Fans of salmon-coloured monotremes will be pleased with the latest trailer for Sonic Mania, as it shows everyone’s favourite Sonic sidekick (who isn’t Tails) tackling another remixed zone from the original Mega Drive games. We were given a super-brief glimpse at the Flying Battery Zone back in March, but here’s a longer look, with the slower-paced Knuckles taking centre stage. I’ve not played the original games in years, so I’d forgotten how differently Knuckles plays compared to Sonic. I’m not

While not specific to wifi, individuals claimed vague symptoms to any source of electromagnetic radiation, including radio waves, and cellphone transmissions. Rather than sitting next to our wireless router, and waiting for a headache, we decided to peruse the medical literature for an answer to how real any potential health concerns from WiFi. Researchers then look for a correlation to see if the symptoms of EHS can be associated with the actual WiFi exposure. Another study that came out this e

It may be Mother’s Day weekend, but YouTuber Nick Luciano’s dad is stealing the spotlight. He did his son a solid and stood in their yard, performing various Overwatch emotes. Mr. Luciano should be his own character in Overwatch. Seriously, though, watching Mr. Luciano use real world tools and toys to fill in for the weapons of Overwatch is probably my favourite thing about this video. Mr. Luciano has done his best impressions of every Super Smash Bros. character, with two standouts being Bayone

If you called Decksplash a skateboarding game, you wouldn’t be wrong. No, it actually plays more like one of those dang soccer-playing cars in Rocket League. Of course, Rocket League doesn’t have grinds and manuals—both of which are governed by the X button in Decksplash—and its cars are quite a bit heavier than the understandably lighter skateboards. However, Decksplash’s controls are, for the most part, as tight and responsive as Rocket League. And just like Rocket League, I found myself favou

We already know that Halo 6 is coming to Windows 10. It’ll be the first main entry Halo game to come to PC since Halo 2 in 2007, but we won’t be able to see it anytime soon. Halo community manager Brian Jarrard confirmed on Reddit that Halo 6 won’t appear at E3 next month. “[W]e’ll have a little something at E3 but it’s not related to the next major entry in the franchise,” Jarrard wrote. What is interesting, however, is the fact that something Halo-related will still be shown at E3.

Hence Introversion’s decision to release Scanner Sombre for PC first, and hold off on making it a VR compatible game until later. “We deliberately didn’t want people thinking Scanner Sombre is a VR game and then not buying it thinking ‘I’ve got to have a headset.’ It’s a PC game, but if you happen to have a headset you’ll be able to play Scanner [in VR].” It seems like a good strategy: I don’t own a VR headset, and so when browsing games on Steam I pretty much ignore anything labeled as a VR gam

Broke Protocol is a weird little game: a wannabe combination of Grand Theft Auto’s crime sandbox with Minecraft’s chunky voxels. In my experience with Broke Protocol, meaningful player-player interaction was a cop running up to me and saying over a crackly mic: “I’m a cop.” Broke Protocol is surreal, like Grand Theft Auto stripped down to the absolute basic elements of its simulation. Even as an alpha, Broke Protocol is the third most popular game on IndieDB , and the developers claim it’s been

Inextricably linked with the Xbox Live Arcade chapter of indie gaming history, a couple of Ska Studios’ early games unexpectedly hit PC yesterday. They were never my thing, but even seeing screenshots of the grungy and gory The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile, and the slightly less grungy but equally gory Charlie Murder takes me right back to the early 2010s. Fan favourites back in the days of XBLA, both games have inexplicably been unavailable on PC until now, but you can now grab them individually (

The Binding of Isaac developer Edmund McMillen announced the contents of Isaac: Afterbirth Plus’ second ‘mod booster’ pack yesterday, and right at the bottom of that blog post, as if to reward people for scrolling down, he revealed that he’s been working on another project with frequent collaborator Tyler Glaiel. “It’s hard, it’s weird, it’s personal, it has amazing controls, it’s a totally new unannounced IP and it’s easily one of the largest games I’ve ever made level wise.” I’m not going to s

THE HIGHSPhil Savage: Platinum treatmentOnly a month after Bayonetta’s PC release, and Sega has announced yet another Platinum port. As well as unlocked resolutions and extra graphics options, Vanquish PC will offer uncapped framerates. As for future PC ports, Sega’s John Clark claimed that, “There’s more to come from Sega in this space, so stay tuned for further announcements.” Whatever they have planned, it’s great to see Sega’s commitment to preserving their back catalogue on PC. Even the com

