As soon as the Internet first got its first look at juggernaut-to-be Palworld, many began accusing it of looking a lot like, well, let's not play that game — you know what I'm talking about.

Still, it seems as if it's not enough to quench all that thirst for Pokémon content, as YouTuber ToastedShoes posted a video of a modded version of the game, replacing the pals with Pokémon and making the main character Ash.

Mechanics-wise, Palworld seems to remain essentially the same, but it feels like a weird new thing. It's hard to avoid looking at Misty holding a shotgun and not think of the possibilities for a zombie apocalypse game set in the world of Pokémon.

The mod isn't out yet for everyone, but Nintendo has shown they're watching by immediately taking down ToastedShoes' original announcement of the mod. ToastedShoes claims he wants to give people access to the mod as soon as he sees fit.

This mod gives me all sorts of mixed feelings. Hurting pals might feel weird sometimes, but we've known them for what, not even a week? Vanilla Palworld allows players the excuse that Pals are trying to usurp the place that Pokémon have in our hearts to instill great violence upon them. Pokémon, on the other hand, are the creatures most of us grew up loving and not wanting to 360º quickscope.

That's why I feel much worse for laughing at the idea of clobbering a poor Wooloo to death and seeing it rolling down a hill like a ball than I would its Palworld counterpart.

The same goes for seeing Pikachus doing mining work. Shocking stuff — is what I would say if they were using their electric powers instead of those pickaxes.

Even though Palworld combines elements such as survival, building, gunplay, and the possibility of committing acts of unbridled cruelty, many still refer to it as just "Pokémon with guns". That's both reductive and dumb because the name Gunkémon was right there. You can now enjoy this wild ride on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox X|S.

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Nobody is surprised that Palworld turned into a big hit. Gamers love Pokémon, guns, and surviving. It should come as no big surprise that a game that competently mixes those elements is doing well.

What feels completely wild, however, is this game from a mostly unknown company seemingly becoming a record-shattering hit overnight.

Palworld's official English-language Twitter account has just tweeted a thank you note for Steam users who made Palworld the game with more paid concurrent players out of any game in the history of the platform.

The numbers are amazing, but that's not quite accurate

Palworld, a game that came pretty much out of nowhere, did manage to beat huge company-backed juggernauts such as Cyberpunk 2077, Elden Ring, and even 2024's best-selling game. Yes, that one about the wizard school that's based on the works of that questionable writer inexplicably became the best-selling game of the past year.

Those are exceptional numbers, yes, though the world-record part isn't accurate. While it's true that Palworld has the current record for the highest concurrent players for games that are currently not free, it doesn't have the all-time record. That still belongs to PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, now very confusingly titled PUBG: Battlegrounds. Back in its heyday, the game by PUBG Corporation managed to hit over three million concurrent players, which is three times what Palworld has now. It's hard to even begin to grasp just how big that game used to be, even though it still pulls huge numbers today. The reason why we're ignoring PUBG's gargantuan numbers is that the game has since gone free-to-play.

Still, Palworld's run has just started, and the game is also likely amassing huge numbers of players on Xbox consoles and the Xbox Game Pass. Only time will tell how many more records Palworld will beat and if it can beat this one in particular.

You can now help Palworld beat this absurd record on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.

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Pocketpair, the devs behind the surprise record-obliterating Palworld, have just warned players about one specific bug that might seriously hinder their gameplay experience.

If you're familiar with the "Memory Reset Drug", which is used to reset character stats, take heed. The developers warn that there's a possibility that it can permanently reduce one's capture power.

Pocketpair says it's investigating this issue and advises players to refrain from, uh, doing drugs until they fix this issue.

The developers don't specify exactly how much of your capture power will go down if this bug knocks on your door, but we have to assume your capture abilities will take a non-negligible hit. This sucks, especially if you've already committed to using these, but as far as release bugs go, it could've been much worse.

Palworld has hit Steam and the Xbox Game Pass like a meteor — one of those from sci-fi tales that come full of wacky alien lifeforms. After not even 24 hours out, the Pokémon-inspired title was already doing numbers high to the point of dwarfing recent mega-hits such as Lethal Company.

Some Pokémon fans have been pretty vocal in accusing Palworld of being nothing more than an edgy clone, but whether or not you care for it, I find it very hard to ignore all of the awesome — albeit sometimes questionable — things that this new title brings to the table.

As for this bug, it's completely natural for issues such as this to hit a game on launch, and it's expected that it'll get fixed soon.

You can now capture cute animals and even human NPCs on Steam and the Xbox Game Pass.

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There are many scary enemies in Lethal Company. I honestly don't think that the Hoarding Bug ranks among them, but I recommend you don't underestimate the pesky critters because they can bring unexpected problems to your playthrough.

Would you like to know more about how to go all Starship Troopers but without the fascism on these bugs? You've come to the right place.

How to deal with the bug threat

Hoarding bugs can show up in seven out of the eight moons in the game, so knowing how to deal with them is very important. The first thing to learn about them is that they're not meant to be a deadly enemy, but rather a competitor of sorts. The reason why they're called "loot" or "hoarding" bugs is because they also like to collect stuff, which might prove a hindrance to our game. Even though they might not straight up kill you, they might keep stuff whose rightful owner is you, the otherworldly corporate looter. So. let's look at the many ways to deal with them.

Murder

Ok, this is an easy one. They're weak, or at least weaker than the player, and you can even easily sidestep their puny moves. You can murder these things with any weapon you have at hand. The only problem here, however, is that killing one of these things might cause the moon to respawn a different creature — one which might be way more problematic for you.

Avoidance

These things aren't there to hunt down the player, but they don't like you, either. Stepping into their territory will make them go aggro, as will taking their stuff. If you find yourself in possession of stuff that used to belong to one of these things, running away is a good idea. They like it indoors, so walking outside will cause their brains to reset and go back home. That peaceful solution might sound appealing, but remember that time spent avoiding a bug is time not spent gathering stuff for your corporate overlords.

Scrap and mirrors

They like stuff more than they like murder, so, once they're chasing you down, you can drop your scrap to get their attention. They'll pick your stuff up and forget about you. The problem here is you need that scrap to avoid getting ejected into the depths of space if you don't bring enough scrap home.

Mega murder

Ok, we now know that they aren't deadly and that they also love scrap. That means that hoarding bugs have scrap of their own. So, instead of getting into skirmishes against them during your stay on a moon, you should just ignore them as much as possible while gathering your scrap. Then, once you're done, you should consider raiding their area, murdering them all, and collecting their scrap. Don't tell anyone that you've learned that from me.

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The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is currently taking place in Las Vegas, and Sony's car which you can control with a PS5 DualSense controller is no longer the wackiest thing on display. It's now, probably, this creepy AI Mario.

UPDATE: Following the publication of this story, Proto Inc. issued the following statement:

This strange Mario hologram booth was seemingly conjured by the unexpected trifecta of AI, AARP (formerly the American Association of Retired Persons), and Target. We first heard about this strange lifeform through Twitter user Greggory, from the show.

Upon first glance, one might notice that he looks a bit off. That's perhaps because of his stiff posture, but the things granting him the status of nuclear-grade nightmare fuel are his voice and facial animations. He sounds like he's audibly searching for an attempt at an Italian accent.

Perhaps he's not even the real Mario, but rather the Mario that the creepy version of Luigi from Mario is missing! Is looking for.

You could even theorize that this a ploy by Nintendo to have Mario fans admit that things could be worse, now that Charles Martinet is out, though it's a fair question as to whether Nintendo knows about this at all.

So what hole did this Mario crawl out of?

As Kotaku found out, AARP came up with AgeTech, a tech comprising various companies that aims at meeting the needs of "the world's aging population", which OG Mario fans apparently are now. One of the companies involved seems to be Proto Hologram, a maker of holographic boxes where you can imprison the mascot of your choice and have it sell stuff. In this case, however, it seems like they're using it to "help combat loneliness and improve telehealth".

That baffles me because, well, at best this thing will solve the problem of loneliness by making old people enjoy being alone more than they would the alternative of being accompanied by creepy AI-powered mascots.

We still haven't heard from Nintendo on this issue, but it's highly unlikely that AARP is illegally making use of Nintendo's mascot. Right?

As for Greggory, the last time we heard of him, he was tweeting about how he would revisit this abomination today.

That was over three hours ago now, so I'm just going to have to assume the worst. Thank you for your service, Greggory.

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Bandai Namco just released a very special five-minute recap of the history of the Mishima clan, to hype us up for Tekken 8's release on January 26. And it's narrated by none other than Succession's own Brian Cox.

What's so special about Brian Cox narrating Tekken?

Any recap would be more than welcome at this point. Some Tekken fans weren't even alive when the OG Tekken came out, and the plotline gets highly convoluted sometimes, but the extra layer of awesome here is the presence of Brian Cox.

So what about it? You might think this is yet another out-of-touch promo by a Hollywood actor whose only knowledge of the game comes from the teleprompter sitting right in front of him. Half of that is likely true, as I doubt Brian Cox knows what a Korean Backdash is, but he has a surprising spiritual connection to this series that makes this work perfectly for people who love both properties.

That's because, over the past five years or so, he's starred in Succession, a show that feels like an American version of Tekken that replaces all the complex physical combos with clever writing that's equally as devastating. Cox plays Logan Roy in Succession, a callous old man whose seat on the throne of megacorp Waystar | Royco is highly disputed by his progeny. Whether or not he noticed — or even cared — when filming that little video, Cox is the American version of Heihachi.

Mishima clan, TL;DR

The main plotline of the Tekken series is about Heihachi Mishima, the grandfather and (former) head of the Mishima Zaibatsu, Kazuya, his son, and Jin Kazama, Kazuya's estranged son.

Up until the end of Tekken 7, the three fought for the leadership of the company. At the end of Tekken 7, however, Kazuya seemingly manages to kill Heihachi, the series' longstanding villain for good, and finally takes over the corporation. The plot of Tekken 8 revolves around the battle between Kazuya, the new herald of darkness, and Jin, who will hopefully turn out to be the champion of light.

Tekken 8 will come out on January 26 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

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A Baldur's Gate 3 player has reportedly been banned for sharing their Xbox gameplay recording, as the footage automatically uploaded contained nude, in-game character models.

Baldur's Gate 3 hasn't been out on the Xbox longer than a month, so this could be one of those BG3 oopsies, but it seems to come down to Xbox's own Terms of Service. Reddit user Daddy-Vegas claimed that one of his clips, fittingly named "naked camp time fun," landed him a ban lasting until the end of the year — yes, of the year that has just begun.

In an interview with DualShockers, Vegas explains that his clips were automatically shared to the Xbox public feed and that the ban occurred just a few seconds after the upload's completion. This left Vegas very little time to react to his malfeasance.

According to Vegas, he didn't intend to share the footage, but the console settings upload these by default — you have to change the option yourself if you've got recordings that may violate ToS. The Xbox probably should not have that feature on by default or create a mature tag for this content, in case it finds it worthy of a ban.

