Category: Video Gaming

Quake and Quake 2 are, famously, very different shooters. The original is a dark gothic fantasy with a side of HP Lovecraft, while the latter leans hard into industrial sci-fi. I’ve always thought of them as entirely separate stories, but Quake 2’s latest official episodes—the Machine Games-developed Call of The Machine—explicitly connects the two, with the episode’s primary antagonist summoning several Shamblers from the first game to attack the player.

This overlap serves as the primary inspiration for Call of the Void, a fanmade Quake 2 episode that takes place after Call of The Machine. This episode throws together Quake 1 and 2’s menagerie in much more literal fashion, splicing the roster of both games to create an army of monstrous hybrids.

Borderlands games are all about chasing down rate loot, and for Borderlands 4, players can once again expect to plug in some Shift codes to grab an instant high-caliber upgrade. Borderlands 4 supports Shift codes, and the ones that can be redeemed for Golden Keys will let you open the unique Golden chests found in Belton’s Bore, The Launchpad, Carcadia, or The Lockaway.

We’re still betting that each code you redeem will still give you Golden Keys that can be used to unlock a treasure chest of rare goodies in the game or new cosmetics that you can apply to your Vault Hunter. We’ll be keeping track of Shift codes and the games you can redeem them in, so you can check back often for updates.

Borderlands 4 Shift Codes

• THRBT-WW6CB-56TB5-3B3BJ-XBW3X (1 x Golden Key) [Expires September 20]
• T9RJB-BFKRR-3RBTW-B33TB-KCZB9 (1 x Golden Key) [Expires October 1]
• THRBT-WW6CB-56TB5-3B3BJ-XBW3X (1 x Golden Key) [Expires September 30]
• WHWJB-XH3SX-39CZW-H3BBB-BTF55 (1 x Golden Key) [Requires linked My2K Games account, expires October 1]

How to redeem Shift codes

To redeem your Shift code, you’ll first need to create a Shift account on the Gearbox website. This is quick and easy to do, and you can then activate your Shift codes on the same website or via the in-game Social menu or via Borderland 4’s Social menu at launch. The other thing to note about Shift codes is that they typically have expiration dates, so it’s a good idea to redeem one as soon as possible.

From there, you can bank the rewards if they turn out to be Golden Keys, or splurge and use all of them to grab some new gear in one go.

One important note: The rewards contained within these chests scale to your current level, so you may want to consider waiting to use a Golden Key. Otherwise, using one early in the game will net you low-level gun as opposed to one you can use long-term.

For more on Borderlands 4, you can see how Gearbox plans to keep you looting and shooting after launch, how to get a free Borderlands 4 gun skin, and this deep dive into every Vault Hunter in the game.

Sundays are for working out what to do with about 200 apples and 50 pears. The parks round here are full of semi-forgotten fruit trees, so we went out last weekend and gathered a few buckets. It has now dawned on me that if I don’t eat apples with every meal and also possibly light fires with them, bathe in their juices and pound them up to serve as a low-grade polyfiller, my flat will soon be overtaken by rats, weevils and feral brewers.

I’ll probably take a load to a food bank. I hear apples keep pretty well when they’re fresh-picked, at least, but pears are treacherous, adamantium-hard one day and a sopping disaster the next. Anyway, here is some internet writing that doesn’t significantly mention fruit at all.

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The September 14 (1548) Wordle clues can give you word-finding guidance whenever you need them—the first row, the last row, any row between, any time you like. Team them up with today’s hints for an additional boost to your puzzling, or cut straight to the part where you win with a scoot down the page towards Sunday’s answer. Enjoy.

You might not think of it as one, but Wikipedia is a game. It has untold numbers of characters and stories, each page an interactive slate with your mouse and hand acting as the choice maker for what you learn next, thus impacting your following choices. This is, admittedly, a bit of a wanky, thinkpiecey way of talking about Wikipedia, so instead of that let’s talk about Neurocracy, a game that could quite easily fool you into thinking it is another version of Wikipedia.

It first launched a couple of years ago now, in 2023, and started its third season earlier this year. In fact, its final episode for season three is coming next week on September 17th, so now seems like a pretty good time to get started with diving into it.

There is is no main character in Neurocracy so to speak, other than you, and you are browsing Omnipedia, a very real but still fictitious website you can head to right now to view everything, though the full version of the game has a virtual conspiracy pin board you can use to unravel the mystery with – we’ll come back to that.

