The Golden Joystick Awards were live earlier this morning, and it definitely feels like a preview to come. Though I personally was rooting for Adriyan Rae (Hazel Flood, South of Midnight) to win best lead performer, it was Jennifer English (Maelle, Clair Obscure: Expedition 33) who took home the crown. Grand Theft Auto VI took home two awards, one for best trailer, and one for most anticipated game. Host Maggie Robertson (Lady Dimitrescu, Resident Evil Village) even quipped that GTA VI won an award before we got GTA VI.

Clair Obscure: Expedition 33 took home SEVEN awards, including Ultimate Game of the Year. Multiplayer romp Peak took home 2, and The Sims was inducted into the Golden Joystick Award Hall of Fame. Hollow Night Silksong took best PC game. Ghost of Yotei took home best console game, and Donkey Kong Bananza took home the Critics Award. Here's the full list of categories and awards, as well as the full presentation, if you want to see it for yourself. Of course, I tacked on my interview with Adriyan Rae, because yes. 

Best Storytelling: Clair Obscure: Expedition 33

Best Audio: Ghosts of Yotei

Best Multi-player: Peak

Best Visual Design: Clair Obscure: Expedition 33

Best Game Expansion: Lies Of P: Overture

Best Indie Game (Self Published): Silksong

Best Indie Game: Blue Prince

Studio of the Year: Sandfall Interactive (Clair Obscure)

Best Early Access Game: R.E.P.O.

Best Soundtrack: Clair Obscure: Expedition 33

Best Game Trailer: GTA6

Best Ongoing Game(Mobile): Pokemon GO!

Best Ongoing (PC and Console):  Minecraft

Streamer Award: Peak

Best Remake: Oblivion 

Best Breakthrough : Schedule 1

Best Hardware: 9950X3D CPU

Best Adaptation: Arcane Season 2

Best Supporting Performer: Ben Starr (Clair Obscure Expedition 33)

Best Lead Performer: Jennifer English: (Clair Obscure: Expedition 33)

Hall of Fame: The Sims

PC Game of the Year: Hollow Knight Silksong

Console Game of the Year: Ghost of Yotei

Critics Award: Donkey Kong Bananza

Most Wanted Game: Grand Theft Auto VI

Ultimate Game of the Year: Clair Obscure: Expedition 33

There’s nothing better than a classic arcade action game. Tons of bullets, endless action, and sprite-based graphics are where it’s at! Those looking to get their fix based on those credentials don’t have to look much further than Neon Inferno!

The game looks great and is a ton of fun. Think Contra meets Wild Guns, as you take down enemies both in your playfield and through the background, breaking the standard 2D feel. It’s super-fast paced and I have been having a ton of fun with it over the past few weeks.

Neon Inferno is now available on PC, Switch, Xbox S}X, and PlayStation 5. We’ll have our full review posted soon, but until then, check out the launch trailer:

The crossover we’ve been waiting for is finally here: Demeo X Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked is now available! Now is your chance to take your roleplaying in VR just a little bit further with official DND adventures. Available on Meta Quest, Steam, and PS5, this new version of Demeo lets you team up with friends and journey through official takes from the world of DND.

Demeo has been one of our favorite multiplayer games, and we’re all frothing at the mouth to try this new version. You can pick it up today and check out the newly released launch trailer below:

After a year of Xbox exclusivity, GSC Game World’s S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is now available on PlayStation 5, with PlayStation 5 Pro enhancements. Additionally, the PS5 launch coincides with a major quality-of-life update for all platforms.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 takes players inside the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, a dangerous open world filled with mutants, strange phenomena, dangerous humans, and, of course, radiation. Playing as a stalker named Skif, you must fight for survival while navigating the Zone, its enemies, and the politics of various factions, as every choice you make matters in its non-linear story.

Running on Unreal Engine 5, including photogrammetry from real site visits to Chornobyl, the game looks stunning, which you can see for yourself in the new PS5 launch trailer below. In addition to its beauty, you can expect S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 to take advantage of PS5-specific features such as adaptive triggers and haptic feedback, Tempest 3D audio, and gyro aiming. On PS5 Pro, it enjoys enhancements like improved resolution, shadow quality, enhanced global illumination, better reflections, improved volumetric fog, and enhanced cloud rendering.

The folks at publisher Tripwire and developer Arctic Hazard have announced that Viking-era tactical turn-based RPG, NORSE: Oath of Blood, will release on February 3^rd, 2026 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. I had been hoping it would make it this year, but the first week of February sounds like a mighty fine time to live out a Viking fantasy.

In a new developer diary, the studio takes us behind the scenes to look at how they used motion capture for heightened realism, and it also introduces us to some of the actors. NORSE: Oath of Blood puts players in the boots of Gunnar, a young Viking warrior whose father was betrayed and usurped. Gunnar seeks vengeance by building his own warband from the ground up. You will build your settlement, recruit allies, train, and battle in turn-based combat as you gun (see what I did there?) for the head of Steinarr Far-Spear, the traitor who murdered your Father.

