When I heard I'd only be getting 15 minutes to try Bandai Namco's newly announced roguelite Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree, I was slightly perturbed. Fifteen minutes, after all, isn't a lot of time to fully evaluate a game, especially at an event with demos scattered in every direction.

Some genres, however, are able to show off their best attributes in a short amount of time, and as I've now learned, roguelites are chief among them. In just a quarter of an hour, Towa and her guardian pals made quite an impression on me, and I left that demo very interested in continuing my journey to help Towa free the world from the malevolent Magatsu's influence.

Towa, in fact, represents one of my favorite phenomena in covering video games; before Summer Game Fest, I knew nothing about it, but now that I've played this demo, it's something I want to play more of as soon as possible.

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Roger Clark, who voiced Arthur Morgan in Red Dead Redemption II, has revealed his newest project--and it's out soon. It's not another western, but instead a game about cats.

Clark is lending his voice to Ultra Mega Cats, a PvE co-op shooter "where badass cats battle waves of enemies in explosive arenas." Clark is voicing the feline Clint, and he described his work on the game as "another wild ride in the gaming world." Clint is a cowboy cat who dual-wields pistols, so while this role is unexpected and very different, it does harken back to Clark's most famous role in Rockstar's Western.

Ultra Mega Cats has players controlling so-called Mega Cats, which are basically cats with super-abilities and incredible power.

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The cloud-gaming service Shadow, which provides cloud computational resources for gamers as well as professionals, has launched a new high-end machine. Called Neo, this new machine runs the equivalent of an Nvidia 4060 GPU and is a free upgrade for users who already subscribe to Shadow's high-end service.

The company states that this new cloud PC will facilitate "up to 150%" more performance in gaming-related tasks, alongside a 200% boost in "pro software" performance. Its new components enable more options for gamers, such as improved DLSS and ray tracing. In addition to the new GPU, the Neo PC has a CPU with eight vCores ranging between 3.25-3.8 GHz, 16GB of DDR5 RAM, and is connected to a 1Gb/s network connection.

Neo will be rolled out for free to existing users of Shadow's previous Boost tier, while new users can subscribe for $38/month. This upgrade brings Shadow's offerings closer to its main competitor in the PC cloud-gaming space, Nvidia GeForce Now, which offers 4080-equivalent performance at its highest tier. While GeForce Now is considerably cheaper (at about $17/month), Shadow's main advantage is that it provides a full Windows experience. This means that users can directly access and download their full PC games libraries without restriction, as well as use any software that works on Windows.

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One of the best animated epics of the 2000s, Nickelodeon's Avatar anime series, is now available at a steal of a price on Amazon. This collector's edition Blu-ray set contains the complete runs of The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra. It's up for grabs for only $33.18, which is well over 50% off its original $98 list price.

See at Amazon Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra Blu-ray collection

This is an 18-disc collection that includes all episodes of the two shows, as well as some great extras. On the discs, there are over 80 minutes of bonus features, including an Auditory Exploration with the Avatar creators. This box set also comes with eight collectible art cards featuring the primary cast of the shows: Aang, Korra, Katara, Sokka, Zuko, Mako, Bolin, and Asami.

In case you missed them when they first aired, Avatar: The Last Airbender tells the story of Aang as he fights to bring balance to a world where the elements of earth, air, fire, and water can be manipulated by gifted individuals. Only the Avatar, wielder of all four elements and who reincarnates throughout the ages, can keep the world in balance, but after the Fire Nation attacked and wiped out the Airbending tribes of the world, everything changed. A century later, Aang returned to a changed world and resumed his mission to master his Avatar powers and bring peace back to a world that was on the brink of all-out war. The show has been a huge hit since it first debuted, earning critical acclaim for its mature storytelling, world-building, and excellent animation.

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Two years ago, BattleBit Remastered caught on after its early-access release and it was briefly one of the most popular shooters online. BattleBit's player count had dramatically dropped since 2023 and the game was seemingly abandoned. Now, however, it appears the game could find a new lease on life with a forthcoming update.

A very short teaser for BattleBit Remastered's Operation Overhaul has been shared by the game's publisher and co-developer, SgtOkiDoki. There's not much to go in the clips, but it's the first sign of life that BattleBit has had in 18 months.

