Open-world games shouldn't be a glorified checklist. Giving you the choice to explore at your own pace isn't an excuse to stuff every corner of a virtual world with map markers, menial tasks, and repeating mini-games. Far too many games these days use size as a crutch, but some know how to make large worlds engaging. The Axis Unseen is one such game. From a former Bethesda developer who worked on Skyrim and Fallout, it's out now, and if you act fast you can grab it at a discount. Continue reading Ex Skyrim and Fallout dev’s new open-world game is huge, and it’s out now MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best indie games, Best survival games, Games like Skyrim

The environments look like the bombed-out, post-apocalyptic ruins of Fallout 4’s version of Boston. Combat meanwhile is slow-paced - the number of enemies seems low - but infused with the same oozing, dripping body horror characterized by Half-Life’s headcrab zombies. It’s not about feeling powerful, it’s about survival. You clutch a revolver and try to contact the outside world - someone, anyone - using your puny shortwave radio. If you told me this was a first-person mod for one of Capcom’s Resident Evil remakes, at first glance, I’d be fooled. Two years since footage was last shared on its official channels, and two years since its creator posted on the formal social media account, the highly mysterious horror FPS game ILL is suddenly back from the dead. Continue reading Two years after it went silent, mysterious FPS game ILL comes back from the dead MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best FPS games, Best horror games, Best upcoming PC games

If you're gearing up for Alan Wake 2: The Lake House, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, and more, you'll be wanting to download the new Nvidia driver that just dropped today. Bringing official support for these titles, along with confirmed use of a variety of Nvidia DLSS options, you'll get the best stability, performance, and visuals if you download and install this new release. A total of eight new releases are getting their official Nvidia stamp of driver-support approval with this new 566.03 release, making a significant portion of the best graphics card options ready for some of the best games you'll see released in the next few weeks. Continue reading Nvidia GeForce GPU owners need this new update for Call of Duty Black Ops 6 MORE FROM PCGAMESN: GeForce RTX 4070 Super review, DLSS explained, Best graphics cards

'DEVASTATING'! Chris Cillizza Sheds ALL the Tears Over Eroding Trust In Dying Legacy Media

Face off against both iconic and brand-new Titan species, including the awaited and teased Abaddon created by the 7LEVELS team in conjunction with Legendary Entertainment. Reunite with the mighty Kong and confront other ferocious Titans together. Use the innovative Monarch ORCA device being your only hope to influence the beasts and survive.

Sources Point to Pro-Iran Defense Official as the Leaker of Top Secret Documents on Israeli War Strategy

Biden Speechwriter Makes Wild Claim, but WSJ Says Nobody Is Buying Dems' Trump 'Fascism' Nonsense Anymore

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Payouts from Juul’s $300 million class action settlement are finally getting distributed — and some people are getting a lot more money than they expected. If you scroll through the r/juul subreddit, you can see posts showing the thousands — or hundreds — of dollars hitting people’s Venmo accounts. One screenshot shows someone who said they received more than $9,000, while others report receiving $6,200 and $4,600. Judging by the comments on some of these posts, it appears people who submitted receipts for their Juul pods or pens may have gotten bigger payouts, and with some users spending hundreds of dollars per week on vaping, the amounts added up. Just got $4,600 from the Juul Settlement pic.twitter.com/XjZETZKWKr— Rogue Peanut... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge WhatsApp is getting a built-in contact manager that lets you save contacts within the app so you don’t lose them if you switch phones. WhatsApp typically relies on the smartphone address book it runs on to hold and manage contacts. But that can be a problem for users who lose their device and fail to back up their phone’s contacts, people who share phones, or those who manage multiple accounts with separate contacts on one device. To start, you’ll be able to save contacts on WhatsApp Web and Windows and Meta says that you’ll “eventually” be able to do so on other linked devices. Contacts saved in WhatsApp use a new “privacy-preserving” storage technology called Identity Proof Linked Storage (IPLS) that Meta explains keeps names and... Continue reading…

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge The first cracks are starting to show in Netflix’s push into gaming. First reported in Game File and confirmed by Netflix, the streaming company has quietly closed of one of its studios, the first in the three years since the company began its foray into gaming. According to Game File, the shuttered studio was known as Blue. In 2022, Netflix announced it hired former Overwatch executive producer Chacko Sonny to run the studio. Since then, Blue had brought on a number of game industry veterans with experience working on high profile franchises including Halo and God of War. Reportedly, Blue was developing a multi-platform AAA game for an original IP but was closed before the game could be announced or released. Netflix has released a... Continue reading…