Naturally, players shouldn't have to worry about a ban over recordings of completely normal playthroughs of a game they'd acquired legally, but there's more. It's the old double standard of gore being fine, but looking at a naked body is a big no-no.

And it gets even stranger

Vegas' post caused many other Xbox users to complain about similar penalties issued by Xbox, penalties that aren't even necessarily BG3 or nudity-related. Reddit user lmaoolivia talks about being banned on similar grounds when playing Attack On Titan, a game that doesn't even feature full-frontal nudity.

Destructoid has reached out to Microsoft and Larian Studios for comment, and will update this story should we hear back.

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Arion Kurtaj, an 18-year-old hacker behind the massive GTA 6 leak last year, has been given an indefinite hospital order.

Kurtaj is a member of the international gang Lapsus$, which was behind various high-profile cybersecurity attacks over the past year. It is estimated that attacks on Uber, Nvidia, and Rockstar have cost the companies up to $10 million. Per the BBC, Kurtaj expressed apparent unwillingness to stop conducting similar attacks.

It turns out that by the time he committed the GTA 6 hack, Kurtaj was already on bail for hacking Nvidia and BT/EE. The BBC reports: "Despite having his laptop confiscated, Kurtaj managed to breach Rockstar, the company behind GTA, using an Amazon Firestick, his hotel TV and a mobile phone."

Kurtaj and another unnamed member of the Lapsus$ hacking group are the first to be convicted, while others are thought to remain at large, according to the BBC.

In July, Arion Kurtaj was deemed unfit to stand trial following a diagnosis of acute austism. The court then had the jury focusing not on whether Kurtaj had done it with criminal intent, but solely on whether or not he had perpetrated the alleged crimes at all.

Regarding the mediate fate of Kurtaj, BBC reports: "He will remain at a secure hospital for life unless doctors deem him no longer a danger."

The news arrives just a few days after news broke of a massive hack at Insomniac, leaking details about in-development games and information about the studio.

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The original DOOM is 30 years old now. That means it has been a little over thirty years since Nintendo turned down Id's offer to port their games to the PC and began a chain reaction that would result in Carmack, Romero, and co. creating the FPS genre. Thanks, Nintendo!

I should also thank John Romero since the co-creator and level designer of the original DOOM has just released SIGIL II, an all-new unofficial DOOM campaign completely free of charge. I still haven't had the time to experience the sequel, but, if it is anything like the original SIGIL, chances are that any DOOM fan will enjoy it quite a bit. It's a treat to all fans of the original game, but it also adds a lot of new flavor that even newer players are bound to enjoy.

SIGIL II, unofficial DOOM 2 episode, is available now

SIGIL II acts as a new episode in a series, meaning that it features actual story beats. It also features nine new levels, eight new multiplayer arenas, a new OST composed by James Paddock, and new art.

On top of this new release, Romero will also be hosting a live Twitch event today, where he will be joining DOOM's other John co-creator, John Carmack, to discuss the original game.

It's great to see that DOOM has survived for so long, and not just because of the latest games in the series. The older games are very much alive as well. Just this year, we also saw the release of one of the greatest mods of all time. I'm of course talking about Myhouse.WAD for DOOM II, which I'm just gonna recommend you try getting into fully blind.

If you own the original DOOM, you can now download SIGIL and SIGIL II for free, or buy their incredibly rad old-school big box versions here.

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Steam's surprise hit Lethal Company has a lot going for it in terms of scare factor. There are the creepy exomoons, the claustrophobic corridors, and even the possibility that even your teammates will turn on you just to make the quick buck needed to meet a quota.

Those do a great job of raising players' chances of peeing their pants, but let's not kid ourselves — the true star of the show is the game's gallery of alien monsters. So, perhaps for fun, perhaps in an attempt to make them less scary by fitting them in tight imaginary containers, let's rank them!

8. Ghost Girl

Don't let the low-ranking fool you, as the ghost girl is one of the most dangerous enemies in the game. This is a creature that is only visible to one of the members of the team — but is deadly to them all.

Still, she just isn't all that scary-looking. The only really scary thing about her is that she's an alien entity that somehow still looks quasi-human.

7. Forest Keeper

If their name is of any indication, these things are just doing their job, but they could look less weird when doing so.

This is one of the few monsters that you'll face outside of the game's facilities, which means that they don't have to be small enough to fit in any corridor. These are hulking monstrosities who'll see you from afar and hunt you down relentlessly. Don't trust your parents. It's not nice outside.

6. Eyeless dog

Why name something bad after the best friend one can have? Because the devs are evil, that's why.

The eyeless dog is the evil version of a dog, but don't go ahead thinking "it's just a cat, then" either. It's a huge mouth with teeth and legs. Dogs are known for their great sense of smell, but that's not his thing, probably because implementing smell mechanics in games would be wack. He's blind, so his thing is his acute sense of hearing. Be quiet — both in-game and in the intercom, as it's very hard to sneak away from this thing.

5. Jester

On the one hand, the Jester spares players from having to stare at yet another killer clown face. On the other, it's still pretty weird because it presents itself as a pair of legs with a jack-in-the-box for a torso.

Who knows what evils lie inside? Just kidding, we know exactly what lies inside it. It's a huge skull ready to eat your own.

4. Earth Leviathan

Lethal Company lulls you into thinking that most monsters would fit into the game's tight corridors, but then you head out of a facility, see a goddamn Earth Leviathan — and then you're dead.

Forget horror movie-style horror; the Earth Leviathan is blockbuster sci-fi stuff. This is like the sandworm from Dune — if that thing also could fly. Stay indoors, scrappers.

3. Bracken

Do you like Solid Snake? Cool. But what if he were evil? And also like, an evil shadow thing?

That pretty much sums up the Bracken. He's a master of stealth that you'll see snapping the necks of your teammates one by one — unless you're unlucky enough to be the first one to get their neck snapped. The scariest thing about this enemy is that he puts players in a spot we never would've imagined, that of a dumb and useless guard in Metal Gear Solid.

2. Snare Flea

This critter is far from the most troublesome in the game, hence not landing on the top spot, but it's easily the one I'd like to be stuck in a room the least.

Maybe I watched too many movies where alien parasites got attached to our heads to murder us or, worse, lay, eggs inside our bodies. Anyway, this one is just too much for me.

1. Coil Head

The coil head looks like it could make a guest appearance in a Silent Hill game, which is good enough to earn it a high spot on this list.

On top of having my favorite design in the game, the coil heads also feature some really neat mechanics. They seem like a twist on Zelda's ReDeads, those enemies that paralyze players with their gaze.

The coil heads are perfectly fine as long as we're staring at them. They seemingly like our attention, and it's only when we stop staring at them that they will murder us. I think it's equal parts awesome and messed up that the devs are forcing players to stare at their object of fear. Congrats on inevitably inspiring so many nightmares to come.

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Back in 2021, a PlayStation showcase announced that Aspyr was developing the often-rumored remake of Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic. Sadly, that was pretty much the last positive piece of news we got out of that project — up until now.

In 2022, we learned that parent company Embracer Group had dropped Aspyr as the developer and chosen its own Saber Interactive as the replacement. A studio swap is usually troubling news, but the apparent writing on the wall came only three days ago when Giant Bomb's Jeff Grubb said that “this game is not being worked on right now.”

Luckily, however, it seems like the rumors of the KOTOR remake's death could have been exaggerated. Bloomberg's Jason Schreier has tweeted that while he doesn't know whether or not the game will ever come out, he reports from two sources at Saber Interactive that they are still working on it.

Embracer has yet to comment on the matter, so we still don't know the company's current plans for the remake. When asked about it during a recent Embracer financial presentation, CEO Lars Wingefors declined to provide a comment, saying "I notice anything I say to this becomes a headline, so that is my only comment."

We might not learn much for a while, considering how Embracer is going through a troubled period. Volition was shut down, Free Radical reportedly faces closure, and its layoffs in just one quarter have reached titanic proportions.

The situation sucks, for developers and players. People who've played the original upon release and the many more who got to experience it in the two decades that have since passed would likely love to revisit Knights of the Old Republic in a remake. But whether that will ever actually happen or not remains unclear.

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The sequel to the masterful Cities: Skylines is now out, but it didn't quite stick the landing.

Even though Cities: Skylines 2 shows great promise, it also suffers from various performance issues that developer Colossal Order Ltd. was aware of before its release. The company decided not to miss the intended release date for the game despite possible problems but has since adopted a different stance. Colossal just announced that the DLC will be delayed while the company works on fixing the game's performance troubles.

In a long developer note, Colossal Order informs of the company's main goals moving forward. In summation, those are:

Performance improvements - which will focus on getting better GPU performance. The current version of the game infamously features too much detail, and fans have criticized it for rendering stuff as useless as teeth that you never see. The teeth are, reportedly, not the issue, but the team is aware that the performance needs improving.

Bug fixes - the developers are working hard on over 100 instances of reproducible bugs reported by the community.

Editor and Mod support - the developers are working on improving the map editor as well as its interface before they do a proper release.

Cities Skylines 2 post-launch roadmap

The company doesn't have a release date for the upcoming content but has presented a broad window.

• The Asset pack has been delayed to Q1 2024 (from Q4 2023)
• The Creator packs have been delayed to Q2 2024 (from Q1 2024)
• The expansion is still set to release during Q2 2024

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Developers love to present players with characters that feature bonkers origin stories in their games, but sometimes the in-development tales that led to the creation of these characters are even wilder.

Here's a list of famous video game characters whose true origin stories I'm willing to bet that you'd never guess — I sure know I wouldn't.

Solid Snake is two different people — just like the real Big Boss

In the Metal Gear Solid series, Solid Snake would feature an original look for the first game, but then become heavily inspired by Snake Plissken from John Carpenter's Escape From New York. You might know that one considering how Snake actually goes undercover as "Pliskin" in Metal Gear Solid 2, but did you know that the character began life because of a different character?

In the Metal Gear series, Solid Snake's design was heavily inspired by Kyle Reese from Terminator, down to his pose for promotional materials.

I find it very interesting that even though both Reese and Plissken are iconic characters, Solid Snake has arguably grown to overshadow both of his fathers in terms of popularity.

Ermac was born out of fake news

Ermac, the red ninja from the Mortal Kombat series, wasn't meant to be a thing.

It all began when one fan sent Electronic Gaming Monthly a Polaroid of a red ninja in the game. EGM believed in this video game equivalent of a bigfoot sighting and published it without further inquiry. The incident created rumors so strong that the good developers decided to just make it real.

But where did the photo come from? Welp, the fan just doctored a photo of Scorpion to make his armor red.

Also, Ermac is short for “Error Macro”, a term used in one of the game's diagnostics menus. Sorry if you thought it had some sexy and mysterious meaning.

Rain from the Mortal Kombat series is both an internal joke and a Prince reference

If Ermac resulted from fans pressuring the MK devs into making a character, then Rain was the devs' revenge. Most of the ninja characters in the MK series have really fun inception stories, but Rain might just take the cake.