SgtOkiDoki and fellow indie developers Vilaskis and TheLiquidHorse released BattleBit Remastered in June 2023, and players embraced its easy-to-play mechanics. What the game lacked in visual splendor, it made up for with destructible environments, relatively realistic depictions of weapons, 254-player lobbies, and large maps to explore. At its peak, BattleBit Remastered had 87,323 concurrent players.

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Fortnite has lost its crown. Grow a Garden, the breakout game on Roblox, has broken the concurrent-player-count record. It broke over 16 million CCUs (concurrent users) over the weekend, beating out Fortnite by nearly two million. The battle royale held the previous record of 14.3 million.

Grow a Garden is an idle video game where a garden changes between sessions. Released in March, it has players plant crops and flowers and design their own garden. The plants will grow when they are offline, making for a nice surprise when they log back on.

"Grow a Garden has more players than New Zealand and Norway combined," wrote Redditor agentsunnyside7_4 in a thread that covered the huge player-count news. "If it [were] a country, it would be the 78th-most-populated country, behind Rwanda and above Burundi."

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Nintendo Games at Amazon

New and upcoming Switch 2 exclusives

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Nintendo's new and upcoming Switch 2 games are now available to buy from Amazon for the first time. Store pages for Donkey Kong Bananza, Mario Kart World, and more Nintendo-published exclusives were quietly added to Amazon's US storefront over the weekend. Amazon's Nintendo store page remains out of date, but the game listings signal the end of a more than year-long disagreement that resulted in Amazon removing all first-party Nintendo games and hardware from its inventory.

Nintendo Switch 2 Games at Amazon

• Mario Kart World -- $80
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild -- $70
• The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom -- $80
• Bravely Default: Flying Fairy HD Remaster -- $40
• Donkey Kong Bananza -- $70 | Releases July 17
• Super Mario Party Jamboree + Jamboree TV -- $80 | Releases July 24
• Kirby and the Forgotten Land + Star-Crossed World -- $80 | Releases August 28

Along with Mario Kart World, Amazon has store pages for the Nintendo Switch 2 Editions of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. Though published by Square Enix, Bravely Default: Flying Fairy HD, a Switch 2-exclusive remaster of the hit 3DS RPG, had been absent from Amazon until now, too.

Donkey Kong Bananza is available to preorder at Amazon for $70 ahead of its July 17 release. Switch 2 owners can also preorder Super Mario Party Jamboree + Jamboree TV and Kirby and the Forgotten Land + Star-Crossed World.

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Nexus Mods, PC gaming's premier destination for mods, is changing hands after almost 24 years. Site founder Robin Scott, aka DarkOne, announced the change in ownership but didn't make clear who the new owners are.

In a post on Nexus Mods, Scott doesn't explicitly state who the site's new owners are, only that it took many months of meetings and face-to-face talks to find a new owner that would "respect the myriad intricacies of both Nexus Mods as a business and the wider modding community." The new owners are focused on "long-term stability, not changing the values or direction of the platform," Scott said, and that the site will continue to be "community-first and mod-author focused."

"So yes, the ownership of Nexus Mods has changed hands, but I want to be clear, this isn't some corporate 'exit' or a backroom deal," Scott said. "This is me doing something I probably should've done years ago: taking care of myself. Reclaiming some headspace. And finally letting go of the idea that I have to do everything and be responsible for everything myself."

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Borderlands 4 developer Gearbox has outlined its post-launch plans for the game, which include new Vault Hunters. These new additions to the roster won't be free, however, as they'll be added to the game through the $130 Super Deluxe Edition. Gearbox has not yet revealed if they'll be available as standalone purchases, but it's likely that the new Story Packs or an upgrade can be purchased for the Standard or Deluxe Edition of Borderlands 4.

In addition to the new Story Packs adding more Vault Hunters, these will also throw in an entirely new region of Kairos with extended narrative content, Gearbox said in a blog post. Additional storylines and side missions will be included alongside various cosmetics and Bounty Packs that will feature "more tightly focused content" for players.