A demo is available now on Steam, and you can check out the latest dev diary below. February 3rd cannot come soon enough.

The original Dragon Quest was release in the US as Dragon Warrior in August of 1989. That September, I was spending the night at a buddy's house so we could go to Cedar Point the next morning (for those not in the know, Cedar Point is the best amusement park on the planet). At around 5:00 PM, my buddy said "Hey, you wanna check out this new Nintendo game?", holding out the Dragon Quest cartridge for me to see.

Flash forward about 12 hours. It is 5:00 AM, and my friend and I have just finished one of the longest gaming marathons of my life. We haven't beaten Dragon Warrior, but we are to the point in the game where we are regularly killing Metal Slimes and Gold Golems, and have become obsessed with increasing our power and wealth before continuing on with the fairly complex story. Remember, this was in pre-internet times, so the fact that we made it this far in one night on our own was pretty extraordinary. We slept for four hours and still went to Cedar Point, slap-happy and exhausted, but with very few regrets.

Dragon Warrior/Quest was my introduction to modern JRPGs - it would be a few years before I discovered Final Fantasy. Though I played many other games in the series, I never got the chance to finish that first game after my marathon night of grinding. No NES + no money = no Dragon Warrior for me. By the time I had a little cash, the series had moved on to bigger and better things. I eventually bought Dragon Warrior 3 without actually owning an NES, just so I could play it at friends' places. But after that one-night spree, I never had a chance to go back to the O.G. Dragon Warrior. 

Fast forward to 2025. I am now in my early fifties, and I have spent literally thousands of hours of my life playing JRPGs at this point. But there has been this nagging itch in the back of my mind all this time; I've never beaten Dragon Quest I. So when I got the chance to try out the Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake, I jumped all over it. Now was my chance to finally push through to the game's ending, to rescue the princess and defeat the dastardly Dragonlord. Metal Slimes and Gold Golems, beware! A true JRPG champion is coming to destroy you all!

And now, about ten hours into that experience, I can report that Dragon Quest I howled with laughter at my excitement before taking one Dragonlord boot and stomping my freaking face into the dirt. As it turns out, Dragon Quest I is hard. We just didn't notice in 1989, because every game was hard back then. 

Square Enix has added a lot of quality of life features to the game to make it more palatable for modern players. The game clearly highlights where your next destination should be on the world map (the original just let you wander around aimlessly until you stumbled into things). And 36 years worth of online guides exist, allowing players to look up different objects and objectives, with definitions and instructions. Heck, you can even fast travel to any destination you've already visited. But none of those improvements change the fact that if you wander too far, too fast, you will be looking at a Game Over screen.

Cross one bridge too many, wander one desert too far, and the difficulty spikes in Dragon Quest will grind your feeble 2025 self to a pulp and spit you out. Powerful enemies will pile on during the game's random encounters, stripping you of all your Magic Points and one-hitting you into oblivion. As an experienced JRPG gamer, I feel that I should be able to overcome these difficulties with careful turn use and planning, but I can't. In Dragon Quest I, you don't have a party. There are no support characters to buff or heal you during your turn. It's just you, and your choices in battle are extremely limited. You can attack, or you can heal. You can buff yourself too, and there are some strategies and powers that allow you to reflect damage to enemies up to a certain point, but the bottom line is that if you aren't ready for an area, you are gonna get smushed no matter how much strategy you employ. 

I've been enjoying introducing Dragon Quest I to my 9-year-old son, who has been dipping in and out of my playthrough with interest. But a couple of nights ago, I got so frustrated at my repeated deaths that I had to shut the game down for a few minutes to cool off, causing him to innocently inquire as to whether the game was "too hard for you". This caused a great deal of sputtering and stammering, and I eventually went on a walk around the block in the cold to clear my head and get my wits about me. And that was the moment I knew that I was going to turn Dragon Quest down to "Dracky Difficulty". 

Dracky Difficulty is Dragon Quest's version of "Easy". It makes your attacks slightly more powerful, makes the enemies slightly weaker, and most importantly - it makes you immortal. This means that I was able to stroll into those more dangerous areas with impunity, and just wear down my enemies. Sure, they immediately strip me down to one Hit Point and zero Magic Points, but they can't kill me. I can just keep whacking away at them until they collapse of exhaustion.

I'm not going to leave the game tuned to Dracky Difficulty forever. I'm telling myself that it's just a way for me to short circuit Dragon Quest's overwhelming grind, allowing me to level up without wasting hours and hours on repeated battles. There's a reason that JRPGs have evolved, and we shouldn't be ashamed of using quality of life settings to get through brutal old-school games. I'll turn the difficulty back to normal when it is time to actually beat the game. Right? RIGHT?

But the 17-year-old inside me can't help but shake his head in disbelief at how soft I've gotten. "Look at how far we got in Dragon Warrior in one night, old man," he says. "You are just using the future version of cheat codes. You might as well be playing with a Game Genie." The 17-year-old inside me has some serious taunts.

