It’s the first in-character look at the franchise’s latest on-screen adaptation

The post Here’s Sophie Turner As Lara Croft For The New <i>Tomb Raider</i> Show appeared first on Kotaku.

The DJI Mini 5 Pr Fly More Combo delivers smooth, stabilized video, long flight time, and a 31% discount that drops the price to $1,099.

The post DJI Offloads Mini 5 Pro Drone Bundles, Now at a Record Low with RC2 Controller and Three Batteries appeared first on Kotaku.

Ron Perlman does not care about video games

The post The Hellboy Himself Was Paid ‘$40 And A Sandwich’ To Voice <i>Fallout</i>‘s Most Iconic Line appeared first on Kotaku.

For a limited time, you can save $17 on the 25th Anniversary LEGO Star Wars Millennium Falcon.

The post LEGO Drops Prices on Iconic Millennium Falcon Sets, Now One of the Cheapest in the Star Wars Line appeared first on Kotaku.

Save 25% on the Garmin Forerunner 55 GPS running watch over at Amazon for a limited time.

The post Garmin Helps You Hit Your 2026 Fitness Goals, Now Selling the Forerunner 55 at Its Lowest Price Ever appeared first on Kotaku.

Let’s finally play some of those video games we’ve been meaning to get to for a while

The post Welcome To Backlog Week At <i>Kotaku</i> appeared first on Kotaku.

Meta and EssilorLuxottica are potentially set to double the expected production target for their smart glasses, according to a recent Bloomberg report.

Citing people familiar with the matter, the report maintains Meta has suggested increasing annual capacity to 20 million units by the end of 2026, as the company hopes to seize growing consumer interest in smart glasses.

Additionally, the report maintains that, provided demand is strong, capacity could exceed 30 million units. Talks are said to still be ongoing, Bloomberg says.

Ray-Ban creator EssilorLuxottica noted in February 2025 that it was ramping up production capacity to 10 million annual units by the end of 2026.

The 10 million figure already represented a significant push past its 2 million units sold following the 2023 release of the first-gen Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.

Currently, Meta and EssilorLuxottica offer two fundamental smart glasses types: audio-only AI centric frames, styled in both Oakley and Ray-Ban variants, and Meta Ray-Ban Display, which includes a single full-color display embedded in the right lens.

This comes amid news that Meta is pausing the international rollout of the $800 Meta Ray-Ban Display smart glasses, which was set to arrive in the UK, France, Italy and Canada sometime in early this year. The company maintains the pause was due to “unprecedented demand and limited inventory.”

Meanwhile, Meta is laying off around 10 percent of staff at its Reality Labs XR division, according to a New York Times report. The move is seen as a strategic shift, moving focus from VR and its metaverse ambitions to AI and smart glasses.

The post Meta Aims to Double, Possibly Even Triple Smart Glasses Production This Year appeared first on Road to VR.

The post Harry Potter VR Game Reportedly Cancelled Amid Meta Budget Cuts appeared first on Road to VR.

Neat Corp’s latest title is due out on Steam in February with a major new feature included.

The Norse mythology-based roguelite Crossings was originally planned to release simultaneously on Quest and PCVR on December 18, 2025. This seemed to be the case as late as December 10, 2025, when a post on the Crossings X account still promoted a dual platform release. A late change, however, saw the title launch only on Quest in 2025 and without the anticipated co-op feature.

February 13, 2026 is the launch of the Steam version of the game as well as the cooperative gameplay for both platforms, according to Neat.

Crossings previously dropped a limited-time demo version during the Fall 2025 Steam Next Fest this past October as well as an accompanying demo on Quest. The co-op feature will see players “cross paths with others” who “naturally and seamlessly appear in the same world” and “without speaking”.

“Communicate with body language, combat, and attention,” the game’s official description explains on Steam. “Split apart or stay close—your journeys intertwine, but your destiny is always your own.”

