12 h. ago Best audio accessories for gaming 2025: Speakers, headphones, gaming chairs and more reviewed

Upgrade your gaming with audio accessories for all. Stuart Pritchard has more than a few sonorous suggestions

Politics

55 h. ago Lionesses line up four friendlies in Homecoming Series after Euro 2025 glory

Sarina Wiegman’s side will embark on a round of fixtures with their first game since Euro 2025 glory coming in October

Politics

61 h. ago Chess: Erdogmus, 14 , wins ‘Immortal’ game on Silk Road as Grand Swiss nears climax

The ‘Turkish Immortal’ allowed two white queens on the board, then sacrificed the black queen for a pawn, followed by checkmate by a previously unmoved black pawnThere were two new frontrunners on Thursday at the $625,000 Grand Swiss in Samarkand on the ancient Silk Road, after Iran’s Parham Maghsoodloo, who had led for the first six rounds, was beaten. The top two finishers after 11 rounds will qualify for the 2026 Candidates and a potential title shot at the shaky crown of the world champion, Gukesh Dommaraju.Leaders after round seven were Nihal Sarin (India) and Matthias Blübaum (Germany) 5.5, Maghsoodloo (Iran), Abhimanyu Mishra and Hans Niemann (US), Anish Giri (Netherlands), Alireza Firouzja (France), Nodirbek Abdusattorov (Uzbekistan) and Vidit Gujrathi (India) 5. Continue reading...

Politics

3 d. ago Uefa delays decision on allowing domestic games abroad and vows to consult fans

Uefa describes it as an ‘important and growing issue’Barcelona and Milan lined up for league matches abroadUefa has postponed a decision on whether to allow domestic league matches to be played abroad and promised a consultation with “all stakeholders including fans” regarding the controversial plans.The move casts uncertainty over proposals to play Villarreal v Barcelona and Milan v Como in the US and Australia respectively this season. Consultation is expected to begin soon, however, perhaps leaving the door open for those matches to go ahead there. Continue reading...

Sport

3 d. ago Ben Proud admits ‘huge financial incentive’ is behind decision to join Enhanced Games

Swimmer is first British athlete to sign up for eventProud: ‘These are opportunities I cannot pass by at 30’Olympic swimming silver medallist Ben Proud, the first British athlete to sign up for the Enhanced Games, has accepted he risks sullying his reputation but admitted he is chiefly motivated by the potential huge financial rewards in the twilight of his career.The swimmer told the BBC Today programme on Thursday: “There’s a huge financial incentive with this and I would be lying if I said it didn’t matter. If you look at the facts it would take me 13 years of winning world championship titles just to earn what I can win at one competition at the Enhanced Games. Continue reading...

Politics

3 d. ago EA Sports FC 26 preview – new play styles aim to tackle Fifa challenge

After a lacklustre response to the 2025 edition, the game has gone all out to engage players and respond to user feedbackIn an open office space somewhere inside the vast Electronic Arts campus in Vancouver, dozens of people are gathered around multiple monitors playing EA Sports FC 26. Around them, as well as rows of football shirts from leagues all over the world, are PCs and monitors with staff watching feeds of the matches. The people playing are from EA’s Design Council, a group of pro players, influencers and fans who regularly come in to play new builds, ask questions and make suggestions. These councils have been running for years, but for this third addition to the EA Sports FC series, the successor to EA’s Fifa games, their input is apparently being treated more seriously than ever.The message to journalists, invited here to get a sneak look at the game, is that a lacklustre response to EA Sports FC 25 has meant that addressing user feedback is the main focus. EA has set u...

Politics

4 d. ago PS Plus Extra and Premium September 2025 games announced as Persona 5 Tactica and WWE 2K25 join

The PS Plus Extra and Premium September games have been officially announced by PlayStation in a new blog post. Here's everything coming to the service on Tuesday, September 16

Politics

4 d. ago Cronos: The New Dawn review – survival horror is dead on arrival

PC, PS5, Xbox, Switch 2; Bloober TeamAn intriguing setup sees an unnamed protagonist time-travel to discover the origins of a devastating outbreak, but a stingy inventory and one-sided battles lead to frustrationBloober Team, the Polish developer behind 2021’s hugely underrated psycho-thriller The Medium and last year’s excellent Silent Hill 2 remake, clearly understands that there is an established, almost comforting rhythm to survival horror games. It’s baffling, then, to see this latest game excel in so many areas while failing spectacularly on several of the genre’s most basic tenets.You play an unnamed traveller, the latest of many, sent to gather information about a devastating outbreak that transformed the citizens of a town called New Dawn into the sort of misshapen monsters that have become the staple of sci-fi-adjacent survival horror: contorted of limb, long of fang, and ample of slobber. As you explore the stark, often beautifully devastated aftermath of the outbreak, yo...

Events

4 d. ago McDonald's full menu for Monopoly game 2025 and how to 'boost your chances'

McDonald's has brought back its Monopoly game for 2025 and it's now available in all restaurants

Politics

4 d. ago Hollow Knight: Silksong has caused bedlam in the gaming world – and the hype is justified

In this week’s newsletter: the long-awaited release from the three-person Team Cherry studio has crashed gaming storefronts and put indie developers back in the spotlightJust one game has been dominating the gaming conversation over the past week: Hollow Knight Silksong, an eerie, atmospheric action game from a small developer in Australia called Team Cherry. It was finally released last Thursday after many years in development, and everybody is loving it. Hollow Knight was so popular that it crashed multiple gaming storefronts. With continual game cancellations, expensive failures and layoffs at bigger studios, this is the kind of indie triumph the industry loves to celebrate at the moment. But Silksong hasn’t come out of nowhere, and its success would not be easily reproducible for any other game, indie or not.If you’re wondering what this game actually is, then imagine a dark, mostly underground labyrinth of bug nests and abandoned caverns that gradually yields its secrets to a d...