Omnipedia, according to its in-world description, is an “English-language online encyclopedia founded by internet entrepreneur Tony Hsiung in June 2049. Intended as “a general reference work and trusted source of information,” Hsiung initially conceived of Omnipedia as a successor to Wikipedia, which was discontinued in 2048.”

We’ve already learned a few things here – that we’re a good couple of decades into the future, and Wikipedia is dead. Gathering bits of information like that is the name of the game, though you’re after juicier pieces than that, as there’s a murder mystery to be solved. As you find actually useful pieces of information, within the full version of the game you can add particular links and bits of text to build this conspiracy for yourself.

I’ve only dipped my toe into Neurocracy’s world, it’s impressively expansive, though it does feel like the kind of thing you should add to slowly, with only the occasional day of falling through the rabbit hole here and there.

As mentioned, Neurocracy’s third and final season wraps up next week, September 17th, but you can pick it up on Itch.io now to start getting yourself ready for it.

Getting your game a publishing deal has never been an easy thing to do. Right now, it’s especially hard given that for many publishers, if it doesn’t seem like a guaranteed hit, it likely isn’t something they’ll take on. This is something that Vampire Survivors developer Poncle, or rather the actual person, Luca Galante, takes great issue with, and in a recent interview he spoke more broadly of his issues with publishers, and his thoughts on now being one.

“I see a lot of publishers I don’t like, and I think that’s my way to define what a good publisher should be, probably,” Galante explained to GamesRadar. “I see a lot of publishers that try to exploit the platforms just to make money, basically, because the video game industry is very obviously an industry that makes a lot of money. There is a lot of money to make. I see that these publishers will try and just exploit platforms for money.”

He went on to note how there are publishers who will put out simply incomplete games, or early access games that never get finished, and that for him, “what a publisher should do is, first of all, make genuine games, genuine products, something that has some real value, and then understand that not everything can be a breakout hit.” Galante also spoke of the importance of post-launch support, and for him this is “definitely a big thing from my point of view that publishers should be able to offer.”

As of now, Poncle has published two games, Berserk or Die, a beat ’em up where you have to mash your keyboard to beat enemies, and Kill the Brickman, a Brick Breaker-esque, turn-based roguelike game, both of which are cheap as chips (£3 and £4 respectively).

It’s these kinds of affordable games with smaller teams that Galante wants to lean towards in publishing, and in particular his priority is to find devs “that are very transparent in what they do, they want to talk with their community, and they have a real, genuine passion for making games.” Not only that, it’s important to him that these devs get to realise their vision by enriching it, as opposed to forcing in things like microtransactions or season passes.

Galante is, perhaps most importantly, fully aware with how lucky he got with Vampire Survivors, and that’s why he wants to publish other games. “We definitely made some mistakes when it comes to putting the game out there, but we learned a lot, and wanted to try to sort of share what we learned with other indies. It was a way to try and give something back to the indie community, share the luck.” Good luck indeed! At this point in time, every dev needs every ounce of the stuff they can get.

Randy Pitchford has responded to complaints about the console version of Borderlands 4 lacking a field of view (FOV) slider, suggesting fairness may have something to do with it.

PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S players of Borderlands 4 were shocked to discover not only a lack of a FOV slider in-game, but no motion blur toggle, either. The PC version of Borderlands 4 has settings for both — in the case of FOV you can increase the value in degrees up to 110 for both first-person play and vehicle use, and for motion blur you can change the amount and the quality.

The lack of a FOV slider is the biggest issue right now with Borderlands 4 on console, if anecdotal evidence across the internet is anything to go by, with some complaining that not being able to tweak the FOV value is causing them motion sickness.

“Man, I’ve tried to play it twice today,” said redditor xInsaneAbilityx. “Both times I get that ‘car-sick’ feel after about 15 minutes and have to stop.” “Yeah I’m pretty sensitive to motion sickness and a narrow FOV in first-person makes me really dizzy. Combining that with motion blur just churns my stomach,” added Dallywack3r. “This game feels almost zoomed in, it‘s really not pleasant to play,” said christophlieber.

There are also suggestions the console version of Borderlands 4 lacks a FOV slider in order to maintain certain performance levels. By increasing the FOV, you’re putting the hardware under more strain and potentially impacting things like framerate.

But social media posts from Gearbox development chief Randy Pitchford suggest one of the considerations is fairness.

Borderlands 4 Review Screenshots