Releasing Pokemon into the wild is never fun. Even if you've become apathetic towards your little creatures, it's a pain to catalogue and release hundreds of Pokemon for the sole purpose of freeing up Box space. Modern games, like Pokemon Legends: Z-A, make this process quicker by letting you release multiple Pokemon, but there's no tangible gameplay benefit to sending your Pokemon back to where they came from. Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection, Capcom's monster-taming spin-off series, puts an exciting twist on this mundane aspect of the genre. It's called Habitat Restoration, and after playing 10 hours of Monster Hunter Stories 3, it might just be my favorite thing about it.

The Monster Hunter Stories subseries can be summed up as turn-based Monster Hunter. The crafting mechanics are streamlined, but the core Monster Hunter loop is largely intact: Kill monsters to craft equipment so you can hunt bigger monsters and craft better equipment. Where the Stories subseries sets itself apart from the mainline series, however, are the monster-taming mechanics. Iconic monsters from the franchise--or Monsties as they're called here--fight alongside you.

New Monsties can be acquired by raiding a monster den and digging up randomized eggs from a nest. Once you have a few eggs, you can return to camp, hatch them, and throw them in your party. However, like Pokemon, no two Monsties are the same. Even ones that share the same name might have different passive abilities and movesets thanks to their genes. Alongside Monster Hunter's classic hunt and craft gameplay loop, collecting better and better monsters is a core aspect of the game.

The Witcher developer CD Projekt Red is based in Poland, and the company is leaning into its Polish heritage with a fantastic social media post.

Today, February 12, is celebrated as Fat Thursday in Poland. It's the annual celebration of the last Thursday before Lent begins, and in the country, people eat a lot of food today, including pączkis AKA Polish donuts. To mark the occasion, CDPR released a Witcher-themed image celebrating Fat Thursday featuring 10 hidden pączkis. Can you spot them all? Look for yourself in the image below.

And if you need some help, here's where to find all of them. If you're looking for pączkis, they are sold in the US as well, at Polish bakeries and grocery store chains like Big Y right now for the Polish festivities. Seriously, if you like donuts, you owe it to yourself to try a pączki as soon as possible.

Game developer Hjalmar Vikstrom, a video game industry veteran who worked at Grin and Avalanche Studios before co-founding GTFO developer 10 Chambers, has left his job and plans to work on smaller-scale projects going forward.

"Making games is hard. And these past years have taken their toll," he wrote on LinkedIn.

Vikstrom said he plans to go independent and make "way smaller games" as he focuses on his health and family "and just enjoying game development."

Publisher Nexon has revealed that Arc Raiders has "significantly exceeded expectations" as part of the company's investor presentation for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025. The new numbers posted for the extraction shooter back that up, revealing that the game sees 6 million players weekly and has now sold 14 million copies since launching in October.

Those are staggering totals, especially considering Arc Raiders just topped 12 million units sold last month. That means the game has moved almost another 2 million copies in fewer than four weeks--and it's happening months after launch. Nexon and developer Embark plan to "sustain strong player engagement and sales momentum" with monthly updates, with an early 2026 roadmap already released. In fact, a new Shared Watch event went live in Arc Raiders earlier this week.

With all of this in mind, it's probably unsurprising to learn that Arc Raiders has been "very profitable," according to Embark CEO Patrick Soderlund. It spent 11 weeks as the most-played game on Steam and was one of Xbox's most-popular games in 2025.

Last December, Call of Duty veteran and Battlefield boss Vince Zampella perished in a car accident. Zampella had deep ties to the video game industry, and according to Hideo Kojima, he also had ideas about making Kojima's Metal Gear Solid into a first-person game.

The Game Awards host and creator Geoff Keighley noted at DICE that Kojima revealed that he had "many discussions" with Zampella about a first-person MGS. It's unclear how far those discussions went, since their collaboration never went forward.

At DICE, Hideo Kojima revealed that he had many discussions with Vince Zampella about creating a first person Metal Gear Solid game together after the release of Metal Gear Solid 4. pic.twitter.com/hhjbCqG7T2

Kojima did introduce a first-person mode in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, however players could only move around in a third-person view. The MGS franchise so heavily leans towards stealth that it might have been difficult to retain the game's signature touches in first-person.

