Et and the main ceremony beginning at 8 p.m. Et.

This year’s nominees are led by Astro Bot and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, each with seven nominations, including Game of the Year.

It’s the 10th anniversary of the award show, and fans are expecting some huge announcement and previews of upcoming games.

Keep reading to find out more…

Watch the Game Awards livestream and see the nominees inside…

Game of the Year

Astro Bot (Team Asobi / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Balatro (LocalThunk / Playstack)

Black Myth: Wukong (Game Science)

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree (FromSoftware / Bandai Namco Entertainment...

Hoard writer-director Luna Carmoon, Didi filmmaker Sean Wang and Baby Reindeer star Nava Mau are among 43 Bafta Breakthrough members for its 2024 cohort.

The 43 names consist of 21 UK creatives, 13 from the US and nine from India. The selected members hail from film, games and television, and will receive one-to-one meetings, career guidance, full Bafta voting membership and access to screenings and networking events in the year-long initiative.

Scroll down for the full list of Bafta Breakthrough 2024

Carmoon is one of several filmmakers in the selection, alongside If The Streets Were On Fire director Alice Russell, The Contestant director Clair Titley, and...

Fresh from being earning a nomination from The Game Awards this year, Ironwood Studios’ Pacific Drive has a new Winter update for fans in “Trips and Treasures.” Available now, this third content update introduces new gameplay features and cosmetic options. For those who love cosmetics, a new cosmetic add-on in the “Frosted Pack” is also available for $4.99.

New in this update includes 23 new cosmetic items to be discovered on your trips out into the Zone – some from brand new sources. You can use 30 different locations in the garage to display your hard won trophies, with even more being added in the future.

Also new in Pacific Drive thanks to the Trips and Treasures update are Goldshells. Be on the lookout for these puzzling little containers out on your trips. Once you find them, the next challenge will be to find inventive ways to break them open. You’ll get a...

Geoff Keighley and company are back again for 2024 edition of The Game Awards on December 12. Nominees for this year’s event have been unveiled, with Sony having the lion’s share of nominations with 16 nominations across its combined portfolio. That includes Astro Bot and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, each with seven nominations, including Game of the Year. They’re joined by in the Game of the Year category by Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree (which has four nominations overall), Balatro, Black Myth: Wukong, and Metaphor: ReFantazio.

Sadly, horror fans are left out of the mix for Game of the Year, though Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 has earned five nominations this year, including Best Narrative, Best Action/Adventure, Best Performance (Luke Roberts as James Sunderland), Best Audio Design, and Best Score and Music (Akira Yamaoka). Other genre titles nominated this year include Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II and...

The Game Awards announced its nominations for the 2024 ceremony on Monday.

Square Enix’s Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Team Asobi’s Astro Bot lead the pack of nominees with seven nominations each, including game of the year. Studio Zero’s Metaphor: ReFantazio earned six nominations, LocalThunk’s Balatro earned five and Game Science’s Black Myth: Wukong and FromSoftware’s Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree both earned four, rounding out the game of the year category.

Major film and television studios and streamers were among this year’s nominations, due to the uptick in video game adaptions. The show’s best adaptation category includes Netflix’s Arcane, Amazon’s Fallout, Paramount+’s Sonic universe-set Knuckles, Amazon’s Like a Dragon: Yakuza and Netflix’s Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft.

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree falls under the expansion pack or downloadable content (Dlc) category, which...

The 2024 Game Awards nominees have been revealed!

The Game Awards recognizes excellence in the global video game industry, as selected by a global jury of over 130 media publications and influencer outlets.

The nominees were announced with a global livestream from the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles.

Viewers can vote now and tune in for the winner announcement at the ceremony, streaming live everywhere from the Peacock Theater on Thursday, December 12.

Voting will end on December 11 at 6:00 p.m. Pt.

This year’s nominees are led by Astro Bot and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, each with seven nominations, including Game of the Year.

Keep reading to find out more…

Game of the Year

Astro Bot (Team Asobi / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Balatro (LocalThunk / Playstack)

Black Myth: Wukong (Game Science)

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree (FromSoftware / Bandai Namco Entertainment)

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (Square Enix)

Metaphor: ReFantazio (Studio Zero / Atlus)

Best...

Wilbert Roget II has been composing some of the biggest projects of the last few years, and you’ll have heard his work without even realizing it. Providing the scores for massive games like Helldivers 2 and Star Wars Outlaws, as well as upcoming anime hit Gundam: Requiem for a Vengeance, there aren’t many better positioned in today’s industry.

