Glass Cannon Network has been a name in the tabletop roleplaying game actual play space since 2015, acting as one of the first major channels in a space that's barely 10 years old. According to Glass Cannon Network co-founder Troy Lavallee, a big part of that success comes down to one decision: avoiding Dungeons & Dragons.

"[GCN] started out as 'Let's just play [Pathfinder,] the game that we know and the game that we love, because if we're infectious about how much we enjoy this game, listeners--whether they even play the game or not, [will listen]," Lavallee told me over a video call.

"We're always shocked by how many people listen who have no interest in ever playing," he continued. "If we can share our infectious joy of playing, people will feed off of that, and that's what they listen for. And then it wasn't until the pandemic [in 2020] that we were like, 'I wonder if we could finally start playing other games,' because we saw that everyone else in the space was pretty much just playing D&D. There were a couple of offshoot things here or there, but it was [mostly] D&D, and then we were playing Pathfinder. I said, 'Let's start playing everything else.'"

Continue Reading at GameSpot

When the original Overwatch debuted almost a decade ago, the game encounter some pushback over Tracer's victory pose, which some claimed over-sexualized her and placed too much emphasis on her butt. Blizzard subsequently apologized and reworked Tracer's pose. Now, former Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan has weighed in on the issue and declared that Tracer's butt was never nerfed.

Kaplan was asked about the issue while streaming his new game, The Legend of California, via IGN. In response, Kaplan said "we actually didn't nerf Tracer's butt. It stayed exactly the same."

Blizzard recently ran into a similar issue and promised to rework the design of Anran, a new female hero whose face was met by a negative reaction from players because she looked too similar to other characters. Earlier this this month, Blizzard unveiled a new facial design for Anran, which emphasizes her maturity over youth and increased her resemblance to her brother, Wuyang.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

Pokemon Champions has arrived on Nintendo Switch, and like many other Pokemon games before it, it's offering a handful of free Pokemon and other helpful items for players. In addition to free Mystery Gifts, you can receive elusive Mega Stones by transferring certain Pokemon over from the Pokemon Home service, and even get a free Gardevoir by participating in the game's first online competition.

Here are all of the free gifts available right now in Pokemon Champions. If you're new to the battle-focused game, be sure to also check out our beginner's guide to competitive Pokemon, as well as our guide on how to move Pokemon over from Pokemon Home.

Table of Contents [hide]

• Free Mystery Gifts
  • Dragonite
  Free Mystery GiftsDragonite
  • Available until August 31, 2026

  As an extra incentive to jump into the game early, everyone who downloads and plays Pokemon Champions before August 31 can claim a free Dragonite. You'll find the dragon Pokemon in your in-game mailbox alongside 100 Quick Coupons, which reduce the amount of time you need to wait to recruit new Pokemon from the ranch.

  Continue Reading at GameSpot

A common misconception about me is that, as someone who loves games, I must love all the cables and shiny bits of hardware needed to play them. Truth is, if you need someone to weigh in on which Baldur's Gate 3 romance is the most narratively satisfying, help you create a solid Diablo 4 build, or walk you through how to get the Master Sword in literally any Zelda game, I'm your girl. However, if your mic mysteriously stopped working mid-match or the PC you built won't turn on, I'd encourage you to ask literally anyone else to help you troubleshoot. Yes, I can navigate my way around a PC just fine and can install mods like the best of 'em, but by and large, I don't want to have to put too much thought or effort into whatever processes it takes to actually play my games.

Fortunately for me, companies like Quoted Tech are eager to pick up my slack. A couple weeks ago, the Canadian-based company generously sent me a custom-made gaming PC--the Horizon Professional--to help remedy my gaming woes, which have grown numerous in recent years. While my PC was great back when my partner first built it, time and increasingly demanding games with better graphics have taken their toll. The thought of upgrading my existing computer--or worse, rebuilding the entire thing--seemed daunting, and rising RAM and SSD costs left me feeling a bit resigned to my dated rig. With all that said, I was shocked by how much the Horizon PC improved my gaming experience with essentially zero setup or friction on my part, and at a reasonable price.

