Key Note Gaming

For years Grand Theft Auto fans have wondered whether Rockstar might take the franchise out of its traditional America setting into cities in other countries. But according to one former developer, that’s never going to happen — and fans just need to accept it. In an interview with Gameshub , former Rockstar Games technical director Obbe Vermeij, who worked at the company from 1995 to 2009, said there were “ideas” about post-Liberty City, San Andreas, and Vice City GTA games set in Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, and Istanbul, but it was GTA: Tokyo that “almost actually happened.” According to Vermeij, who left Rockstar just after finishing GTA 4, another studio in Japan was going to take Rockstar’s code and develop GTA: Tokyo (Vermeij didn’t say which studio). “But then that didn’t happen in the end.” Why? It sounds like Rockstar came to the realization that American cities are the natural and best setting for GTA, and given it takes so long to release new games in the series, going int...

CD Projekt has said huge discounts on Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Complete Edition displayed on the Nintendo Switch 2 eShop this week were a mistake, but it will honor any sales made at the discounted prices. Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition for Nintendo Switch 2 went on sale with a whopping 75% off in the U.S. earlier this week, making the normally $69.99 game just $17.49. Making this deal all the more eye-catching is the fact the Ultimate Edition includes the DLC expansion Phantom Liberty. This DLC normally costs around $30 (or around $21 with a discount), which meant the base game plus the DLC was cheaper than the DLC itself if you bought it with the discount. As you'd expect, plenty of people bought the game at that price. "I couldn’t believe it lmfao," one fan said. "I bought as soon as I saw the price. I had been waiting for it to go on sale but was amazed at the discount." Said another: "I was on the fence for a...

Look, not all games can be great. In fact, many of them are not good, and some even fail to be simply okay. If you’re looking for all things good and great, then check out our list of the best-reviewed games of 2025. But this place, sadly, is not where they live. No, this is where I have the job of reminding you of all of the worst games we played this year. The ones that didn’t quite live up to expectations and received a score of five or below from IGN reviewers. Maybe you did enjoy some of these, and to that I say, all the power to you. Let us know in the comments which games featured on this list you did actually love playing. But before you scroll all the way down there, let’s talk about IGN’s worst-reviewed games of 2025. 5 - Mediocre What better way to kick this off than with a welcome tour? A Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour , to be exact. A collection of minigames and digital museum displays designed to give you a better idea of the tech powering your new Nintendo console, t...

Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games has told fans that the Mark Hamill-fronted single-player space adventure Squadron 42 is still on track for a 2026 release date — and not to expect “a long, drawn-out marketing campaign” beforehand. Founder and CEO Chris Roberts wrote in a blog post that CIG is focusing on quality and polish as it moves toward an internal beta milestone and, eventually, a full release for Squadron 42 at some point next year. “We’re confident in the direction the game is headed and are fully focused on delivering,” Roberts said. “We know many of you are eager to play, and we’re looking forward to putting it in your hands. We don’t plan on a long, drawn-out marketing campaign as we’ve already done our share of trailers and gameplay previews. When it’s time, you (and the rest of the gaming world) will hear a lot more from us.” All chapters are said to be fully playable from beginning to end, and “we’ve been playing through the game ourselves regularly,” R...

Yes, GTA 6 may still be a while away, but that gives us plenty of time to go back and replay all of those Rockstar games we’ve loved from the past, or even check out some that we may have missed. But which parts of the famed Grand Theft Auto developers’ library should you prioritise first? Well, we’ve gone ahead and ranked our favourite Rockstar games. From school-yard antics to tragic tales on the American frontier, here are the 10 best Rockstar games. 10. Manhunt For a studio that’s no stranger to causing controversy due to the contents of its games, arguably none of Rockstar’s negative press surrounding GTA has come close to the furore that followed Manhunt. A stealth-action horror game in which you play as a death row inmate forced into partaking in a series of snuff films for the disembodied voice of a pre-Succession Brian Cox, it maybe shouldn’t have been a surprise that it garnered horrified reactions from the mainstream media, resulting in it being banned in several coun...

Arc Raiders is a multiplayer extraction adventure in which players scavenge the remnants of a devastated world. The main threat is Arc’s machines and, as developer Embark Studios puts it, “the unpredictable choices of fellow survivors.” But one Arc Raiders player, hell bent on killing relative newcomers, casuals, and those who have next to no loot or even none at all, has gone viral for killing others for sport — sparking a debate about what is and isn’t acceptable PvP behavior in the process. Let’s start with a brief primer on how Arc Raiders works. You can play solo or in parties up to three, working as a team to progress through the game. However, other players are a constant threat, and while Arc Raiders’ explosive launch has seen a number of wholesome, viral clips of players coming together to help each other out, some players just want to watch the world burn. Taylor "THump" Humphries, a retired American professional H1Z1 and Apex Legends player, who has taken it u...

Since first releasing in 2022, open-world racing game CarX Street has gotten countless updates and pieces of new content, but the update it just dropped is one of its biggest yet. Titled Showdown, it adds a brand-new PvP team mode that pits street racers against pursuing law enforcement. The mode can be played by up to 16 people at a time, eight on each team. On one side, street racers need to reach a designated area to earn points and then deliver them to a garage. On the other side, police officers are rewarded for neutralizing racers in several different ways, which we’ll cover in detail in a bit. Each match is played in two rounds, with everyone randomly assigned to either the racers or police, then switching sides between rounds. So you’ll always play as a racer once and a police officer once. The racers have HP, and if their HP is brought down to zero, they lose all their undelivered points and respawn at the garage to try again. Racers lose HP when they run into environmen...