Lord of Hatred will be the final showdown with Mephisto

The post <i>Diablo 4</i>‘s Second Expansion Adds New Classes And Big Changes appeared first on Kotaku.

Tomb Raider Catalyst is out in 2027 and a remake of the first game arrives in 2026

The post Here’s Our First Look At Tomb Raider’s New Lara Croft appeared first on Kotaku.

We finally got a look at the whole cast in action

The post The <i>Street Fighter</i> Movie Looks Surprisingly Good In Its First Trailer appeared first on Kotaku.

Remedy Entertainment is shaking things up with Control Resonant

The post <i>Control 2</i> Is A Trippy Character Action Game Set In A Twisted NYC appeared first on Kotaku.

Leon will have his own campaign in the upcoming survival horror game

The post Capcom Reveals Leon Kennedy Is Playable In <i>Resident Evil Requiem</i> appeared first on Kotaku.

Larian Studios teased a new game set in the Divinity franchise

The post The Maker Of <i>Baldur’s Gate 3</i> Reveals Its Next RPG And This One’s ‘Even Larger’ appeared first on Kotaku.

Mass Effect‘s Casey Hudson is leading development on the new single-player RPG

The post <i>Knights Of The Old Republic’</i>s Director Is Making A New <i>Star Wars</i> RPG appeared first on Kotaku.

It briefly flashes Jason Momoa as Lobo

The post The First <i>Supergirl</i> Trailer Has A Great Line About What Makes Her Different From Superman appeared first on Kotaku.

Apparently Amazon couldn’t be bothered to produce an accurate recap for one of the biggest shows of the last few years

The post Amazon’s <i>Fallout</i> Season 1 Recap Is Inaccurate AI Bullshit appeared first on Kotaku.

The annual Keighleys are here and big game reveals are leaking like crazy

The post The Game Awards 2025: How To Watch And What To Expect appeared first on Kotaku.

Free-to-play multiplayer racer Boom Karts VR is out now on Quest, supporting crossplay with the mobile edition.

Originally launched on iOS and Android, free-to-play racing game Boom Karts has now received a VR edition from Finnish developer Zaibatsu Interactive. This arcade racer sees you try to secure the race wins using power-ups while avoiding obstacles and traps, racing friends and sabotaging rivals along the way. Now, it’s come to Quest 2, Pro, 3, and 3S.

Featuring ranked leagues and ranked matches, Boom Karts VR also comes with an adventure mode and quests. Cars and characters can be customized alike through both cosmetic items and unlocking additional upgrades. Compared to the mobile edition, the VR edition of Boom Karts contains various new features like playing in a theater mode.

Game-specific friend lists are also available, as is a ‘Teams’ option that sees your group unlocking rewards, upgrades, and new items to upgrade your kart. One and two-handed control schemes are supported for the Meta Quest’s Touch controllers, as are USB controllers.

Boom Karts is out now on Quest, Android, and iOS.

Transmission: Shortwave, a casual VR delivery driving sim set in a retro-futuristic Great Britain, is now available on Quest.

Marking the debut game from British indie studio Cardboard Sword, you may recall Transmission: Shortwave recently appeared in the UploadVR Winter Showcase. Taking place in an alternative 1990s Great Britain, you’re tasked with delivering parcels across these UK-inspired landscapes at your own pace as a member of ParcelPal.

Detailing this further, Cardboard Sword calls Transmission: Shortwave a reflection of the team’s “tongue-in-cheek humour and nostalgia.” Leaning into the retro aesthetic, Transmission: Shortwave comes with an original soundtrack that’s inspired by early electronic dance music.

The developer states you can simulate driving “as much or as little” as you’d like, letting you use optional shifters, handbrakes, and turn signals. As you progress across the game, you can customize your courier by gradually unlocking different car models and colors.

Transmission: Shortwave is out now as a Meta Quest exclusive for $4.99.

Time is not on your side in the Mega Dimension DLC, so here’s a few tricks to help you out in Hyperspace

The post 7 Tips To Know Before Heading Into <em>Pokémon Legends: Z-A’s</em> Grindy New DLC Mode appeared first on Kotaku.

The remastered version of the classic game was set to launch early next year, but is now indefinitely delayed

The post That Ugly <i>Deus Ex</i> Remaster Just Got Indefinitely Delayed appeared first on Kotaku.

Pocket Lands, a mixed reality sandbox game where you can create miniature worlds, is out now in early access on Quest.

Originally announced at last month’s VR Games Showcase, Pocket Lands is a tabletop voxel sandbox game from Thomas van den Berge (Vermillion) through Mountainborn Studios. You can create diorama-like worlds across different biomes in mixed reality with support for both Touch controllers and hand tracking, then explore them in first person with fully immersive VR.

In its current early access release, Pocket Lands features various biomes and the ability to create worlds of different sizes. The game also supports a day and night cycle, empty dioramas for building without distractions, quick construction tools, and a virtual camera to record and share your different builds.

For the full release, Thomas van den Berge previously advised Pocket Lands will launch in “the second half of 2026”. The store page’s “coming soon” section lists planned features such as multiplayer, cave systems, underground biomes, new surface biomes, creatures that roam these lands, and more. However, it’s unclear if each feature will arrive at full release or across incremental updates.

Pocket Lands is out now in early access on the Meta Quest platform.

From wild rants and embarrassing product placement to awkward celebs and touching moments, we’ve seen it all over the last 11 years

The post The Best And Worst Moments In Game Awards History appeared first on Kotaku.

People who bet on AI being Time Magazine‘s Person of the Year and lost money are very mad right now

The post Prediction Market Gamblers Can’t Believe They Just Lost A $20 Million Bet On A Technicality appeared first on Kotaku.

