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Video game analyst group Circana has released its November 2023 U.S. Video Game Market Highlights report and in it, the company reveals that, unsurprisingly, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III was the best-selling game of the month. It launched on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC on November 10 and is already the second best-selling game of 2023, behind Hogwarts Legacy.  The annual Call of Duty game always sells extremely well – it has taken the top spot of November for five years straight – so today's results are no surprise. However, what's new this time around is that Modern Warfare III is now an Xbox-owned game, after Microsoft successfully completed its acquisition of Activision Blizzard for a colossal $69 billion. Also, notably, despite Modern Warfare III reviewing poorly – it has a 56 on Metacritic, the lowest of the rebooted...

Tekken 8 hits PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC in just over a month, on January 26, 2024. As the release date nears, developer Bandai Namco has been releasing more and more about the latest entry in its flagship fighting series. We learned about newcomer Reina last month, and recently went hands-on with the game, too – read Game Informer's Tekken 8 preview here. Now, Bandai Namco has revealed the first gameplay trailer for its "mechanized space ninja" Yoshimitsu.  It did so with a new Tekken 8 gameplay trailer that shows Yoshimitsu ripping and slicing through various fighters in the game's roster. This ninja is no stranger to the Tekken series, having appeared in every mainline numbered Tekken game since the series' start – he's actually my favorite fighter, and for money, this is his best look yet.  Check him out...

Developer Bethesda Game Studios is working on bringing mod support, city maps, and "all-new ways to traveling" to its recently released sci-fi RPG, Starfield. It announced this by way of a Starfield subreddit comment from the official developer Reddit account, as reported by IGN. The team says it's working on other things, too, like quest fixes, hotfixes, and more.  It says players can expect a rollout of fixes and updates roughly every six weeks, although if something can be corrected with a quick hotfix, it might launch those in between the six-week waits. While bug and progression fixes are nice, it's the new ways of traveling and city maps that has me most excited. Traversing Starfield's cities is fun, but actually learning them is quite difficult without a map. And I'm hoping the new ways of travel makes traversing vast...

God of War Ragnarok's Valhalla DLC is out now on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4, less than a week after it was revealed at The Game Awards 2023. It features a good bit of story content that acts as an epilogue to the events of Ragnarok, and it's packaged within a roguelite structure, meaning it's heavy on the combat. Apparently, there's an endgame challenge in Valhalla so difficult that nobody on the dev team could complete it on the DLC's "Show Me Mastery" difficulty, according to Valhalla's director Mihir Sheth.  "I am so, so curious to see how quickly players will humble us...as they often do...but maybe this time we've beaten them?" Sheth writes on Twitter, as first reported by Wccftech.  There is an endgame challenge in #GodOfWarRagnarokValhalla that no one on the dev team has completed on the hardest...

Mouse, an upcoming classic first-person shooter sporting a vintage rubber hose animation style, turned heads in May with its first look at gameplay. Although that initial showing was very much a work in progress, today’s video offers a more polished look at what’s to come. The noir game stars a private-eye rodent cleaning up his corruption-riddled city by using his trusty tommy gun to mow down scores of mouse gangsters in cartoonishly violent fashion. Additionally, we get a look at other lethal methods such as tossing dynamite, shooting down pianos to crash on top of foes, or just knocking goons' heads off with a good punch. Between all of that, the mouse protagonist consumes spinach and tea for presumably health while engaging in other activities such as collecting baseball cards and chatting with characters. Mouse is the debut title from...

PlayStation has released its 2023 Wrap-Up tool, which allows players to view their achievements, top games played, trophies earned, monthly gaming stats, and gaming style for the past year....

Update, 12/12/2023: Following Sony's lead, Microsoft has published its yearly retrospective as well, allowing Xbox and PlayStation fans alike to take a look back at the games they played this year. You can check out the Xbox Year In Review right here. For an idea of what to expect, here are some of my stats: The original story continues below... When the year comes to a close, many spend time reflecting on the past 12 months of their lives, the decisions they made, and the places they went. In recent years, companies like Spotify have capitalized on this tradition, turning it into their Wrapped celebration, which has users all over the world sharing their stats, blurring the lines between an internet trend and a viral marketing campaign. It's no surprise that other companies would want to jump on that...

Update, 12/12/23:  After reports in November indicated that Free Radical Design, the team behind the TimeSplitters franchise that had been reformed in 2021 to create a new entry in the series, was facing a complete shutdown, the studio closure happened yesterday. Game Informer reached out to Free Radical Design parent company Embracer Group for a comment on the closure – it pointed us to the following LinkedIn post by Plaion, which owns Free Radical Design.  "It's with a heavy heart that we must announce yet another difficult decision," the post reads. "Today, we have to confirm the official closure of Free Radical Design, and say goodbye to many remarkable, talented, and hard-working people. We are beyond grateful for their incredible contributions to Plaion and wish them the best of luck and success on their professional journey from here on out."  The original...

From astonishing remakes to visionary spine-chillers, here's IGN's pick of 2023's best horror games....

We celebrate the growing genre of challenging RPGs with our award for 2023's best Soulslike game....