Upon opening the box, I was impressed by how carefully packed the unit was. On top of having thick styrofoam surrounding the entire PC, the interior of the case was filled with packaging moulded to its shape, preventing anything from shifting around. Assembly was just as easy, which is to say, required next to nothing from me. After pulling the PC out, I popped off the case's glass side panel, removed the packaging, closed it, then plugged it in. Done. So, let's move on to the specs.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

Can we all agree that space is both pretty amazing and terrifying? I've largely felt both awe and terror while the crew of the Artemis II, the latest manned space mission, has traveled the farthest any person has ever gone from Earth and broadcast images of our neighboring celestial body and the space beyond. It's got me thinking about a lot of things, like how small and insignificant we are in the grand scheme of the universe--let alone this solar system--as well as how little it feels like we know about the Moon despite its relative proximity! That last point really sticks out to me, because despite the Moon's many mysteries, knowing little about it hasn't stopped the world of games from imagining some pretty awesome, weird, and even terrifying visions of what it may contain.

Games are no stranger to the Moon. BJ Blazkowicz has shot Nazis up there. Chell has opened a portal on its surface--one that sucked the villainous Wheatley into the vacuum of space at Portal 2's conclusion and nearly took her with him. Later this month, players will be navigating an abandoned Moon base and simultaneously solving puzzles and shooting robots as Hugh and Diana in Pragmata. Plus, who can forget their first brush with gaming's most-iconic version of the Moon, the world-ending and seriously terrifying visage of one that cuts the sky above Clock Town in The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. These are just the highlights; video games have a long, rich, and weird history with the Moon, be it ours or imagined ones.

When I think of the Moon in games, my mind wanders, as it often does, to Destiny. It is, perhaps, my single favorite instance of the Moon in any video game, and so much of that has to do with my first time stepping foot on it. During Destiny's beta, players were relegated to the game's starting zone on Earth as well as the game's first few missions and Strike. Near the end of the test though, Bungie did a cool thing and opened up the Moon for approximately two hours, making it feel like an exclusive instance and glimpse into the wider world that players might spend the next 10 years exploring. And so I touched down on its glistening surface and gave into the wonder of its vistas and the darkness (and Hive!) contained within its Hellmouth, a seemingly endless underground fortress filled with ritual sites, alien wizards, and at least one portal to another realm inside the soul of a dead god.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

Pokemon's turn-based combat can be best described as an inch wide and a mile deep. Its rock-paper-scissors style is easy to understand, but below the murky surface lies an entirely different game. Moves that may seem useless at first glance take on a different meaning in a competitive setting, where complicated stat spreads are tweaked ever-so-slightly to maximize a Pokemon's efficiency and a constantly evolving meta-game makes it hard to nail down which strategies are viable and which aren't. Toss in over 1,000 unique monsters that can be trained in hundreds of thousands of different ways, and you're left with arguably the most impenetrable competitive video game scene of all time.

For decades, Pokemon's competitive scene was just that: a near-impenetrable experience that requires hundreds of hours--and hundreds of dollars--to keep up with. Pokemon Champions is The Pokemon Company's attempt to bring white-knuckled, competitive battling to the masses. The financial barrier to entry, at least ostensibly, is low thanks to its free-to-play model, and the snappy stat-training mechanics reduce a lot of friction. However, Pokemon Champions lacks the necessary onboarding to captivate a new audience while also giving clear advantages to players who've invested in Pokemon Home. In its current state, Pokemon Champions falls just short of being the be-all and end-all of competitive play that I hoped for.

Despite Pokemon Champions' lackluster onboarding, there are a lot of tutorials. When you first start up the game, you're introduced to a cast of characters who teach you how to battle, obtain Pokemon, and build a team. Assuming you don't skip any dialogue, it takes roughly 30 minutes before you're set loose. From there, you can battle online, train Pokemon, build teams, or continue with supplementary tutorials. I opted to do the latter.