Ed Boon inserted Rain in a small filler sequence in MK3 just to mess with the minds of fans. "How can we unlock this cool new guy?" Many must have asked. The thing is, the purple ninja didn't even have any moves of his own, because he wasn't even a real character. He was yet another rehash of the classic MK ninja skin.

Rain only showed up as a real character a bit later with the release of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Ed Boon says that his name and color came about as a tribute to Prince's hit, "Purple Rain.‌" Here's hoping he's being honest about that.

Kirby's look was just a placeholder

Kirby is one of the most immediately recognizable video game characters, but Nintendo didn't originally want him to look like that.

What we know as Kirby was merely a graphical placeholder for an actual design that never came to be. Either that, or he just swallowed whatever Nintendo artists put near him.

Imagine rocking as much at design as the person who randomly came up with a throwaway design that became more recognizable than 95% of video game characters out there.

Gordon Freeman from the Half-Life series was originally a space biker

‌Despite making a few mistakes along the way, the protagonist of the Half-Life series remains one of the more book-smart main characters in gaming history. Still, Valve originally wanted him to at least look like the exact opposite of that.

He was originally born as “Ivan the Space Biker”, a much more burly version of the main character we ended up getting.

The Spy from Team Fortress 2 was born out of a glitch

Team Fortress 2's spy is likely the most meme-able character in the game, and that's saying a lot since this is one of the most meme-able games in existence. Still, he's there because of a happy accident.

He exists because a bug plagued the game's beta stages and caused enemies to show up as if they were teammates. This would've led a weaker dev team to lose its collective mind, but Valve saw the universe sending them a sign.

Nathan Drake is based on a real-life daredevil

If you think Nathan Drake from the Uncharted series is the son of Lara Croft and Indiana Jones, then I have some worrying news for you.

Naughty Dog actually based him on Jackass superstar Johnny Knoxville. It's one of those things that you'd never in a million years consider a possibility, but good luck erasing the knowledge from your mind now that you've seen the image above.

Lady Dimitrescu is based on a real serial killer

Lady Dimitrescu likely became even more popular than the game she's from, and that's cool, but also kind of worrisome when you know the full picture. You see, Lady Dimitrescu is partly based on Morticia Addams, who is cool, but also on a noblewoman called Elizabeth Báthory, who was anything but.

The thing about Báthory is that she was one of — if not the most — prolific serial killers in history. Báthory was active in the second half of the 1500s, and her thing was killing young girls to drink their blood, as she thought that would keep her youthful. She was wrong and died before reaching even 55. Times were tough back then, but I think it's fair to say that killing up to 650 people for their youth and not even reaching the age of 60 is pretty embarrassing.

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The Internet has no shortage of lists depicting the creepiest enemies you can find in video games. Yeah, the Pyramid Head is very scary, but what about NPCs that, due to glitches or wacky design, become just as monstrous as the most intentionally scary monsters in gaming?

Sure, we already covered the creepiest glitches in video games. But for those who need even more cursed content, here's a list just for you.

Kids in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla

‌In previous Assassin's Creed games, Ubisoft generally modeled regular-looking kids. But in Assassin's Creed Valhalla, the company managed to come up with a bunch of monstrosities when it came to portraying Viking children.

Did the devs have a huge bone to pick with Scandinavians? At best, these NPCs only look okay. Most look extremely scary.

And that's not even the glitch. That's the feature. The glitch is one that makes these kids grow as large as adults.

Babies in Bioshock Infinite

‌Eerie children have been a staple of horror movies for the longest time, so it's no surprise that video games would eventually follow that trend. Granted, the world of Bioshock Infinite is weird. But it never gets worse than when you look at some of its babies.

‌What the hell is that? Why does the game have some normal babies in it, and then some have the bodies of children but the heads and faces of adult men? Is this a side effect of taking plasmids during pregnancy? That could've made for such a great side plot.

The super-human drone controller in The Division 2

Upon release, the drone controller NPC in The Division 2 was just something else. She was just too good, like, impossibly good. Please see if you notice anything strange about her mannerisms in the clip above. Imagine being a poor criminal or rebel and knowing that's what you're up against.

‌I'm not keen on drone warfare in real life, so I actually enjoy Ubisoft's accidental attempt at making it look gross and weird in games.

The mannequins in Skyrim are straight out of a horror movie

‌If you look closely at the mannequins in Skyrim, you might notice that they look back at you. In fact, they never stop following you with their unseeing eyes.

That's because those goddamn mannequins aren’t objects, they're secret NPCs. Sometimes you gotta make some shortcuts when you're developing a game, but some shortcuts will do more harm than good. This is not one of those cases, because I absolutely love these cursed monstrosities.

The soldiers’ wives in Medal Of Honor Warfighter

‌Remember Medal Of Honor? That series met its demise after the launch of Medal Of Honor Warfighter, a big-budget game that came out in 2012 with NPCs that look straight out of the early 00's.

The male models don’t look great, but they have one thing going for them: short hair. Their wives, on the other hand, have both really weird faces and hair animations. Also, how old are they? They manage to look both 30 and 60 at the same time.

The cutscene looks like an attempt to make one of those creepy AI-made deepfakes long before that was a thing.

Stalker Watson in Sherlock Holmes Nemesis

Watson in Sherlock Holmes Nemesis is always following players around, and teleporting behind their backs when they let him out of sight. It's a good thing that this man loves Holmes. Otherwise, there'd be serious cause for concern.

This odd feature grew into such a classic that the devs behind the vastly superior Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments made an in-engine short film starring Sherlock Holmes' creepiest friend.

Red Dead Redemption 2’s Bald Man

‌The Bald Man is a weird NPC that has appeared for many Red Dead Redemption 2 players seemingly just to haunt them. Nobody knows why he’s there or how he showed up. He's become the Slenderman of the RDR2 community.

The only thing we know about the Bald Man is that sometimes he's floating, and sometimes he shows up in a see-through manner, just like a ghost. I don't really know anything about him, as nobody does, but I recommend that you don't engage with him in a shootout. We know how well shooting supernatural entities turned out for John Marston.

This poor man from Assassin’s Creed Unity who is is immune to hanging

Assassin's Creed Unity caught a lot of heat upon release due to the presence of a variety of obvious glitches, but I believe that more discrete glitches make for better horror.

What you see above is not an NPC that you'll learn later was faking his death. That's supposedly a very hanged, very dead, man. Still, a weird glitch forced him to be conscious and hilariously nonplussed about the fact that his neck was broken.

I just find it very interesting that the Assassin's Creed series, one that I'm assuming is made by people who know a lot about death, don't always manage to kill their NPCs dead.

The post Most unintentionally creepy NPCs in video games appeared first on Destructoid.

The Silent Hill brand is about to venture into the territory of interactive entertainment. Tonight, Halloween night, Genvid Entertainment and Konami join forces to invite fans and newcomers alike to enter the world of Silent Hill: Ascension.

What is Silent Hill Ascension?

Ascension is not a game per se, but rather a web series featuring a completely new story and cast of characters set in the infamous town.

You can just watch the series for free if you'd like, but you — and the rest of the community — can pay to try and directly influence the evolution of the new Silent Hill canon.

To have influence over Ascension, you'll need IP. That's short for Influence Points. You can get some IP for free by completing daily puzzles, such as a rhythm game where you play the songs of Silent Hill, but you naturally stand to earn way more points by paying actual money.

The best way to earn IP is the Founder's Pack. It costs you $19,99 and includes a season pass that will allow players to unlock all sorts of cosmetics that they can try to get their characters to wear in the series.

Ascension will run over the course of 16 weeks, during which the community will get to decide what happens to its characters and to the world of Silent Hill.

The premiere will be about 45 minutes long. From then on, each night will bring a new episode that will last from 5 to 15 minutes.

People who've purchased the Founder's Pack will get to replay the series with the option to find out different possible outcomes.

How to watch Silent Hill: Ascension?

You can either watch Silent Hill: Ascension via the website Ascension.com or via its app that you can get for either Android or iOS.

Genvid will debut the series premiere of Silent Hill: Ascencion tonight at 9 pm ET / 6 pm PT on Ascension.com, the App Store, and Google Play.

If you're too hyped to wait that long, then you can check out Greg Miller of Kinda Funny hosting the premiere Pre-Show at 7:30 pm ET / 4:30 pm PT on Ascension.com as well as on Kinda Funny's YouTube and Twitch channels.

‌

The post Streaming web series Silent Hill: Ascension premieres tonight appeared first on Destructoid.

Alan Wake 2 is finally out. It's quite the scary ride, and one our review-in-progress offered plenty of praise for as Remedy Entertainment went back for round two. However, Alan Wake 2 may suffer a few launch hiccups, as an annoying audio issue affects some Xbox players.

After the sequel's launch just days ago, player reports have included complaints about the game's audio cutting out with no apparent cause. While the problem has no clear fix, Remedy Entertainment has acknowledged its existence and stated that it's looking into a solution.

Remedy also released new patch notes regarding the new update today, bringing general bug fixes for the PS5, Xbox, and PC versions. On both consoles, the studio added localization fixes. Additionally, the Xbox version received tweaks for various visual issues and a problem where players would get soft-locked in interactions.

The Xbox version will also get what Remedy describes as a "significantly friendlier" error message when third-party software prevents the game from starting.

While some of those launch day woes may burden your early nightmares, there are more performance-friendly options to play Remedy's follow-up. Prior to launch, communications director at Remedy Thomas Puha confirmed both Xbox Series X and PS5 versions would feature different visual modes so players could choose what they value most out of the experience.

You can now experience the full horrors of Alan Wake 2 on PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

The post Remedy is looking into Alan Wake 2 audio issues on Xbox appeared first on Destructoid.

Some games provide intentionally scary moments, while others turn into horror masterpieces entirely by accident. In honor of the sentiment, here's a list of regular games turned into horror masterpieces via the miracle of video game glitches.

Skyrim NPCs can survive decapitation

‌The world of Skyrim is a magical place, though not all the magics contained within are necessarily good ones.

Remember that guy who gets beheaded right at the start of Skyrim? Well, he does lose his head every time, as there's no way to mess with that scripting, but the wound isn't always fatal. This guy — as well as other enemies who wind up headless — can just get up and go on with their lives.

While there's no recording of this headless horseless man going on a vendetta against Dovakhin for doing nothing to prevent his execution, I would keep my eyes open on a playthrough where that happens.

Chances of it happening on your playthrough: Low

Demon babies in The Sims 3

‌The Sims series is as far as it gets from a horror experience — or is it? Well, it turns out that babies in The Sims can become pretty hellish. There's a glitch that turns the babies in The Sims 3 into what feels like an early version of the necromorphs from the Dead Space series.

Putting our offspring in this world can be scary, yes, but I doubt this was an intentional allegory for the fears of parenthood like in David Lynch's Eraserhead.

