It's the 30th anniversary of Pokemon this year, and to celebrate, Pokemon-themed versions of the popular Goldfish snack are on the way.

The limited-edition Goldfish packs are inspired by the Pokemon's original starters--Charmander, Squirtle, Bulbasaur, and Pikachu. The snacks themselves are shaped and colored to match the four Pokemon, and like in the game series, the aim is to encourage you to collect them all.

As for the Goldfish taste? It's the same cheddar Goldfish flavor. If you're interested in eating Pokemon, you cannot do that, but here are some Pokemon that, frankly, look delicious.

There's no shortage of Left 4 Dead-like games. It's become such a cottage industry that I once interviewed several teams making games inspired by it, to try to figure out what makes the game timeless and so inspiring to other studios. There have been many different takes on the co-op zombie horde-slaying experience, but the toughest, most unforgiving of them may be No More Room In Hell 2.

It's a game I've enjoyed in spurts since it first hit early access in 2024, but I've been waiting for the 1.0 launch before I really jump in for a bunch of hours. Now, that 1.0 launch draws near, with a summer release planned. But you can play it sooner than that--and for free.

No More Room In Hell 2 is offering a free weekend on Steam and the Epic Games Store, April 30-May 4, its second such event, taking place a year after the previous one. During the free weekend, you'll be able to jump into the new wave-based Survival mode, which challenges you and up to seven others on your team to survive three brutal rounds against the ocean of undead the game likes to send your way.

Electronic Arts is among the numerous game developers who are embracing AI in their development processes, and now CEO Andrew Wilson has commented further on the controversial topic.

Speaking at the iicon event in Las Vegas this week, as reported by Game File, Wilson said he recently saw some internal EA data that said about 85% of the company's quality-assurance work is being done today alongside "some kind of machine learning or AI-driven algorithm."

This has not led to lower employment at EA for QA work, he said. "We hire more QA people than we ever have," he said. The executive went on to say that EA's QA teams are using AI for "the simple stuff." Related to this, he said EA has needed to hire more QA workers to check the work, which sounds odd, though we do not know the specifics of the situation. This follows on from a Harvard Business Review report that said early findings suggest that AI doesn't reduce work, it intensifies it.

Outside of a VR game that launched last year, it looks like the Thief series is on ice for now. So what's the next best thing? It might be a spiritual successor in the form of Thick as Thieves from veteran producer and Deus Ex creator Warren Spector's studio, OtherSide Entertainment. A single-player and co-op game that's all about the art of the steal, it's one of several new titles launching in early access next month, and it'll cost just $5 to get in on the ground floor.

Set in an alternate timeline and taking place in the city of Kilcairn, Thick as Thieves will offer an introductory campaign set across two dynamic replayable maps when it launches on May 20. The game will feature 16 missions and six pieces of gear to collect, and OtherSide is aiming to develop additional content based on player feedback.

One of the biggest talking points surrounding Rockstar's upcoming open-world game GTA 6 is how much it will cost, and now the top boss at Rockstar's owner Take-Two has weighed in.

Speaking at iicon this week in Las Vegas, Strauss Zelnick suggested the game will have a "reasonable" price, but he did not say exactly what it will be.

"Consumers pay for the value that you bring to them, and our job is to charge way way way less of the value delivery," Zelnick said, as reported by IGN. "How you feel about something you buy is the intersection of the thing itself and what you pay for. Consumers need to feel like the thing itself is amazing and the price they were charged was fair for what they got."

Game developers should embrace generative AI, according to The Witcher 3 game director Konrad Tomsazkiewicz. He said this in a new interview in which he also confirmed his upcoming new game, The Blood of Dawnwalker, used generative AI early in the process, but no AI-generated assets should be in the final game. He also said his studio Rebel Wolves wants to use AI to help support its existing workers, not replace them.

During a discussion attended by Eurogamer, Tomsazkiewic said Rebel Wolves used generative AI to create voices in the game "in the early stage" of development. He said an RPG like The Blood of Dawnwalker requires its developer to support multiple different languages, and this is "costly" and changes after initial recording can be "really expensive." Rebel Wolves utilized generative AI to hear NPC voices early in the development process to help team members determine if something is working or not.

If Rebel Wolves used real human voices at this early stage of development, and then realized a change was needed, that would be "really expensive" and not efficient game development, creating new pressure on the team, Tomsazkiewicz said.