Make some space in your calendar, because Konami has scheduled a new Silent Hill Transmission for February 12. Kicking off an hour after the PlayStation State of Play livestream is scheduled to end, this broadcast will focus on updates for the Silent Hill series.

You can catch the livestream through the official Silent Hill YouTube channel.

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The Silent Hill Transmission will go live on February 12 at 4 PM PT / 7 PM ET.

Bungie's next live-service game, Marathon, is just a few weeks away. Preview events are already lined up around the world, including one in China, which reportedly showed off a ton of weapons and guns that will be available at launch.

According to MarathonGameHQ (via Eurogamer), there will be 28 guns in Marathon, each with two or more skins. Some of the skins will alter the weapon model. Players can upgrade these weapons with one charm slot and three sticker slots, which will be unlocked by completing challenges.

The new game will maintain continuity with the Marathon trilogy Bungie created during the '90s. That link will be explored through the will of Dr. Strauss, which will reconnect the narrative threads between the original games and the new one.

If weapons are the stars of Terraria, accessories are the quiet directors backstage. A single slot might not seem like much on its own, but with up to seven of the right trinkets equipped, your humble pixelated self transforms from target practice to terror incarnate.

There’s no shortage of options, especially once you start combining effects or tinkering with modifiers. So, rather than flood you with 37 “great picks” and a dozen situational caveats, we’re cutting through the fat and crowning the best-in-class endgame accessories for each of Terraria’s four core playstyles: Melee, Ranged, Magic, and Summoner. Simple as that.

And yes, you should absolutely still stack damage, crit, and movement speed modifiers like your life depends on it, because it does.

Hasbro has released its financial results for 2025, revealing a standout performance from Magic: The Gathering that saw the TCG franchise earn over $1.7 billion--an increase of 59% from the previous year and MTG's strongest year ever.

Wizards of the Coast, the Hasbro subsidiary that oversees MTG, Dungeons & Dragons, and Hasbro's digital gaming projects, grew a record 45% in 2025, and was largely responsible for Hasbro's overall revenue increase of 14%. The company's other two segments, Consumer Products and Entertainment, both decreased by 4%.

While Hasbro is aiming to evolve its product-heavy catalogue into a digital-first business over the coming years, tabletop gaming is still a major driver of revenue, bringing in $1.7 billion and making up over 75% of Wizard's total 2025 revenue. Across both tabletop and digital sales, Magic: The Gathering was a standout franchise in Hasbro's stable, earning $1.7 billion and making up over 60% of Hasbro's total gaming-related revenue.

The Game Boy Color was an 8-Bit system that debuted in 1998 nearly a decade after the original Game Boy. Given the technical limitations of that era, few would have believed it was possible to create 3D images with a Game Boy Color. And yet nearly three decades after its release, a fan modder has successfully done so.

Danny Spencer created real-time 3D images on the Game Boy Color and shared a blog post (via PC Guide) where he explained at length how it was done. The short version is that Spencer had to come up with a workaround for the Game Boy Color's inability to calculate 3D graphics. His solution was to include the completed calculations and convert the resulting vectors into spherical coordinates.

For the purposes of this demo, Spencer only created a 3D model of a teapot and a Game Boy Color. It's not a full-fledged game, but it works and it allows players to manipulate a 3D image from all angles in real time. In addition to the video above, a browser-based playable demo is available on Spencer's blog that utilizes a Game Boy Color emulator.

Despite Highguard releasing less than three weeks ago, it appears that the game's developer, Wildlight Entertainment, has already been hit with large-scale layoffs. The news comes not long after studio head Chad Grenier made news by saying "it doesn't matter" whether the game gets "a thousand people or a hundred million people."

In a post shared via LinkedIn, former Highguard level designer Alex Graner announced he was looking for work after being laid off by Wildlight. According to Graner, "most of the team" was let go.

"This one really stings as there was a lot of unreleased content I was really looking forward to that I and others designed for Highguard," Garner wrote.