Helldivers 2, Star Wars Outlaws and the Process Firstly, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us(again!)! For those who may not be aware, would you mind explaining who you are and what you do?

Delighted to chat with you again! My name is Wilbert Roget, II, and I am a music composer for video games, and most recently, Japanese anime.

What’s the most challenging aspect of composing for a video game compared to other mediums?

Game scoring is unique in that it’s an interactive medium,...

On the heels of July’s free content, Ironwood Studios has launched its second free content update for its supernatural survival title Pacific Drive in “Drive Your Way”. This new update introduces a wealthy of features, including giving players greater control over their car, environment and overall experience. Alongside the update, a new cosmetic add-on, the Anomalous Customization Pack, is also now available for $4.99.

Drive Your Way introduces six gameplay presets, in addition to the default Pacific Drive setup:

Iron Wagon: Significantly increases difficulty, adds permadeath Scenic Tour: Lowers difficulty, removes death and reduces requirements to driving, hazards, damage and crafting Mechanic’s Road Trip: Driving is impacted by the terrain and status of the car. Items cost more to repair and cannot be crafted while on runs Joyride: The same gameplay and tension as Pacific Drive, but gathering, crafting and research requirements are all lowered. Damage and failure...

Ironwood Studios’ supernatural survival title Pacific Drive has surpassed 600,000 in sales since its launch back in February. And to celebrate, the developer has released the free Dumpsters, Dslr’s, and Drives content update, as well as some paid cosmetic content.

“We are blown away by the response to Pacific Drive. This is not a milestone we expected to reach when we first started working on the project. It is a dream come true for us,” said Alex Dracott, CEO and Creative Director at Ironwood Studios. “It is a testament to the hard work of everyone at Ironwood Studios. We are incredibly grateful to our community for believing in our vision and joining us on this journey. None of this would have been possible without their support, and we are grateful to be able to continue supporting Pacific Drive to enhance the experience.”

That support has come in the Dumpsters, Dslr’s,...

Arrowhead Gaming Studios’ Helldivers 2 is certainly one of the most popular games in the world right now, so naturally, many other developers are looking to collaborate with Arrowhead to give fans exclusive crossovers. Dead by Daylight‘s official X account recently posted a Player Satisfaction Survey in which fans were asked to answer various questions about the game.

Helldivers 2

One of these questions asked fans to describe their experience with various popular video games and Helldivers 2 was also a part of this list. The list consisted of many other games like Payday 2, Left 4 Dead, and Five Nights at Freddy’s: Security Breach. Many fans believe that this survey was conducted in order to analyze players’ demand and plan a crossover accordingly.

A crossover between Dead by Daylight and Helldivers 2 is indeed a bit unusual but there is a character in the game that could lead the Automatons in this crossover: Berserker.

As Omeda looks to take over the Moba landscape with its new title, Predecessor, the game has an interesting origin story that started eight years ago. Multiplayer online battle arena enthusiasts probably came across another title in the genre called Paragon a while back, which was developed and published by Epic Games, but things didn’t work out too well for it due to a lack of players and sustainability.

That led to the game’s servers being shut down two years later, but it wasn’t all in vain since that was somewhat of a starting point for Predecessor.

Predecessor Has Epic Games to Thank for Its Origin Story Omeda implemented some of Epic’s assets in its Moba game, Predecessor.

During a discussion with the CEO and Founder of Omeda Studios, Robbie Singh, we brought up the variety of characters that are a part of the developer’s latest Moba,...

When one thinks of multiplayer online battle arena, or Moba, games, League of Legends and Dota instantly come to mind, as they are some of the most iconic titles the genre has ever seen. However, for those players who aren’t well-versed in Moba gaming, the barrier of entry can be jarring simply due to how inaccessible it all looks, as the games are mostly played from a traditional top-down perspective instead of a more approachable third-person Pov.

Fortunately, Omeda’s Predecessor, which is now free-to-play in its open beta phase, puts its own spin on the genre by introducing an element that isn’t usually seen in Moba games.

Step Aside, League of Legends: There’s a New Moba in Town With a Third-Person Pov

League of Legends may be iconic, but Predecessor is played from a third-person perspective.

We had the pleasure of having a conversation with Robbie Singh,...

