Picture this: You're a medieval rat, working in tavern to cook and serve food - with up to 3 of your rat friends. Sound like a dream? Well dream no longer, ya little scroungy rodent, because Restaurats was released yesterday on Steam.

Now typically, you don't want to see rats in a kitchen, I totally understand, but in Restaurats, you're no longer a rodent pest, you're an employee! 

This is a co-op simulation game for up to 4 players, or you can go at it alone. As a rat employee, you'll start at the bottom and work to improve your tavern so it becomes the most legendary in the realm. Learn the recipes to wow your fantastical guests, serve them, bus their tables, and earn bonuses when you complete the job for the most world-renowned guests.

KEY FEATURES

• CULINARY CONNOISSEUR - Learn recipes to cook for the tavern’s fantastical patrons. The more complex the dish, the better the reward.
• CUSTOMER SERVICE - Be attentive to the tavern’s guests, like skeletons, vampires, orcs and more. Each has unique preferences and requirements, so be sure to look after their needs.
• RAT UPGRADES - Level up your character, improve your skills, and customize your rat to be the most stylish of your friends.
• ROGUELIKE PROGRESSION - At the end of each run, you’ll unlock new recipe cards, upgrades and more to improve your tavern.
• ULTIMATE RESTAURAT - Build up the tavern with new blueprints to improve its capacity, functionality and attractiveness.
• HAVE FUN TOGETHER IN CO-OP - Not only can you cook, you can also gamble, play mini-games, and simply have a blast with friends together. This is not just a cooking game, it's a lively sandbox experience with tons of humor!

It's important to note that there's also a post-launch content roadmap that showcases the upcoming features to the game, including futher customization, events, locations, and more.

So if this sounds up your alley, gather up 3 of your closest rat pals and scurry on over to steam, or check out the launch trailer here:

I guess if it ain't broke, send it into space. Angry Birds 2 is back, as you may know. Now that any phone can run practically any game, it's only fair that we get to play Angry Birds 2, the way it was intended. I'm currently installing it on Windows via the Google Play Store, which is also, for some reason, installing on Windows. I'm late to the party. 

So late, in fact, that Rovio and Angry Birds 2 started an in game campaign for Angry Birds 2 Space back in late October, and will be available to play until November 21st. This campaign was paired with a milestone, and that milestone was that if they got enough players to play, and unlock their own milestones, and meet certain thresholds, they would launch an Angry Bird from space in real life. 

I'll spoil this for you. People are playing Angry Birds 2, and they met the criteria. Here it is, an Angry Bird being launched, toward the Earth, from Space. Don't say I've never done anything for you. 

Every time I try to get ahead, the busy work outside of the gaming world comes for me. All that to say, I haven't had the chance to get my hands on C. Viper yet. I haven't even seen Mecha Zangief in person, but that's another story. 

C. Viper is already making waves. Much like the response to Sagat, it seems that Street Fighter 6 is doing everything right. With it's record breaking numbers, new moments being made, and even pros complaining that the younger generation is good at Street Fighter 6, because it's "too easy", I think Street Fighter 6 will go down as one of the greatest fighting game of all time. We still have Alex, and Ingrid coming, plus I'm sure a season 4 and 5 character. 

Combine all that with monthly themes, and unlockables that can pay for themselves after you buy them once, and you have the same 10/10 I gave it almost three years ago. I'm sure I'll go through a couple of matches with her. Maybe one day. Maybe. Capcom, I think you have a hit. 

Marvel Cosmic Invasion will boast 15 characters. Storm, Wolverine, Spider-Man, Venom, Captain America, Iron Man, Phoenix, Cosmic Ghost Rider, Nova, Beta Ray Bill (with Stormbreaker), Black Panther, She Hulk, Rocket Raccoon, Phyla-Vell, and Silver Surfer. Tribute Games wants to tell you all the things, and if I know anything about Dotemu and Tribute Games, is that there will probably be more to come. 

It's really insane to me that these characters are all in a beat em up, and you can choose 2 at a time. More so, it's a 4 player beat em up, which means at some point, the game will allow 8 playable characters on the screen at the same time doing all the super hero things. The behind the scenes look, also told me things I didn't know, like Cosmic Ghost Rider is a fusion of Ghost Rider, and The Punisher. The stages will take you from New York, to Wakanda. From The Savage Lang to Asgard, and so much more. The stages will affect the gameplay in some form. Stay tuned for that. 

In the demo, the heroes take on Cosmic Beetle, and if they've gone that deep, I can only imagine the boss fights for the rest of the stages. This looks like it's going to hold up for us. The game releases for practically everything on December 1st. I personally can't wait. What a year for gaming. 

Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration will be expanding even further as a new DLC pack is coming to the game next week.

This DLC pack will focus on Namco's contributions to Atari's consoles throughout the 80's including the infamous version of Pac-Man for the Atari 2600. The great part of course is that we will get a brand new timeline added to the interactive documentary which will include new interviews, archival footage, pictures, documents and more. 

The DLC pack is called the Namco Legendary Pack and will include 14 game including the following...

• Pac-Man (Atari 2600)
• Pac-Man (Atari 5200)
• Pac-Man (Atari 8bit)
• Dig Dug (Atari 2600)
• Dig Dug (Atari 5200)
• Dig Dug (Atari 7800)
• Dig Dug (Atari 8bit)
• Dig Dug (Arcade)
• Galaga (7800)
• Galaxian (2600)
• Galaxian (5200)
• Galaxian (Atari 8bit)
• Xevious (2600)
• Xevious (7800)

The Namco Legendary Pack for Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration will launch on November 13th for $7.99. 

Dispatch has been a hot topic in the GN Slack. While the review is still incoming, the staff who have dipped their toes in are loving the game and storytelling. Well there is more story to tell with episodes 5 & 6 having just released and the season finale incoming next week, November 12th. 

Dispatch is an episodic office adventure. You play the part of an out of commission super hero tasked with working the phone dispatch for the rest of the team. With your super suit of mech armor destroyed, your new team is actually a crew of former villains in a rehab program. The game is made by AdHoc Studio, which itself was a spin off from talent that left Telltale Games. So you know the team has a lot of talent to make great episodic content as Telltale was infamous for. Well, they are delivering on that promise as early signs are overwhelmingly positive, with a 9.3 User Score on Metacritic, 93% positive reviews on Steam, and 4.95 out of 5 stars on the PlayStation Store. 

Dispatch is available on PC via Steam or PS5 via the PS Store, links above. 

After Nintendo told everyone that the Nintendo Switch 2 sold 10 million, they bookended the reveal by also saying they would start focusing more on Nintendo Switch 2 games. Somewhere jammed in the middle, they also revealed that Donkey Kong Bananza sold 3.49 Million Copies, between July and September. That is...well...you know. 

With that comes a new game in the Legend of Zelda series, and the third of the Hyrule Warriors games. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment. This game is part of the Imprisoning War where Zelda had to push back and lock Ganondorf away. It's a prequel and a sequel all in one. This takes place during The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, even though Zelda has been transported to the past. Nintendo is calling this one canonical, and I'm going to let them. 

I haven't got my hands on it yet, as I'm still waiting on the Nintendo Switch 2 version of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, but that's another story. You can check out the non spoiler teaser/release video below. I think Zelda fans will love it. I just gotta get past that $70 price tag. There's also no "Link" in this game, but rest assured you can play as Zelda, King Rauru, and plenty of others from the TOTK universe. 

Avatar Legends won't be available until Summer 2026 but people will be able to get their chance to play it early as a closed alpha was announced for the game last week. Today, the developers have announced the dates for the closed alpha and how to sign up. 

The closed alpha playlist will include four characters including Aang, Katara, Zuko and Korra and will run from December 5th through December 7th.

The playtest will be available for North and South America only, including Hawaii, Alaska, Central America and the Caribbean. There will however be a second closed alpha playtest next year that will be open for the entire world. 

You can sign up for the closed alpha test on their official website. 

With Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 now less than two weeks out from launch, the next installment in the franchise is what's on the forefront of fans' minds. However, a significant development has been made in the Call of Duty cinematic endeavor. Yes, if you haven't heard - Call of Duty is getting a movie; and the publisher and studio have announced the creative talent that will bring the project to life.  Peter Berg, Taylor Sheridan, and David Glasser have teamed up to direct, write, and produce the film; mostly in that order. Berg will write, direct, and produce - a real triple threat. Berg created the Friday Night Lights series and directed numeropus projects including films Lone Survivor, Deepwater Horizon, and Patriots Day. Most importantly he played Dexter Rutecki in the early 90s cult classic Aspen Extreme - if you know, you know. Sheridan will write and produce; he also a historty of some pretty decent work including Yellowstone among others. Glasser is just getting a producer credit, but what is most interesting about the whole affair is what this crew is going to do with the film.

Call of Duty is a cultural behemoth, not just as a shooting game, but its one that has its fair share of really great narrative elements interspersed into the campaigns over the years. All Ghillied Up and No Russian aren't just two of the best levels in any Call of Duty, they are two of the best levels in gaming history. And the gang of Cpt. Price, Ghost, and Soap MacTavish are an awesome trio to build a story around. So what are Berg, Sheridan, and Glasser going to do? Stick to the characters we know? I doubt they will just replay story elements that have already been tread but will they throw a few easter eggs in there? Or do something totally different? 