We’ve played versions of the game but the mechanic of impromptu teamwork appears fundamental to the full promise of Crossings, so we are holding back our review until the co-op mode launches on both platforms.

Crossings is out now for Meta Quest 3 and 3S for $9.99.

The ambitious multiplayer mod took years to make but only lasted a month

The post <i>Bully Online</i> Mod Suddenly Shutting Down Just Months After Launch appeared first on Kotaku.

Your enjoyment of Stellar Cafe comes down to two things: how you feel about AI in video games and how good of a conversationalist you are.

I’ve had some experience with AI-driven NPCs in games before, specifically in Skyrim (with mods) and former-social-VR-turned-MMORPG Riff XR. The difference with these two examples is that those games have much more to offer than said AI NPCs whereas Stellar Cafe lives and dies on the characters and your interactions with them. It makes for a unique experience that rolls credits before the fairly simple premise wears thin.

Developer AstroBeam’s claim to fame is being helmed by Devin Reimer, one of the co-creators of Job Simulator, and Stellar Cafe feels very much inspired by that VR classic while taking the concept of sentient robot interactions to the next level. You play as, well, yourself, with James, your robot barista, asking your name and using it for the rest of the game. Having played dozens of games where the player can name the main character, only to watch voice-acted NPCs never actually say it, this was surprisingly an immersive touch.

After talking shop with James, you learn that James is throwing a party for Patch Day, an upcoming holiday, but the nine other RSVPs have only replied ‘maybe.’ James requests your help to find out why each robot is on the fence and convince them to turn that ‘maybe’ into a ‘yes.’ The rest of the game plays out like a linear sandbox. You progress through the robots in groups of three across three cycles (days), but how you solve their problems is entirely down to your creativity.

For example, one bot can’t attend the party because they have to work at a job they hate and would rather quit. Through a series of prompted responses, you assist this bot in writing a resignation email. After that email is done, it gets sent to the supervisor who replies in short order. I played the first three scenarios in the game twice (including this one), using wildly different approaches each time, and the responses were indeed different. Another example is Captain (one of the few names I remember as I write this review) who needs your help to come up with a story pitch. The sky is the limit since your dialog choices and the responses are not pre-determined. I can see this game being played multiple times to see just how wacky of a response you can get from the robots.

Frankly, these characters felt more realized with better personality traits and voices than I’ve encountered in most VR games. I enjoy puzzle games in general and it was a trip to have the puzzle actually talk back to you. Having said that, a little goes a long way here. Each encounter can be completed inside 10 minutes and some of them landed better than others. I won’t give any more specifics to avoid spoilers, but there were two in particular I could not wait to move on from. Also, there are one or two phrases that every robot says that got old pretty quickly.

Another unique part of the game is that it is entirely driven by your voice, including the movement. Utilizing your Quest’s microphone, you instruct your AI assistant, Visor, to move you from location to location (the counter, the booths, and the tables) and of course you spend the entire time talking. There are physical interactions as well, with some bots having tablets to pick up and view, and of course, plenty of custom drinks from James.

All of the voice interactions work perfectly fine, but the tablets were a bit jittery at times. Stellar Cafe can be played with controllers or hand-tracking and the game suggests using the latter. Unfortunately, my Quest kept detecting my controllers, to the point where I had to turn on hand-tracking. That’s not a shortcoming of the game itself but Meta’s operating system, though I still wanted to point it out in case other players bump into it. There were also instances where I looked around the cafe during a conversation and the bot registered it as me shaking my head no, forcing me to redo a prompt or response.

Stellar Cafe’s full runtime is about 2 hours, including the ending. However, I can see players who enjoy the live AI interaction toying with the bots for hours on end. There were a few hiccups in the interactions, like sometimes James would make me a drink and deliver it to me, then tell me the drink would be ready soon. To the game’s credit, I called James out on this every time it happened and he responded appropriately, apologizing and saying something about his timing circuits misfiring. Nicely done.

