Video Game News Roundup – March 24, 2025
Welcome to our daily roundup of the latest video game news! Today’s highlights include:
- Noctua’s pumpless ‘thermosiphon’ liquid cooling unit is expected to be released in 2026 and has already given me a free lesson in basic thermodynamics
- All Assassin’s Creed Shadows allies and how to unlock them
- Dune requirements are here and we’ve got the latest preview
Let’s dive into the details of what’s happening in the world of gaming today.
Noctua’s pumpless ‘thermosiphon’ liquid cooling unit is expected to be released in 2026 and has already given me a free lesson in basic thermodynamics
Source: PC Gamer – March 24, 2026
Noctua is perhaps best known for its brown fans and conventional air coolers, but it might not be long until it makes its move into the liquid cooling world, too. Noctua founder, Roland Mossig, showed off the prototype of its pumpless thermosiphon cooling unit in Japan this weekend, and according to Japanese tech outlet Hermitage Akihabara it’s expected to be released in 2026. Our Jacob first took a look at the thermosiphon prototype at Computex last year, and came away impressed. Essentially it creates a vapour chamber-like effect by using heat emitted from the CPU to evaporate a refrigerant, which then moves up a vapour tube into a fan-cooled condenser, where it cools off, condenses back to a liquid state, and makes its way back to the CPU to be heated again—no pump required.
Read the full article at PC Gamer →
All Assassin’s Creed Shadows allies and how to unlock them
Source: PC Gamer – March 24, 2025
One of the surprise additions in Assassin’s Creed Shadows is the allies system, giving you six companions who can come to your aid. Each one has up to three abilities and passives once you’ve fully upgraded them, and the best news is that they’re not all designed specifically for combat as you’d expect. In fact, the stealth-focused ones are actually the most useful. It takes quite a while to unlock all AC Shadows allies, and it’s even possible to miss some of them as you need to make the right choices during certain quests. Don’t worry though, I’ll go over exactly what you need to do to unlock all six below.
Read the full article at PC Gamer →
Dune: Awakening system requirements are here, complete with Razer Sensa HD haptic support to ‘feel the rumble of your ornithopter’s seat’
Source: PC Gamer – March 24, 2025
Dune: Awakening, the upcoming Arrakis-set survival MMO based on Frank Herbert’s Dune series and the super-popular film franchise, is due for release on May 20. The good news for spice enthusiasts is that the system requirements look surprisingly light, although you’ll still need a decent chunk of storage space to contain all those bum-rumbling ornithopters. Oh yes, Dune: Awakening supports Razer Chroma RGB and Razer Sensa HD Haptics, meaning it can be synced up to the Razer Freyja haptic gaming cushion to vibrate your posterior—or as Funcom puts it, “feel the rumble of your ornithopter’s seat.” Our Nick used one for sim racing recently and enjoyed the results, so perhaps this game might deliver more glute-shaking giggles.
Read the full article at PC Gamer →
MSI has gone so heavy with 12V-2×6 power sockets in its latest high-end PSUs that many AMD and Intel graphics cards have no way of being powered
Source: PC Gamer – March 24, 2025
Nvidia’s 12VHPWR power connector, later updated to the 12V-2×6 format, has been at the centre of controversy since it first appeared on certain GeForce RTX 30-series cards four years ago. Now there’s a new chapter in its history, as MSI has become the first PSU manufacturer to all but abandon the evergreen 8-pin power connector in its latest top-end power supply units. Over the years, the power demands of a gaming PC have steadily increased and power supply units have followed suit by offering additional sockets for all the extra cables needed. Take any modern PSU and you’ll see multiple sockets for powering the CPU, motherboard, drives, and of course, the graphics card.
Read the full article at PC Gamer →
Gabe Newell had his eyes on a social network in the ’90s that ‘was not in a games context at all’—meaning Valve-owned social media could’ve been a very real thing
Source: PC Gamer – March 24, 2025
During the Game Developer’s Conference 2025, Monica Harrington—one of Valve’s founders and its first chief marketing officer, who once outright threatened Sierra over the rights to Half-Life—gave an illuminating talk on the company’s infancy. Before, of course, it became the goliath-felling company it is today. While this is interesting in itself—another fascinating snippet she shared was about how Gabe Newell, circa 1998 to the early 2000s, had his eyes set on a social network. Y’know, like Facebook, Instagram, or X. “Gabe had interesting ideas that had nothing to do with software,” Harrington said. “I mean, with games—and some of those would have been really interesting.”
Read the full article at PC Gamer →
The RTX 5060 and RTX 5060 Ti are rumoured to be mere weeks away, with board partners reportedly required to ensure at least one MSRP model at launch
Source: PC Gamer – March 24, 2025
In the world of GPUs, it’s always the top-end halo products that launch first and grab all the headlines, but when it comes to sales, the mainstream models matter the most. And it looks like Nvidia fans might not have much longer to wait, as it’s being reported that the launch of the RTX 5060 Ti is just two weeks away and card manufacturers are also required to have at least one MSRP model on retailer’s shelves too. News of the impending appearance of the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti was published by BenchLife via a post on X from wxnod, with April 16 being the official launch date.
