The Larian CEO has been facing backlash from angry fans

The post Baldur’s Gate 3 Director Says It Would Be ‘Irresponsible’ Not To Experiment With AI appeared first on Kotaku.

Trombone Champ: Unflattened gets an official crossover with indie hit Celeste, adding 10 tracks in a new song pack today.

For the unfamiliar, Celeste is a 2018 flatscreen platformer developed by Maddy Makes Games. Playing as Madeline, you seek to climb Celeste Mountain while a personification of her self-doubt attempts to stop her. It features a soundtrack by composer Lena Raine, this song pack is now officially available in both Trombone Champ and Trombone Champ: Unflattened.

Flat2VR Studios advised that because some included songs originally ran for 10 minutes or more, they have “carefully edited them down for length while keeping the parts that hit.”

You can find the full Celeste Song Pack track list below:

• First Steps
• Madeline and Theo
• Resurrections
• Spirit of Hospitality
• Scattered and Lost
• Starjump
• Reflection
• Confronting Myself
• Heart of the Mountain
• Reach for the Summit.

While Unflattened only receives the Celeste Song Pack, the flatscreen version of Trombone Champ gets two additional DLCs today with 14 songs each. One is based on cartoon platformer Pizza Tower, joined by an Undertale + Deltarune pack. It’s worth remembering the latter previously received Unflattened DLC in August, though that only contained six songs.

The Celeste Song Pack for Trombone Champ: Unflattened is out now for $7.99 on Quest, PC VR, and PlayStation VR2.

Upgrade a loved one’s home audio with the help of Samsung this holiday season.

The post Samsung’s 2025 Soundbar Is Now Priced Like Budget Earbuds With a Christmas Discount appeared first on Kotaku.

Also: an arcade class returns and Nintendo almost settles one of its longest-running lawsuits

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Street Gods, one of two Norse mythology-inspired VR roguelites coming to Meta Quest in December, emphasizes style and power fantasy over any real impactful combat.

Developer Soul Assembly has a long history with combat-heavy VR titles, like the Drop Dead series, Last Stand, Warhammer 40,000: Battle Sister. While it occasionally dabbles in other genres, like working on​ Just Dance VR, action games are its bread and butter. All the aforementioned games, primarily shooters mind you, received mostly the same critical response. Straightforward, albeit shallow, and fun to play with friends.

So, given Soul Assembly’s history and the genre we’re dipping into, the first thing that surprised me in this game is how forward the story is. Most roguelites deliver the setting in a cursory introduction that just sets the table for the carnage that will ensue. Street Gods surprisingly takes its time with a lengthier than expected multi-part tutorial that arguably takes a bit too long with the setup, but in hindsight turns out to be the best part of the game.

You play as Val, a street-smart graffiti artist who happens upon Mjölnir, the signature weapon of Thor, the Norse God of Thunder. As you approach it, Mjölnir inexplicably begins to speak to you. This voice is Thor himself, entrapped in his own weapon for reasons beyond his own understanding. You pick up the hammer and are immediately attacked by what can only be described as Norse zombies, who look ripped straight out of the Drop Dead universe with different clothes on.

It’s here that my primary issue with Street Gods comes up. Thor teaches you how to swing and throw Mjölnir to defeat the undead, but nothing really lands. I realize that when playing VR, you are ostensibly always swinging at air, but most melee-heavy games get around this with a combination of controller haptics, sound effects, and visual cues (sparks, blood, enemy reactions, etc.). There is no real crunch here, no impact, no visceral immersion to the combat. The controller haptics are extremely weak, so when unleashing power attacks like shooting lightning from the hammer, it doesn’t feel like much of anything because both the haptics and sound effects are so subdued. The ‘clank’ sound of the hammer on impact is fine, but not enough. It needs more oomph, to be blunt.

Now, this may be by design, since you are imbued with the power(s) of a God in this game, but the power fantasy here is muted by the lack of physicality. This is a fairly lightweight arcade-like experience with a heavily comic book-inspired aesthetic (more on that later). The arcade feel shines through as you tear through enemies like wet paper with all of your various abilities, but I couldn’t shake the combat’s lifeless energy.

Having said that, Street Gods makes up for its general lack of substance with all kinds of style. As you quickly unlock new abilities, you’ll be tossing enemies around with lightning-powered hammer uppercuts, a golden lasso that can yank foes all over the map, unleashing lightning attacks, and so on. The elongated introduction has a stretch where you are falling through the merging of Earth and Asgard, and that sequence is terrific. The game feels cool to play, but that level of cool can be fleeting depending on your personal tastes. I found myself losing interest about 20 minutes into each of my runs because of combat.