Getting into Pokemon Champions can be daunting for casual fans of the series, seeing how seriously players take competitive battling. But the game's rotating rosters of recruitable Pokemon should make building a viable team much easier, as the latest roster update shows.

The new 2026 Global Challenge Special Roster was added to the game on April 24, and it'll be available until May 4. It has a smaller lineup of 31 Pokemon compared to the 229 Pokemon in the Regular Roster M-A that Champions launched with. Recruiting out of this roster will give players a better chance of getting Pokemon popular in the meta like Incineroar, which should provide an extra edge in competitive play.

As with any roster in Pokemon Champions, players can recruit one Pokemon for free every 22 hours--any additional recruitment until the reset will require Victory Points, and Quick Coupons can be utilized to shorten the waiting period.

Details on Resident Evil Requiem's upcoming minigame have begun to emerge, as Capcom has teased a mode that goes all in on action. The only catch here? You'll need to have beaten the game first before you can access it, Capcom says. If you haven't played Requiem yet and were planning to grab it purely for the action segments, now might be a good time to start working your way through the campaign.

"It's a minigame, and it's based on the battles in the main game," game director Koshi Nakanishi said to Japanese site Denfaminicogamer (via Google translation). "For those who have cleared the main story and are thinking, 'I still haven't had enough fun', I think you'll be able to enjoy this and go 'Whoa!', so sharpen your tomahawk and wait."

Producer Masato Kumazawa confirmed that the minigame will be unlocked after the campaign is completed for the first time. Requiem's two-protagonist approach was split between the game's traditional survival-horror gameplay that emphasized stealth and cunning, while the survival-action sections with Leon S. Kennedy draw from recent games like the remake of Resident Evil 4. In the first few hours of Requiem, Leon's sections are brief in comparison to Grace Ashcroft's missions, but once the veteran agent returns to Raccoon City, his style of gameplay dominates the second half of the game.

It is a weird time for sex on the internet. We live in both an era of extreme sexual permissiveness and constant restriction. Formerly niche fetish terms like "gooning" have reached mainstream usage. The advent of machine learning has made deepfake pornography more common than ever, to horrifying effect. The release of the Epstein files has revealed how pervasive sexual exploitation is. Yet, ID-restriction laws have been passed in the UK and Australia, and several US states have floated or passed similar laws. Dozens of sexually explicit games were banned from Steam and Itch last year, in large part thanks to payment-processor pressure. Tomodachi Life exists at this curious intersection between permissiveness and restriction.

In early community-made videos, Tomodachi Life players made their little Miis talk about lesbian sex, frotting, and other sexual acts and innuendos, taking advantage of the game's surprisingly lax text filtering. This is not the first Nintendo game to create room for such a community--in 2015's Splatoon, some players posted more explicit images and text in the early hours of the morning, when the game's kid-focused playerbase was less likely to see it--but Tomadachi Life's cutesy mundanity makes it an especially subversive space for horny posting.

One Bluesky user, baffled that the game lets her type "lesbian sex," laughs along with the strangely coherent conversation that follows (and several other copycat posts on Bluesky have followed that one). On Twitter, streamer Blake Jennings' Mii befriends "human Shrek" by discussing "clapping your booty cheeks." And multiple posts on both Bluesky and Twitter describe the game as "writing boobs on a calculator," and that feels like an accurate assessment. Making your grandma say "farting" may be tamer than making outright innuendos, but both driven by a similar sort of glee. The player is turning the game to their whims, and the game is letting them.

Pokemon Go's Steeled Resolve event is officially underway, shining the spotlight on various steel types like the debuting Orthworm. That isn't the only special Pokemon you can encounter in the mobile game right now, however. The event also brings back the elusive shiny Meltan.

This shiny mythical Pokemon only appears during special events, making it rare even among shiny Pokemon. However, finding one involves persistence and a particular item called the Mystery Box, which you can only obtain through some convoluted means. Here's a full breakdown on how to get the Mystery Box and catch shiny Meltan before the Steeled Resolve event ends.

• How To Catch Meltan

Unlike most Pokemon, Meltan doesn't normally spawn in the wild. Rather, the mythical Pokemon will only appear after you've opened the Mystery Box--a special item that you'll receive after you've linked your Pokemon Go account to Pokemon Home (or Pokemon: Let's Go, Pikachu or Let's Go, Eevee for Nintendo Switch).

