At the time of writing, Sons of the Forest has well over 200,000 concurrent players on Steam (opens in new tab), making it the platform’s fourth most-played game right now behind CS:GO, Dota 2, and Hogwarts Legacy. It’s also currently the most-watched game on Twitch (opens in new tab).

The open world survival game is a follow-up to 2018’s The Forest, which stranded players on a cannibal-filled island after a plane crash. Sons of the Forest sends us to another forested island, this time in search of a missing billionaire, and it’s just our luck that this island is also full of mutant cannibals.

As is the modern survival game way, chopping down trees is an essential activity in Sons of the Forest, which’ll see us build more and more complex weapons and buildings as we progress. However, there’s an interesting addition to the survival formula here: NPC companions who can help us out with the less-exciting survival tasks, like, say, chopping down trees.

PC Gamer’s Chris Livingston jumped into Sons of the Forest as soon as he had it downloaded, and I’m not sure what he’s up to right now, but he was holding his own severed head in the first screenshot he showed us (above), so I assume things are going well and he’s getting lots of trees chopped.

Sons of the Forest costs $30 on Steam (opens in new tab), and we’ll let you know how we’re getting on with it soon. The Steam user reviews are currently “Very Positive,” but the game’s only been out for a few hours, and it’s the kind of thing people will likely want to put tens or hundreds of hours into.

The developer expects Sons of the Forest to hang out in early access for “6-8 months,” and says the final version will include bug fixes, improvements to “balance and core gameplay,” more stuff to craft, build, and discover, and “additional game mechanics and lore.”

Atomic Heart is developed by Mundfish, a Russian studio with alleged ties to the Russian government (opens in new tab). It’s a complex issue, but the short version is that Mundfish is backed by a company founded by a former deputy general of Gazprom, Russia’s state-run energy behemoth, and distributed by VKPlay, which is effectively controlled by Gazprom.

There are other, less concrete connections and claims, but the bottom line, as Joshua Wolens explained in our overview of the controversy (opens in new tab), is that “it seems unlikely that no money earned by Mundfish and its investors from Atomic Heart’s sales will end up in the pockets of the Russian state, if only by taxation on whatever interests they still have in the country.” Atomic Heart is also full of Soviet kitsch, and the lead character is a literal KGB agent, which doesn’t sit well with everyone, although Rich Stanton said in our review (opens in new tab) that the game critiques Russian exceptionalism

Ukraine’s decision to request that sales of Atomic Heart be suspended was first reported by Dev.ua (opens in new tab) (Google translated (opens in new tab)) and was confirmed today in an English-language statement sent to PC Gamer.

“The Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine will send an official letter to Sony, Microsoft, and Valve requesting a ban on selling digital versions of this game in Ukraine,” deputy minister of digital transformation Alex Bornyakov said. “We also urge limiting the distribution of this game in other countries due to its toxicity, potential data collection of users, and the potential use of money raised from game purchases to conduct a war against Ukraine.

“According to media reports, the game’s development was funded by Russian enterprises and banks sanctioned and have systemic importance to the Russian government. Therefore, we call for all users worldwide to avoid this game. We also want to emphasize that the game developers have not publicly condemned the Putin regime and the bloody war that Russia has unleashed against Ukraine.”

That’s true: Mundfish has described itself as “a pro-peace organization against violence against people,” but it has not spoken out against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. What’s less clear is the reason for its silence on that front: Russia is not particularly well-known for tolerating dissent, and even if Mundfish doesn’t actually support the war, it’s not hard to imagine that criticism of the regime could lead to a loss of funding and the dissolution of the company.

Bornyakov said the ministry was prompted to call for the ban by “a public request from the Ukrainian gaming community,” and that it could ask for proscriptions of other Russian-made games if they’re found to have comparable connections to the Russian government.

“If similar facts are observed in relation to other games, we will react to this situation,” Bornyakov said.

Atomic Heart has been largely well-received critically—we called it “a beautiful, flawed, and deeply weird Soviet Westworld” in our 78% review (opens in new tab)—but it’s also been roundly criticized for a number of issues beyond its possible support of the Russian government: One of the Soviet-era cartoons seen in the game features a racist caricature, and some observers have said that the highly sexualized robot twins in the game are based on Yulia Tymoshenko, the leader of Ukraine’s pro-Western Batkivshchyna party. Others say that the hairstyle is common throughout central Europe, however, and not unique to Tymoshenko.

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In January, Mundfish also denied that it was harvesting data for the Russian government, an allegation made following the discovery of a clause in its digital store terms of service saying that user data could be collected and submitted to Russian state authorities including the tax office and the Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the KGB. Mundfish told GamesRadar (opens in new tab) that the data cited in the report was “outdated and wrong,” however, and that neither the website nor the game actually collect any user data. 