Dimensional Double Shift is out now on Samsung Galaxy XR, coinciding with the game’s “largest update ever.”

Previously released on Quest in early access, Dimensional Double Shift is a hand tracking party game where you serve food orders and fix motor vehicles for the locals of each dimension you visit. Following October’s New Joysey DLC, it’s now available on Samsung Galaxy XR headsets and offers cross-platform multiplayer support with Meta Quest headsets.

Today’s Samsung Galaxy XR launch is also joined by Dimensional Double Shift’s free Winter Update. Developer Owlchemy Labs confirmed that this includes Solo Practice Experiment, its first single-player mode for the former co-op only experience, which teaches you the game’s core systems.

Other new features include rotating weekend Boosters, starting with a limited-time ‘Midas Touch’ modifier where everything you touch turns to gold. Other Boosters include turning your mouth into a flamethrower, stretching your arms further, and more. Finally, the game’s celebrating ‘Snow-vertime Fest’ from December 18 until January 5, adding a festive hub alongside winter-themed avatar cosmetics and new interactions.

Dimensional Double Shift is out now in early access on the Meta Quest platform and Samsung Galaxy XR.

This pair is comfortable to wear, and offers an incredible battery life of up to 50 hours.

The post Sony’s Budget Wireless Headphones Just Got Even Cheaper With a Nearly 50%, Priced Like No-Brand Wired Earbuds appeared first on Kotaku.

Google is starting to roll out new photorealistic avatars which they call “Likeness”. Similar to Apple’s Personas, Likeness avatars are generated by scanning a user’s face, then animated it with input from the sensors on a headset. The avatars can be used to represent the user in video call apps, but Google doesn’t yet have a way to have spatial meetings with other Likeness avatars.

The News

Google is launching its own photorealistic avatars called Likeness avatars, for use on compatible Android XR headsets. The idea is similar to Apple’s Persona avatars: scan the user’s face to create a realistic representation, then use the headset’s on-board cameras to animate the scan as realistically as possible.

 

Likenesses take a slightly different (and probably more user-friendly) approach for the initial face scan; rather than scanning by holding a headset out in front of your face, Google instead released a Likeness (beta) Android app to let people scan themselves with their phone instead. Holding your phone in front of your face for a scan is definitely a bit easier than awkwardly holding a whole headset with both hands.

According to Google, the Likeness (beta) app is only compatible with Google Pixel 8 or newer, Samsung Galaxy S23 or newer, or Samsung Z Fold5 or newer. Without a compatible device, you can’t create a Likeness avatar, meaning Android XR users with an iPhone (or unsupported Android phone) won’t be able to scan themselves. One benefit of Apple’s approach to scanning with the headset itself is that anyone can use a Persona avatar on Vision Pro regardless of what kind of phone they have.

Like Apple’s approach, Likeness avatars can be used generically as a ‘virtual webcam’. That makes them widely compatible with most video call apps that expect a front-facing camera, like Google Meet, Zoom, Messenger, etc.

And just like Apple, the first ‘beta’ iteration of Likeness avatars are 2D only. They are presented as a 2D representation with no way to transmit them in a spatial format, or have a ‘spatial meeting’, like Vision Pro can do with spatial FaceTime calls. However, Google says it’s working on spatial meetings for the future.

My Take

Photorealistic avatars on XR headsets are a great value-add because of the ability to use video call apps naturally. Apple’s Personas are currently the state-of-the-art as far as consumer-available photorealistic avatars, and the company has shown that it’s possible to cross over the uncanny valley with this approach to avatars.

During a recent meeting with Google, I joined a demo video call on Google Meet with one of the participants using a Likeness avatar. From a photorealism standpoint, the results look impressive, and facial movements look convincing too. However, because I didn’t personally know the individual using the Likeness, I was unfamiliar with their actual idiolect, which makes it impossible for me to judge the accuracy of the facial motion. Still, facial motion only needs to be plausibly realistic to be passable in many circumstances, and that’s been achieved from what I can see.

While it’s a bummer that there’s no ‘spatial meeting’ yet for Android XR (allowing users to chat face-to-face with fully spatial Likeness avatars), Google made the right choice in prioritizing virtual webcam usage at the start. It’s less impressive than spatial meetings, but more widely useful and compatible with existing services and apps.

There’s probably no chance we’ll see spatial calls between Likeness avatars and Persona avatars any time soon, but virtual webcam compatibility makes it trivial for both kinds of avatars to chat across headsets.

One thing worth noting is that Likeness avatars probably won’t be compatible with all Android XR devices. Forthcoming ‘Android XR’ smartglasses (which don’t run anything close to the full-blown version of Android XR) don’t have the power or sensors necessary to render or animate a Likeness avatar. Similarly, devices like XREAL Aura (which does run full-blown Android XR), might have the power but don’t have the sensors (eye and mouth tracking cameras) to animate a Likeness avatar.

It’s possible that Google could make Likeness avatars compatible with these devices by doing simulated eye movements and audio-based lip-sync. Although those technologies are already widely in use for more cartoonish avatars, they’re likely to fall deep into the uncanny valley when applied to photorealistic face scans. So I doubt Google will take that approach.

With the introduction of Likeness avatars, Google also has the same challenge I pointed out recently regarding Apple’s Persona avatars: as headsets get smaller, how will they bring this level of avatar fidelity to smaller headsets that have even less room for the cameras that are essential for these kinds of avatars?

The post Google is Rolling out Photorealistic ‘Likeness’ Avatars on Android XR to Compete with Apple’s ‘Personas’ appeared first on Road to VR.