With its upcoming narrative racing game Heading Out, developer Serious Sim seems to be putting its own fresh spin on the vehicular genre. When one usually thinks of racing titles, iconic franchises such as Need for Speed instantly come to mind, but there’s not much else to do other than drive the car around and win races in those games.

Fortunately, developers like Serious Sim and Ironwood, the latter being the development team behind Pacific Drive, a survival title released last month, are making sure that they try something new with the genre and possibly end up creating sub-branches of it to keep them interesting in today’s landscape.

Games like Heading Out Show That the Racing Genre Can Be So Much More

Putting a fresh spin on the racing genre, Heading Out will be released in just a couple of months on May 7.

We recently had the pleasure...

Choosing the right upgrades early in Pacific Drive can make progression that much easier. There are a total of 143 blueprints or improvements and a select few can make all the difference when first starting. You can outfit your car with an assortment of helpful upgrades and even create crucial workbenches. Players will drive through the Olympic Exclusion Zone, which is filled with strange anomalies that will latch on and damage your vehicle. Pacific Drive is a game with an extensive crafting system, and you will want to research the right upgrades.

Once you finish your first drive, the Fabrication Station becomes available. This is used to print out every upgrade in the game and is split into 12 categories. These include Garage Upgrades, Light Blueprints, Expansion Rack Upgrades, Battery Blueprints, Refine Blueprints, Car Body Blueprints, Car Storage Blueprints, Utility Blueprints, Survival Tools, Wheel Blueprints, Fuel Blueprints, and Engine Blueprints. Selecting the...

Stellar Blade, created by the South Korean Shift Up Corporation development studio, is one of the other PlayStation-exclusive games that will be available soon. This game has had several controversies so far regarding the camera itself, which focuses almost entirely on the butt of the protagonist.

Thanks to a leaked demo that Sony uploaded a little earlier than was planned, some fans discovered a very Nsfw suit called Skin Suit, where the protagonist is practically naked. The players who want to use this particular skin will have to fight without a shield.

Stellar Blade players will have to be prepared for more difficulty if they choose the skin suit Stellar Blade really wants to make an impression

Shift Up Corporation has been developing a Stellar Blade for numerous years; this project was formerly known as Project Eve. This game will be a third-person action game that promises to be very complicated with original action mechanics.

Dumpster Pearls are a unique resource in Pacific Drive that can be found in multiple locations. Unlike other materials, you cannot use them right away. Instead, players must break down this hard resource using a specific workbench in the auto shop. This is worth the effort because opening a Dumpster Pearl can contain many rewards, such as scrap metal or even hand tools.

Players should store all Dumpster Pearls until they can be opened. When broken down, you will get extra resources to help your survival. One of the most important items in the game is Repair Putty. This can be crafted with a few common materials and chemicals in Pacific Drive. While everything can be found by exploring, Dumpster Pearls are a great way to gain extra resources. This special material can be found in dumpsters, wrecked cars, pneumatic tubes, or inside crates.

Related Pacific Drive Review: "An Excellent...

When your car becomes damaged in Pacific Drive, you need to get chemicals to craft important repair putty needed to fix it. Additional items can be made using chemicals as a material, so it's something you want to stock up on whenever you can. You'll have to investigate the right places to collect stored chemicals as you continue to drive through different zones.

Repair Putty is perhaps the most important item you can craft in Pacific Drive's surreal station wagon survival gameplay. Made from 2 Scrap Metal, 2 Plastic, 2 Glass Shards, and 2 Chemicals, this putty fixes any major damage your car may sustain during your travels. The chemicals used in this recipe are barely used for anything else until you reach the later stages of the game.

Related Pacific Drive Hands-On Preview: "A Bit Of A Frankenstein's Monster" Pacific Drive's first hands-on availability at Gamescom offered a better idea of...

Your car can run out of fuel quicker than you expect in Pacific Drive, so you'll want to siphon gas from wherever you can to refill your tank. Making sure your vehicle isn't empty is crucial, especially if you want to reach new locations. It's not hard to find gas from different sources, but it isn't clear how you can transfer another car's fuel into your own.

Be mindful of when your car is close to having no gas at all since running out of fuel means stopping wherever you are. This can cause you to become stranded in dangerous areas without enough resources in Pacific Drive's surreal survival experience. Thankfully, the Auto Shop gas pump has unlimited fuel for you to top off your tank before venturing out into unexplored areas of your map.

Related "Upgrades, Upgrades, & More Upgrades": Pacific Drive Hands-On Preview Pacific Drive brings the...

