The next Battlefield Labs testing period kicks off soon, and now Battlefield Studios has revealed what testers can expect--and it includes the first big map and the server browser.

Server browser

The server browser in Battlefield 6 is limited to the game's Portal mode, a decision that players have made their feelings known about. For the upcoming test, the developer said the main goal is to "observe how it works in practice, with initial feedback focusing on accessibility and UI clarity."

Battlefield Studios said people should know that what they are seeing only represents a non-final version of the feature. For the Labs test, it is "intentionally limited," the developer said.

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It's a glorious weekend coming up for college football fans, with the official first weekend of games on tap. To capitalize on the excitement, EA Sports is making College Football 26 free for everyone.

This actually begins today, August 28, to coincide with the slate of games scheduled for tonight. The free weekend ends on Sunday, August 31. EA said people can "try out all the new features, see the latest roster updates, and more." The game is free on both platforms: PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.

Additionally, for this weekend only, EA is discounting College Football 26's Deluxe edition from $100 to $75. This version of the game comes with a variety of extras, including Ultimate Team credits and more.

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Bandai Namco has announced a new mode called Deep of Night for Elden Ring Nightreign. Set to arrive September 11, it's meant to offer a more challenging experience for veteran players with stronger enemies to face.

Deep of Night was officially revealed on the Bandai Namco website, after it was datamined as a possible ranked mode for Elden Ring Nightreign earlier this month. The mode will see wins and losses "affecting the depth" of players in this high-difficulty mode. The post challenges people to beat Depth 3, while specifying that the fourth and fifth levels are actually an "endless battle for those seeking even greater thrills."

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Kirby and the Forgotten Land made quite an impact when it landed on Nintendo Switch back in 2022. In the titular pink mascot's first true 3D adventure, players were treated to a lengthy and feature-filled campaign and a surprising amount of post-game content. Now, with the addition of the Star-Crossed World expansion, there's even more to enjoy--provided you have a Nintendo Switch 2, that is.

With the introduction of Star-Crossed World, you can venture into previously completed levels to find all-new paths and scenery as you work to uncover the mystery behind a fallen meteor. But you won't be able to start this DLC immediately. Instead, you'll need to make a bit of progress in Kirby and the Forgotten Land's main campaign first.

How to start the Star-Crossed World DLC in Kirby and the Forgotten Land

To begin the Star-Crossed World, you'll need to have purchased Kirby and the Forgotten Land Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Star-Crossed World for Nintendo Switch 2. If you already own the original game, you can upgrade to the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition--which includes the DLC--for $20. If you don't own the original game, you can purchase the bundle containing both the main game and DLC for $80.

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Capcom: Ace Attorney and Mega Man Humble Bundle

$5+

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Between big titles like Resident Evil Requiem, Onimusha: Way of the Sword, and Pragmata, Capcom's slate of upcoming titles is stacked. However, if you're looking to stock up on classic titles from the prolific company, you'll want to check out the new Capcom: Duo of Justice Ace Attorney and Mega Man Humble Bundle. As the name implies, this limited-time bundle offers up to nine Mega Man and Ace Attorney titles for PC--most of which are multi-game collections--plus the recent Ghost Trick remaster for just $35. A portion of your purchase supports Breakthrough T1D, a diabetes research and advocacy organization. All games purchased in the bundle are delivered as official Steam keys. This bundle will be available until September 16.

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Like other Humble deals, the Capcom: Ace Attorney and Mega Man Bundle offers a multi-tiered pricing structure, starting at just $5 for three collections, including Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy and the Mega Man Legacy Collection 1 and the Mega Man X Legacy Collection 1--both of which include the first set of games in their respective Mega Man franchises. You also get two coupon codes--one for 50% off Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney.

From there, each tier adds an additional two games per price point. Pay $15 or more, and you'll get everything from the first tier, and also unlock Mega Man Legacy Collection 2 and Mega Man X Legacy Collection 2, so you can round out the full collections of both series. Then at $25, you'll also add Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective and Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection Vol. 2. And you opt for the $35 tier, you'll also get Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection Vol. 1 and The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, which bundles together The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures and The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve. The full bundle tallies up to $254 worth of games for just $35. You'll find a breakdown of the four available tiers below. We've highlighted the entries that are new compared to the previous tier.

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Bella Ramsey, who stars in HBO's The Last of Us as Ellie, has a message for viewers who are upset about the show and the changes from the source material heading into Season 3: "You don't have to watch it."

Appearing on The Awardist podcast (via Culture Crave), Ramsey first reacted to the controversial second season, in which Kaitlyn Dever's Abby brutally murders Joel (Pedro Pascal). Ramsey said they tried to "steer clear" as much as possible from the discourse and controversy.

"There is nothing I can do about it anyway. The show is out. There is nothing that can be changed or altered [for Season 2]. There is not really any point in reading or looking at anything. People are of course entitled to their opinions. It doesn't affect the show, it doesn't affect how the show continues or anything, in any way, so they're very separate things to me. So no, I just don't really engage," Ramsey said.