The Ministry of Digital Transformation didn’t say when it will issue the call to halt sales of Atomic Heart in Ukraine, and so far there’s been no public comment from Valve, Sony, or Microsoft on the request. I’ve reached out to all three for more information and will update if I receive a reply.

Remember when predicting (guessing) the big Steam sale dates was basically a national pastime? It seems so long ago, and frankly a little bit weird in hindsight. (It was also very stressful for those of us tasked with writing Steam sale announcement news.) Now, though, we can plan our whole year in advance, because Valve has revealed the dates for every Steam sale and fest coming in 2023 (opens in new tab).

Valve changed its Steam sale structure (opens in new tab) in September 2022, cutting the Lunar New Year sale from its schedule in favor of a more evenly spaced seasonal schedule. The reasoning was simple: Lunar New Year sales typically dropped just a few weeks after the wallet-demolishing Winter sales, and it was just too much Steam sale in too little time. 

The Finals, a multiplayer FPS from the ex-Battlefield devs at Embark Studios, is holding a closed beta test soon. That’s exciting news, considering we haven’t heard much about the game since its last closed test in October. The closed beta will run a full two weeks, from March 7 to March 21. 

Embark is taking sign ups for closed beta through The Finals Steam page (opens in new tab). Just click the “Request Access” button in the “Join the The Finals Playtest” box to sign up. You’ll be alerted through Steam if you get in. In the meantime, there’s a new gameplay trailer (opens in new tab) to behold.

You see, I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole. A deep, strange, musical rabbit hole. I’ve been on a real rhythm game kick these last two months, my love for the genre revived by too many weekends holed up in my local arcade playing Dance Dance Revolution and Maimai. In an attempt to bring that love back home with me, I reinstalled DJ Max. It’s a game that initially didn’t resonate with me, but I’ve been grinding it out pretty hard since the new year.

Super Sentai

It started simply enough. I was going through different songs with friends, making use of the game’s pretty sweet multiplayer lobby function. I’d already caved and bought a few song packs to broaden my library, trying my best to become comfortable with difficult four-button note charts while my friends casually aced eight or ten-button ones.

Then, it happened. My friend scrolled past a song called NB Ranger – Virgin Force. Naturally, in all my maturity as a 27-year-old woman, I had a little giggle at the name. “Virgin Force? Like, virgin virgins?” I remember half-jokingly asking my friend. Imagine my surprise when, with no hesitation, he replied “yup.”

Something I hadn’t had tons of time to pay attention to while grinding away at each song was the music videos that play in the background. Every single song in DJ Max has an accompanying video—rest in peace to my hard drive taken up by all these video files—and NB Ranger – Virgin Force was no different.

Turns out yeah, these are literally Power Ranger-type dudes who hate relationships. The story appears to follow the red ranger, the rest of his comrades lost to girlfriends and other things that are totally against the NB Ranger ethos. But it’s fine, because the red ranger is still around to sabotage relationships and ensure no two people can successfully be in love. Until, I’m pretty sure, he falls in love himself. He gets a girlfriend and even seems to have a child.

This spurs on the rest of the force to return and bring their brother back to the way of the NB Ranger. For some reason, they deal with this by hitting his girlfriend with a laser that turns her into a giant. The squad then turn into one mega-ranger, taking her down once and for all.

I was so bewildered and weirdly into whatever was happening, but I assumed it was an isolated incident. Nope! There are a ton of NB Ranger songs (opens in new tab) that span years of DJ Max games, like the very first one that shows the sexless squad ruining numerous dates. They incinerate flowers, terrorise couples on a ferris wheel and have a wee cry while doing it. But then the sequel introduces a girl ranger, for whom the entire crew seem to battle with their morals to win over. Not only are they fighting each other over their desire to smooch a hot lady, but doing it in their own selfish pursuit of also wanting to smooch her. There’s even a version where the squad are all girls instead!

I’ve become so disgustingly fascinated with it all, and I’ve been determined to dive into more weird bits of lore. I noticed that DJ Max has two mascots in El Clear and El Fail. Two sides of the same coin, the former being a cheerfully good mascot while the latter is a little chaos goblin who I adore. I assumed they’d always been present in the series, but turns out they’ve only been around for a few years. After more digging, I discovered they’re a split reincarnation of a mascot from DJ Max Portable on the PSP called EL. Who the hell even thought of all this?

Why am I rambling to you all about bizarre lore from a game I didn’t even think would have it? I think there’s something super neat about spending time with a game and finding all its strange quirks and story that you wouldn’t have even known about without doing a bit of digging. There’s a weird satisfaction that comes from knowing all these strange facts and background for different characters and songs, and I’ve loved seeing discussion over on the DJ Max Discord and conversations with my own friends. Uncovering secrets in games is always a ton of fun, but even moreso when you weren’t even expecting any in the first place.