Chances of it happening on your playthrough: Low

The Manimals in Red Dead Redemption

The original Red Dead Redemption could sometimes mix up human and animal models, which resulted in human NPCs behaving like animals. No, not in the Wild West sense where we expect everyone to play like barbarians.

I'm talking about people literally behaving like animals. Some move like four-legged animals, some others even fly as if they were birds. Sure, this sounds fun when you're just reading about it, but it's probably not as fun to get mauled by a bunch of suit-and-tie-wearing coyotes.

Chances of it happening on your playthrough: Low

The evolved Manimals in Assassin's Creed Origins

Video games have gotten better over time, and that's why Assassin’s Creed Origins features an evolved version of the Red Dead Redemption glitch shown above. Now, instead of having humans behaving like animals, we have some animal NPCs that adopt human mannerisms.

This might not be ancient Egypt done right, but it sure as hell is ancient Egypt done cool.

Chances of it happening on your playthrough: Low

Inexplicable Statue in Witcher 3

‌The Tower of Mice is already one of the eeriest places in the entirety of The Witcher 3, but it gets even worse if you pay attention at the wrong time.

If you stand in the specific spot shown in the video above, you’ll get to see a weirdly lean creature phasing in and out of existence. What is it? Nobody knows for sure, but it's creepy as hell. The good news is that it's completely harmless. Maybe it actually likes Geralt.

Chances of it happening on your playthrough: This specter is there for any player who wants to meet it.

‌Alma following you in FEAR 2

Alma is the little The Ring-inspired girl that serves as the poster child for the FEAR series. She shows up to spook players throughout FEAR 2, naturally, but this weird glitch makes her follow you around nonstop. The player in the video above gets rid of her by throwing a punch, which caused her to fly away in the most awkward manner possible. This is the perfect combination of funny and terrifying.

‌‌The FEAR series is already scary enough as is. It doesn't need its scare factor to get further inflated by wacky glitches.

Chances of it happening on your playthrough: Astronomically low. This may be the only recorded instance of this glitch.

NBA Jam has ghosts

‌NBA Jam came out in ‘93, a few months after the tragic death of Drazen Petrovic.

Imagine trying to enjoy the game when the arcade machine starts shouting his name — and no one else’s — even though he's not even playing. That’s as close as it gets to a video game haunting — and it's totally real.

Chances of it happening on your playthrough: 100%. This glitch is present in every early version of the game.

Fallout 4 companion becomes your greatest enemy

Most Fallout 4 fans don’t like Preston Garvey very much because of how pushy he gets with helping settlements, and most of them haven’t even had to deal with him going mad.

Yes, it's possible that Garvey will turn into an unkillable Terminator-like figure that will hunt players down until the heat death of the universe. Yes, that's something that happens, and someone has lived to document it.

This brave wasteland journalist tried everything, from regular bullets to explosives. Nothing would stop Garvey. The best he could do was temporarily stun the unstoppable force. He then had an idea, to build the most powerful settlement ever built. Maybe its concentrated firepower would destroy Garvey. Too bad the settlement refused to shoot Garvey, seemingly remembering that he's the only person in the land who cares about settlements.

The ordeal ended not with Garvey's death, but with him randomly going back to friendly mode. There's no way of knowing how long this peace will last.

Chances of it happening on your playthrough: Extremely low, but keep your eyes open, and don't neglect your settlements.

Mount and Blade’s terrifying skybox

‌In Mount and Blade: Warband, a weird glitch might turn the entire skybox into the face of an angry man who merely stares at the player. Who is that? Why is he so pissed? Nobody knows.

I’m assuming that’s a very pissed-off medieval god, which is sadly the worst possible kind of god.

Chances of it happening on your playthrough: Very high. This is a surprisingly common glitch.

The post Creepiest glitches in video games appeared first on Destructoid.

Gamers are well aware of the notorious things that the Metal Gear Solid series does well. Still, Hideo Kojima has filled the entire franchise with awesome details that might go by unnoticed just like Solid Snake would.

Not anymore.

The original Metal Gear Solid is haunted by many ghosts

This one is a little hard to notice as it only shows up in second or further playthroughs of the original Metal Gear Solid.

When we go for MGS' New Game+, we'll get a digital camera from the get-go. Players can use this camera to snap pictures of cool-looking parts of the Shadow Moses military complex, but there's a secret, darker, reason why the camera is there.

In true Japanese horror fashion, it's there to capture ghosts. You'll never notice it when you're taking the pictures, but, when you go back to look at your gallery, chances are you'll see the spooky ghost of one of the game's many developers.

There's a secret game inside Metal Gear Solid 3

If you save and reload your game while Snake is in the cell after getting captured by the bad guys, you'll get back not to MGS3 per se, but to a game called Guy Savage. I'm gonna call it a minigame because it's very short, but this doesn't feel like just a minigame.

Guy Savage puts you in the shoes of a two-sword-wielding man who has to chop up a small army of enemies. The whole thing is wild because it looks and plays just like a demo for a real game, but Guy Savage doesn't exist outside of Snake's dream in MGS3. Can you imagine a team led by anyone other than Kojima making such a detailed experience and putting it in a place that most players will just miss?

I don't think anyone would ever accuse MGS3 of suffering from a lack of features, but it's nice to see Kojima will never stop going above and beyond.

Guards breathe realistically in Metal Gear Solid V

There are many ways to kill guards in Metal Gear Solid V. One of the cheapest and most callous options is to knock them out and drop their bodies face down atop a body of water. Wait for a short while and they will simply drown.

An even viler mode — though one that shows the game's great attention to detail — is to order conscious enemy guards to lie down on a body of water. I'm just pointing out that this is something you can do — not something you should do.

Sneezing can be Snake's greatest enemy in Metal Gear Solid 2

The Tanker at the beginning of Metal Gear Solid 2 provided one of the most impressive showcases of environmental video game design back in '01. Don't stay out to marvel at the beauty of the rainy Hudson River for too long, though, as this will cause Snake to catch a cold and start sneezing.

Snake's new ailment might feel like a bit of harmless fun at first, but be careful. It's only all fun and games until Snake's random sneezes begin giving away his position to nearby guards.

You can get Snake to puke in Metal Gear Solid 3

Snake can suffer from a bunch of ailments in MGS3. No ailment of the future Big Boss is funnier than a quick vomiting bout — especially when it's all the player's fault.

If you open the game's menu and decide to use the analog stick to spin Snake around, he will throw up on the floor as soon as you return to the game. Please spin your Snake responsibly.

You can have a lot of fun at the bar in Metal Gear Solid 2

You can completely ignore the bar area in the Tanker segment from MGS2, but that would be a grave mistake. I don't mean that in the sense that booze rocks. I mean that this discrete area contains a multitude of showcases of some of the most interesting examples of attention to detail in the history of gaming.

You can realistically destroy glass bottles with your gun, see wine spilling toward the floor, and, most interesting of all, engage with an ice bucket. This unassuming bucket displays proper physics and even drops ice cubes that will melt just as if they were the real thing. The ice bucket/cubes serve no real purpose and only exist in the game in that tiny part of that one map.

It's just wild to think that the developers put who knows how many hours into creating something so spectacular that only very few would notice.

The many ways to bring about The End's end

You probably know by now that you can avoid fighting Cobra Unit's The End entirely. You know you can snipe him in the head before his boss encounter starts, by setting your console's clock ten days to the future, or simply by, well, sitting down for 10 days with your console on until he dies of old age. Those are all great, but did you know that The End owns a pet parrot that you can capture and use to find his location? That's true!

Regardless of your strategy, remember never to save during the fight against this boss. Loading that file will trigger a cutscene where Snake falls asleep and gets taken to prison. This will result in the worst fate one can suffer in an MGS game — having to backtrack your way to your previous position.

I love every single detail of this battle, and I like that not even this was enough to satisfy Kojima. Did you know that he originally wanted the battle against The End to require at least two actual weeks of your time?

Metal Gear Solid 2 features realistic seagulls

The development team behind MGS2 paid more attention to making realistically diabolical seagulls than many games put into the creation of their human NPCs.

The seagulls in Metal Gear Solid 2 will poop on the eyes of players who dare to look up to enjoy the beautiful MGS2 skybox in first-person mode. Also, walking over their poop will cause you to slip and fall.

Your natural reaction might be to shoot them, but I recommend against it. Any attempt to get violent revengeance will result in the game itself straight-up refusing to save your progress. Whenever you spot a seagull in MGS2, think of it as the one enemy you don't want to trifle with.

The post Top 8 things you may have missed in the Metal Gear Solid series appeared first on Destructoid.

Most people love the Metal Gear series and are quick to rank their favorite games in the franchise. But are most people going to bother to rank the actual Metal Gear robots? Nope! Let's dive in.

9. Gekko (MGS4)

Features: The Gekko units don't require a pilot and can work as a team.

The Gekkos are very disappointing from a design standpoint. They're the legs of Metal Gear RAY stitched to the torso of REX but without the charisma of either model.

Metal Gear Solid 2 began by introducing Metal Gear RAY, which owns, and then went on to introduce Arsenal Gear, an even bigger and crazier Metal Gear. The Gekko was the first new Metal Gear model introduced in Metal Gear Solid 4. The Gekko isn't very impressive, so I kept waiting for some wilder threat to show up. Nothing ever did.

They also suck in combat. Here's a fun clip of Raiden making a mockery of them. They were easy to rank last!

8. TX-55 (Metal Gear)

Features: It's like a tank with two legs and it fires nukes.

The original iteration of Metal Gear doesn't look very threatening — especially by the mech standards of today — and it isn't even a very tough opponent to beat! Still, it does its best to provide a battle event in a game that actively has to try to avoid action. Also, this is the one that got the ball running for the franchise. We gotta honor the classics.

7. Metal Gear MK. II (MGS4)

Features: A small screen that allows you to talk to your hacker friend. Can hack stuff and can also zap enemies. No missiles, not even tiny ones.

In all fairness, Metal Gear Solid 4 does introduce a Metal Gear model other than the Gekko. It's the Metal Gear MK. II. He's not a beautiful killing machine, though.

The MK II is a cute little Metal Gear. He might be a huge departure from what we expect out of this kind of unit, but I do enjoy the subversion. Also, this little thing brings some interesting mechanics to the table as well as some cuteness factor, so I'm gonna keep it.

6. Zeke (Peace Walker)

Features: Nukes. It's also customizable with a chance of going haywire.

Zeke is the name of the Metal Gear unit from Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. He rocks because he's not just a Metal Gear. He's our Metal Gear. He's the only real Metal Gear mech we can call our own. Peace Walker allowed players to customize ZEKE more or less like they would customize a mech in Armored Core, and that owned.

Spoilers: Things do go very awry with Zeke later in the game, but Zeke is great while it lasts.

5. Arsenal Gear (MGS2, MGS4)

Features: A lot of room, the capability to ram through an entire city, like, say, New York.

MGS2 first introduces Metal Gear RAY, but then we get one of the game's many great twists when we learn that RAY wasn't the new Metal Gear unit ruffling everyone's feathers. It was Arsenal Gear.