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September 4 is quite the scary date for indie devs this year. You probably already know why, but here's the reason anyway: After a long wait, Hollow Knight: Silksong is finally arriving on that exact date. It's easily going to be one of the biggest indie releases of the year, and because of that fact, a number of indie games have opted for a delay to avoid being drowned out by the Silksong-mania. One exception is a co-op racing party game called Fling to the Finish, as the companies responsible have decided to release its console ports on the same day as Silksong.

Publisher Daedalic Entertainment and developer Splitside Games confirmed the game will be releasing on console September 4 in a press release, referencing Silksong in a tongue-in-cheek manner: "Arriving same day as THAT metroidvania." To be fair, as you can see in a trailer below, there's no real reason to think that Fling to the Finish is in any direct competition with Silksong.

Fling to the Finish is more in the vein of games like Human: Fall Flat, as it sees you playing as perfectly spherical, cartoonish characters that are tied together two at a time. You then have to maneuver through various obstacle courses as you try not to drag your friend down with you, all while racing other players. Apart from both games featuring platforming, their target audiences couldn't be more different, so there's no reason to think Silksong should affect Fling to the Finish's release on console.

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Disgraced Hollywood actor Kevin Spacey was "a little weird" on the set of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, game director Glen Schofield said, adding that the controversy surrounding the Oscar-winner does not "taint the game" overall.

Speaking to PC Gamer, Schofield said he wanted Spacey to play the villain, Jonathan Irons, even though he understood that Spacey was not well-versed in gaming. Despite that, Schofield applauded Spacey's acting chops, saying he gave an "unbelievable" performance in Advanced Warfare.

"He just is a great actor," Schofield said. "Then when we said cut, you could tell the video games weren't his thing. We had to get him a trailer. So he had a trailer outside that he would go in and he was a little bit more difficult, I would say. There's a speech where he talks about democracy, and that's just a really amazing speech."

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Pokemon Legends: Z-A will see players return to Pokemon X and Y's Kalos region, and fittingly, one of the major gameplay features of those games will make a return: Mega Evolutions. Ahead of its release next month, The Pokemon Company has shown off one of the new Mega Evolutions debuting in the game, as the Luchador-inspired Pokemon Hawlucha is getting a serious upgrade when it jumps into the ring.

A Fighting- and Flying-type Pokemon, Hawlucha's Mega Evolution sees the Pokemon transform into a creature that has even more ornate plumage, which makes it look like a Pokemon version of famed wrestler Jushin Thunder Liger. "After bathing in the energy of Mega Evolution, its whole body has grown more muscular. Its signature move is Flying Press. It spins to increase the momentum of its dive when attacking. It shows off its muscular chest--both to its opponent and to its Trainer," Hawlucha's Mega Evolution Pokedex entry reads (via Serebii).

Hawlucha is the third new Mega Evolution reveal so far for Pokemon Legends: Z-A. The first one was Mega Dragonite, a power-up that adds massive wings to the powerhouse Pokemon's head, and recently, we got a brief taste of what a Pokemon horror movie would be like with the debut of Mega Victreebel.

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While proprietary engines aren't all that common at many studios--given the fact that they're just simply difficult to make--Capcom has found a lot of success with its own one, RE Engine. It's been used across all of the studio's games since 2017's Resident Evil 7, with the upcoming Pragmata being no different. However, a small thing you might not think about being important is that Diana, the game's deuteragonist, has very long hair. According to producer Naoto Oyama, the RE Engine actually had to be changed to even make this possible.

When asked about any new features that could be used in future games in an interview with VGC, Oyama explained that Diana's hair is one example. "The RE Engine is, first of all, something that we've all really built to create something that's important for us as a backbone for our games," he said. "And so, with that, we also have the ability to always request stuff when we want to add this or that to the RE Engine. One of these which is visually easy to understand is Diana's hair, which is made up of strands."

He went on to note how in previous games they've generally used technology more suitable for shorter hair, Diana's long hair is "something that we've finally been able to do with Pragmata, so we've had the help from the RE Engine team to create this." When asked if we might see any zombies sporting some luscious long locks or not, Oyama replied, while laughing, "It's hard to say."

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Developer Crystal Dynamics is laying off more members from the team, though not detailing the total number of people impacted. This is the second round of cuts at the Tomb Raider studio within the last six months--and the first since the Perfect Dark reboot was canned.

On LinkedIn, the official Crystal Dynamics account announced the layoffs. "This decision was not made lightly," the post reads. "It was necessary, however, to ensure the long-term health of our studio and core creative priorities in a continually shifting market." The language is pretty similar to what Crystal Dynamics stated after 17 people were laid off in March: "We did not make this decision lightly."

The biggest known project at Crystal Dynamics currently is the next Tomb Raider. The game starring Lara Croft will be published by Amazon Games, and Crystal Dynamics noted that "the future of Tomb Raider" is "unaffected by this decision."

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Ever since Resident Evil 7, the horror series' non-remake games have opted for a first-person perspective over the third-person perspective Resident Evil 4 set as the de facto choice in 3D games. Resident Evil Village was made with first-person in mind, though it did get a third-person camera mode post-launch. When Resident Evil Requiem launches next year, it'll do so with first- and third-person modes right out the gate. But according to the game's director, the latter was only added in so it wouldn't be too scary for some players.

