15 years later, Batman: Arkham City is still the one every Batman game gets measured against. It took the series out of a single building and into a section of Gotham built around free-flow combat, stealth, and dense side content. That template later showed up in games like Insomniac’s Spider-Man and Shadow of Mordor. Later Batman titles never fully matched it. Origins felt like a narrower version of the same idea. Knight got closer but undercut itself with weaker antagonists and a heavy Batmobile focus. It reportedly sold over 12 million copies. Rocksteady and Warner Bros. largely moved on from single-player Batman after Knight. Until a new Rocksteady Batman game shows up, if it does, Arkham City remains the benchmark.

GTA 6 promo trash from Miami is already selling for real money on eBay. A Vice City foam finger sold for $555. Another is bidding around $300. A used Cluckin’ Bell cup has 50+ bids and is near $250. A greasy Burger Shot paper bag has 14 bids and is over $150. All of it comes from temporary stands Rockstar set up inside the Kaseya Center. Outside Miami, there’s no official way to get any of it. Scarcity is doing the rest. One-city disposable packaging is trading like limited merch because most people can’t just walk up and buy it.

After nearly 13 years, Dark Souls 2 has a Seamless Co-op mod that takes the edge off its worst areas. Modder Yui’s version syncs progress and lets you respawn at the last bonfire to rejoin instead of ending the session. Ted Litchfield ran Iron Keep and similar spots with Tyler Colp and Sean Martin. One death no longer resets the group outside bosses or invasions, so the enemy gauntlets turn into slower attrition fights. Invasions still happen and show up more often than in the base game, with some latency left. Solo is still the better first run, but the mod makes the prickliest FromSoft game actually finishable with friends.

The official Edgerunners account says fans voted on the next “It’s All About You” episode focused on Season 2. “The Next Edgerunners Legend” won. It was described as dynamic actions that leave your heart racing. The other options were portraits of the characters and poster-style artworks. The account says Night City’s stories are far from over and told fans to stay tuned for the episode. The win puts the focus on high-energy action clips and fan creations rather than still portraits or poster art, matching the series’ core style of fast, violent Night City sequences.

After 7 years of development, the Katana Zero DLC is now the size of a full sequel. Askiisoft developer Justin Stander said the team “made it bigger” and that it is now “the size of a full sequel, plus a soundtrack of over 30+ new songs.” The free expansion was first announced shortly after the 2019 launch. No release date was given, and it is unclear whether the original free plan still holds after the expanded scope. Seven years of work turned a free DLC into something the size of a sequel, but a release window is still missing.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Season 2 follows characters at rock bottom in Night City. King has lost his augmentations after cyberpsychosis, D pursues revenge, Talia moves with Maelstrom, and 12-year-old Roman scrapes by trying to make films. The season shows them finding reasons to keep going even as their problems remain. It treats violence as futile and monstrous rather than a spectacle, and it ends with more smiles than the first season. The piece aligns Season 1 roughly with Cyberpunk 2077’s “The Sun” ending and Season 2 with “The Star,” where characters choose time with people over a blaze of glory. Where Season 1 followed a descent into a violent end, Season 2 frames survival itself as the defiant choice in a city that offers no clean outs.

Blue Archive’s Japan publisher is changing from Yostar to Nexon in January 2027. Yostar CEO Lee Hyung-dal said the move is not a service end. All account data, items, and blue pyroxene will transfer. The change follows a request from Nexon Games to end the publishing contract. Both sides agreed after discussions. The handover is set for late January, aligned with an in-game update and the Blue Archive Fes event on January 23–24. Yostar will continue operating the game until the transfer is complete. Nexon takes full control of the Japan service after requesting the end of the Yostar deal. The confirmed data handoff and short runway are the measures meant to keep existing players through the switch.

Pocketpair’s John Buckley says the studio has no plans to turn Palworld into a traditional live-service game. He said they do not want to follow a fixed seasonal model or a set monetization approach just because it works for other titles. Content will determine the format. Free updates will continue for now. A larger paid expansion is not ruled out, but nothing is in active development. Buckley also explained why spinoffs like Palfarm are being made as standalone games instead of modes inside the main title. The team wants each idea to have its own systems and pacing. The main Palworld game remains the priority, and the spinoffs are not meant to replace it. Update 1.1 is coming but is not described as a massive patch. Details are still being held back. The approach keeps the core game free of seasonal pressure while still expanding the IP through separate projects.