But then I think back at him..."Oh yeah? Well, at least I can afford my own Nintendo, LOSER." Yeah. That'll shut him up. And when I beat Dragon Quest I, it will totally still count, right? RIGHT? 

Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake is now available on Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Steam. It is hard, but it is totally worth playing. 

Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game has been slowly rolling out gameplay videos discussing the various mechanics in the game and in their latest video they detail the games support system.

This somewhat reminds me of the variation system from Mortal Kombat X where each character in Avatar Legends will have three different support characters to choose from, each of which will give the character different abilities in the match. 

The demonstration only included Aang but we did get to see all of his supports including the following...

• Appa - Allows Aang to go into flow attacks after any normal attack 
• Gyatso - Gives Aang's air scooter more mobility with a controllable air ball that can move him forward, backward and can pass through opponents
• Momo - Aang gains more control over his air glider and can cancel into attacks much faster

Despite not releasing for a while, you can get your hands on the game soon as a closed alpha test will be held next month and sign ups are open now on their website. 

Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game launches Summer 2026..

I'm an avid enjoyer of Microsoft Flight Simulator on my PC. I love taking in the sights of various cities across the world, and while I have a couple of different HOTAS setups, I don't have my own simulator rig to be a permanent fixture in my home and sometimes, I look at those peripherals and decide I just don't want to set them up. It's the minor annoyance of having them for a true flight experience.

Honeycomb Aeronautical has recognized that it can be a pain to set those up, but also that console players should have a better experience themselves.

Enter the Echo Aviation Controller, a truly unique controller that has all of the necessary controls and functions in the palm of your hands.

It isn't every day that you see an accessory come out that makes you do a double take, but look at this glorious controller. To have all of the throttle, flaps, brakes and rudder controls right there is fantastic. 

The controller is fully compatible for Microsoft Flight Simulator, so I'm already intrigued. There is a mention that other flight simulation software is compatible but nothing concrete beyond MSFS.

This appears to be truly a plug-and-play experience with little to no setup needed. If that's the case, there will be a lot more pilots taking to the skies with a better experience. I love that the rudder controllers are not bound to shoulder buttons but, instead, on the reverse side of the controller itself. The controller also comes with swappable buttons/levers for color coding for some customization options.

The Echo Aviation Controller will be available soon at an MSRP of $149.99.

When we think of post-apocalyptic settings, we think of settings like Mad Max, Fallout, and The Last of Us. It's typically in the future, it's typically got (the rusted, broken, disheveled) remnants of the real world, and the level of technology is in decline if not entirely erased.

But many fantasy worlds are post-apocalyptic as well. Especially in Dungeons & Dragons. Dragonlance suffered the Cataclysm when the gods threw down a fiery mountain. Critical Role's world of Exandria went through The Calamity, as Dungeon Mastered by Brennan Lee Mulligan. Dark Sun is post-apocalyptic eco-fantasy as wizards defile the land, draining the world of plant life until there's nothing left but bones and dust. Last but not least, Forgotten Realms was rewritten from the events of the Spellplague when the god of magic was assassinated and magic stopped working for a decade.

On a different scale, the Forgotten Realms city of Cormanthor was peak high magic some 800 years ago. It would later be renamed Myth Drannor after a flying city from the Shadowfell crashed into the city, basically causing a Chornobyl-scale event that forced the inhabitants to abandon their overly magical homes and lifestyles. Don't quote me on that; the wiki page on Myth Drannor is over 4,300 words long—and that's before you click on any one of its hundreds of links.

Its novel-length history notwithstanding, the ruins of Myth Drannor are the first above-ground megadungeon I've seen in the Forgotten Realms. Waterdeep on the Sword Coast has Undermountain a.k.a. the Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Now The Dalelands has Myth Drannor for your campaign-length dungeon-exploration needs.

And just look at these depictions of Myth Drannor. The painstakingly hand-drawn map. The wide-angle view from a nearby village in the massive trees. Visit this page on D&D Beyond to get these two megapixel images of the megadungeon.

Forgotten Realms: Adventures in Faerun (a Dungeon Master Expansion) and Forgotten Realms: Heroes of Faerun (a Player Expansion) released November 11. They finally expanded the map of Faerun beyond the Sword Coast, and they're being epic about it.

After I got my access to Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, 6 other real world doors opened, so I haven't had the chance to really sink my teeth into it. The staff is talking about getting everyone together and going out to blast zombies, but it hasn't happened yet. I suppose I can round up some other troops in the meantime, but I'm noticing the discourse online. There are people who don't like the campaign, and the always online situation. 

Low and behold, the internet has spoken and showed their disdain for the use of AI in video games, and I'm not talking about the computer controlled enemies. I also don't mean to draw attention to negative thoughts, but I don't even know if this is a play it yourself and find out. This is always why Game Pass was a good thing before they jacked up the price on that. I don't know if I agree with review bombing, especially over a campaign for a multi-player game. I suppose I need to check it out for myself. 

It's out now for everyone who has it. I'll see you out there. Try to hold over until then. Here's some footage from the beta.