Soon you'll be able to weep at the loss of your favorite operative at your very own table; XCOM is getting a tabletop game. Developer and publisher Firaxis announced the game as part of their 30th-anniversary celebration, which accompanied a brand refresh.

Exact details for the XCOM board game are still under wraps. Modiphius Entertainment, also known for the Mass Effect board game and Fallout: The Roleplaying Game, is handling development. Like many other video game adaptations, the tabletop game will feature miniatures. In the announcement, Firaxis said the game will be inspired by XCOM: Enemy Unknown, the franchise reboot from 2013. The board game's price and release date were not announced. You can sign up on the official website to get future details in your email inbox.

This is not the first time XCOM has gotten the board game treatment. Way back in 2015, Fantasy Flight published a tie-in, co-op XCOM game. That one focused on the "meta" layer of XCOM--i.e. choosing what research to complete, building out parts of your base of operations--rather than the tactics-focused combat of the game's missions.

If you're on your last life, you could consider purchasing a Super Mario coffin for your funeral. The (unofficial) tie-in went viral after a Brazilian manufacturer posted promo videos for the coffins, showing off Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, and Princess Peach themed designs.

Each coffin is painted in the character's distinctive color and emblazoned with their logo: the M and L hat symbols for Mario and Luigi, a mushroom for Toad, an egg for Yoshi, and a crown for Peach. Otherwise the coffins are ordinary and interchangeable with each other, featuring gold detailing and the conventional boxy shape. Brazilian urn and coffin manufacturer Bignotto is responsible for the wacky designs. It posted a few videos on its official Instagram page, zooming in on the details of the designs while remixed Super Mario Bros. music plays in the background. This isn't the first time Bignotto has turned to pop culture for its products; it has also promoted Barbie and Fairy OddParents coffins.

In other Nintendo related news, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie became the highest-grossing movie so far in 2026, though the biopic Michael just stole its number-one spot in US cinemas. If you've been living the dream in Tomodachi Life, here's how to get each personality type in the game.

It appears that Sony has implemented a new feature requiring PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 owners to connect to the internet every 30 days to renew the license on digital games they've purchased. Players who have stumbled into this odd feature are saying all PlayStation Store purchases made after March 2026 now feature a 30-day timer showing how long players have until they must connect to the internet and renew the game's license. Players who fail to do so within the time limit will lose the ability to play recent digital purchases until the game's license is renewed via internet connection. Sony hasn't made any official announcements about this--it's possible it could be a bug--but GameStop is already capitalizing on the bad press surrounding Sony's digital game license timers.

"Play really has no limits at GameStop," the company shared in a recent X post referencing the PS5's 'Play Has No Limits' tagline. "We believe that games should work for players, not against them. If you own it, you should be able to play it anytime, anywhere, whether you are online or offline."

Urging players to "start a real collection you can play, share, and trade," GameStop is offering a deal where customers can get a 10% discount when purchasing two to three preowned games, a 20% discount when purchasing four to five, or a whopping 30% when purchasing six or more preowned physical titles.

At the inaugural iicon event in Las Vegas today, Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick gave a speech in which he gave some hope--but not much--for sequels to L.A. Noire and others.

Zelnick was asked if Take-Two was planning to do more with L.A. Noire. He said, "Yes," before saying, "You never know," according to Game File. More broadly, Zelnick said Take-Two is constantly thinking about where it could take all of its franchises.

"The answer broadly is we're looking at doing something in the future with all of our intellectual property, but nothing to announce," he said, adding that any announcement about a Rockstar franchise would come from Rockstar, not Take-Two.

Arc Raiders' Riven Tides update adds a handful of quests focused on the newest map so that you can get acclimated to how it plays. But as expected, a few quests will send you to take down some older enemies, such as Collision Course, which asks you to kill a Comet and obtain a Comet Igniter. Luckily, this isn't terribly difficult to do once you know how to approach these potentially deadly ARC.

Before loading into a match to kill a Comet and take its Comet Igniter, it's a good idea to bring an augment sporting a safe pocket. Once you score the Comet Igniter, make sure you extract safely with it. If you die without it in a safe pocket, you'll need to head back into a map and repeat the process.