Since time immemorial, storytellers have been fascinated by the near-supernatural connection between people and their trusty vehicles. At first, it was just with horses and their wheeled extensions, but the rise of the automobile and the freedom that it appeared to represent soon led us to bond with inanimate objects – and our stories adjusted accordingly. And yet, with the exception of certain racing simulators, few video games dare to focus on the more esoteric side of owning and maintaining a beloved vehicle.

This is what initially attracted me to Ironwood Studios’ Pacific Drive, a survival-horror driving sim that puts players behind the wheel of a quirky station wagon stranded in a supernaturally-afflicted version of 1990s Cascadia. And while traversing a wasteland from the inside of a customizable vehicle isn’t exactly a novel idea, it’s never been the central game mechanic quite like this before.

Taking place in an...

2024 is less than three months old, and it’s already shaping up to be a grim year for the gaming industry.

Mass layoffs continue to be a tragic trend, major releases like Skull and Bones and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League are floundering, and hardware and software delays continue to raise questions about what we can safely look forward to. The industry is in rough shape, and its problems can no longer be disguised by a steady stream of major new releases as has been the case in recent years. If anything, the quickly declining quality and quantity of those major new releases are causing more gamers to wonder what is happening and how things are so bad.

As the industry’s console manufacturers and Triple-a studios scramble to find answers to all those questions, hope has emerged in somewhat surprising places. So far, the 2024 game of the year...

Quick Links A Challenging, Customizable Journey Pacific Drive's Garage Is A Beautifully Implemented Home Base Replayability In Pacific Drive Is A Major Selling Point Final Thoughts and Review Score Pacific Drive offers a unique single-player driving survival experience with high-risk, high-reward gameplay. The game features mysterious anomalies instead of traditional enemies, requiring reflexes and creativity. Crafting, repairing the car, and exploring zones in Pacific Drive create a rewarding and challenging adventure.

Pacific Drive is Ironwood Studios' debut title, a twisted, intriguing driving/survival game that takes players into unexpected places with its high-risk, high-reward gameplay. While not without the occasional stumble, Pacific Drive is one of the most inventive and satisfying survival games in years.

A mysterious first-person single-player game where players drive a station wagon through North America's beautiful Pacific Northwest, Pacific Drive can be oddly relaxing; until the game's story takes a few strange turns into the abnormal.

As the PS5 enters its fourth year, the console is really starting to hit its stride with its game library. Most game studios are finally moving away from cross-generation releases on the PS4, which means we have some truly exciting games coming in 2024 that harness the full capabilities of the PS5 hardware.

2023 set a high standard for PS5 owners with blockbuster games like Diablo 4, Spider-Man 2, Street Fighter 6, and more being launched. Can 2024 match that output, or maybe even surpass it? Here are five games coming to PS5 in 2024 that may just do exactly that.

SUGGESTEDStarfield Reportedly on Its Way to PS5 Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth (PS5) Release Date: 29 February Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth

The sequel to 2020’s Final Fantasy 7 Remake, FF7 Rebirth will take players beyond the confines of Midgar to a much larger map that includes areas like Nibelheim, Junon, the Gold Saucer, and others. The protagonists from FF7 Remake – Cloud,...

After delaying their dark fantasy RPG The Thaumaturge from a December release, Fool’s Theory and 11 bit studio have announced that the game will be delayed again. Instead of a February 20th release on PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store, The Thaumaturge will now arrive on March 4. As before, the PC release will be followed by releases on the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series at a later date.

According to the developers, The Thaumaturge is complete. However, “taking February’s busy launch period into account and the opening for a better release window, we’ve decided to take this opportunity to give The Thaumaturge more breathing room so it receives the attention we believe it deserves.”

Fool’s Theory is correct in that the slate for February is a busy one. Alongside titles such as Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden (which arrives today), players also have the upcoming remaster...

It’s always fun to be able to try out an upcoming game before its release, and that’s exactly what Steam Next Fest aims to do. Running through February 12, the celebration highlights thousands of demos, allowing you to get your hands on some of the most anticipated games while discovering new ones to add to your wishlist.

Going through the list can be a daunting task, so here’s six highlights that I’ve tried out and would highly recommend.

Children Of The Sun

I went into this one thinking it would play like a neon horror version of Hitman, but instead it was something more interesting and focused. In Children of the Sun, you play a masked sniper enacting vengeance on a cult that ruined her life. Each level presents you with an area populated by a group of cultists. You circle the perimeter to get the best angle,...