Arsenal Gear isn't a mech. It's a gargantuan mobile fortress. It also looks really cool. Sadly, we didn’t get to see much of Arsenal Gear in action because Konami feared that some of its scenes would resemble the events of 9/11, which preceded the release of the game in just a few months, so they ended up cutting a lot of its footage.

A different version of Arsenal Gear shows up in MGS4, and that's where it finally got to show its true power.

4. ST-84 Sahelanthropus (MGS5)

Features: Missiles, the ability to stand and walk like a human being, and even a goddamn laser sword.

The Sahelanthropus is by far the wildest Metal Gear unit in existence.

At first glance, the Sahelanthropus from Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain makes no sense. It has many more features and is way more powerful than REX, a model would only come out over 20 years later, but it might make sense, after all.

Maybe it’s the result of Kojima predicting the future once again. Maybe he foretold the current trend of brands selling us hogwash for true technological evolution. Are LCD screens better than CRT ones for gaming? Is having digital versions of games on platforms that might implode better than owning a good old DVD? Don’t you miss your headphone jack? I’ll never forget the Patriots for taking those away from us.

3. Shagohod (MGS3)

Features: Can launch nukes, has two huge front drills, doesn't have legs but is ultra-fast, ready for all types of terrain, and can ram anything. Can be controlled from the outside provided you're a superhuman who possesses electricity-controlling abilities.

Even some of the characters in Metal Gear Solid 3 diss the Shagohod because it doesn’t have legs. Still, it sure does make up for its supposed shortcoming by making use of its wheels to create one of the most memorable boss encounters in the series.

2. Metal Gear RAY (MGS2, MGS4)

Features: Missiles, lasers, the ability to jump and swim. Oh, and it has a cool tail. Also, it exists for the purpose of destroying other Metal Gear units.

the slickest-looking unit in the history of the series also comes equipped with lasers and a sweet tail. I don't really need to say much about this one because its look immediately has everyone sold on its capabilities, but it kind of matters that this is probably the most advanced Metal Gear Unit that (dark) money can buy.

Not enough? Okay, then here's Metal Gear RAY stealing the show in some of the coolest cutscenes in both MGS2 and MGS4.

1. Metal Gear REX (MGS1, MGS4)

Features: Nuclear missile launching capabilities, a huge railgun, lasers, homing missiles, and the ability to somehow roar like a dinosaur.

The mech that popularized the term “metal gear” for a new generation was never really topped. Defeating it in the first MGS felt like the final achievement in gaming.

Nearly a decade later, REX returns in MGS4 and we finally get to control it. That remains one of the best things in gaming because it brings back both the memories of the original game and of that glorious moment in Jurassic Park when the T-Rex comes back to save the day. The only thing capable of beating Nostalgia is stronger Nostalgia.

The post Top 9 best actual Metal Gears in the MGS series appeared first on Destructoid.

Horror lovers love the constant dread provided by horror games, but we all know nothing beats an expertly crafted jumpscare.

Let’s see if our readers can handle witnessing 10 of the best jumpscares in the history of gaming in one sitting.

Zombie dogs jumping through the window in Resident Evil and REmake

Even with its messy writing and voice acting, the original Resident Evil does a great job of reminding players they’re in constant danger.

We get some relief right at the beginning of the original Resident Evil when the S.T.A.R.S. team makes it into the mansion and locks the dogs on the outside, but we later learn it’s but a ruse. Those goddamn zombie dogs somehow find the energy to jump through windows and get to us. This is one of the earliest — and still best — jumpscares in the history of gaming.

Nemesis also jumping through a window in Resident Evil 3

Nemesis is, in my opinion, the scariest monster in the history of Resident Evil. Capcom seemingly used actual Pavlovian psychology in an attempt to scare players even further than they did in previous games in the series, and I think they absolutely nailed it.

Nemesis has his greatest ever moment when he jumps through the window in the police precinct straight at players. This might be the best jumpscare in the series, as it's a better-directed version of the already amazing dog scare from the original game.

Silent Hill's "abandoned" dog house

No, I’m not talking about the adorable dog from the ending of Silent Hill 2. It's about the one from this segment in the original Silent Hill.

The image above naturally became a meme, but for the people who were unlucky enough to experience that event through playing the game, and not via a harmless still frame coming from someone else’s playthrough, it also became a grueling memory.

This is the video game equivalent of one of those cursed photos taken right before tragedy strikes.

Zombies using doors in Resident Evil 2

The door-opening animation was one of the staples of the Resident Evil series, as well as one of the most iconic loading screens in gaming.

The series took its sweet time, around one game and a half, making you believe that you got to safely catch your breath while you witnessed the main characters opening doors. You know what I'm talking about. The player’s point of view closes in on the door, the handle moves, the door opens, and we find ourselves in a different room.

Resident Evil 2 spiced things up and, while we’re opening one of the many doors in the game (I won’t say which), we get greeted by zombies rushing at us from the other side. What an amazing subversion of expectations.

All of P.T. but mostly Lisa

P.T. is a masterclass in psychological horror. It smothers players with so much tension that even the smallest attempt to get them to jump out of their chairs would likely work, but the game actually features masterful jumpscares that would work in any scenario.

At the center of said jumpscares is Lisa, the mysterious entity who haunts the corridor that serves as the entire world of P.T. Upon finding her and making the mistake of getting too close, she'll make a run for players. This is likely when you freeze and think that you're dead, but nothing actually happens. Lisa just disappears before making contact. That could have been it. They already had a great jumpscare, but they wanted more. It's only when players decide to look behind them that she shows up again to really murder the player.

Anyone who's been through this is likely feeling a nice little chill down their spine right now.

A regular day of exploration in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

This is probably my favorite one on the list because it’s not even scripted. That thing you just saw above can happen to you at any moment during a playthrough, meaning that it can happen more than once.

Maybe it’ll even follow you to real life, who knows? S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl just does not mess around.

That damn baby in RE Village

You know the one.

What makes this encounter so unforgettable is how — even like 10 games in — this just isn't what you'd expect out of this series. This monstrosity shows up completely out of the blue, and it's by far the scariest part of Resident Evil Village. Here's hoping we'll see Capcom venturing into even weirder territory for the upcoming games in the series.

Resident Evil 4’s fishy revenge

The Del Lago is one of the bosses in Resident Evil 4, but Leon's final encounter with the lake monster is underwhelmingly boring. A one-off in such an otherwise impeccable game. Still, the Del Lago manages to save face as he’s actually the protagonist of the game’s best (and totally optional) jumpscare. It triggers once you shoot the water three or four times. He just jumps out of the lake and eats Leon whole. No QTE event can save you here.

Outer Wilds fishes fish the player

Outer Wilds presents itself as a very harmless and even wholesome space exploration title, and that's what it is — for most of the time. Still, when the game finally gets players' full trust, it hits them with one of the most horrifying sights in the history of gaming.

Be careful whenever you enter a planet that seems hospitable, as you might be entering a zone filled with giant spaceship-eating anglerfish.

Prey’s calibration test

‌Prey from 2017 sneakily invites players to do a Halo-style calibration test, but this is just a ruse to get the guard of players down and deliver one hell of a jump scare.

Remember kids, calibrating your hardware is important, but not at the cost of your heart.

The post The 10 best jumpscares in horror games appeared first on Destructoid.

Gray Fox in the original Metal Gear Solid famously claims that "only a fool trusts his life to a weapon." He might be right, yeah, but he's an anime-tier exosuit-wearing Cyborg Ninja who's 'roided to the brim with nanomachines.

We common folk might need some weapons in the predictable future when some wacky CEO tech bro inevitably puts our bodies in a video game scenario, so here are the best ones you can find.

10. BFG 9000 (Doom series, Quake 3)

‌Got no aim? Don't bother training it. Instead, look for a "Bio Force Gun" 9000. Yeah, that's what The Rock said it stands for in the Doom movie, so that's probably the only meaning that acronym has ever had.

Pull the trigger once and every enemy that's not a boss and whose name isn't Marauder turns into mush. This is the quintessential late-game FPS weapon and one every player is sure to love even if only because of how useful it is.

Seeing it firing is also a thing of beauty, whether you’re playing the original Doom, Doom Eternal, or any Doom game that exists in between. I love it even in Doom 3, where overcharging it will lead to the player's immediate demise.

The BFG even has a surprisingly simple but awesome story behind its design. Did you know that its model is just two toy guns glued together?

9. Gunblade (Final Fantasy VIII)

‌Everybody clowns on the Gunblade from FFVIII, but if you look at history, you’ll see military figures that actually used it to great success. One such person was one of UK Admiral Horatio Nelson’s top men who defeated Napoleon at Trafalgar, his only defeat at sea.

I imagine he didn’t decide the battle on a 1v1 against a gunless saber-wielding Napoleon, but that's a more likely picture than imagining Nelson's man using a Buster sword. Yeah, even though Cloud’s Buster Sword and Sephiroth’s Masamune get the spotlight when it comes to cool FF weapons, there’s no way in hell anyone ever got to kill anyone other than themselves and their team by taking either of those to an actual battle.

8. Railgun (Quake series)

Ever heard of Instagib? It’s an awesome game mode that spawned entirely out of the Railgun from Quake 2. How many weapons get to spawn their own genre?

‌The premise of the railgun is simple. The thing you click on gets pierced by a supersonic projectile, and, if you're playing on Instagib mode, it gets "gibbed", which means obliterated.

The Railgun is the exact opposite of the BFG. If you want a kill, you need to aim as precisely as you can. You'll find no better weapon in the world of gaming if you want to see who aims the best. It's also one of the most fun and rewarding weapons that you can get your hands on.

7. Cerebral Bore (Turok series)

Recency bias nearly made me go with the Lancer assault rifle from the Gears Of War series, but I think it just doesn’t get more unnecessarily over the top than Turok's weapon inspired by the Phantasm series of movies.

You can just tell that somebody needed to make a statement by creating the biggest gore-maker in the history of gaming, so they naturally went with something that makes your skull puke its brain out.

We tend to rewrite history a lot, so perhaps let's start doing it in fun ways. How about we start making it so that kids in one or two generations max think that this is how America made the dinosaurs go extinct?

6. Dagger Of Time (Prince of Persia’s glorious ‘00s run)

‌This is likely the most overpowered weapon on the list as it allows its user to go back in time and hopefully prevent serious mistakes. The dagger of time lets you go back and correct mistakes such as jumping head-first into a spike pit or, perhaps even that preorder — you know which one(s).

‌Outside of that, the dagger of time also works just like a regular knife would, except this one also kills the undead. You'll never want to go back to cutting steak with daggers that don't control time.

5. Portal Gun (Portal series)

This one is a weapon in name only, but I doubt anyone who's ever played Portal or Portal 2 would find it undeserving of a spot here.

If the Gravity Gun rocks because it gave players the chance to do something they’d all wanted to do since games began featuring objects, then the Portal Gun rocks because it gave players the chance to do something they didn’t know they wanted to do.