Politics

5 d. ago ITV shares huge Big Brother announcement as the 'game is changing'

ITV has teased the "game is changing" ahead of Big Brother 2025.

Politics

5 d. ago Australia retain Soccer Ashes as Toure and Irankunda strike against New Zealand

Socceroos defeat All Whites 3-1 in AucklandAny thoughts? Get in touch with an email3 mins: The All Whites go searching for an opening down the left flank but neither is able to connect a series of passes during a messy opening.1 min: A cagey opening as the Socceroos lose the ball in their attacking third and the All Whites knock it around the back. Continue reading...

Events

5 d. ago New Zealand v Australia: international men’s football friendly – live

Updates from the Socceroos v All Whites clash in AucklandKick-off time at Go Media Stadium is 7pm local/5pm AESTAny thoughts? Get in touch with an email3 mins: The All Whites go searching for an opening down the left flank but neither is able to connect a series of passes during a messy opening.1 min: A cagey opening as the Socceroos lose the ball in their attacking third and the All Whites knock it around the back. Continue reading...

Society

6 d. ago PS Plus Extra and Premium September 2025 reveal date and what to expect from the new drop

The PS Plus Extra and Premium September 2025 games are set to be revealed soon, and players are hoping for some big titles to be added to the service's top tier

Politics

6 d. ago Are smartphones eroding the experience of watching football?

Phones make everything easier but they have bred impatience and diluted the escapism of going to gamesBy Nutmeg magazineIn November 1980, I was 13 and making my way to Firhill from East Kilbride alone, arriving at the game to discover there was no manager in the dugout. It seemed very strange but, as I went on my own and was too shy to speak to anyone while I was there, it wasn’t until the next day that I found out via the Sunday Mail that Bertie Auld had resigned and gone to Hibs.The news was devastating. Bertie was my first manager, in charge for all the years I’d been a supporter, all of them in the Premier League. Now he’d gone and nobody had told me. Continue reading...

Politics

9 d. ago Drugs, diet and AI: the ‘gamechanger’ new findings on tackling heart conditions

Five areas of focus at world’s largest heart conference said to mark ‘turning point’ in cardiology and patient careDoctors, scientists and researchers have shared new findings on ways to tackle heart conditions at the 2025 European Society of Cardiology annual meeting, the world’s largest heart conference.The event in Madrid was attended by 33,000 health professionals from 169 countries. More than 1,100 sessions featured “gamechanger” research, new guidelines and groundbreaking trials. Continue reading...

Events

1 week ago These are the seriously flattering autumn looks that are flying off the shelves at the supermarket from as little as £14... and how you can take advantage

Fast-forward to autumn 2025 and the big four have seriously stepped up their sartorial game, with designer-inspired pieces that look expensive, but are a steal compared to High Street prices.

Economics

1 week ago Forget Tomb Raider and Uncharted, there’s a new generation of games about archaeology – sort of

In this week’s newsletter: an archaeologist and gamer on why we love to walk around finding objects in-game and in real lifeThe game I’m most looking forward to right now is Big Walk, the latest title from House House, creators of the brilliant Untitled Goose Game. A cooperative multiplayer adventure where players are let loose to explore an open world, I’m interested to see what emergent gameplay comes out of it. Could Big Walk allow for a kind of community archaeology with friends? I certainly hope so.When games use environmental storytelling in their design – from the positioning of objects to audio recordings or graffiti – they invite players to role play as archaeologists. Game designer Ben Esposito infamously joked back in 2016 that environmental storytelling is the “art of placing skulls near a toilet” – which might have been a jab at the tropes of games like the Fallout series, but his quip demonstrates how archaeological gaming narratives can be. After all, the incongruity ...

Politics

1 week ago Ghost of Yōtei: a determined outsider seeks revenge in feudal Japan

The makers of the forthcoming open-world adventure explain how new gameplay features and an extra-resourceful sword-wielding protagonist set it apart from 2020 predecessor Ghost of TsushimaAtsu is no samurai. The lead character in Ghost of Yōtei is a wandering sellsword from a lowly family. Her sex and lack of status mean that, following the murders of her family, she has no fixed place in 17th-century Japanese society, and there is no permitted path for her to tread if she is to get revenge on the Yōtei Six, the men who killed her loved ones. As the game’s co-director Nate Fox puts it, “Atsu is not somebody who walks in to a room and people pay respect to.”Yōtei’s predecessor, Sucker Punch Productions’ 2020 sprawling open-world game Ghost of Tsushima, is the story of a samurai, Jin Sakai, who shreds his honour to defend his homeland. Jin can’t repel the Mongols attacking Tsushima as a noble warrior, but as “the Ghost”, a fear-inspiring legend willing to use any dirty tactic to gain...

Politics

1 week ago World Rugby urges men to learn from women’s game on engaging with fans

‘More personality creates more stars,’ says rugby chiefSell outs expected at four weekend World Cup gamesThe head of World Rugby has urged the men’s game to learn lessons from how players at the Women’s Rugby World Cup have shown off their personalities and interacted more with fans.Alan Gilpin also suggested that World Rugby would be preparing a dossier of “great facts and stats” to show teams at the men’s World Cup in 2027 that engaging more with supporters would not take the edge off their performances. Continue reading...

Sport