Pacific Drive offers a refreshing twist on the survival-crafting genre with a strong focus on story and characters, setting it apart from cookie-cutter games in the genre. Players begin as a delivery person who gets drawn into a mysterious anomaly within the Olympic Exclusion Zone, embarking on an adventure to collect resources for their upgradable and customizable vehicle. With individual runs chosen from a larger map of branching paths and a heavy emphasis on story, Pacific Drive provides players with a reason to collect resources and explore the game's diverse regions.

Pacific Drive is one of the newest additions to the overloaded survival-crafting genre of games. Many of the games in this genre offer the same thing; little-to-no story and characters who begin with nothing but the ability to ravage the land of all its resources, eventually building an impenetrable shelter to protect themselves from a random threat the world provides.

Pacific Drive offers a unique take on both survival and vehicle genres, where players must care for their car as they try to escape the surreal Olympic Exclusion Zone. The game is the debut for Ironwood Studios, which is headed by industry veterans from titles like Don't Starve and Infamous. Screen Rant attended the first hands-on experience that's been offered for the title at Gamescom 2023, giving a better idea of what it's like behind the wheel.

Pacific Drive is a run-based title with elements of survival, adventure, and crafting that come together to make a wholly unique experience. The general premise centers on players attempting to escape an area full of anomalies in the Pacific Northwest through exploration and resource collection. There were two separate parts to the hands-on look at Pacific Drive led by developer Seth Rosen: one which focused on the game's garage hub, and the other...

Pacific Drive is a new take on survival games, incorporating roguelite elements with am emphasis on driving. Set in an alternate version of the Pacific Northwest, players will work to escape the Olympic Exclusion Zone through the use of their trusty station wagon. The game is the debut title from developer Ironwood Studios, and is set to release some time in 2023.

The general gameplay loop of Pacific Drive revolves around players taking excursions across the map for supplies and then returning to their garage hub to craft and make repairs and modifications to their vehicle. Each visit to the Olympic Exclusion Zone is heavily randomized, where players will encounter dangers like harsh weather and strange entities known as anomalies. The symbiotic relationship between the player and their car is a core facet of Pacific Drive, with each protecting the other as they work to escape the Exclusion Zone.

Related: What...

Trinity Fusion, developed and published by Angry Mob Games, has a new demo available in line with Steam’s Next Fest. A 2D platformer with action-roguelite sensibilities and a multiversal narrative concept, Trinity Fusion brings a fetching 3D-rendered presentation and an accessible combat system, somewhat reminiscent of Dead Cells without the pixels. This newest incarnation of the game takes a few steps forward, but it doesn’t yet feel like a fully-baked hit.

In our previous experience with Trinity Fusion, we appreciated some of its basic combat mechanics - especially when multiple enemy types were on the screen - and hints at the wider story doled out in the closed beta. The new demo doubles down on that story, threading active narrative sequences into the main game instead of leaving everything to simple hub interactions. There's no comparison to Hades' vibrant underworld hub, but its intriguing three-story cylindrical design stands apart from other action-roguelites.

Pacific Drive offers a new, vehicular twist on the survival genre set in a reimagined Pacific Northwest. The game is the debut title from Ironwood Studios, which is home to several industry veterans that have previously worked on titles like Don't Starve, Infamous, and Mafia III. Screen Rant attended a special preview presentation from Ironwood that offered more insight on what players can expect from the title, which is slated for release some time this year.

Pacific Drive's take on a survival title is different from games like Valheim, focusing less on the player character and their base and more on their car and garage. The Pacific Northwest setting has a sci-fi slant, taking place in what's called the Olympic Exclusion Zone. Most of the finer details of the game's plot have been kept under wraps so far, but the central storyline revolves around players escaping from the Exclusion...

There may be a lot of truth to the idea that Liz & Dick is (one of) the most talked about movie of the year, but I’m not absolutely sure it’s a claim I would feature.

Good or bad, Lindsay Lohan or no, and if you’re the right crowd, Lifetime or no, there’s no denying that the movie takes on interesting subject matter, and is potentially well worth watching just to catch some glimpse into the lives of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Of course, I don’t know that it has anything to say that isn’t well-worn material, but it’s worth finding out.

What do you think about this one, and is the movie, wherever it lands, overshadowed simply by the fact that Lohan is in it? I’d like to know where the public is coming down on this one. Will you watch?...