If you like the Portal Gun and don't want to get older waiting for new places where you can use it, check out this awesome mod that allows you to bring it to the world of Half-Life 2.

4. Blades Of Chaos (God Of War series)

‌The Blades of Chaos represent the greatest victory for the cool factor in its eternal war against common sense and physics. Where does Kratos store all those chains? Does he have to tie the blades to the chains whenever he’s about to start swinging? Is there a mechanism or some magnet that makes the transition much easier? How come he never gets tangled up in them?

And yet, none of these questions matter because getting to stab your enemies from afar is just too much fun. They almost feel like an early and much less cowardly version of a military drone!

Also, credit where credit is due, the Leviathan Axe from the newer games also absolutely owns and is one of the main reasons why the series' revival works so well — but it just isn't silly enough.

3. Protec Grappler G3 (Just Cause series)

The Gravity Gun made games much more fun by allowing players to move objects around and even throw them as they saw fit. The Just Cause series upped the ante by allowing players to attach themselves to objects and even vehicles moving at dangerously high speeds.

The Grappler might not seem like much — it's pretty much just a rope, really. Still, it's one of the most fun weapons in the history of video games. It's a true testament to the ingenuity of the devs behind this series. The Grappler is also, surprisingly, one of the most powerful. Don’t believe me? Ok, here's a video of someone beating the final boss of Just Cause 3 in fifteen seconds just by using the Grappler to introduce it to the pavement.

2. Lightsaber (in the Jedi Knight series only)

‌This isn’t a video game weapon per se, but it’s in so many video games that I guess I just couldn’t ignore it. The lightsaber, when done right, is just one of the best and most fun weapons you can wield in a game. And by that, I mean the lightsaber from the Jedi Knight series, the one that allowed me to go on Dark Souls-style duels a decade before Dark Souls was a thing. The lightsaber that would down an opponent just by hitting it — you know, just like the lightsabers from the movies!

The lightsabers in the Survivor and Force Unleashed series feel less like a superweapon capable of killing anyone in one blow, and more like a shiny baton. It sucks when new games create problems for the solutions we already had.

1. Gravity Gun (Half-Life series)

‌Gaming was one thing before Valve revealed the first Half-Life 2 gameplay footage at E3 2003, and then it became something completely different — something better. Behind that shift is the "Zero-Point Energy Field Manipulator", aka gravity gun.

‌The gravity gun might be the most important weapon in the recent history of the FPS genre as it doubles as the tool that’ll solve most of the game for the player — not just by killing what stands in your way. This marvel allows players to use HL2’s physics engine to move objects in a way that can solve puzzles, but also in a very lethal and fun way. The gravity gun excels both as a weapon and as a way to put gamers’ brains at work without them ever feeling like they’re at risk of becoming nerds.

The post Top 10 Coolest Weapons In Games appeared first on Destructoid.

Mortal Kombat games have gone a long way from being okay fighters that made up for their shortcomings with huge amounts of brutality. The last few games in the series absolutely rock even from a serious competition standpoint, but I still love the series' absolutely absurd displays of violence. Here are my favorite fatalities in Mortal Kombat history.

7. Smoke bomb

Though easily the least graphic one of the bunch, Smoke's explosive fatality is the most deadly in MK history. Smoke doesn't just smoke his opponent, he smokes himself and even the whole planet. Flawless plan and a flawless victory indeed.

The original hardware MK3 ran on just wasn't powerful enough to make this fatality look as cool as it should have, so I love finally getting to witness it in the glory it deserves in Mortal Kombat 1.

6. Quan Chi's Chiropractic adjustment

This fatality was just the goofiest crap when I first saw it in Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance. Then it grew up on me as I grew older. Headaches, mysterious neck pains, and all those recommended YouTube videos of professionals with dubious credentials nearly ripping off the heads of their patients made this one go from hilarious to horrifying.

Not even its lack of blood and guts helps make it any less scary. It forces me to think about the possibility of surviving the ordeal and having to go places with my neck looking like that.

If you still don't find this one of the best fatalities in the series, I just ask you to give it enough time.

5. Sindel's Scream

One'd probably expect a scream-based fatality in this game to simply explode the head of the victim, but this one taught me not to underestimate the artistry of the people behind this series. The fatality animations in Mortal Kombat sometimes surprise us with their originality, and this is the best example of that.

Instead of going for something predictable, you see Sindel's scream ripping off a character's clothes, and then their skin. The only thing that's left is a still-standing corpse that most anatomy teachers would pay millions for.

4. Johnny Cage's triple decapitation uppercut

Mortal Kombat, despite all of its blood guts, and bones, has always been goofy as hell. Over half of all fatality animations show a character's body exploding and leaving two skulls, six femurs, and around four torsos on the ground. I laugh every time I think about parents wondering if this was the game that would totally turn their kids into demons.

I love this secret fatality because it uses Johnny Cage, a Hollywood actor, to hammer in the inherent ridiculousness of fatalities. There should be way more secret fatalities like this one.

3. Giving birth to Noob Saibot

Noob Saibot would be one of the coolest characters in the series even if his fatalities didn't own. But they do. Not bad for a character that came to life as a joke.

Noob Saibot's second fatality in Mortal Kombat 11 is one of the most inventive and gruesomely detailed in the history of Mortal Kombat. There's nothing funny or wacky about this one. The only thing you'll find here is proof that the people of NetherRealm are master wizards of gore.

2. Sub-Zero spine rip

This is the quintessential Fatality. Sub-Zero's spine rip is likely the one that sold most people on the series due to the incredibly high detail of violence it manages to show via such simple hardware. No one was ready for this one.

The people behind the game know that they immediately struck gold with this one considering how they never stopped remaking it.

1. Liu Kang's Arcade Fatality

Did you know that originally, Liu Kang was as non-violent as possible? Weird design choice for a game you loved because you got to tear your opponent's face off.

In the original MK, Liu Kang doesn't have a fatality that's, well, lethal. It was only to contend with the desire of fans to ramp up the violence that the developers gave Liu Kang fatalities. Still, they originally only gave him fatalities where he got to keep his hands clean. Did you ever notice that Kang never directly killed anyone in the original trilogy? It's true.

Sure, you see him turning into a dragon and eating a person, but that's not his character model, that's just a dragon! The same goes with this one, where an arcade cabinet falls on top of your opponent and just crushes the poor fool. You never see Liu Kang dropping it. Hell, he's not even in the picture when it happens!

The developers were facing a serious handicap when coming up with Fatalities for Liu Kang, and I believe they still knocked it out of the park.

You wouldn't know just how scary the Arcade Drop fatality is until you yourself are playing in an arcade that looks just like the one you just saw crushing someone on screen.

Special mention: Kronika's demise

This one doesn't count as a fatality because it's a cutscene, but fatalities kind of are cutscenes, right? Well, either way, I just have to put this one here.

One thing that has always bugged me about Mortal Kombat is that villains don't tend to get a proper sendoff. Upon defeat, they usually just explode in a nonchalant manner and that's it. Not with Kronika, though. The poor creature goes out in the most violent way imaginable. Don't believe me? Well, then why is this the only video of an MK fatality that I can't embed here?

Now this is how you end the game with a bang.

The post Top 7 Fatalities in All of Mortal Kombat appeared first on Destructoid.

The video game movie adaptations from the early '00s didn't exactly rule, but they sure weren't formulaic, either. These things were wild, and therefore much more interesting than a lot of the content we get on streaming these days. I invite you to try to reappraise video game movies that got unfairly maligned back when we didn't know how bad things would get.

7. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001)

First off, I have to say that I don't entirely agree with the opinion that Max Caufield from Life Is Strange expresses above. Hell, I don't even bite that she cares about the movie all that much, considering how she gets the name wrong. Still, I remember watching that in theaters when it first came out. The experience was mind-blowing. Why don't more people agree with me? Well, I assume it's because most people didn't see it in theatres.

Square tried hard to make something new and beautiful that would resonate with FF fans and outsiders alike. They sure did make something new and beautiful. It just didn't resonate with anyone. I get that it lacks pacing and that the plot isn't particularly memorable, but experiencing this in theatres felt like what I assume many would only feel ten years later when watching Avatar.

The Spirits Within came out close to the release of Shrek, whose box office success made Square's film feel like a straight-to-DVD release. Still, if you're to watch the two back-to-back nowadays, Shrek isn't nearly as funny, and The Spirits Within remains beautiful, albeit a bit dull — so basically as fun as watching Shrek as an adult.

6. Tomb Raider (2018)

If you like HBO's The Last Of Us, then you probably should check this one out. Not because they're similar, but because Tomb Raider is also a very safe adaptation. The only big change we get from the game is the third act, which feels a lot like the third act from the original Uncharted game, so that still counts as a safe adaptation.

Also, there's Alicia Vikander, who actually breathes way more life into the character than nu-Lara from the games.

This film never reaches the highs of Angelina Jolie's first movie, but it never reaches its lowest lows, either. It's the perfect simulation of a dangerous tomb-raiding escapade.

5. Super Mario Bros. (yes, the original one from 1993)

1993's Super Mario Bros. failed to reach the hearts and pockets of fans, but it had the same idea that the best video game TV show adaptations of today all had: doing something original with the source material.

Too bad they strayed too far from what people felt comfortable with and we ended up with something that didn't resonate with anyone.

Even though it didn't work out, probably due to a really messed-up production cycle that got worsened by studio meddling, Super Mario Bros. still gave us a bunch of hilarious memes.

4. Silent Hill (2006)

The original Silent Hill film — definitely not the second one — is way more beautiful than it needed to be. Christophe Gans, the director whose style feels like it inspired Bloodborne, went all out in terms of eye candy.

Silent Hill could've featured one hundred cheap jump-scares and audiences would have liked it, but Gans said no, and confidently crafted a moody film that mostly captures the feel of the game. Though it exists because someone saw its money-making potential, I love seeing a "product" that feels so untainted by studio meddling.

I believe that the biggest problem of this film is that it sometimes sticks too close to the formula of the original game, and sometimes gets too far away from it. I wish Silent Hill could've told a new tale set in that town. Still, I'm still quite happy with what we ended up getting.

Also, even though his presence in the film makes no sense, that Pyramid Head kill — you know which one— is one of the best that I've ever seen in any horror film.

3. Tomb Raider (2001)

I saw this in theaters back when it came out and never thought much of it. It was only twenty years later that I caught Tomb Raider on TV and naively thought that I'd just watch one scene and change the channel. I stayed until the very end of the credits, because even the soundtrack owns.

I don't think I need to talk about Angelina Jolie in the role. Everyone understands that she absolutely nailed it.

The rest of the people making Tomb Raider also knew how to make this thing fun. The only problem here, I'd say, is that it was seemingly made through the lens of people who think video games never evolved past the "just blow stuff up" mentality of the '80s. Nearly all of the action scenes here are good, up until the moment when they go too over the top.

Lara doesn't need a training robot just that's just there for a bloated opening action sequence. Even Lara herself states that it feels like an unnecessarily dangerous thing to have around.