When it boils down to it, the Call of Duty movie could be any other generic war movie; but then it won't really be a Call of Duty movie, would it? It'll be interesting to see how it all shakes out. And when it comes around to start casting roles...

Like a lot of the gaming community, I've become obsessed with Dispatch. The new episodic game by AdHoc Studio - which is staffed by a subset of former Telltale developers - tells the ongoing story of Robert Robertson, an Iron Man-type hero that has fallen on hard times when his mech suit goes belly up during a showdown with a supervillain. To make ends meet (and to possibly get some free work done on his super suit), Robert joins SDN, the Superhero Dispatch Network, as a dispatcher.

(Spoilers below? Maybe? WHY AREN'T YOU CAUGHT UP?)

As a dispatcher, Robert must man a desk, taking incoming calls from SDN subscribers and sending out appropriate heroes to meet their needs. Kaiju attacking the city? Send someone strong enough to handle that fight. Need a pretty face to charm some possible investors? Send someone with a high charisma rating. Each of the misfit heroes on your roster has inherent strengths and weaknesses, which you can either develop or mitigate by investing points when they perform well at their assigned duties. As you assign them to tasks, the heroes chatter amongst themselves, cracking jokes (mostly at your expense) and moving the story along.

That all seems pretty fun, but it quickly becomes clear that the game is rigged. Starting with the third episode (four out of a total eight are now released), it becomes obvious that Dispatch is setting the player up to fail for story reasons. In Episode 3, a cut is going to be made to the team, with the hero that performs the worst getting slashed from the roster. As a result, all of the deeply flawed heroes start sabotaging each other in the field, causing all sorts of trouble for poor Robert. Assignments start failing left and right, causing heroes to get grounded (they can only fail so many times a shift), which reduces the roster, which causes more of them to fail. This cascading disaster causes the entire shift to fall with a thud, leaving the player scrambling, unable to keep up with the barrage of requests.

Now, here's the thing. I know I'm supposed to fail at this. It is vital to the story that I do poorly. I suspect my poor performance in Episode Four is scripted as well. And, in terms of the overall game, it seems to not matter even slightly how well I do at the actual act of dispatching heroes. The game rolls forward whether I stink up the place or not.

The real game at play here is Robert's interactions with the other heroes; the story beats are what matters. The dispatch interface is just a bunch of interactive video game theater. It is ultimately meaningless. But I can't stop trying to succeed. The gamer in me wants to do well, even to the point where I've been tempted to start an episode over just so I can beat Dispatch at it's own game - which I'm fairly sure is impossible. By stacking the deck and then hinting around that it doesn't matter at all anyhow, Dispatch is totally playing with my gamer emotions.

Of course, Dispatch is playing with my other emotions as well. In addition to being pretty much the best animated superhero show this year, Dispatch is also a game, and in Episodes Three and Four, it finally got around to letting the player make some decisions that feel like they matter. At the end of Episode Three, the player gets to decide between two characters to cut from the team. And in Episode Four, we get down to the real nitty-gritty, as we get to determine for Robert which of the two love interests he is going to pursue. (You get to choose a new hero to add to the team as well, but that's not what we are here for.)

There are two superhero love interest options, and it's not even a choice, y'all. Reformed villain Invisigal is super into me. She is clearly the only choice.

The other option, SDN Branch Manager Blonde Blazer, rebuffed my initial advances, and then she's been playing this quiet long game ever since. Dropping little hints, letting me zip her up in her overly revealing dress. I mean, fine, if there are no other options. I suppose I can play the long game too. GN's Randy Kalista also points out that Blue Blazer might ultimately break bad, with her "I have to drink a ton to feel anything" schtick. But there are other options, and I don't need to get dragged into all that mess.

Not when Invisigal is right there, all messed up and funny, and saying things like "I had a dream we were banging". (Except she doesn't say "banging".) She's giving my rear the once-over when I'm trying to work, and it doesn't even come off as creepy. There is no way I'm going to pick Miss By-The-Book-Maybe-A-Ticking-Time-Bomb Blazer when there is someone with an actual sense of humor standing right there staring me down. C'mon, y'all. Keep it real.

I guess the overall point I'm getting at is that I'm doing my best to be less invested in my work performance at SDA, while becoming slightly concerned about how invested I am in my superhero love life.

Did Dispatch trick me? Am...am I playing a dating simulator?