Whether you're trying to knock out Collision Course or need some Comet Igniters for crafting or projects, here's how to get your hands on them.

The Blood of the Dawnwalker, the vampire-themed fantasy game from a team of former Witcher developers, is shaping up to be one of 2026's exciting-looking new original games. Its director, Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, said in an interview that he doesn't think some of its new ideas would have been possible at CD Projekt Red.

Tomaszkiewicz was asked by IGN if he thought he could have made the game's "narrative sandbox" and time-loop elements at CD Projekt Red or another large studio, and he said, "I think I couldn't."

"When you have the big companies which have established IPs, it's really hard to change something or do something really innovative because it's always about being same-but-new," he said. "You already know the playerbase wants almost the same, but new, in comparison to doing something really fresh and new."

Season 3 of Battlefield 6 arrives next month, and the update is set to introduce the game's largest map to date. Railway to Golmud is revealed as a reimagining of Battlefield 4's popular Golmud Railway map, and the developer has shared a closer look at the map and some key changes players can expect, including major changes to the train.

In the latest blog, Battlefield Studios calls this reimagined version of Golmud Railway a "tribute to the veteran Battlefield community."

"We have better technology than we did 13 years ago," said level designer Luka Grepl-Malmgren. "Two of the original level artists of Golmud Railway are still here at DICE, so we all worked together to not only recreate their work, but also understand what was not possible in Battlefield 4 and bring those ideas to life in Battlefield 6."

Next to its effective scares, Phasmophobia is a game known for its janky player characters and animations. For some, these rough edges, like the remarkably silly way player-characters move through the world, have been more like a feature than a bug. Kinetic Games has recognized that some players like the jank, but has always maintained its plans to buff out these rough edges, and has today revealed the forthcoming update that will do exactly that.

On May 5, Phasmophobia will get a free patch that the team is calling the Player Character Update, which will bring with it several changes to what investigator avatars look like, but perhaps even more dramatically, how they move and interact with their haunted locales.

The update will finally populate the in-game shop, which has been visibly empty in the safehouse's computer for a long time. Players will be able to choose from one of 12 base character models, then customize their features like clothing, hair color, and "much more," according to the studio. More cosmetic options will arrive in the game over time, and in the week following the patch, players can grab the High Priestess t-shirt via Twitch Drops.

Maybe it's because of how long it takes to make video games these days, but I've been surprised to see so few games going for what Helldivers 2 does so well. Its gameplay loop is extraction-ish in nature, but decidedly different too, as specific objectives keep players more focused than something like Arc Raiders, in which players might hop in just to screw around and see what happens. But one new game that just came out is wearing its inspiration on its sleeve, remolding Helldivers 2's core into a first-person co-op shooter set in a Western world full of color and personality.

Far Far West comes from Evil Raptor, a team I really hope you're already familiar with. If not, you've missed a few bangers. The team's debut, Pumpkin Jack, was an ode to the 3D platformers of yesteryear made even better by its Halloween-inspired characters and setting. The small studio followed that up with Akimbot, a more on-the-nose homage to Ratchet and Clank specifically, and it's well worth playing if you're waiting for more from Insomniac's mascots. Now, Far Far West retains those games' vibrant color palettes, but shifts to first-person for a game that feels like Helldivers and looks like a Saturday-morning cartoon.

In Far Far West, teams of up to four players will choose their destination and mission parameters, drop into an open-world setting, and giddy up. Around the world, hordes of skeletal six-shooters, charging bulls, and vultures flying overhead will take aim just below your cowboy hat. if played solo on normal difficulty, the game packs quite a punch. You'll need to complete a main objective, but you'll always face a boss before you can extract, too, which differs from Helldivers but fits right in anyway. It's definitely made for co-op, as some of the mission objectives can be completed alone, but just barely.

Former The Elder Scrolls Online director Matt Firor has further discussed the cancellation of ZeniMax's Project Blackbird, which was aiming to be a cross between Cyberpunk 2077 and Destiny.

Speaking to MinnMax, Firor said, "Making games is always a heartbreaking business." Project Blackbird was canceled for financial reasons, Firor said. He previously said it was the game he had been waiting his entire career to make.

"You could be at the best studio in the world, and decisions happen that impact people. I didn't agree with what happened, but I understood the reasoning behind it. It is just financial," he said, as reported by Kotaku.