Visually, Stellar Cafe isn’t exactly pushing the boundaries of standalone VR. If you’ve played any Owlchemy Labs game (Job Simulator, Vacation Simulator, etc.), it’s about that level of visual fidelity. However, take your time and look around the cafe. There are a ton of little touches that show a level of care and sense of humor in the single-level game design. The television above James plays a rotation of news broadcasts, weather reports, a humorous riff on the Home Shopping Network, and more. I got a kick out of the employee of the month plaques too.

Finally, to address the elephant in the room: yes, this is ostensibly an artificial intelligence game. If you are uneasy or outright opposed to the use of AI in video games, Stellar Cafe is not going to change your mind. It’s not a revolutionary step forward for the medium, but it is an interesting thought experiment into how this technology can be applied.

Stellar Cafe – The Final Verdict

Stellar Cafe is a lighthearted, relatively short AI experience that wraps up its simple story before outstaying its welcome. I do wish it were longer, but what’s here is quite enjoyable and worth a pickup as a glimpse into what feels like an inevitable future for gaming, especially social sim settings like this.

UploadVR uses a 5-Star rating system for our game reviews – you can read a breakdown of each star rating in our review guidelines.

Resident Evil Village and more round out some strong additions

The post PS Plus Extra Packs A Big Lineup This Month Just In Time For <i>Resident Evil 9</i> appeared first on Kotaku.

Ryan Hurst is known for his work on Sons of Anarchy and The Walking Dead

The post The Live-Action <em>God Of War</em> Series Has Found Its Kratos appeared first on Kotaku.

BigRig Creates and Mr. Volt are the latest to create a working Pokédex, but they took it a step further than most

The post The ‘World’s Smartest Pokédex’ Is Something Straight Out Of Your Childhood Dreams appeared first on Kotaku.

Meltdown from Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 definitely looks different in Black Ops 7, but does it look worse?

The post One Of These Games Is From 2012 And The Other Is From 2026 appeared first on Kotaku.

A fan project brings unofficial new content to Battlefront 2

The post <i>Star Wars</i> Modders Have Taken <i>Battlefront 3</i> Into Their Own Hands And It Looks Great appeared first on Kotaku.

CharacterBank set out to work on Knights of Fiona aiming to take what they learned from Ruinsmagus into a more expansive and ambitious role-playing game.

Part of that journey involves making it multiplayer.

“ Ruinsmagus was a full single-player experience when we launched it, and we heard a lot from players about wanting to keep playing and exploring that world, so creating this large world that players could keep visiting was our biggest goal with this experience,” explains Shuto Mikami, the CEO of CharacterBank, on the origins of this new title. “Plus, with that previous game, the actual gameplay is almost more linked to a shooter game in how you played it, and we wanted to create something that felt more like an RPG. Using magic that didn’t feel like shooting bullets, swordplay, bows, introducing these styles that allow the game to feel more like this genre.”

I jumped into Knights of Fiona for the first time in an exclusive demo at the studio’s offices in Kyoto, Japan, looking at their effort to build something that feels like a true, traditional RPG adventure. I can see similarities to the hub world of Ruinsmagus and this title, but this time the hub is one continuous and larger town that feels more alive, even in these early stages. We were still required to warp to some locations of the town, but that should change with further development.

Rather than feeling limited to just you and a very small cast of characters, you have a team of party members and a supporting cast each as visually distinct and personality-driven as the last. The train station, the main starting point for a lot of missions, has moving trains and a large space to explore.

It’s when jumping into the quests themselves that the distinctions and evolution of this experience compared to CharacterBank’s prior work becomes most apparent. As Mikami notes, the first thing that stands out in the gameplay loop compared to Ruinsmagus is just how much additional depth and variety exists in terms of combat. You have bows, swords of all sizes, mage staffs and more at your disposal, and not only does each class feel distinctly unique to one another, weapons within those same classes feel unique and can be further upgraded to improve their strength and suit your style.

