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Sony announced that PlayStation Plus subscribers will get access to three games starting Oct. 6 through Nov. 2: extraction shooter Hunt: Showdown 1896, racing title F1 25, and Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2. The games are included at no extra cost across all PlayStation Plus membership tiers, which start at $11 a month.
Android Authority found new code in Play Store version 53.3.21-34 showing a more developed layout for paid game listings, featuring larger banner graphics and color-matched interface elements. The update also appears to replace numeric ratings with descriptive labels such as 'Absolute peak' or 'Controversial,' and is expected to add more detailed feature information for shoppers.
An experimental PlayStation 5 emulator called KytyPS5 has progressed from merely booting Marvel's Wolverine to actually rendering its cinematics and gameplay, according to a social media post cited by VideoCardz. The game still runs at only single-digit frame rates, far from playable performance, and there is no official PC version of the Insomniac Games title.
Analogue will reopen pre-orders for its Pocket handheld and Dock accessory on October 2 at 11am ET. Units are expected to ship within two weeks of purchase, and the console still carries the $240 price following a $20 tariff-related increase applied at its last restock in March.
Teardown of Google Play Store version 53.3.21-34 uncovered code strings referencing a new 'playlist' feature that would let users group at least three games into a custom collection. The strings suggest users could name, describe, and color-code these playlists, plus add, remove, or delete games from them later. Google has not confirmed the feature publicly.
Nintendo has officially ended service for Mario Kart Tour, the free-to-play mobile racer launched in 2019, with servers going offline on Sept. 29. The app will remain installable but will only display player stats, and unlike Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, it is not being converted into an offline title.
Control Resonant, the sequel to 2019's Control, has a slow-paced opening with limited weapons and abilities, and its late-game bosses and mold-infested areas can become punishing damage sponges. Rather than adding a traditional easy mode, Remedy built an Assist Mode with three presets (easy, high-risk, low-risk) plus adjustable sliders for damage output, falter thresholds, projectile speed and enemy aggression. Control had received a similar assist mode after its initial launch.
WIRED's gaming router testing named the Asus ROG Rapture GT-BE98 Pro, a quad-band Wi-Fi 7 router, as the fastest device it has tested. The guide also recommends Asus overall as the top gaming router brand, citing its ROG sub-brand, free security software, AiMesh compatibility and generous port selection.
Security researchers have released an exploit called Relapse that jailbreaks the PlayStation 5 across nearly every firmware version except the newly released 14.00.00. Hackers say jailbroken consoles can already run recent titles like Marvel's Wolverine and The Witcher III Remastered without payment, and can install homebrew software in under a minute.
A 2008 blog post presented a series of parody images that riff on the exaggerated, often misleading cover art used for Atari 2600 video games. The post included reader reactions praising the blog's humor, sourced from Popcrunch.com and a commenter named Jenn.
Researchers describe Ataraxos, a decision-making system for the imperfect-information board game Stratego. It combines two interdependent self-play reinforcement learning processes—one for choosing piece set-ups, one for choosing moves—built on transformer networks, alongside a belief network trained on self-play games and a search procedure used at test time.
A personal tech history post describes growing up with a Packard Bell 386 SX running MS-DOS, playing games like SimCity 2000, Scorched Earth and Oregon Trail. The author recalls that tinkering with SimCity 2000's saved game files became the moment they first learned about bytes and hexadecimal data on disk.