This extends to the power-ups. After dispatching all the enemies in an arena, you are presented with a chest with the standard assortment of power-ups and perks: more health, better defense, increased attack power when health is low, and so on. New abilities are unlocked in an arena that lets you practice before you move forward. Occasionally, a new ability would spawn as a perk, like dropping a bomb behind you when you dash, but they are few and far between. All the tropes are here, but at its core, there’s nothing new to veteran roguelite players.

One of the tricky things to get right in a game that plays in power fantasies is balancing said fantasy with a sense of peril. Street Gods falls woefully short here. I never felt any real sense of danger during any of my runs. Enemies can spawn all around you, but maybe owing to the limitations of standalone VR, there are never more than a handful onscreen at any given moment and they go down so easily that you hardly ever get hit.

Even as the game ramps up with a few new enemy variations with area of effect attacks, they’re still taken out from range simply by throwing Mjölnir (which eventually gets powered up to hit multiple enemies). Health is dropped in droves by enemies upon death too, so even if you do take damage, it’s easily nullified. Compare this to Drop Dead: The Cabin, another Soul Assembly title, where restrictions on map traversal and scarcity of supplies make every run a struggle and that is sorely missed here.

Visually, Street Gods is an interesting study in contrasts. The story of the game is the Norse realms are colliding and merging with Earth (Midgard), so you do battle in city streets with otherworldly vines and giant crystals protruding from them. It looks quite nice, but after the umpteenth time in the same map, even with switching things up with different times of day & weather, it gets old pretty quickly. Most of the maps are quite colorful, except for the snow-covered areas. These are blindingly washed out, so much so that I had to turn down the brightness on my Quest.

Occasionally, between levels, you’ll travel to a hub between realms to get some exposition from your talking hammer and a rock with paper drawn eyes and a crown representing Loki. This hub area is the nicest looking part of the game by far. You can also damage the vehicles and dumpsters in each level, but like the enemies, the damage just sort of happens. If you are old enough to recall destroying the car in Street Fighter II, same idea here. Frame A, perfectly fine. Frame B, destroyed. With no animation or motion between the two, other than a plume of fire for vehicles.

As stated earlier, the common enemies look ripped straight from a Drop Dead game, with gangly looking movements and a comic book-esque word pop-up when getting hit, but in motion, they don’t look great. If they are far away from you, they visibly move at a lower framerate and this frame drop repeats when you knock them far away. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. Graphically, Street Gods is a mixed bag.

The world of Street Gods doesn’t take itself too seriously, choosing to lean on the (hopefully) fun combat and powers to keep the player engaged. The exchanges in the hub area are mostly played for laughs, with the voice actors delivering their lines like the straight man in a goofball comedy. Some of it lands, but most of it doesn’t. Val and Thor also quip endlessly during combat, with some of their lines clumsily stacking over each other, and after 2 or 3 runs, I had heard them all and was begging for a mute button. Same with the music, which felt very run-of-the-mill and on a short loop. There is a story here, with hints at Val’s backstory and questions as to how and why Thor is imprisoned in his own weapon, but the dialogue and the characters are so ho-hum that it’s difficult to get invested.

Finally, when I was approaching my first boss fight, I entered the portal and the game crashed after 3 minutes of black screen with music playing. When I reloaded, it just dropped me back into more waves, this time in a new element type (snow) that I hadn’t seen yet. I had to let myself die and delete my save data to in essence restart the game to get back to the boss fight, which thankfully loaded on the second attempt. Performance was fine to start, but after that crash, I started to see some stuttering and frame drops when a lot of enemies were onscreen.

Hopefully this can be fixed with patches, but having to restart took me out of the game completely. I put it down for some time before jumping back in.

Street Gods – Final Verdict

If you are an action junkie just here to wreck enemies, there are better roguelites available in VR with more engaging combat than Street Gods. Even as a power fantasy, the lack of weapon variety, uninspired enemies, repetitive locations, and power-ups make Street Gods a struggle to hold your attention for long.

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

Disappointed fans are reporting that they saw no signs of superheroes before James Cameron’s latest

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You’ll save some money and time without having to sit at home and game with this machine.

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James Cameron’s latest installment in the Avatar franchise isn’t scoring as well as SpongeBob with critics

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You never know when you might run into a power-centric emergency, so stay ready with this discount.

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Beat Saber gets the Coldplay Music Pack, featuring 12 songs covering the band’s wider history.

Out now on Quest and Steam, Beat Saber’s Coldplay Music Pack covers the band’s wider discography from the last three decades. It features songs such as ‘Yellow’ from debut album Parachutes, all the way to ‘feelslikeimfallinginlove’ from 2024’s Moon Music. This also adds a new environment that Meta confirmed “draws inspiration from the band’s vibrant live shows, music videos, and album artwork.”

