Games would be first held in Africa if bid successful
East-coast city preferred to Johannesburg and Cape Town
South Africa on Thursday announced the east coast city of Durban as its preferred candidate to host the first Olympics in Africa.
South Africa is bidding to host the 2036 or 2040 Summer Olympics and Paralympics. The International Olympic Committee will choose the host city for 2036 in mid-2029.
Liquid Static Studio; PC You take on the role of flight attendant in this clever and absorbing retro-style game that veers from daft horror spoof to genuinely disturbing
There was always something creepy about the job-simulator genre. All those mindless automatons queueing up to use your bus, bar or bed store, or whatever workplace you are trapped in for the duration of the game. The endless repetitive tasks. The emptiness of the world beyond your corporate existence. Together, these elements scream existential terror … which is perhaps why we are now seeing a new indie sub-genre of job sim horror games, including Home Safety Hotline, Dredge and more recently, Grease Trap ’99, a Lovecraftian mystery set in a Scottish chip shop.
Now, we have Night Plane, in which you take on the role of a flight attendant on a jumbo jet to hell. It all starts kind of normally. You turn up for the first day of your new job, meet your colleagues, then take your spot at the departure gate, checking in customers and being careful to root out anyone with invalid tickets. Once on the plane, you roll your trolley down the aisle, serving booze and inedible meals, and occasionally dealing with passenger complaints. Then the plane crashes and, frankly, it all goes downhill from there.
Bereaved families have urged the publisher of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 to remove a clip from the game that shows a figure performing CPR and bodies lying in the street
Bereaved families in South Korea have demanded that the makers of Call of Duty remove harrowing footage of the deadly 2022 Seoul crowd crush from the latest instalment of the video game.
The clips, which are seconds-long, appear in the opening moments of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, and are used to represent a scenario of civilian casualties during a fictional North Korean invasion.
AI tools are making it easier to modify and recreate games, raising questions about piracy, copyright and how far the technology could disrupt the industry
If your social media algorithms have clocked that you’re into video games, something strange will have happened in the past few weeks. Your feed, like mine, will have been full of clips of streamers playing bizarre mashups of popular video games. Skyrim in Minecraft. Halo, except the main character is Mario. Skate 2 in Call of Duty maps. A flood of professional-looking fan-coded game mods that are mildly interesting to look at for 30 seconds, but ultimately inconsequential. Would I download a mod that lets me play Wii Bowling inside a zombie shooter? No, but I am very interested in where they came from.
Of course, the answer – or at least, most of the answer – is AI. After a week of researching this (thanks especially to Replay Mode on YouTube for this informative video, which set me down this track) I now understand that these mashup mods are not just AI-generated videos, but AI-assisted coding. Basically, as of a few weeks ago, Anthropic’s Claude has become extremely good at decompiling video game code. Games are written by humans in readable code and then compiled into binary 1s and 0s that the PC or console running it can read; decompiling is the reversal of that process, revealing a game’s source code, which humans can then edit and mess around with for fun. This used to be an extremely laborious process. But now it is not, because humans aren’t doing much of it any more.
Whether you favour spooky fairtales, satanic card games or infernal hijinks at the chip shop there are all manner of fresh top scarers at large this witching season
Tis almost All Hallows’ Eve and naturally, the thoughts of all good video game players are turning to horror. 2026 has already been a bloody good year for the genre with Resident Evil Requiem and Silent Hill: Townfall leading the rabble. But this autumn sees a festering surge of indie horror releases, featuring everything from cursed card games to Nazi-hunting penguins. Here are eight terrifying titles we think you should sample while jack-o-lanterns burn and spirits walk the moonlit streets.
We all know the highlights of the tomb raider’s storied career – but what about the lowlights? We dig deep to unearth the archaeologist’s less glorious moments
Happy birthday, Lara! This month marks 30 years since Ms Croft first swan-dived into our lives with her unique blend of athletic prowess, archaeological expertise and giant knockers. More than 100 million Tomb Raider games have been sold since. We all remember the good times: the bold design and sheer playability of the original titles; the establishment of Lara as a 90s icon, embodying both lads’ mag culture and girl power; the way she made games cool, even appearing on the cover of the Face. We’ve had blockbuster movies, big budget reboots, and shiny reissues. And who could forget the time we got to powerwash her house?
But no one gets to 30 without a few skeletons in the closet – or in Lara’s case, butlers in the freezer. So here’s a look at the darker parts of her past.
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