Firing an arrow, for example, requires a full-bodied, two-handed pull back of the bow. Aim and fire with the assistance of a guide for the arrow’s flight path, which allows us to attack from a safe distance countered by the slower nature of these weapons. Using swords of all sizes has a distinct feel and heft despite the typical limitations of the virtual form that makes it impossible to differentiate the weight of a virtual object, instead built into how you swing these weapons and approach combat. If magic can feel the closest to the combat of Ruinsmagus, the way you aim and the various spells that differ between staffs allow for a degree of control and variety. Even then, more than just swinging aimlessly, you have multiple actions assigned to various buttons for varied attacks, and everything from positioning to learning attack patterns is important for victory.

The game further encourages you to switch between these weapons, not just because of the weapons themselves but everything to do with upgrades and passive abilities that support your loadout. These come in the form of cards received randomly as rewards after each quest as well as from the in-game shop. These cards will also impact passive abilities that can improve base strength and introduce additional augmentations to your weapon’s abilities. You can further merge weapon cards to improve the level and experience of weapons beyond merely using them in action to essentially craft new weapons, and place passive cards in open slots to give you an edge in battle. The rarity and power of these cards increases based on difficulty chosen for each quest, with encouragement to revisit quests to get these abilities.

Gameplay focuses on fun over realism in combat and mechanic design, he explains. “We brought in the real weapons to try so we had an idea of how we wanted to replicate the feel of them in the game. That being said, one of the things we were considerate about was that, when we were designing for the sword and the bow, was that it wasn’t too technical. We want to make sure this is accessible for casual players and people who just want to jump in and experience this world.”

Which is important when creating a multiplayer experience you can play with friends. Another distinct characteristic of Knights of Fiona is that this is an online game at its core. All quests are taken on as a party, whether CPUs or online with friends, and you can engage in proximity voice chat and explore the hub world together also. Playing the game with just a few of the developers at their offices, lots of the fun of the experience was derived merely by exploring and talking amongst ourselves, just as much as it was fighting through hordes and large boss fights.

How you approach missions varies wildly based on your party and the quest itself. Playing through most of the first chapter including its finale during our session, we experienced the story as we saw off the first major threat, going from fighting early low-level hordes in open fields as we learned to gain the trust of the town to fighting off against the game’s first boss, an angry fire-breathing dragon. This set-piece is a clear statement of intent for the team’s ambition as we rush through waves of enemies and projectiles on the burning bridge that enters the town, only to come across a large bright-red dragon with eyes intent to kill, breathing fire and shaking the world with every attack. With a group you can split duties and distract the dragon, while alone you’re faced with a battle of wits and agility, not just strength.

It’s impressive, but only a small idea of what’s to come. Enemies of world-ending, literally titanic proportions are being teased, to such a scale that simply looking up at them in VR makes you feel like an ant, and I can barely even speculate how you would overcome their might. It’s promised to be longer but varied in setting as you trek out on a globe-trotting adventure in order to save it, even if your home in Gallia remains a hub. All with a rich cast of characters to support you along.

While the core story will have a definitive ending, it’s possible to replay missions on new difficulties for new weapons and ability cards, and while the team haven’t confirmed definitive plans at this stage, they’re open to the idea of much more.

According to the game’s director, HOI, multiplayer and online elements are about more than merely keeping players coming back, but creating something that can stick with people. Talking about their hopes for the game, they noted, “I want people to finish this game and think, I want to spend more time in this world, I want to get to know these characters more, about their relationships, what other adventures they may go on and the like. I want people wanting to learn more about this world. Lately, as soon as a game, a manga or an anime has finished, it’s forgotten by the next weekend, which is a little sad considering the love and work that went into it. Whether on their own or with other players, we want people to keep coming back to experience more in this place.”

In an introductory prologue, we arrived in this place unaware of the dangers it was soon to face in the oncoming war. Its people are losing hope, and that’s where you come in. You end up entrusted with leading the resistance to this fight by the leaders of Gallia, including some of its ruling figures like the large, tree-like Kelnund and Leonhardt, make allies with the knight Geisenberg, and find support from characters in the town like the purple-skinned alchemist Nebulous Babbege.