Speaking to GamesRadar, director Koshi Nakanishi explained how he implemented Resident Evil 7's first-person perspective to make it "more immersive and more scary than ever before," noting that he thinks "media and players agreed it was an incredibly scary game, but it was possibly too scary."

He went on to say that because it felt too scary, he believes some players weren't able to finish it, or even start it in the first place. In turn, with Requiem, he wanted to make sure there was a way to let as many people play the game as possible. "If you started the game off in first-person perspective, and you're finding it's too much, then-third person is almost a way to step slightly back from that level of horror and make it slightly easier to deal with by having the character on screen as a kind of avatar of yourself," Nakanishi explained.

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What's the most important thing that EA's new Skate game needs? Contrary to popular belief, polished gameplay and fun environments aren't at the top of the list, because that's a spot reserved for the soundtrack. If we're talking sub-genres within the playlist itself, then naturally, we have to know just how much of it is reserved for the best music to power a kickflip: ska. So just how much ska is in Skate? That's a question Skate's developers aren't quite ready to answer yet, although they are tooting their horns about the game's upcoming release on PC and console.

"I know ska is really polarising. I love Ska, I love Rocksteady (another genre of music), so I don't know how to answer this. I'm also bad at math, so I'm going to say it won't be a high percentage but I won't rule out ska being on the soundtrack," senior creative director Deran Chung said to VideoGamer. Skate head of creative Jeff Seamster added that the game definitely features "some" ska, which might be reason enough to grab your old Mighty Mighty Bosstones T-shirt out of your cupboard and dust off your Reel Big Fish CDs.

Of course, you're free to have as much ska as you want while playing, thanks to the integration of streaming services on console and PC. Pull up a playlist of Fishbone and Madness on Spotify, and you're good to go.

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The Battlefield 6 testing program, Battlefield Labs, is ramping back up this week following the end of the game's popular open beta earlier this month.

A leaked document reveals that the next Battlefield Labs test will begin on Friday, August 29, across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. The Labs test will include a lot of new features, including the debut of the server browser and bigger maps.

If you took part in a Labs test before the open beta, you're automatically in for future tests. Everyone else, however, has to sign up for Labs and hope to be chosen. You can sign up for Labs here.

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Activision has brought Call of Duty: World War II back to the Microsoft Store and Xbox PC App after it was removed more than a month ago, though the company has still not said a word about what happened.

A statement released on August 27 confirmed that the 2017 game has returned, and is once again available for PC Game Pass players. However, there was no explanation as to anything else related to the game's removal on July 4. At the time, Activision said it pulled the game to investigate "an issue."

While Activision never confirmed what happened, fans believe they worked it out. Call of Duty: WWII was reportedly overrun with Remote Code Execution attacks that had players losing control of their PCs via a security exploit. A similar attack happened to Dark Souls 3 back in 2022, which led to the entire trilogy being taken offline while the security issue was addressed.

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Earlier this summer, Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima laughed when asked if he would play the remake of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, before flatly replying, "No, I won't." Regardless, the creative team behind Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater is hopeful that their former colleague will get a chance to see that the remake was created with great reverence and respect for the original.

"We are not sure what [Kojima] would want to do, but we want to deliver this game whilst being very respectful of all the people that we previously worked with," said MGS Delta producer Noriaki Okamura during an interview with Inverse. "We would love for [Kojima] to see it too."

Kojima parted ways with Konami in 2015 after spending decades as one of the top creative minds in the company. Since that time, Kojima has launched his own company and released two Death Stranding games. Okamura has openly shared his admiration for Kojima and expressed his desire to work with him again on MGS. However, Kojima has his own MGS-like game called Physint, which may still be a few years away. The director recently confirmed that Physint is still in a conceptual phase.

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While players are still enjoying Peak's brand-new Mesa biome, the game's latest patch is here to address some technical concerns--specifically making it easier to run Peak on lower-powered computers.

The latest patch, which brings the game to version 1.27.a, introduces a new Texture Quality graphics setting. The new option, which Team Peak says has been much-requested, allows players with low VRAM to lower the texture quality, reducing the incidence of low framerates, missing graphics, and potential crashes. The developer notes that the lower texture quality "doesn’t even look much worse," so it's worth checking out for anyone who's been experiencing performance issues in Peak.

The developer has also added support for DX11 graphics API, alongside existing options DX12 and Vulkan. "It might be better, it might be worse," the patch notes warn, but suggest players who have had issues with the other options give it a try anyway. "We can’t really confirm which exact configurations of graphics cards this will work better with, but if it can improve it for some of you that’s fantastic!"

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It all starts with the slam of a prison door. Four captains from the same Mafia family, the CR:5, are taken out in one fell swoop and left to rot behind bars. Lucky for them, our hero's already there. Gian's just a run-of-the-mill wiseguy, passing his time doing petty jobs for the family when he's on the outside and living the lazy life when he's in the slammer. But those easy days come to an end when he gets word from the boss: if he can break the captains out, Gian will earn a spot at the top of the hierarchy. Can he pull off a job this big, or is it more than even Gian's fabled good luck can manage?