In Battlefield Redsec's Battle Royale, the Traverser Mark 2, also known as the Marauder, has proven to be too powerful, thanks to its armor and turret. That's why Battlefield Labs is removing the Marauder from Battle Royale and replacing it with other transport vehicles.

Battlefield Labs made the announcement in a brief update, which explained that the decision came down to player feedback and the team's internal metrics. However, the Marauder could return in a future update. The dev team noted that it's looking into adjustments that would allow that to happen without running into the same issues again.

Last month, Battlefield 6 and Redsec Season 2 launched with over 200 game improvements and quality-of-life changes. It also included new maps, weapons, and additional vehicles. However, producer Phil Girette recently acknowledged that the delay between Season 1 and Season 2 hurt Battlefield 6's momentum.

Light on combat, heavy on story, adventure games are such an underrated delight. Fanatical’s Story Rich Adventures Bundle is a celebration of the genre. It includes 17 games, and, like all Fanatical Build Your Own Bundles, the more you add to your cart, the deeper your discount. Pricing starts at three games for $1.65 per key ($4.95 total), but if you add five or more games you'll pay just $1.60 per key, and at seven or more titles, the price per game drops to $1.45. If you add all 17 games to your bundle, you'll pay just $24.65--which is a massive discount compared to the full bundle's $340.78 value.

As for the games on offer, two of the marquee options are Heavy Rain and Beyond Two Souls--which are available as a double pack, meaning you get both games for just one slot in the bundle. These cinematic adventures are polarizing to say the least, but they're worth experiencing, whether you come away loving or hating them. Games by Quantic Dream tend to have high production value, cinematic storytelling, and tell stories that are relatively compact, so you can get through them in about 12-20 hours. Heavy Rain is the story of a bereaved father looking for his son who has gone missing, all while a serial killer is on the loose. Beyond Two Souls sees you take on the role of a psychically gifted young girl who grows into her abilities, and you also get to ride a horse at one point, which is cool.

A cozy meditation on mortality, Old Man’s Journey is a quiet, contemplative adventure game you’ll be thinking about long after you finish it. There’s no dialogue in the game; you just see the story unfold as you take on the role of the Old Man, who receives a letter that prompts him to leave home one day. At its heart, it’s a game about loss, and hope, and the rich texture of a life well-lived. Keep your tissues handy.

God of War: Sons of Sparta is a reasonably decent but not particularly great metroidvania spin-off that suffers from an identity crisis. A prequel set when franchise protagonist Kratos and his brother Deimos were coming of age in the Spartan army, Sons of Sparta lacks the over-the-top action spectacle of the other games in the God of War franchise. As a metroidvania it is middling and at times simply awkward, with a dearth of its own original ideas or excellent execution to liven up the genre. The result is a game that feels confused and muddy, despite a few bright spots.

Sons of Sparta takes place across two distinct time periods in the God of War timeline: an adult Kratos telling the story of his adventure to his daughter Calliope, before the tragic events of the first game earned him the nickname the Ghost of Sparta; and the story itself, which takes place when he's a headstrong but duty-bound teenager just starting to make a name for himself in Spartan warrior trials. That tale involves Kratos and Deimos encountering mythical beasts and monsters and cultists as they search for another missing teen, Vasilis. As the story progresses it becomes an interesting look at a foundational time in Kratos' life, though as a side story it does feel removable from the rest of the canon.

At the beginning, though, Kratos is not a very interesting character to follow at this point in his life. He's too rigid and committed to his duties and the rules. He can frequently be overly pious and condescending toward Deimos. The search for Vasilis carries as much weight as a Scooby Doo mystery--you'll get a clue to go towards a location, search around, and then Kratos realizes that he arrived a few minutes or hours too late. Aw shucks, you just missed him, but maybe he left to go here instead. There aren't many twists and turns; it's just following a wandering character around.

Near the beginning of the year, Ubisoft shared plans to bring a Realism Mode to The Division 2 as part of its 10th anniversary celebration. It's designed to make the game even tougher by removing some of the game's more advantageous features, and it's only sticking around for a short time.