With characters, each design is as distinct as they are intriguing, soaked in a visual design conveying a history beyond what we are privy to in this adventure. Lots of time was spent on the design process before a line of code was made from design to even assigning characters their own Myers-Briggs-style personality types, HOI explains. “I often find that if you think about the story and create the world before you think about its characters, you end up creating characters that feel like gods in their world, which isn’t a good thing. So the first thing we would consider with every character is what is their personality, what are their motivations, what are their desires, what or who do they love, things like that.

“For example, we’d consider the role that a character is expected to take upon, how they feel about that role, the pressures elsewhere, things like that. The characters would be born from considering their internal emotions based on the life they have around them. Who could they talk to about these things? What are their more immediate problems and concerns? When it came to thinking about the setting, well, Gallia is a very medieval-inspired setting, so we considered philosophies of the time, what would the internal political debates of the location be, what sort of world and ruling would we have here, what does class division look like in this setting, we’d consider all of this from the earliest stages.

“Then we would bring in the designers. Maybe we would have some rough sketches of the settings, characters and ideas, but the designers would help to brush them up and help build them out further, or the designers would create it all from scratch based on the original designs. We also have a bigger cast, which helps. In Ruinsmagus, we had Iris as our main character, but she also had to be a guide for the player, she had a lot of roles to fill. Fiona started in this place, but with more characters we could think more about how she would react to different things and then give her deeper character development from there.”

Another distinct characteristic of Knights of Fiona is that this is an online game at its core. All quests are taken on as a party, whether CPUs or online with friends, and you can engage in proximity voice chat and explore the hub world together also. Playing the game with just a few of the developers at the office, so much fun was derived just by exploring and talking and having fun in this area. While the core story will have a definitive ending, it’s possible to replay missions on new difficulties for new weapons and ability cards, and while the team haven’t confirmed definitive plans at this stage, they’re open to the idea of new stories, time-exclusive skins and more to support the online service and to keep the game as something to return to with friends.

Even in this early stage, the game feels alive. The opening hub town includes lots of areas to explore and create your own fun. While not currently active due to the game not yet launching to the public, community integration in the town hall exists in the form of a notice board to allow fanart shared in Discord with players.

Currently in place of fan art are doodles from the staff, and you can see the love for these characters in all the fun sketches made by the team (with particular love for my own early favorite Nebulous Babbege). You can feel the love for this game, this world, and what it means to the team behind it in all the subtle details in the town and world, the care and refinement in card art for weapons and abilities and in the art in the town, and how much it means. For director HOI creating the story, he mentioned that one of the key inspirations was the challenge and responsibility of creating a new game and the expectations, something that weaves its way into the world and ideas driving Knights of Fiona.

Beyond simply being something new and much fun to play through even at this early stage, you can feel that this is the game that CharacterBank as a studio have been working toward for some time. It brings across ideas from much of their other works, builds beyond what they were able to achieve in Ruinsmagus, and charts ambitious ground for RPGs in VR. To support post-launch additional content the team is launching a Kickstarter campaign.

With everything considered, it’s a tall order. If the team can fully deliver on all of its ideas, we could be in for something truly special.

The cube-shaped survival game is out in early access, after a fraught decade of development

The post The 10-Year Wait For ‘<i>Minecraft</i> Killer’ <i>Hytale</i> Is Finally Over appeared first on Kotaku.

Josef Fares argues for publishing diversity in the gaming industry

The post <i>Split Fiction</i> Director Warns About Taking The Wrong Lessons Away From <i>Clair Obscur</i> appeared first on Kotaku.

Game better with the ASUS TUF T500 PC without paying the full price.

The post This Asus TUF Gaming Desktop PC (Nvidia GPU, 512GB SSD) Is So Cheap You’ll Want to Buy It Instantly appeared first on Kotaku.