NightCoop, a free fan-made co-op mod for Cyberpunk 2077, has launched in open beta. It supports up to eight players in one shared Night City. Each person plays their own V with their own look, level, gear, and cyberware. The host’s save controls the quests, NPCs, and city state. Dialogue choices are decided by majority vote. Cutscenes, combat, and vehicles stay synced. The mod works best in the prologue and Act 1. Later sections are less tested. Guests’ solo saves stay untouched. The host can toggle PvP, and players who go down can be revived. It requires a licensed copy of the game on Windows and RED4ext. The beta is available now. Each player keeps their own build. The group still has to agree on every major choice. Personal progress stays separate. Story decisions do not.

A24’s Elden Ring movie is reportedly budgeted at nearly $200 million. That figure would make it the studio’s most expensive film by a wide margin. Its previous high was Marty Supreme at $70 million; Civil War sat around $50 million. The Elden Ring number is nearly three times the last record. Alex Garland is directing the live-action adaptation. The film is set for March 3, 2028, after wrapping in July. Earlier reports had put the budget just over $100 million. A24 has built its name on smaller, more contained films. A $200 million fantasy adaptation puts it in a different tier, closer to major studio tentpoles than its usual slate.

Prime Video’s Fallout reality competition, Fallout Shelter: The Experiment, premieres January 13, 2027. The first four episodes drop that day, with the rest following weekly. Everyday participants compete inside Vault-Tec shelters through drills, psychological dilemmas, and moral trials for a $1 million prize. Studio Lambert, the company behind The Traitors and Squid Game: The Challenge, is producing with Kilter Films. Todd Howard is an executive producer. The show turns the franchise’s vault experiments into a competition format, so the same company that made the games and the scripted series is now putting real people through the premise.

The canceled Mass Effect game was set 600 years after the Reaper War and built around a galactic Cold War between three factions. YouTuber Dantics, who says he was on BioWare’s Mass Effect Council, described the player as a customizable N7 agent, “a cross between John Wick and James Bond,” with implants for hacking and environmental control. Missions stayed handcrafted like the original trilogy but added Hitman-style freedom, close-range executions, and squadmates who could clash. Liara returned as an Asari Matriarch, and romance was left unsanitized. Instead of another galaxy-ending invasion, the story ran on cold-war tension and a shadowy adversary, with Geth megastructures linking the Milky Way to Andromeda. EA closed BioWare and canceled the project this week, so the version that kept Shepard’s legacy intact across every ending never left development.

Hideo Kojima once wanted Snatcher floppy disks coated in paint that would melt from computer heat and fill the room with the smell of blood. Konami blocked it over hardware risks and fumes. He later called it the “Smell Project.” Researchers have developed Scentronic tech that uses an e-nose to identify scents and release matching molecules through a remote device. Ohio State doctoral student Chunyu Yang said the goal is to “add smell to the visual and audio information we already share remotely.” It currently handles five scents, with a broader library possible, and is aimed at online shopping and sharing experiences. Sony already holds a patent for similar aroma tech in games, so the ideas Konami shut down nearly 40 years ago are no longer limited by what a floppy disk could physically do.

You met me at a very strange time in my gaming life

respawning as an angel

Half of Cyberpunk 2’s quest team are former modders, associate game director Pawel Sasko said. People who already spent years building quests inside CDPR’s games need less time learning how the studio’s systems work. Sasko called modding a foot-in-the-door technique. The studio has been hiring from Witcher and Cyberpunk mods for years.

Valve music designer Mike Morasky mentioned “HLX” during a Q&A at GameSoundCon while discussing HDR audio. He said Deadlock uses one version of the system and “HLX has its own version.” After the name left his mouth, he stopped talking. A colleague next to him said “nice work.” HLX has shown up in datamined files from other Valve games for years. This is the first known time a Valve employee has said the name in public. Valve has not confirmed the project. The slip is the clearest sign yet that the codename is still in active use inside the company.

Cyberpunk 2077’s free Edgerunners 2 Update is out now. It adds a quest set before the events of the Netflix series, plus Weak Kingsley’s outfit and revolver from the anime. Dual-wielding for pistols and revolvers, cyberware appearance customization, and a radio station with tracks from both seasons are also included. The update arrived two days after the series premiered. The new quest and gear create a direct in-game connection to the anime. Dual-wielding and the customization options expand systems that already existed in the game. The patch is free on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. Switch 2 and the Mac App Store version follow later. The anime content links the game to the series. The playstyle changes remain after the tie-in ends.

Quiet rooms with loud walls

Just a shadow in a pixelated world