There are nine battle tutorials in total, and most of them barely scratch the surface of Pokemon's competitive depth. The one tutorial that focuses on weather, for example, showcases how water attacks deal more damage under rain and triggers certain abilities, but it fails to mention the other three weather states or other impacts rain can have. Another one covers Move Priority but glosses over how it actually works when multiple moves with different priority interact. There is an in-game glossary that goes a little more in-depth, but even that feels lacking. Not wanting to overwhelm a new player is reasonable, but I can't imagine jumping into competitive battles without fully understanding why an Incineroar is occasionally outspeeding my supposedly faster Jolteon. Sure, those resources are out there, but players shouldn't have to reach for external guides just to learn the basics of competitive battling.

Perhaps NPC battles could offset this by giving players a safe space to learn different interactions and try out strategies, but Champions lacks this as well. Casual matchmaking is your best bet, but I've found skill levels to be all over the place. Sometimes I'd get paired with a razor-sharp meta-relevant team that wiped the floor with mine, and other times I'd go up against a confounding assortment of Pokemon. The skill instability makes it hard to test whether a game plan is viable or not.

Ranked Battles fare much better. My opponents steadily got tougher as I ranked up, and now--at Ultra Ball Rank 3--I feel like battles can go either way. Whether I win or lose, most clashes feel like they come down to a few hair-raising turns where I either outplay my opponent or they outplay me. It's those highs that make competitive battling so exhilarating. Just because you know what a Pokemon does and the role it typically plays within a team doesn't mean you know how your opponent plans to utilize it. Success depends on a strong understanding of the game, sharp improvisational skills, and thinking multiple steps ahead of your opponent. Pulling out a hard-fought win by successfully reading an opponent, or pivoting strategies at the last minute is intoxicating, and it's easy to fall into that "one-more-battle" rabbit hole late into the night.

Compared to Scarlet and Violet, battling is snappier. Thanks to quick animations, streamlined battle text, and shorter connection times, bouts move at a steady pace. Most double battles I participated in were under 20 minutes, and if they went on longer it was because my opponent was using stall tactics to keep their Pokemon on the field. However, even those strategies have been de-emphasized due to balance changes making them harder to come by.

Champions also makes battling more legible than any mainline game before it by shedding light on obscure mechanics from the series. For example, if you look up the move Iron Head in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, it simply says: "This may also make the target flinch." Champions says it "has a 20% chance of making the target flinch," while also showing how many targets it can hit and precisely how the move connects. For years, this has been information that players have had to infer through rigorous battling or by looking up details online. Having all this additional context front and center while training your Pokemon makes the whole process more efficient.

Pick a Pokemon to train, allocate its additional stat points, change the nature, swap out the moves, and switch the ability and you're good to go.

Training in general is also much easier in Pokemon Champions. Pick a Pokemon to train, allocate its additional stat points, change the nature, swap out the moves, and switch the ability and you're good to go. As long as you have the VP, Pokemon Champions' in-game currency, you can train a Pokemon as many times as you'd like. I had my first team up and running in minutes, something that would have taken hours in Scarlet and Violet.

Part of the reason team building is quicker is because Pokemon Champions is missing a lot of Pokemon and items that players have come to expect. Competitive staples in previous iterations, like Amoonguss and Rillaboom, are absent, as well as popular items like Rocky Helmet and Life Orb. I don't find these absences all that bad, though. Sure, I'm bummed some of my favorite Pokemon didn't make the cut, but putting these restrictions on players lets a new meta develop that isn't dominated by familiar strategies and overpowered Pokemon. It's abundantly clear that new Pokemon and items will rotate in and out in the future, so I'm perfectly happy working with what we have for the time being.