Each Bounty Pack will feature a new area with fresh missions alongside a unique boss fight, loot, a new type of personalized Digirunner vehicle, and a Vault Card with its own set of rewards for completing certain challenges. Bounty Packs will be included in the Deluxe and Super Deluxe Editions of the game.

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Sandfall Interactive's Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been one of 2025's most intriguing success stories, with more than 3.3 million copies sold to date. Thus far, Sandfall's Clair Obscur updates have been focused on bug fixes and quality-of-life adjustments, but the dev team also wants players to know that it's considering adding "a wide range of future improvements" including "new content."

In a message shared on Blusky, Sandfall writes that it is "actively assessing" what to put in the game next, including expanded localization and accessibility features. The developer didn't specify what it meant by "new content," but that could potentially include more missions or DLC.

Bonjour! We're currently exploring a wide range of future improvements — from accessibility features to new content and all sorts of bits and bobs we're actively assessing. Naturally, this also includes expanded localisation options!

— Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (@expedition33.bsky.social) June 16, 2025 at 5:57 AM

Although Sandfall didn't share many specifics about the potential new features, it has previously acknowledged requests for a photo mode in Clair Obscur. Art director Nicholas Maxon noted that members of the team had already internally requested the feature, and it remains something that they want to put in the game after addressing more pressing issues.

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Borderlands 4 Standard Edition

$70

Preorder at Amazon Preorder at Best Buy Preorder at GameStop

Borderlands 4 Deluxe Edition

$100

Preorder at PS Store Preorder at Xbox Store Preorder at Steam

Borderlands 4 Super Deluxe Edition

$130

Preorder at Amazon Preorder at GameStop

Borderlands 4 Collector’s Edition

$150

Preorder at GameStop

Borderlands 4 launches on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on September 12, and preorders are now live. Physical PS5 and Xbox preorders are available at Amazon, Best Buy, and GameStop so far. Multiple physical versions are available, including a $70 standard edition, the $130 Borderlands 4 Super Deluxe Edition with extra DLC, and the $150 GameStop-exclusive Collector’s Edition that offers tons of extra content. There are also digital editions available. Securing an early copy gets you a DLC pack of unique cosmetics as a preorder bonus.

Borderlands 4 is also eventually coming to Switch 2, though preorders are not currently available for Nintendo's new console.

Borderlands 4 Preorder BonusesBorderlands 4 Preorder Bonuses

All Borderlands 4 preorders include the Gilded Glory Pack as a bonus, which gets you a Vault Hunter Skin, Weapon Skin, and an Echo-4 Drone Skin. The Gilded Glory Pack is offered as a preorder bonus for all physical and digital versions of the game from all retailers.

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2K Games has officially announced the price point for Borderlands 4, and it's not $80. In a blog post, the publisher confirmed that preorders are now available, and the game's standard edition is $70.

Normally, this wouldn't be a big deal, but with Mario Kart World going for $80 and The Outer Worlds launching later this year at $80, many are wondering how many other games will follow suit. The pricing discussion for Borderlands 4 was further elevated by Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford, who controversially said "real fans" would find a way to pay $80 for the game if it ended up costing that much.

Buy Borderlands 4

Although Borderlands 4's standard edition is priced at $70, Gearbox is offering other options that cost more. There is a $100 deluxe edition that comes with various extras, while a $130 Super Deluxe edition has even more. A $150 Collector's Edition is also on the way, and it doesn't include a copy of the game.

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One of the earliest missions in MindsEye tasks you with tailing a car. Get too close and the person driving will spot you; fall too far behind and you'll lose sight of the vehicle. It's the exact kind of mission structure we all decided was tired and needed to go away over a decade ago. The only difference in MindsEye is that you're piloting a drone instead of driving a car, so even the relatively small stakes are diminished by the fact that you can just fly really high to avoid being seen. It's not a positive first impression, especially when you factor in the confluence of concerning events surrounding the game and developer Build a Rocket Boy--from the studio's co-CEO stating that anyone sharing negative feedback about the game was being funded by an ubiquitous source, to the chief legal officer and CFO both leaving the company a few weeks before launch.

Neither is a great look, yet I still went into MindsEye with an open mind. There's some pedigree behind the scenes, after all, with former Rockstar North lead Leslie Benzies handling directing duties. Benzies was a producer on Grand Theft Auto III through V before leaving to found Build a Rocket Boy, and you can clearly see elements of GTA's DNA in MindsEye. Unfortunately, the comparisons end there.