Cut some of the over-the-top action, some of the unnecessarily expensive CGI, all of the dodgy CGI, the sappy scene with Jon Voight, and this is a legitimately awesome action romp.

2. House Of The Dead (2003)

If you are reading this, it means I have succeeded in reaching you through a secret channel the editors don't know of. Yeah, I'm ranking an objectively bad movie really high, but please hear me out.

Don't watch this one alone. You're gonna have a bad time. I don't mean that because House Of The Dead is too scary. It's because, just like the original game, this is meant to be a multiplayer affair. This is the kind of experience you want to share with your friends. Otherwise, good luck explaining to anyone just how bad it is.

The House Of The Dead movie is an accidentally great adaptation of the source material. The incredibly messy action scenes? They play out just like the levels of an arcade game hellbent on killing you to get more of your money. The bad acting? Well, that's actually just a perfect recreation of the series' hilariously bad-acted cutscenes.

It's also, I'd imagine, even more bafflingly hilarious to the people who don't know it's based on a video game. Just imagine how bonkers it'll feel when these unwitting fans-to-be get hit by those action scenes that are intercut with footage from the game?

House Of The Dead never stops upping the ante in terms of stupidity, so it never really gets boring. If your group ends up enjoying this one as much as my group did, then I recommend you get your friends to watch Alone In The Dark next. It's just as "good".

1. Resident Evil (2002)

Paul W. S. Anderson doesn't get the respect he deserves when it comes to horror. None of his movies are straight-up great. Still, his most inspired moments are more than enough to make up for the bad ones.

The original Resident Evil is a surprisingly fun film. I'd say there's even a great movie there if you just remove some of the over-the-top action. It had the right idea of doing something original rather than copying the games. In fact, it could even do away with all the zombie-related stuff. They could've made it just about people trapped in an underground facility that's haunted by the ghost of the Red Queen. You know, that evil AI behind the awesome corridor laser scene? I'd pay to watch that movie right now.

Too bad they didn't learn their own lesson and just copy-pasted Resident Evil 3 to make the sequel.

The post Top 7 movies based on games that deserve a reappraisal appeared first on Destructoid.

Greatness alone won't immortalize a game in the memory of players. Do you know what it is that players will never forget? That hilarious thing that happened in your playthrough that the game clearly didn't want to happen. Luckily, Starfield is both a great game and one filled with marvelous glitches and bugs. Here's the mandatory compilation of the best ones we've seen so far.

The best possible use for a jetpack

The only cool thing about a jetpack is that it allows you to imagine all the hilarious ways in which the person who puts it on will meet the Grim Reaper. Rocketeers getting stuck on walls has been a staple of slapstick comedy ever since the invention of the jetpack. Even though Starfield absolutely shines when it comes to its physics, it doesn't feature destructible walls capable of "housing" Boba Fett wannabees. Not intentionally, at least.

‌I urge the good people at Bethesda to please consider making that a feature.

The cleanest headshot you've ever seen

‌Have you ever seen a kill so clean on a video game that you wonder whether it's the result of a glitch or the result of a perk you still haven't found? Well, we here at Destructoid have already gathered extensive intel regarding every build in Starfield, and I assure you that what you see below is not the result of any secret perk.

‌We wish it was, though.

The glitch that accidentally achieves perfect comedic timing

‌Do you know how in some movies characters often look at an armed explosive, then at the camera to utter some expletive deleted before blowing up for comedic effect? You'll have a harder time achieving that scenario in real life because the person in question would either just scream or run away. It's even harder in most games because their scripting usually renders characters immortal during cutscenes. Cutscenes in RPGS have the same effect as a really slow roll in Dark Souls. Not in Starfield, though, where triggering a cutscene may not even allow NPCs to finish their line in case an explosive happens to go off nearby.

‌

VASCO turning into ED-209 for a second

‌Remember the scene in the original Robocop where a supposedly good robot tells an unarmed executive to drop his weapon, then turns him into ketchup? Starfield has already featured a completely unintentional PG-13 remake of that scene.

In the clip below, we see VASCO, our robotic friend, aggressively taunting an NPC that's just having a conversation with the player. When the NPC fails to do whatever it was that the short-circuited brain of VASCO wanted it to do, it knocks out the poor NPC out of nowhere.

‌

Space is no place for Cowboys

‌For a game that tries to bring the magic of the Western genre to a Sci-Fi setting, Starfield isn't doing that great of a job promoting the space cowboys' gunslinging abilities.

Or maybe that's just a special kind of Xenogrub that comes equipped with advanced bullet-deflecting tech.

The Martian in Starfield

‌Starfield loves to create accidental remakes of Hollywood films. This time I'm talking about this hilarious glitch that made a player clip through a ship, leaving him stranded on a red planet. It's just like Matt Damon on Ridley Scott's The Martian but much better because it's oh-so-much shorter.

The only way to make this video game adaptation even better would be to have it feature breakdancing space pirates.

And those are the best Starfield glitches I've seen so far. Found some that belong here? Then sound off in the comments below! Until then, I'll see you around!

You can now go on the hunt for even funnier Starfield glitches on Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

The post Here’s a compilation of Starfield’s funniest glitches appeared first on Destructoid.

Many of us remember a simpler time when wild Skyrim cheese and cabbage physics videos were the best thing on the Internet. The bad news is that you didn't just wake up from the coma that you had entered after you beat Skyrim. The good news is that Starfield players are bringing that Nostalgia back and making better physics videos than ever before.

Video game physics has gone a long way since the release of Skyrim back in 2011, and a whole new generation of players is trying their hand at messing with Starfield’s top-of-the-line physics. The results are sometimes hilarious, like the time when someone said that Starfield's physics were sh*tty. Crappy mistake, my dude.

That beautiful video by YouTuber Dennios will amaze many, but not everyone. It's important that we all take off our nostalgia glasses when looking at similar videos. While Skyrim players had a lot of fun spawning way too many physics objects, that game didn't react very well to having even 100 cabbages on screen. Managing to even put one thousand of one thing on screen without Starfield immediately crashing tells a lot about the quality of its engine.

With that being said, here's Youtuber jackfrags spawning over one million potatoes inside a house.

And whereas some of these videos are just hilarious, some others are just absolutely breathtaking. Here's Dennios once again, this time spawning 10,000 milk cartons atop a building to see them beautifully cascading down.

And even better is seeing Dennios creating a 10,000-long row of milk cartons — a literal Milky Way — and then flying through them in zero gravity.

And I know that you've just seen looks amazing, but who the hell am I kidding? I know damn well that everyone's here to see some cheese action, so here you go:

You can now spawn tens of thousands of physics objects in Starfield on PC and Xbox X|S

The post Starfield players are killing it with physics demonstrations appeared first on Destructoid.

As you probably know by now, Starfield sends you on beautiful, zero-gravity voyages across the galaxy, but there are some limitations. You can't seamlessly travel from planet to planet as you would in No Man's Sky, and you can't glide through space without a ship like in Outer Wilds — until now.

Reddit user u/WeirdConcern4666 managed to break into Starfield's final frontier, which isn't actually space. Rather, it's the door that prevented players from floating around in the abyss, wearing only their protective suits.

Perhaps the game didn't intend to let players float shiplessly about, but it doesn't seem to break Starfield, either. Using console commands, players can propel themselves through the dark, and it both looks and feels surprisingly great for an unintentional, forced feature. Plus, it seems to work without mods.

Going shipless: Try your own Starfield Spacewalk

Want to do the same? WeirdConcern4666 also shared the details on how he did it:

Open the game's console (either by pressing @ or the \ key), then type the following commands:

player.setpos x 10
setgravityscale 0

He advises players to use the commands from the cockpit and not while piloting the ship. Then, to return things to their normal state, players only need to scan and teleport back to the ship. Finally, open the console and type the command:

setgravityscale 1

And that might not be all

WeirdConcern4666 didn't stop at merely setting foot where no human had before. He claims he also set up shop in a place where nobody's ever lived before. After flying about through asteroids, he decided the rocks would make for a good home and claims he settled an outpost there.

The folks at Rock Paper Shotgun followed his instructions and confirmed you can spacewalk in Starfield. However, they couldn't build anything on asteroids as they seem to only feature collision physics when in contact with a spaceship. The player's model just goes through them as if they're not there.

Regardless, even if you can't build a proper base on an asteroid, this discovery paves the way for interesting mods that send Starfield players on new adventures. Maybe one day we'll actually see someone finally land on Saturn and prove that the guy complaining about Starfield's gas giants was right all along.

The post Starfield player goes on a spacewalk and explains how to do it appeared first on Destructoid.

One of the best things about Armored Core 6: Fires Of Rubicon is the game's character creator mode. FromSoftware is no stranger to character customization, but the tools in the Souls series allow only for the modification of humans or Shrek-like creatures. Making mechs is a completely different thing. I've previously showcased a few hilarious fanmade AC units, and I'm glad to see that the community AC unit factory isn't slowing down.

[caption id="attachment_400711" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Image by Exoskellet[/caption]

The GameCube AC

Ever thought that the GameCube featured an extraordinary library of games and deserved better than to get mercilessly slaughtered by the PS2? Well, just like Murphy in Robocop, it's now back as a murder bot via the reconstructive efforts of Exoskellet.

Do you like it? Here's the code to get those sweet textures: 7BM73CAKQQX1

But what if you're less into Robocop and more into Cain, the weird junkyard-themed villain from Robocop 2? Well, then, Exoskellet also has you covered:

[caption id="attachment_400715" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Image by Exoskellet[/caption]

It doesn't even look all that different from my 20-year-old GameCube.

The McChicken

[caption id="attachment_400683" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Image by BawkbaSoup[/caption]

Shoutout to Destructoid user JimmyJamz for showing me the beauty above.

Tired of waiting for that definitely real and revolutionary video game console by KFC? Well, you snooze, you lose, and McDonald's beat the competition by ignoring the console-to-mecha pipeline and getting straight to the robot-making business. Just kidding; please don't sue us — that's actually Twitch streamer Bawkbasoup's creation, the McChicken.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_Dv3UCXzak

Cloud Strife

[caption id="attachment_400738" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Image by u/Bustersword[/caption]

It was only a matter of time until anime fans began making AC units that looked like famous video game characters.

Cloud Strife from FFVII is perfect for that, as not even the weird bodily proportions of the AC units make it look stranger than his model did in the original Final Fantasy VII. Sadly, however, Armored Core 6, a game about unreasonably large killing objects, doesn't feature one single melee weapon disproportionate enough to do the Buster Sword justice.

Homer Simpson

[caption id="attachment_400740" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Image by u/BlacktemplarKNB[/caption]

Not into JRPGs? Then consider taking H0m3-R for a spin. Isn't this just the most beautiful video game adaptation of the main character from The Simpsons that you've ever seen? If anything about that design gives you the wrong idea that it might not be absolutely combat-ready, then perhaps consider going with the classic Omer Simpson instead.

