A demo version of 2K Games anticipated new “genetically enhanced” first-person shooter BioShock has gone live on Microsoft’s Xbox Live Marketplace for the Xbox 360. The game is due to ship for the gaming console August 21 in the United States and on August 24 in Europe; a demo version for PCs is due to be available for download later this month.
BioShock’s setting is the underwater society Rapture, which is engulfed in civil war. Gamers wend their way through the powerful forced on both sides, foil treacherous security systems and try to stay one step ahead of genetically modified “splicers” that dog their every move. BioShock enables players to turn virtually anything into a weapon, hack devices and in-game systems, upgrade their weapons, and create their own ammo and battle movies—one player might specialize in catching grenades in mid-air and tossing them back at assailants, while another might get really good at plaguing enemies with swarms of insects. Players can even modify their own genetic biology using plasmids.
BioShock is rating M for “Mature” by the ESRB; the Xbox 360 edition will be priced at $59.99.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.