MindsEye is not good. That early tailing mission is sadly indicative of the rest of the game as you slog through roughly 10 hours of dull and creatively bankrupt third-person action, combining driving and cover-based shooting within a linear framework. The story isn't completely terrible, at least, with a few entertaining moments sprinkled into what is otherwise a mostly forgettable tale. You play as Jacob Diaz, a former soldier with selective amnesia caused by a neural implant in his neck: the titular MindsEye. What initially begins as a personal quest to uncover his past gradually becomes a mission for humanity's survival, as familiar sci-fi tropes come to the fore.

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Stellar Blade launched last week for PC, and its first weekend saw the biggest spike in concurrent players--an early trend often seen with major releases. After reaching a peak of 147,996 concurrent players on Steam shortly after launch, that number surge to 192,078 concurrent players on the weekend. This doesn't include the players on the Epic Games Store, where Stellar Blade is also available for purchase.

As noted by industry analyst Daniel Ahmad, Stellar Blade is doing very well in China, thanks to the Chinese dub of the game and it being priced much cheaper there.

Majority of PC sales from China thanks to Chinese dub (not on console) and regional pricing ($38 vs $60)

— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) June 16, 2025

Shift Up also confirmed that Stellar Blade has sold over 1 million units in just three days, and with PS5 sales combined, this brings the grand total of sales up to 3 million so far. The game has also been fine-tuned since launch, and it has received two major expansion packs as well.

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Actor Rob Wiethoff, who played John Marston in Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption series, has teased that he has "such exciting news" to share as soon as this week.

During a recent livestream where he was playing the 2010 original Red Dead Redemption, Wiethoff said of the forthcoming news, "I can't share it with you now. It's absolutely killing me."

"I can't wait for you to know what's going on. And that's all I can say. I cannot think about anything else. Especially playing this game [Red Dead Redemption]. I can't think of anything else," he added.

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Since the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2 on June 5, many Nintendo fans have wondered when the first Nintendo Direct of the post-launch era would drop. Nintendo has decided not to monkey around for too long on the subject, as it has announced the next Direct will be this week--and it will be focused on Donkey Kong’s upcoming adventure Donkey Kong Bananza.

The Donkey Kong Bananza Direct will air Wednesday, June 18 at 6 AM PT / 9 AM ET on the official Nintendo YouTube and Twitch channels. It will feature "roughly 15 minutes of information about the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 game," according to the official announcement on the Nintendo Today app.

This marks the first Nintendo Direct since the Switch 2 Direct in April served as a broad introduction to the new console, as it revealed new Switch 2 features, games, and accessories. Games announced during the stream included The Duskbloods from From Software, Kirby Air Riders, and Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment.

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Following the reveal of The Witcher 4 tech demo earlier this month, CD Projekt Red has shared why it has decided to focus on developing the game for consoles first, rather than for PC.

In case you missed it, the State of Unreal showcase offered us the first in-engine look at The Witcher 4 by highlighting the new, explorable region of Kovir, a brand-new look at the game's protagonist, Ciri, while also showing off the many features of Unreal Engine 5, which the game will utilize rather than the studio's proprietary engine.

It looked beautiful, but what's more impressive is the fact that the tech demo was captured entirely on the base PlayStation 5 at 60fps, with ray tracing.

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Welcome back to the world of A Building Full of Cats! In this sequel, not only will you be petting all the cats in the building, but you'll also be assisting its residents with various tasks. Can you pet all the cats and make a difference in the lives of the building's residents?

As a reserved and unassuming university student in snow-bitten Hokkaido, the personal tragedy which visited Honoka Asakawa would lead to her experimentation in a magical art thought long-lost - blood magic. Unexpectedly able to visit the sealed world of Meiji-era Sapporo, Honoka's quickly taken under the wing of the cheerful and bright Lady Yasue, a powerful mage who's remained in this gilded cage for a century. As their feelings for each other develop, the true repercussions of Honoka's first steps into the secret world of magic and mages are only just starting to play out, eventually leading to catastrophic consequences.