Read the full article at PC Gamer →
Real-Life Japanese Shrine That Appeared in Ghost of Tsushima Bans All Tourists After ‘Grave and Unforgivable Act of Disrespect’
Source: IGN – March 24, 2025
After Japan’s Prime Minister responded to questions around Assassin’s Creed: Shadows and the risk of copycat “defacing” of shrines, the shrine linked to Ghost of Tsushima has banned all tourists after an “unforgivable act of disrespect.” Automaton reported on the Watazumi Shrine, a real-life Shinto shrine located on Japan’s Tsushima Island, which announced it had banned entry to anyone other than congregants and worshippers after what it called “a grave and unforgivable act of disrespect committed by foreigner(s).”
Ghost of Tsushima, released in 2020, brought worldwide attention to the Watazumi Shrine and is thought to have inspired the in-game Scarlet Rock Shrine.
Read the full article at IGN →
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle PS5 Release Date Trailer Sees Uncharted’s Nolan North Accept Indy’s Troy Baker Into an ‘Exclusive Club’ of Adventure Games on PlayStation
Source: IGN – March 24, 2025
Bethesda has announced that MachineGames’ Indiana Jones and The Great Circle launches on PlayStation 5 on April 15 for early access ahead of a global release on April 17. Those who pre-order get access to the early access. The PS5 release date, which comes four months after Indiana Jones and the Great Circle launched on Xbox and PC, was announced alongside a playful promo trailer that sees perhaps the two most famous video game actors in the world on-screen together. Play
In the trailer, Indiana Jones actor Troy Baker chats with Uncharted star Nolan North, who famously plays intrepid explorer Nathan Drake in the PlayStation-exclusive series.
Read the full article at IGN →
Ex-Warner Bros. Exec Reveals the Real Reason Shadow of Mordor’s Much-Loved Nemesis System Was Created
Source: IGN – March 24, 2025
Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor is remembered for many reasons, but perhaps best of all for its Nemesis system, an incredible mechanic for generating memorable Orc encounters. According to a former executive, the Nemesis system came about from trying to solve a different problem: secondhand sales. In a new video, Laura Fryer — former vice president of WB Games who oversaw the publisher’s Seattle studios at the time — talked about her time with Monolith. While discussing the way trend-chasing affects the industry, Fryer mentioned that chasing trends is what “literally led to the Nemesis system.” At the time, used game sales were a hot-button topic.
Read the full article at IGN →
Five new Steam games you probably missed (March 24, 2025)
Source: PC Gamer – March 24, 2025
On an average day about a dozen new games are released on Steam. And while we think that’s a good thing, it can be understandably hard to keep up with. Potentially exciting gems are sure to be lost in the deluge of new things to play unless you sort through every single game that is released on Steam. So that’s exactly what we’ve done. If nothing catches your fancy this week, we’ve gathered the best PC games you can play right now and a running list of the 2025 games that are launching this year.
Read the full article at PC Gamer →
Dune: Awakening promises us a breath of fresh air, skipping early access for a full launch with no monthly subscription in May
Source: PC Gamer – March 23, 2025
Dune: Awakening is only a couple months away from release, and its dev team just gave us a few new reasons to get excited, including a promise of free updates and no monthly subscription. This weekend, Funcom posted a video on Steam sharing more details on Dune: Awakening, which will open for pre-orders on Monday. Joel Bylos, Dune: Awakening Creative Director, outlined the highlights, stating, “The key things that you need to know about Dune: Awakening’s launch are that it will not launch in early access and it will not have a monthly subscription. It will receive regular free updates, including new content, new features, and quality-of-life improvements.”
Read the full article at PC Gamer →
By the way, you can have a ton of pets in Assassin’s Creed Shadows
Source: Polygon – March 24, 2025
You can pet every animal in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. In one of the greatest technological feats in recent computing memory, Ubisoft lets the player place functionally any animal in their Hideout. And then you can pet them: dogs, cats, monkeys, foxes, pigs, and deer alike. You unlock the Hideout early in the game. It’s a beautiful, peaceful home base for Naoe, and over the course of the game various recruits come to stay there, giving the Hideout a cozy, small town feel.
Read the full article at Polygon →
One of the worst games ever made is coming to Steam, but we won’t know how cruel this joke is until we see the price tag
Source: PC Gamer – March 23, 2025
Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, a canonical “bad videogame” with a 1/10 review from GameSpot and 8/100 score on Metacritic, is set to be re-released on Steam some time between April and June this year. The listing went live on March 22 according to SteamDB, and was subsequently shared to Twitter by popular gaming news account Wario64. Big Rigs’ original developer, Stellar Stone, is credited on the page, with original publisher GameMill replaced by newcomer Margarite Entertainment. In a pinned post on Big Rigs’ Steam discussion page, Margarite wrote that it had acquired the rights to Big Rigs and a few other “classic” (their word) games.
Read the full article at PC Gamer →
Join the Conversation
Which news caught your attention today? Are you more excited about Dune or Indiana Jones? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