We will, however, always have Half-Life 2—and, thanks to the efforts of a group of modders, it may soon be playable on current Oculus Rift and HTC Vive headsets. The Half-Life 2: VR mod that first saw the light of day back in 2013 has been resurrected on Steam Greenlight, with updates that will allow it to run on current VR hardware. As explained by Road to VR, the original mod fell into disuse because Valve didn’t update the Source engine to keep pace with changes in Rift and Vive headset softw

What’s also on the way, and a whole lot sooner, is the Payday 2 Ultimate Edition, which will include the base game and all DLC released so far. In the leadup to the release of the Ultimate Edition, Payday 2 DLC has been put on sale for 85 percent off, and will remain at those prices until it comes out. At that point, it will all be consolidated into the Ultimate Edition, and will no longer be available for purchase separately. “We’ve actually decided to support Payday 2 even longer than original

But there’s some appeal to that vision, despite the violence, because survival games imagine a direct relationship between us and our food. Clearly, our specific cultural attitudes toward food inform our game design, which led me to wonder: Could we invent new kinds of games by adopting different attitudes toward food? And the egalitarian nature Lee observes already does manifest in survival games, whether by design or not. We can completely change the social dynamics of a game with one variable

I pretty much just based my strategies off of what I read on the Fires of Heaven and Afterlife message boards. A whole new worldDS Wreck’s most embarrassing story is my personal favorite, and it’s really short too. Commenter Leidan Wing writes in to tell us about the dangers of letting other people share your account in EVE Online. Leidan’s friend didn’t know this. “I still wonder what face he made and what kind of insults passed through his mind directed at me,” Leidan writes.

A listing for something called Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 – Zombies Chronicles appeared a couple of weeks ago on the ESRB website, but only very briefly before being removed. And now we’ve got a trailer so we can all what the fuss is about. “Together, we’ve been slaying the undead for nearly ten years, across different game consoles, and Zombies Chronicles is really about bringing all of those fans together. As with previous Black Ops 3 DLC, Zombies Chronicles will be released first for the PlayS

Security researchers are warning of a ransomware outbreak that is spreading around the globe. This particular ransomware is called WCry. (Image: © MalwareHunterTeam)As the day has gone on, WCry has spread to the U.K. and other parts of the world. There is a live map at MalwareTech that shows WCry spreading to victims in real time. The ransomware is said to have initially spread through spam containing fake invoices, job offers, and other attempts aimed at random email addresses.

The blurb for Alkemi’s Drifting Lands says it “defies genre conventions” by “blending the intense combat of shmup gameplay with the freedom of ARPG-style character progression … to create a new style of action game.” That’s not immediately apparent in the new release date reveal trailer, which comes out of the gate hard on the shmup side of things, but eventually it gets there. Drifting Lands offers three different classes of ships, which can be customized with 70 active and passive powers, up

One week ago, Amplitude Studios released the first of four trailers intended to showcase the pillars of the 4X strategy game Endless Space 2: Explore, Expand, Exploit, and Exterminate. Expansion is a slow and steady process, with inherent dangers: Moving people between worlds is a risky prospect, especially in rough neighborhoods. “Luxury resources” can help colonies “gain traction” by unlocking specific bonuses, but different races take very different approaches to colonization. Endless Space 2

Another Rising Storm 2: Vietnam beta weekend is here, and will run through this Monday. If that sounds appealing, then good news, we have 5,000 free beta codes to give away. The beta servers will be online throughout the weekend. Please note, if you have already pre-ordered Rising Storm 2, or buy it during the beta period while also using a beta key, you’ll get a warning about owning a duplicate product. We’re told not to worry about it: go ahead and install the beta, and after it’s over, your f

Linksys is primarily known for its line of wireless routers, and to a lesser extent its family of cable modems as well. Building on the latter, Linksys has begun taking preorders for its CG7500, an all-one-one DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem/AC1900 router combo. These all-in-one solutions that combine a cable modem with a wireless router into a single package are growing in popularity among third-parties such as Linksys. The sleek device features a 24×8 DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem that is certified to work wi