The only thing that can potentially throttle team building is VP. Like many free-to-play games, Pokemon Champions frontloads you with a ton of in-game currency to get you started, but once that dries up, your team building potential is limited. Recruiting Pokemon, training Pokemon, and buying battle items all cost VP, and because VP cannot be directly purchased, you'll need to battle, complete challenges, and advance the battle pass. Recruiting and training a Pokemon could cost as much as 5,000 VP, and one ranked win typically earns you a paltry 300 VP. This makes trying to assemble and train a team an arduous endeavor, unless you're willing to pay $6.99 for the Starter Pack which includes 30 Teammate Tickets and 50 Training Tickets. This offsets the cost, but it means that players who don't purchase the Starter Pack could be at a disadvantage.

Pokemon Home connectivity levels the playing field--at least for those who pay for the Pokemon storage service and have built up a respectable collection over hundreds of hours of playing other Pokemon games. As long as you have the box space in Champions, there's no limit to how many Pokemon can visit from Home. The catch is that box space is limited to 30 slots unless you buy the Starter Pack or subscribe to the $4.99/month subscription which ups it to 80 and a whopping 1,000 slots respectively. Additionally, you can buy the Premium Battle Pass for $9.99, which includes Pokemon, Mega Stones (all of which can be purchased from the store for VP), and a sad selection of cosmetics from Pokemon Legends: Z-A.

While I'm not necessarily averse to free-to-play games, Pokemon Champions' model alongside its Home support make for an unbalanced experience. Players who have a robust collection in Pokemon Home have immediate access to meta-relevant Pokemon, while players who don't must roll the dice with Champions' randomized recruitment. Despite having a massive collection tucked away in Pokemon Home, I opted to only use Pokemon Champions' recruitment mechanics for the first few hours to see if I could build a decent team. I did manage to pull a few staples like the Ghost- and Grass-type Pokemon Sinistcha, and the Water-type powerhouse Palafin, but those Pokemon alone were not enough to carry me past the Great Ball rank.

The free-to-play model makes it an obvious entry point, but it doesn't always give new players the resources to succeed.

After a dozen or so more pulls, I caved and plucked Incineroar and Sneasler from Home, the two most-used Pokemon in the doubles format according to the in-game stats. I also imported Floette Eternal Flower, a Pokemon Legends: Z-A exclusive that can only be obtained by completing the grind-heavy post-game, which just so happens to be the best special attacker in Pokemon Champions. Once I built a team around Floette, Incineroar, Sneasler, and Sinistcha, battles got easier until I started seeing more teams streamlined for the current meta. Right now, the only thing preventing casual players from getting blitzed by the best Pokemon in the game is the Ranked matchmaking, which, to its credit, is quite good. However, a quicker and more direct way to obtain specific Pokemon for players who may not have a wealth of Pokemon in Home could make for a more symmetrical experience.

This puts Pokemon Champions in a weird spot. The free-to-play model makes it an obvious entry point, but it doesn't always give new players the resources to succeed. When I purposefully withheld Pokemon Home access, I had plenty of ideas for teams but couldn't assemble any of them because I was missing a few key Pokemon. When I finally succumbed to Pokemon Home, I immediately pulled the most meta-relevant Pokemon simply because I could. That won't be an option for everyone.

While I have issues with Pokemon Champions' onboarding and recruitment processes, the foundation is solid. The punchy battles and added transparency for once-hidden mechanics make this the best official way to play competitive Pokemon. The lack of certain Pokemon and items may seem like a letdown, but the limited roster has allowed for some unlikely picks to flourish in fun ways. Assuming The Pokemon Company continues to support Champions with balance patches, new features, new Pokemon, and new items on a regular basis, it could live up to its potential as the premier avenue for Pokemon Battles.

Right now, though, Pokemon Champions provides two different experiences for seasoned players and newcomers respectively--and unfortunately for newcomers, it's an uneven one that will require a lot of their own dedication and time to improve. Perhaps the barrier to entry for competitive Pokemon can never be smashed entirely, but Champions wears it down, and those willing to push through it will find one of the most thrilling competitive games on the other side.