Diablo 2 fans are finally receiving new content for Diablo franchise's 30th anniversary, as Blizzard has revealed a new DLC for Diablo 2: Resurrected that will add a new class alongside some of the community's most-requested features, albeit for a price.

Starting today, players will be able to purchase the Reign of the Warlock DLC for $25. While the new Warlock class, which uses summoned demons both to fight and to sacrifice in order to gain buffs, is the most notable inclusion, the community is likely to be just as excited about some of the other additions coming as part of the Reign of the Warlock: a loot filter and enhanced stash tabs.

Both have been among the top features requested by the community for decades. Players have long resorted to using third-party mods or external tools for loot filters, but that will no longer be required going forward. Blizzard notes that players will not only be able to set up their own loot filters, but they will also be able to share or select custom loot filters made by others in the community.

Diablo 4's endgame is getting another radical overhaul, this time in the form of its new War Plans progression system that will add skill trees for each endgame activity, letting players customize and power-up each one.

War Plans are coming as part of Diablo 4's upcoming Lord of Hatred expansion and will let players make a "playlist" of five activities drawn from existing endgame modes like Infernal Hordes, the Pit, Helltides, Nightmare dungeons, the Kurast Undercity, Lair bosses, and the Tree of Whispers.

The more a player runs a specific type of activity, the more they will progress new activity-specific skill trees that allow players to customize them in a variety of ways. That could mean tweaking how many monsters spawn during that activity or changing the specific types of rewards it grants. Blizzard notes that players will even be able to bring aspects of some endgame activities into other ones, so players can have the best of both worlds.

Diablo's newest class is the Warlock, and it won't be confined to a single game in Blizzard's ARPG franchise. Instead, different flavors of the Warlock will come to all three current Diablo games: Diablo 2: Resurrected, Diablo Immortal, and Diablo 4.

Announced during Blizzard's Diablo 30th Anniversary Spotlight, the demonic spellcaster will first arrive in Diablo 2: Resurrected today as part of the game's Reign of the Warlock DLC, one that also introduces new endgame challenges and long-requested quality-of-life features.

In Diablo 2, the Warlock will be able to summon three different demons--the Goatman, the Tainted, and the Defiler--as well as bind demons to their will. The Warlock can then sacrifice the demon to absorb their lifeforce and gain temporary buffs based on the demon consumed.

Diablo's world of Sanctuary isn't what you'd call a hot tourist destination. Between mobs of monsters, cultists with dark designs, and a general sense of decay that permeates the landscape, Sanctuary has been forever scarred by the war between Heaven and Hell. But in Diablo 4's second major expansion, Lord of Hatred, players will get to venture to the sacred isles of Skovos. The ancient birthplace of the firstborn civilization, Skovos is a region where humanity has thrived and has built wonders, a stark departure from the "grotesque and destroyed" landscape that Diablo players are used to.

"It's been fun to build a place that's not just grotesque and destroyed and ruined," associate game director Zaven Haroutunian said to GameSpot, explaining how the Amazons and Oracles had created a haven. "Why is this place so safe? Why has it been able to keep all evil at bay? Because of the Amazons. They're just so f**king badass. What kind of people show up? Pirates? Whatever. Call the Amazons, they'll kill these pirates, and we'll be fine. And so it's a society that's been able to maintain its order, partly due to all its various orders, right? Amazon orders being one of them, the Oracles is another."

"When you go to Skovos, the example I've used is, people pay their taxes, the roads get fixed, the houses aren't constantly on fire. This is a society that's taken care of, right? It is protected and is well-defended. And anytime anything goes wrong, all the Amazons show up, lock shields, and just like, f**k with anything that shows up. We wanted to pay tribute to that class and the fantasy people had when they saw it in the story. So when you go to the Skovos, you're going to see this made manifest, right? Man, when the Amazons show up, they clean up--they leave nothing, and that's how badass they are."

Diablo 4's next expansion, Lord of Hatred, is more than just another chapter in the Diablo universe. Since its release in back in 2023, Diablo 4 has told a singular story referred to as The Hatred Saga; as its events have unfolded, we've found our character, The Wanderer, at the center of a battle between Heaven, Hell, Sanctuary, and one extremely messy family. However, all of that is about to come to a close, as Lord of Hatred sees us reunite with the game's former antagonist, Lilith, in an epic showdown against Mephisto that will both explore Sanctuary's past and settle its future.