As laid out by the game's developers, Realism Mode is only available through the Warlords of New York expansion. But from today to April 2, that expansion will be open to all players so they can have a chance to experience it themselves.

Realism Mode drops most of the video game conventions like the HUD, the map, and hitmarkers. The combat has also been completely re-balanced, and old strategies like shooting limbs aren't going to as effective in this mode.

The Video Game History Foundation has beaten a copyright troll and is now able to better preserve Cookie's Bustle, a Japanese point-and-click PC adventure game from the 1990s.

Cookie's Bustle is an obscure game that didn't get much attention or preservation following an initial physical print run around its release in 1999. It's considered an "orphan work" without a clear owner, and is exactly the kind of game the Video Game History Foundation likes to preserve. A new blog post on the foundation's website detailed why that process was more complex than usual.

Anytime someone online posted materials related to Cookie's Bustle in recent years, a company called Graceware Inc. filed DMCA takedown notices to remove the content. That's because in 2021, Graceware had claimed copyright ownership and filed trademarks related to Cookie's Bustle. VGHF caught wind of Graceware's aggressive DMCA strategy after they filed one over a VGHF post about obtaining a copy of the game.

Highguard will officially go offline on March 12, developer Wildlight has announced. This was the expected result, given that player numbers had fallen dramatically and the game was being supported only by a skeleton crew following mass layoffs at the company.

More than 2 million people played Highguard, the studio said, and "many believed in what we were building." Wildlight said it is "deeply grateful" for the fans, but admitted, "We have not been able to build a sustainable player base to support the game long term."

Highguard will remain playable until March 12, and Wildlight said it hopes people will come back "one more time to show your support and get those final great matches in while we still can."

Upon booting up Deadlock, Valve's latest MOBA/hero-shooter hybrid, players are treated to a hell of a visual: the New York City skyline plunged in shadows, illuminated only by the windows of its skyscrapers and a series of occult sigils. One in particular sits above the tallest building in the shot, and above it, a dark swirl builds in the clouds; ghastly pigeons perch on a nearby roof, emitting an eerie, green glow. There's clearly magic at work here, and it keeps sucking me back into the orbit of Deadlock's "Cursed Apple."

If you were to ask me, I'd tell you that New York City has always been a touch magical. At least, I was frequently led to believe it is. As a boy, I read books like Suzanne Collins' Gregor the Overlander, which imagined a vast Underland just beneath New York City's surface filled with humans, giant talking rats, and bats named after figures from Greek mythology and history. I also came up on Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series, which always supposed that Manhattan's skyline was merely a facade for the new home of Mt. Olympus, and that the larger-than-life figures and monsters of Greek mythology were not only real, but around every corner, disguised by a supernatural mist.

Plenty of other fiction has played with the trope of there being a magical society underneath the city as well. Look no further than Remedy Games' Control and its upcoming sequel, Resonant. In that world, the Federal Bureau of Control operates out of an imposing and impossible brutalist structure called The Oldest House that, despite being in the middle of Manhattan, magically conceals itself and all the supernatural goings-on occurring inside its shifting halls. Even Dimension 20's two seasons of The Unsleeping City deals with the thin veil between the mundane and the magical in New York City, and films like Night at the Museum have posited that when the city that never sleeps does in fact grab a wink, our most precious touchstones and pieces of history come to life and play behind our backs.

Capcom has previously acknowledged that Monster Hunter Wilds has some serious problems on PC that have dogged the game since its release last year. But Capcom hasn't given up on Wilds yet, and it's promising to take the lessons from this Monster Hunter game into its future titles.

In a financial Q&A from earlier this year (which was first shared by Genki), Capcom reiterated its commitment to pushing Wilds to the same level of success as Monster Hunter World or greater over a long-term period. To do that, Capcom plans to resolve the "technical challenges the game has faced," while attracting new players "through pricing strategies."

The report notes that PC games now account for "approximately 50% of total unit sales." Capcom also added that its difficulties with Monster Hunter Wilds on PC has given the company technical expertise that will be put to good use when it develops future games for computers.

