Highguard made a bewildering debut at The Game Awards in December, with a brief trailer that didn't really make a compelling argument for how the FPS would be distinct from its competitors. Amid endless live service deaths over the past few years, the gaming world mostly seemed to discuss Highguard as if its failure was already assured – and the early Steam reviews suggest that something of a self-fulfilling prophecy is underway.

As I write this just a few hours after launch, there are well over 9,000 Highguard reviews on Steam, and just 20% of them are positive, marking the response as "Mostly Negative." That number will likely shift in the days to come, but that score is currently among the worst ratings applied to any game on Steam. It also launched to a peak of 97,249 concurrent Steam players, as SteamDB shows, which puts it among the daily peaks of titles like Valve's own Deadlock.

Many of those negative reviews complain of typical launch day woes, like server instability, poor performance on certain systems, or its use of the controversial kernel-level anti-cheat that underlies many modern multiplayer titles. Other poor reviews are memes. There seems to be some sentiment going around that it's "woke" for reasons I find even more difficult to parse than usual.

But there are plenty of reviews talking about the game itself. Much of the more direct criticism suggests that the map is far too big for the 3v3 format, with the pace of play getting severely bogged down. Others seem to be finding the TTK out of balance, or the gunplay wonky. But, it's important to note, many of those reviews are coming with barely an hour played.

I've got no idea if Highguard is good or not – and as somebody who absolutely Does Not Get competitive shooters, I likely never will. And I've definitely played plenty of games that I quickly clocked as being terrible within minutes of putting my hands on them. But there's a certain glee around the takedown of Highguard that I find deeply off-putting, and I hope the game itself can somehow display its merits outside the cloud of discourse that's lingered over it since The Game Awards.

"I wish Highguard had been received better," CEO admits, after cancelling a planned Apex Legends-style shadow drop when Geoff Keighley said "let me do something."

Some good news for Americans who like going to bed on time: the final two episodes of Fallout Season 2 are being aired earlier than we thought. Instead of broadcasting on Prime Video at midnight Pacific Time on Tuesday nights, episodes 7 and 8 will air six hours earlier.

That means west coasters in the US can watch the show's last two episodes around dinner time on January 27 and February 3, and the east coast can watch them in the early evening instead of in the morning. As for Europe… well, now you need to stay up extremely late or get up quite a bit earlier if you want to catch them the moment they become available.

"Good morning, Vault Dwellers!" Fallout's official X account posted today. "Due to strong participation and interest, we have amended the start times for the remaining Season Two presentations. Episode Seven will now begin Tuesday, Jan. 27 at 6 p.m. PT, and Episode Eight will now begin Tuesday, Feb. 3 at 6 p.m. PT. Your punctuality is appreciated!"

I think this time change is a good move because the sooner we get the last two episodes the better, even if it's just by a matter of hours. I don't know about you, but I've become less content with watching TV shows that release one episode per week, much preferring the binge model. What can I say? I'm an impatient glutton.

It's especially rough when we get a particularly short episode, and if you snip out the opening recap and closing credits of Fallout Season 2 Episode 6, the running time was barely 43 minutes long! That's not enough Fallout to tide us over for a whole week. Hopefully, these last two episodes will be long ones, too.

As a bonus, Prime also released a pretty dope-ass poster for Fallout Season 2:

"Who would win in a fight, this guy or this guy" is one of the most worthy questions you can ask, so I love those YouTube channels that do NPC battle royales⁠—the Oblivion Imperial City Arena walked so these guys could run. The channel "Elden Ring Fights" is exactly what it says on the tin, and it recently uploaded a banger: Dark Souls' Artorias vs. the bosses of base game Elden Ring.

FromSoft dusted off the venerable swordsman to serve as a boss in Elden Ring Nightreign's recent Deathly Forsaken Hollows DLC. He's effectively been "ported" to Elden Ring's iteration of the FromSoft game engine, allowing Elden Ring Fights to pit him against the Lands Between's finest.

And boy, for a battered veteran coming out of retirement, Artorias fares better than all those tomato cans they kept setting up in front of Jake Paul. Artorias went on an absolutely brutal tear through the bosses of Elden Ring: Early terrors like Margit and Godfrey don't stand a chance, with single hits from Abyss Artie chunking their health bars. If you have a real job and don't like watching 30-minute YouTube videos, here are the highlight battles I'd recommend skipping to:

• 8:22 - Maliketh the Black Blade
• 13:31 - Dragonlord Placidusax
• 16:53 - Radagon & Elden Beast
• 24:06 - Malenia

All four of these were fun to watch because they're quite dynamic, close fights. Maliketh delivers one of only two L's to Artorias, coming from behind in spectacular fashion in his second phase. I don't think I've ever once felt in control of the Maliketh battle across five playthroughs, and if he had a beefier health bar, I think he'd be the toughest guy FromSoft ever made.

Malenia is Malenia: The fact that she can be flinched gives her a huge disadvantage in these boss vs. boss battles, which do really boil down to facetank DPS races. But her health back on strikes, plus the (mostly) uninterruptible Waterfowl Dance, make up for it.

Placidusax and Elden Beast are notable for being come-from-behind victories for our boy in blue. His AI clearly wasn't designed to handle their mobility or brutal AoE attacks, not to mention the Radagon - Elden Beast fight's marathon nature. And yet, he still squeaked it out. The Fire Giant fight is similarly close, but it's a slog to watch.

I have absolutely no respect for Rykard, Lord of Blasphemy, née Praetor. He's a big dumb blob of snake with two health bars and an AOE fire damage effect, resulting in an unentertaining, unearned victory over Artorias. That's a Mickey Mouse title belt he's wearing, I tell you.

But this video also doesn't tell the full story: We don't know how Artorias fares against Shadow of the Erdtree bosses. Another Elden Ring Fights video shows him getting beat by Carian Knight Rellana in a different context, which doesn't bode well for his chances elsewhere. Still, Artorias risks sullying his legacy as a fighter, preserving a 20 - 2 - 0 record by not taking fights he might lose.