The Coldplay Music Pack comes with all twelve new songs for $14.99, or you can pay $1.99 for individual tracks. Here is the full track list:

• A Sky Full of Stars
• Adventure of a Lifetime
• Clocks
• feelslikeimfallinginlove
• GOOD FEELiNGS
• Something Just Like This
• Speed of Sound
• Talk
• Trouble
• Viva La Vida
• WE PRAY (ft. Little Simz, Burna Boy, Elyanna, TINI)
• Yellow

This latest music pack was previously revealed during last week’s announcement for a free, upcoming Coldplay concert in Meta Horizon. Meta confirmed it’s partnering with iHeartMedia to bring the band’s Music of the Spheres concert tour to Meta Horizon, using 180-degree VR. That’s based on the band’s stint at Wembley Stadium and goes live on December 30.

There’s still more to come for the band’s collaboration with Meta. Last week also confirmed that Coldplay is returning to fitness app Supernatural in the US and Canada, following its original appearance in 2022. This will introduce three new workouts, and that begins on December 29.

Beat Saber – Coldplay Music Pack is out now on Quest and Steam.

Coldplay Gets Beat Saber DLC & Free Meta Horizon Concert This Month

Beat Saber gets a Coldplay Music Pack next week, and the band’s hosting a free concert event on Meta Horizon later this month.

UploadVRHenry Stockdale

Just Dance 2026 Edition Sees a 50% discount before we’ve even reached its titular calendar year.

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Valve’s annual blowout features deals on Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, Expedition 33, Assassin’s Creed and more

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It redefines what responsive gameplay actually feels like.

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Industry veterans are weighing in after Larian received blowback for using generative AI in its workflow

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Enjoy a versatile streaming stick that can get you wherever you want to go just by plugging into your TV.

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BattleCrafter is all about restoring the weapons and armor of old, letting you get a closer look at everything from ancient swords to modern rifles, and learn about them too.

Developed by VR Factory Games, the studio known for Bartender VR Simulator (2018) and Workshop Simulator VR (2025), BattleCrafter VR puts in the shoes of the galaxy’s top restoration specialist who is tasked with bringing humanity’s greatest battles back to life.

Using futuristic tools, you’ll rebuild weapons, armor, and war artifacts, then showcase them in Mars’ massive War Museum domes.

1 of 3

Missions require you to restore four key historical artifacts and install them inside massive multimedia domes that recreate iconic battles.

The better your craftsmanship, the higher your reward, which you can reinvest into advanced workshop upgrades like 3D printers, magnetic assembly platforms, and laser welding tools, the studio says.

You can find BattleCrafter VR exclusively on the Horizon Store for Quest 2 and above, which is priced at $20. At the time of this writing, pre-order is still available, which brings it to $14, a 30% discount.

The post ‘Bartender VR’ Studio Releases Weapon Restoration Sim ‘BattleCrafter’ on Quest appeared first on Road to VR.

Corbeau has friends in high and low places

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Save up to 21% on the M4-powered MacBook Air for a limited time at Amazon.

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Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell is coming to Ghosts of Tabor through an official DLC crossover.

Revealed during the Ruff Talk VR Showcase last week, Combat Waffle Studios CEO, Scott Albright, confirmed that the latest (now-live) wipe for Ghosts of Tabor would launch on December 17. Albright then introduced a brief teaser for this upcoming crossover, announcing Splinter Cell DLC is on the way. Little else was shown, and a release date is currently unknown.

“This collaboration means more than dropping an iconic character into our game. Splinter Cell defined an entire generation of tactical gameplay, and we are bringing that legacy into VR,” stated Albright in a subsequent LinkedIn post.

Splinter Cell has its own history in virtual reality, too, and you may recall Ubisoft announced VR entries for it and Assassin’s Creed at Facebook Connect in 2020. The latter eventually launched as Assassin’s Creed Nexus in 2023, though Splinter Cell VR was cancelled in 2022 alongside three other Ubisoft titles. At the time, CEO Yves Guillemot stated that Ubisoft was “adapting [its] organization to current economic uncertainties through cost optimization.”

We’re seeing an increasing number of crossovers in Ghosts of Tabor in recent months, timing up October’s Terminator: Dark Fate DLC with additional Halloween updates. Last month also saw Combat Waffle team up with Starbreeze for an official PAYDAY collaboration.

Ghosts of Tabor is available now on Quest, Steam, PS VR2, and Pico.

Universal compatibility across your entire device collection.

The post Microsoft Does Final Price Cut of Year on Xbox Controllers, Nearly 50% Off and Makes Sony’s Look Overpriced appeared first on Kotaku.