I taught an old man new tunes in rhythm-action shopkeeper sim Mr. Records, and now you can try the demo yourself

One of the bright spots of a miserably grey Summer Game Fest 2026 was Mr. Records, a mashup of rhythm-action autorunner and casual vinyl shop management by music game specialists Glee-Cheese Studio. I’ve since played a demo – which you can now try yourself on Steam – and was pleased by the apparent confirmation that it can induce that head-nodding, foot-tapping thing that rhythm games should. Big fan, usually, of games that force me into involuntary body movements.

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Bungie decide their destiny is to do more Destiny after all, pledging to bring back vaulted Destiny 2 campaigns while declaring that Marathon "needs to evolve"

Not long after announcing changes to how they'll handle majorly updating Marathon going forwards, Bungie have reversed course on their decision to stop developing Destiny 2 - a move they followed with layoffs. Promising to bring back vaulted bits of Destiny 2 and declaring that the series is "foundational" to their future. A future which they've kicked off with a lot of grovelling for forgiveness.

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Nighthawks review – a series of vignettes that sometimes excel but more often falter

Nighthawks, the 1942 painting by Edward Hopper, is generally described as portraying loneliness. The four people at the diner counter are dwarfed by the empty, cold openness of the street. But the inside of the diner looks warm. One man sits apart, but the other two patrons might be a couple, their hands close. The worker seems to be watching them, perhaps thinking of somebody he’ll return to after his shift. Nighthawks, the 2026 vampire RPG, takes this same sensation, connection in the middle of isolation, and plays it much less subtly. When it works, it manages to tell sub-stories that will stick with me like the glow of a friendly building late at night.

But it doesn’t always work.

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The Steam Frame’s first post-launch update speeds up charging and ungarbles a mic bug

Having launched though the same system of reservations and waitlists as the Steam Machine, the Steam Frame is still navigating that inscrutable void betixt "on sale" and "actually out." Nevertheless, it’s had its first software update, SteamOS 0.3.0, which brings – among other technical tidbits – a microphone bug fix, smoother controller tracking, and "substantially faster" charging to the VR headset. Yeah, nice one Valve. Would have been useful to have that last one when reviewing the thing on a deadline but whatever.

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Ahead of GTA 6, Rockstar warn modders against against making unofficial main story expansions, unauthorised ports and mods that combine GTA maps

There still might not yet be a release date for GTA 6's PC port, but Rockstar appear to be preparing for the massive uptick in mods for their games that'll inevitably accompany it. In new modding guidelines posted this month, the studio have expressly warned against a bunch of things modders could do, including building on established storylines from the base game, pulling over bits of older GTAs, and porting the game to platforms it's not hit yet.

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Silent Hill: Townfall review - an often inspired, if slightly lumbering trek into the fog

Once a fictional town in Maine, Silent Hill has broken containment and become a transferable oral history mechanism, offered to videogame developers worldwide as a way of investigating, even celebrating local culture. I'm still in two minds about whether this licensing outreach project, begun with Silent Hill f, is more inspired than it is vampiric. I picture Konami's invitation being pushed under the door of potential collaborators like Mary's letter to James in Silent Hill 2: "in our restless dreams, we see that town... let's touch base there sometime, expand our concepts further."

There's opportunity and peril for any studio who answers the letter: opportunity, because Silent Hill is an uncommonly rich way of thinking about the past, with its parallel realities, monster metaphors, and woozy grounding in both mysticism and psychoanalysis. And peril, because licenses have a way of engulfing licensees, forcing them into a straitjacket of tropes: fog, sirens, antagonists with geometric heads. Thankfully, Silent Hill: Townfall's creators Screen Burn (previously No Code) haven't gotten lost in the murk, though I don't think Townfall is their finest creation, not least because it's overreliant on stealth. Like the makers of Silent Hill f, they've taken what they need from Silent Hill to tell a story of their own.

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The Sunday Papers

Sundays - well, very early Sunday mornings - are for watching a whole queue of hungry wild animals pass your kitchen window, because a neighbour has decided to leave a bollard-sized catfood dispenser outside the block entrance while they're away on holiday. I'm pretty sure the neighbour's cat wouldn't eat from the dispenser even if there wasn't a badger wedged eagerly inside it. She's an aloof and disdainful creature, who hates going near the front door because that's where those stinky humans come from.

Will I try to feed the poor moggy, denied her dinner by a bunch of Farthing Wood rejects? No I will not, because I'm too busy reading articles about videogames, and things that are vaguely in the orbit of videogames. Here are a few of those articles. Look, please stop fretting about the cat. She's perfectly plump and glossy, whereas that badger looks like he hasn't had a square meal since August.

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