You, too, can now make your wacky mechs in Armored Core 6: Fires Of Rubicon on PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S

The post Here’s a glorious GameCube-inspired mech in another Armored Core 6 Showcase appeared first on Destructoid.

Have you already finished Armored Core 6, and you want more mech action but don't feel like attempting a crazy no-weapon run just to breathe new life into the game? Worry not! I, and some of the Destructoid staff, have come up with a list of wildly varied mech-based games that I'm sure will scratch that itch.

[caption id="attachment_400155" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Image by Square Enix[/caption]

Xenogears

If you love the Final Fantasy series, but you think it could use more mechs and have more of an anime look, then Xenogears is the game for you.

It begins as many other PlayStation 1-era RPGs do, with the hero's rural hometown getting destroyed. Only this time, it's not by an evil wizard—it's by giant mechs straight out of what seems like hundreds of years in the future. That's Xenogears' way of telling players that they were about to experience something like they never had before.

On top of a good story and gameplay that remains fun to this day, Xenogears kickstarted a gaming universe that gave us the likes of Xenosaga and Xenoblade.

[caption id="attachment_400154" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Image by Monolith Soft[/caption]

Xenoblade Chronicles X

If you read what I just wrote about Xenogears and thought, "This is what I want, but more modern and even more better-er", then this is the one for you.

Xenoblade Chronicles X is, for the time being, the best mecha RPG in existence. It perfectly combines classic gameplay elements with the more modern, more action-oriented RPG battles you see in games like Final Fantasy XV. Also, its gorgeous world is a marvel to explore. Shame it's the one Wii U game that hasn't made it to the Switch.

[caption id="attachment_400160" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Image by Capcom[/caption]

Steel Battalion

Not many people ever got to fully experience Steel Battalion for the original Xbox because playing it as Capcom had intended required players to get a $200 controller that featured three pedals, two joysticks, and one hell of a lot of buttons. Still, the lucky few who got into that cockpit for the most realistic mech experience possible can attest that they will never forget their experience. So much for the original Xbox not having original titles.

Steel Battalion got an online sequel for the Xbox and another called Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor that came out on the Xbox 360, but they pale greatly in comparison to the original. I recommend you resist the urge to buy them just so you get some other use for that massive controller.

[caption id="attachment_400161" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Image by Konami[/caption]

Zone Of The Enders: The 2nd Runner

The original Zone Of The Enders, Konami's space mecha action title for the PlayStation 2 rocks. But this is the one that features Hideo Kojima's signature on the cover, so you know it's the real deal.

It improves upon even the strengths of the original ZOE, and it also does a much better job with both the plot and presentation than the first game. While having a whiny kid as the protagonist tends to bring surprisingly positive results in the mecha genre, ZOE 2 swaps the kid we played as in the original with Dingo, a space badass who looks and also has a name that sounds a lot like Dante. Also, Konami replaced the 3D cutscenes of the first game with full-on anime cutscenes, and the result is just beautiful.

If you like the original version, try giving Zone Of The Enders: The 2nd Runner - Mars, the game's awesome PS4 remaster, a go.

[caption id="attachment_400156" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Image by Brace Yourself Games[/caption]

Phantom Brigade

Are you looking for a tactical mech-based game that has more of a Western look and feel to it? Then Phantom Brigade might just be the one for you. If you're both into mechs and games like XCOM, then this is definitely one to try out. Destructoid's Eric Van Allen says it reminds him of Gundam's 08th MS Team series in all the right ways, which is fairly high praise.

Just remember that, as with all things XCOM-like, this one will provide a huge challenge—though that probably won't prove much of a problem if you're looking for even more mech games after Armored Core 6 tossed you around.

[caption id="attachment_400157" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Image by Harebrained Schemes[/caption]

Battletech

Battletech is the name of the MechWarrior universe, and Battletech, the game, is the latest and best way to experience that universe.

It invites players to a deep and sprawling CRPG experience that combines the best of the MechWarrior series of games, as well as the best elements of the tabletop series, without requiring players to pay exorbitant prices to get all of the cool extra stuff.

[caption id="attachment_400159" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Image by Subset Games[/caption]

Into The Breach

Into The Breach looks just like a tactics RPG of old, which is great for nostalgia value, but don't let it fool you. It's also an extremely modern game that offers all sorts of quality-of-life improvements over the genre's most well-known titles.

While it might not feature flashy graphics or nonstop action, ITB is one of the best tactical strategy games ever made—inside or outside of the mecha bubble.

[caption id="attachment_400162" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Image by FromSoftware[/caption]

Any game in the Armored Core series

I personally believe that the series got much better when FromSoftware imbued the AC series with its lessons learned while making Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring. But the older games in the series still hold a lot of value.

If you want to see how it all began, try out the original Armored Core. It's a game that, despite being simpler on the gameplay side of things, actually features way more customization options than Armored Core 6. If you want to see Hidetaka Miyazaki's first crack at AC, then consider giving Armored Core: For Answer a try, as he directed that just one year before he got to make the original Demon's Souls.

Lastly, consider giving Armored Core V a shot, even if just to see how much the series has evolved since its last entry. They're all very interesting to explore in the wake of From's latest take on the mech game genre in Armored Core 6.

[caption id="attachment_400163" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Image by Square Enix[/caption]

Front Mission 3

Do you like Final Fantasy Tactics but don't find Final Fantasy badass enough? Well, then, you can play Front Mission 3 because it's like Final Fantasy Tactics but with mechs. What's not to love—I mean, what's not to enjoy in a completely non-emotional manner?

All jokes aside, Front Mission 3 is the best game in the series and a game that did an unbelievably good job at pushing the PlayStation 1 to its limits when it came to both graphics and depth of gameplay.

[caption id="attachment_352877" align="alignnone" width="1198"] Image by EA[/caption]

Titanfall 2

I like to sneak Titanfall 2 into basically any best-of list I come up with. It's not just one of the best mech games, nor is it just one of the best FPS games ever made—it's one of the best overall games ever made.

The bang for your buck ratio here is absurd. It features some of the most enthralling FPS action you've ever seen. Do you feel like the Call Of Duty series has gone stale? Worry not! This is where you'll find all the innovation that has escaped that series.

Titanfall 2 provides one of the best multiplayer experiences ever made, too, or would provide if enough people played it. And that's not where the goodies end: TF2 also introduces unbelievably awesome new mechanics in every single mission of its campaign in a way that makes it stand toe toe-to-toe with the campaigns of Half-Life 2 and Halo 3. I mean that.

There are even more mech games that didn't make the cut of this list, but feel free to share more of your favorite mech game follow-ups to Armored Core 6 in the comments.

The post The best mech games to play after Armored Core 6 appeared first on Destructoid.

While most find the games by FromSoftware extremely hard, a few others seek even more challenge. These daredevils will do whatever it takes to add an extra layer of difficulty to the game. This week, one brave Armored Core 6: Fires Of Rubicon player and YouTuber by the name of ZeroLenny beat the game with no weapons, simply by punching and kicking his enemies into piles of rubble with his fists and feet in Armored Core.

How did ZeroLenny do it?

Lenny didn't exactly unequip his weapons, because they're forced onto your AC unit. Still, he found out that he could simply not use them and charge into his enemies instead, as that also provides a reliable damage output. Naturally, punching doesn't use ammunition, but that doesn't mean ZeroLenny came across an infinite source of damage. This is a nu-FromSoftware game, meaning that anyone whose name isn't Sekiro has a stamina bar — even robots. Melee attacks cost you stamina, so there's an extra layer of hardship — in case having to get close you your enemies every time isn't tough enough already. Lenny found a workaround by getting the DF-GN-02 LING-TAI, the generator with the smallest recharge delay in the game.

https://youtu.be/3hcuiuagEYA

Unforeseen consequences

At first, Lenny thought that a way of the fist run would just make the game harder all across the board, but he ended up discovering that, in true Souls fashion, it had some unexpected perks. Melee attacks do great posture damage and are better at destroying the enemies' posture than most weapons. Also, enemies take more damage when their stamina is down, so there's an extra perk. If you're good enough, you can doom most enemies to perpetually cycling from a state of stagnation to one of binge-eating knuckle sandwiches.

Best tips for players who also want to embrace the way of the fist

While likely unadvisable, Lenny's Armored Core way of the fists isn't entirely unviable. On top of what you already know, Lenny has some tips for footwork. Lenny says that tank legs are the best for melee damage, but they severely hamper your dodging. The best options for legs are normal or quad ones. These will give you the extra option of kicking your enemies. Kicks are good and will net you countless (imaginary) style points when you kick enemies off cliffs.

[caption id="attachment_395925" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Image via Bandai Namco[/caption]

Lenny says that one of the hardest missions in the game for no-weapons users will be the tower defense one. The devs expected players to shoot the enemy projectiles shot at them, but that won't work here. Lenny managed to finish the mission by learning the map, destroying only specific targets, and by flying over the others. This will take up much more time, but it's completely doable.

I’ve previously written about how it’s only a matter of time until someone beats AC6 using only a banana. This isn’t that, but we’re getting closer. You can now try to beat Armored Core 6, bare-fisted or not, on PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.

The post Armored Core 6 player beats the game with just punches and kicks appeared first on Destructoid.

Armored Core 6: Fires Of Rubicon came out to receive massive critical acclaim. That's neat but nowadays even a great game will only enjoy long-lasting success if it has the backing of an equally great community. Luckily, not even a full week after its release, the mechs we've seen from the Armored Core 6 community has already proven that it's filled to the brim with talent and the will to come up with, uh, very "innovative" AC designs.

Evangelion Unit 01

You know damn well that as soon as you announce a mech game with great character customization options, the entire anime fan community will get it just to create Gundam and EVA units. This should come as no surprise.

[caption id="attachment_399621" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Image by Masked[/caption]

What's especially cool and unique about this one is that there are fans out there telling you exactly what to do if you want to make your own EVA 01 AV unit.

[caption id="attachment_399623" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Image by u/moyu2099[/caption]

Venom

Your first reaction might be "What the hell is Venom doing in space?" But I'd like to remind you that Venom does come from space, so let's judge less and enjoy more.

What's great about this design by Reddit user moyu2099 that you can get here is that it doesn't just make great use of Venom's black and white signature colors—it really does look like a possible sci-fi iteration of Venom. Great stuff.

[caption id="attachment_399624" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Image by u/YambagMcgee[/caption]

The N64 Rumble Pak

Many remember the original PlayStation as the first console to have rumble features, but it was actually the Nintendo 64 via its Rumble Pak. I don't know whether or not Reddit user Fake_Diesel came up with this AC to remind people of this fact, but it sure does look like they won't let Nintendo's great advances remain unnoticed any longer.

Now here's hoping the same one-person team does one for the N64 Expansion Pak. Remember that? It was a tiny add-on that got the N64 to run some games better, and to run Donkey Kong 64 at all. Shouldn't be too hard!

Armored Core 6: Fires Of Rubicon is now out for PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S

The post Here’s some hilarious mechs fans have already made in Armored Core 6 appeared first on Destructoid.