Pokemon's turn-based combat can be best described as an inch wide and a mile deep. Its rock-paper-scissors style is easy to understand, but below the murky surface lies an entirely different game. Moves that may seem useless at first glance take on a different meaning in a competitive setting, where complicated stat spreads are tweaked ever-so-slightly to maximize a Pokemon's efficiency and a constantly evolving meta-game makes it hard to nail down which strategies are viable and which aren't. Toss in over 1,000 unique monsters that can be trained in hundreds of thousands of different ways, and you're left with arguably the most impenetrable competitive video game scene of all time.

For decades, Pokemon's competitive scene was just that: a near-impenetrable experience that requires hundreds of hours--and hundreds of dollars--to keep up with. Pokemon Champions is The Pokemon Company's attempt to bring white-knuckled, competitive battling to the masses. The financial barrier to entry, at least ostensibly, is low thanks to its free-to-play model, and the snappy stat-training mechanics reduce a lot of friction. However, Pokemon Champions lacks the necessary onboarding to captivate a new audience while also giving clear advantages to players who've invested in Pokemon Home. In its current state, Pokemon Champions falls just short of being the be-all and end-all of competitive play that I hoped for.

Despite Pokemon Champions' lackluster onboarding, there are a lot of tutorials. When you first start up the game, you're introduced to a cast of characters who teach you how to battle, obtain Pokemon, and build a team. Assuming you don't skip any dialogue, it takes roughly 30 minutes before you're set loose. From there, you can battle online, train Pokemon, build teams, or continue with supplementary tutorials. I opted to do the latter.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

Epic Games and Disney are working together on multiple upcoming games as part of the mysterious Disney x Fortnite project, and now one of them has seemingly been revealed early--it's probably not what you expect.

Bloomberg reported that the first new game to come from Disney's $1.5 billion investment into Epic Games will launch in November and it will be a shooter along the lines of the popular extraction game Arc Raiders. Players will be able to suit up as a Disney character and duke it out until they reach an extraction point, sources told the site. According to the report, internal reviews for the project have assessed it to be "not very original" in its current form, but other staffers said they feel optimistic that it will be in better shape come launch.

Disney's investment into Epic and Fortnite will span at least two more games, the sources added. An early version of the second game got "middling internal reviews," sources said. The report went on to say budget for the third game was shifted to the first two projects because "Disney was disappointed by Epic's release timeline."

Continue Reading at GameSpot

Several years have passed since Professor Layton and the New World of Steam was first revealed, but at long last, developer Level-5 has lifted the lid on its long-in-development puzzle-solving game. A new trailer has provided a detailed look at the game and a release date window of 2026, but the biggest surprise is that the mystery-solving Professor will be looking to crack his latest case on more than just Nintendo hardware, as Professor Layton and the New World of Steam is also coming to PC--for Steam, of course--and PS5.

Previously confirmed for Switch consoles, this will be the first time that a Professor Layton game has been released on a non-Nintendo console and on PC. The series kicked off on Nintendo DS in 2008 and has continued on 3DS and Switch consoles since then, and while there have also been iOS and Android ports, those aren't technically considered to be consoles--and as well all know, technically correct is the best kind of correct.

Beyond that, the trailer also showed off the game's new art direction, which blends the traditional look of the series with 3D-animated visuals. We also got a closer look at Steam Bison, a US town fueled by invention and full of steampunk technology. On Switch 2, the game will offer mouse support, and Level-5 says that players can expect to meet a colorful cast of characters while working to solve the mystery that lies at the heart of Steam Bison.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

PUBG franchise director Taeseok Jang has reflected on the string of shortcomings in the live-service multiplayer space, including high-profile examples like Concord and Highguard. He said in an interview that he has friends who worked on those games, and has tried to learn lessons from their struggles.

Jang told GamesRadar that it is "really hard to succeed every time," and for Concord and Highguard, he said he is trying put himself in the developers' shoes and think, "'What could I have done better in that situation?'"

He said he would "try to have that perspective, and try to learn from it."

Continue Reading at GameSpot