Ahead of Lord of Hatred's April 28 release date, developer Blizzard showcased the expansion--and its upcoming Warlock class--in a Spotlight presentation. Prior to the showcase, GameSpot had the opportunity to sit down with Diablo 4's associate game director Zaven Haroutunian and art director Nick Chilano to dig deeper into why players should be excited for the arc's epic finale. The pair spoke in depth about Skovos, its Amazonian guardians, what this moment means for Diablo as a whole, and how happy they are that fans love "mommy" Lilith.

GameSpot: First things first, I would like to talk to you both a bit more about Skovos. Skovos, I feel, has been this mythological place in Diablo. It was teased back in Diablo II, we thought maybe it was going to be explored and then it wasn't, and now we're finally getting it. What is it like to realize something that has been so monumental to the community?

Diablo 4's Lord of Hatred expansion goes live in April, and one of its big draws is that players will finally get a chance to explore a location that has only been hinted at for decades. The Skovos Isles were teased in ancient texts--better known as the Diablo 2 game manual--and it's that very same pocket-sized manuscript that inspired Blizzard to create a region that has been left relatively unscathed by the doom and gloom that has befallen Sanctuary over the centuries.

"I've been playing Diablo games since the very beginning, so I had that exact same feeling of like, 'Oh my God, it's Skovos. I get to go there. I'm going to meet the Amazons.' I want to do all this stuff--meet the Oracles and so on," associate game director Zaven Haroutunian said to GameSpot. "It's someplace we've never really gone in this series. No game has gone deeper than a scratch into what this place is. So it was a good opportunity to kind of sit back and take stock of the series' entire history."

"When we were building Skovos--not just the story part, but the culture there and the characters and the history--we were going through the Diablo 2 manual trying to rediscover what we've said about this place," Haroutunian continued. "We wrote everything down like, 'Oh, we didn't name all the islands. Let's name islands. Let's try to draw these things from the book.'

If you've been looking for fast-paced, action-packed sci-fi games, look no further than the Humble Sci-Fi Shooters 2.0 bundle deal. Like other Humble Bundle deals, the Sci-Fi Shooters 2.0 bundle offers a tiered pricing structure where the more you pay, the more games you'll unlock, with the full seven-game bundle costing just $20. Also, like other Humble Bundles, a portion of all sales is donated to charity--in this case, Humble is partnering with One Tree Planted and Cool Effect, which help combat the effects of climate change. The bundle is available until February 23.

Following the events of Fallout Season 2, most of the wasteland's major factions stand revealed. However, a cameo appearance in Season 2, episode 6 hinted at another looming conflict in the show. According to Fallout co-showrunner Geneva Robertson-Dworet, that performer may have a bigger role in the show going forward.

Spoilers for Fallout Season 2 to follow!

In episode 6, Walton Goggins' The Ghoul was impaled on a poll and on the verge of losing his mind when he was rescued by a shadowy figure who wanted to recruit him for an upcoming war. The character in question was voiced by Hellboy star Ron Perlman, and a brief glimpse of his face confirmed that he's a super mutant. The Ghoul turned down the request to join him, and the super mutant released the former without letting him know where the super mutants are hiding.

A report claims that Microsoft could merge Xbox Game Pass Premium and PC Game Pass together.

Tom Warren of The Verge reported that Microsoft was considering such a move. Xbox Game Pass Premium is the $15/month version of Game Pass that comes with access to a library of 200+ games, but not day-one new releases. PC Game Pass, meanwhile, costs $16.50/month and includes access to "hundreds" of PC games, as well as new games on day one. The Verge's report didn't have any word on what the price of a hypothetically merged subscription would be, or any other features.

The site also reported that other upcoming changes to Game Pass in the future could be more third-party services bundled in. Some of these today include EA Play, Fortnite Crew, and Ubisoft+ Classics for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. The report also claimed that the rumored free Xbox Cloud Gaming offering (in exchange for ads) will not be its own separate Game Pass tier.