The Sims 4 is adding a new in-game Marketplace where modders can sell their custom content--which includes items like clothing and furniture--a move that will allow console players to officially use any sort of modded content for the first time. But there's a pretty big catch: There will be no free items on the Marketplace, only paid packs that must be purchased with a new currency called Moola. The PC and Mac version of the Marketplace will launch on March 17, with the consoles versions coming "in the next couple of months," according to the announcement.

The idea here appears to be to leverage modders to ramp up production on The Sims 4's kits, which are bundles of create-a-Sim and build mode items that usually cost about $5. Maxis has already roped in modders to help with these in the past with its "creator kits." But with the Marketplace, creators will be able to publish their own kits on their own time without Maxis commissioning them for the job. The Marketplace will only have custom content, not mods that alter gameplay.

On the creator side of this, there's another catch: Items sold on the Marketplace must be exclusive. That means that modders can't offer their Marketplace content anywhere outside the Marketplace--for free or otherwise. There's also no indication that it will be possible to offer free items on the Marketplace. But Maxis emphasized repeatedly in the Marketplace announcement that it will otherwise be business as usual for modders who want to keep operating on modding sites or Patreon, and that the Gallery won't be affected.

Wildlight's free-to-play shooter Highguard was not the success that the studio wanted to see, and now senior level designer Alex Graner has said he thinks the gameplay being so intense didn't help.

He said on the Quad Damage podcast that Highguard releasing as a 3v3-only game required "such a high intensity of communication" with teammates. "It doesn't leave much room for casualness. I think that was the biggest thing that turned a lot of players off Highguard," he said, as reported by Kotaku.

"3v3 duos is always the sweatiest version of anything like battle royale, objective modes, wingman, you know it, you name it," Graner added.

The Second Galactic War rages on in Helldivers 2, with more than 8.6 billion Helldivers giving their lives last year. Of that number, 177 million were from friendly fire.

That's just one of the staggering statistics revealed by developer Arrowhead Studios in a new infographic charting enemy casualties, friendly-fire incidents, most popular stratagems, and more data from the game's second year.

While billions of Helldivers died defending democracy, it was much worse for Super Earth's foes. According to Arrowhead, Helldivers 2 players killed nearly 280 billion enemies across the game's three factions. The bug-like Terminids made up the majority of those, with 121 billion of the bugs slain over the course of the last year. In return, the Terminids claimed 2.8 billion Helldivers.

Bungie's Marathon launches soon, and similar to its work on Destiny 2, the extraction shooter will be anchored by seasons that run for three months at a time. Each season is designed to contribute to the evolution of Marathon over time, but the main takeaway is that as soon as a new one begins, all players will have their progress reset to zero.

Bungie says that seasonal resets will include everyone's gear, contract progression, faction progression, and player level, but achievements and cosmetics--both earned and paid--will not be affected. Codex progression and liaison contract progression will also carry over, and Bungie says the reset is designed to make loot feel meaningful while keeping the game dangerous. "It's a way to say goodbye to the old, welcome the new, and kick off a journey from zero-to-hero with new ways to play, content to master, and things to discover," Bungie added.

Seasons will also be free for all players and won't require them to purchase expansions or DLC to access. As players complete contracts and progress through faction upgrades, they'll steadily increase their power and gain access to better gear from the armor, allowing them to craft their ideal build and recover easily from a bad run on Tau Ceti 4. Once a season starts to draw to a close, Bungie explained that this will create a sense of urgency as players decide to jump into battle with their best gear before they lose it.

Last fall, Prime Video announced that it's adapting Square Enix's Life Is Strange as a live-action TV series. Now, the two primary leading roles have been cast.

Tatum Grace Hopkins will portray Maxine "Max" Caulfield, while Maisy Stella will play her best friend, Chloe Price. Outside of her roles on Broadway--including The Queen of Versailles and For the Girls--Hopkins is virtually unknown in the entertainment industry. Life is Strange will be her first TV role ever.

Stella is better known as a musician, but she has an impressive acting resume as well. She had a co-starring role on ABC's Nashville for six seasons, and had a starring turn opposite Aubrey Plaza in the Prime Video original film My Old Ass. Her next films, Poetic License and Flowervale Street, are slated to debut later this year.