Key Note Gaming

From ARC Raiders to Escape From Duckov , extraction shooters seem to be enjoying something of a renaissance right now, to the delight of FPS fans like myself. But of all the newcomers to that space, none have captured my attention more than Marathon since I first played its early alpha over a year ago. Even through some of Bungie’s recent lows, the notion of taking the high-stakes looting deathmatch that is an extraction shooter and combining it with the unparalleled shooting for which the studio is known has always been an awesome idea. Now, having sweated it out for over 65 hours in Marathon’s most unforgiving maps and game modes, that rad concept turned out exactly as well as I was hoping it would, with absolutely stellar gunplay, a shocking amount of compelling lore to dive into, and a loot grind so hard to step away from that I’ve had trouble finding time to finalize my thoughts in between runs. There’s still plenty of room for tweaking – whether it’s balancing some of the play...

Darwin's Paradox! really taps into the joy and simplicity of a fun cartoon for its quirky alien invasion adventure. With a simple setup of an octopus clumsily trying to survive on land, it gives way to some wacky, slapstick platforming encounters that totally capture the fun, charming vibe of a Saturday morning cartoon. Developer ZDT Studio offers up a plucky puzzle-platformer that carries a lot of energy, but it often struggles to maintain those good times when it gets hung up on overly long, clunky encounters that drag down this otherwise fun jaunt. Set in a stylized cartoon world that feels in step with Pixar's Finding Nemo, Darwin's Paradox! follows a clever and oddly lucky octopus who is thrust into increasingly zany encounters. After a mysterious, otherworldly presence encroaches upon their underwater home, Darwin and their octopus friend are whisked away to the surface and separated. But it's not enough that Darwin has to figure out how to survive on the surfa...

Crimson Desert has hit a new Steam concurrent player peak during its second weekend, after another game-changing update brought a raft of improvements to the open world action adventure. Developer Pearl Abyss released update 1.01.00 (patch notes, courtesy of Steam , are below) this morning, sparking excitement within the Crimson Desert community as a number of significant changes kicked into gear. For example, the patch added five summonable mounts ( the lack of summonable mounts was a big criticism in the wake of the game’s release ), decreased loading times for fast travel and revival, and improved the controls further. But these are just a few examples of the positive changes — the patch includes a long list of pretty meaningful tweaks that combine to make a big impact on the overall Crimson Desert experience. Pearl Abyss has pumped out these big updates remarkably quickly. Crimson Desert hasn’t even hit the two weeks on-sale mark, and already a series of patches have helped tu...

A new weekend has arrived, and today, you can save big on Death Stranding 2: On The Beach, Code Vein II, My Hero Academia: All's Justice, Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter, LEGO R2-D2, and more. Check out our top picks for Sunday, March 29, below. Amazon's Big Spring Sale is also live this weekend, so check out our full roundup for even more deals. Death Stranding 2: On The Beach for $29.99 Death Stranding 2: On the Beach for the PlayStation 5 just dropped to $29.99 as part of the Amazon Spring Sale. Previously, the lowest we've seen physical PS5 copies was $49.99, so this marks a new low price. DS2 has hundreds of hours of content with an incredible narrative, extensive gameplay mechanics, and much more. Enter Australia as Sam Porter Bridges and connect the world once more. My Hero Academia: All's Justice for $39.99 My Hero Academia: All's Justice covers the epic conclusion of MHA, featuring the climactic final battle of Deku and Class 1-A versus Shigarak...

Heads up: Death Stranding 2: On the Beach for the PlayStation 5 just dropped to $29.99. This is the best video game deal right now during the Amazon Spring Sale and beats out the $49.99 price I saw during Black Friday. I played and beat DS2 right after it came out. It might not appeal to everyone, but this was my top #2 game of 2025. From the "nonsensical" story to the "grind" of delivery packages - I loved every minute of it. Update: If Amazon is out of stock, you can get it for the same price at Best Buy. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach for PS5 Death Stranding 2 resumes the story of Sam Porter in his ongoing mission to deliver packages for a greater good while taking care of his newly adopted kid, Lou. The epic story is absolutely over-the-top ridiculous and is anchored by incredible visuals. The voice acting and motion capture draws from an ensemble celebrity cast that includes Norman Reedus, Elle Fanning, Troy Baker, Léa Seydoux, Shioli Kutsuna (Yukio i...

A classic Nintendo handheld turned 25 this week amidst an ongoing bust-up about the very future of graphics tech, an anniversary that reminds us how hollow the pursuit of ever increasing graphical fidelity is when all the post-processed path tracing in the world can’t make the driving in Cyberpunk 2077 feel as good as V-Rally 3 on the Game Boy Advance. Look at it. Squeezing every bit of horsepower out of the GBA’s dinky 16MHz processor, a system explicitly designed to run sprite-based 2D games, V-Rally 3 represents an incredible feat of software engineering: a fully 3D racer conjured from textured polygons, clever art direction, and three entire volts of copper-topped power. This was damn close to PS1 quality gaming you could enjoy on a bus (at a time when the PS1 was still very much a going concern), making the GBA a very early taste of what would be possible decades later, where any lingering distinction between a handheld game and a home console or PC game has been utterly oblite...