Issy van der Velde
I'm Issy, a freelancer who you'll now occasionally see ov𒉰er here covering news on GamesRadar. I've always had a passion for playing games, but I learned how to write about them while doing my Film and TV degrees at the University of Warwick and contributing to the student paper, The Boar. After university I worked at TheGamer before heading up the news section at Dot Esports. Now you'll find me freelancing for Rolling Stone, NME, Inverse, and many more places. I love all things horror, narrative-driven, and indie, and I mainly play on my 🦩PS5. I'm currently clearing my backlog and loving Dishonored 2.
Latest articles by Issy van der Velde
Somehow this keeps happening: Another game with a Persona 5 collab is going under, and this time it's JRPG comrade War of the Visions: Final Fantasy Brave Exvius
News Is it a curse or are games just expens🔯ive🐻 to maintain?
No Man's Sky's latest free update lets you live out your childhood dreams of digging up dinosaur bones
News ꧅🐲The Relic update includes bones, museums, and new monsters
20 years later, God of War's original monster art has been revealed: behold this army of stick figures slapped on a whiteboard, no clue Kratos is coming for them
news Fans just want a remaster though
The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 developer enters into partnership with Pokemon Go owner to create a new game "set within one of CD Projekt's IPs"
News Please b🌺e Cyberpunk; I've seen enough Witcher mobile games
GeoGuessr is coming to Steam and you can go head-to-head to prove you're the best geographer of them all
news What a time to be alive
Assassin's Creed Shadows has been the series' best launch since Valhalla, but that was "a perfect storm we may never see again," says Ubisoft
news A much-needed win
Ex GTA 6 dev says free and live service games are "eating everyone's time," and combined with "open world fatigue," it's getting harder to make players explore
news Who has the time anymore?
Following a high-profile guild quitting WoW Classic Hardcore, Blizzard makes the unprecedented decision to revive MMO characters that die during DDoS attacks "at our sole discretion"
News OnlyFangs can raid once more
Assassin’s Creed Shadows Yasuke actor says that Naoe could beat his samurai in a fight: “Especially with that big a** helmet of mine”
news Might vs. sleight
After 14 years at Bethesda, Skyrim and Fallout veteran made his final settlement in just 2 days – but only because he'd made some rough ones before that
News I think they're all neat
Tekken lead Katsuhiro Harada says he's spent decades "mentally preparing" for AI to overtake humans, but it's not happening: "If AI had really advanced, we wouldn't be pouring 10, 20, 30 billion Yen into making games"
news He's not worried
A year after Malevelon Creek became Helldivers 2's fiercest battleground, it looks like the Automatons are coming back for more
News Put me back in, Sergeant
Hollow Knight: Silksong gets unprecedented second update in 2 weeks, with a Steam page tweak pointing to a 2025 release
news We're not fooling ourselves this time, right?
Helldivers 2 players "became obsessed" with Malevolon Creek, but it was Gabe Newell who really kicked off one of Super Earth's bloodiest battles
news The rally we didn't know we needed
Assassin's Creed Shadows lets you add dozens of cute animals to your hideout, and all you have to do is pet them
News Can I pet that dawg?!
Assassin's Creed Shadows looks like the success Ubisoft needed as it tops Steam charts
News It needed a win
Biggest announcements from the Game Developers Conference 2025
Presented by Microsoft
From Helldivers devs potentially speaking at the UN to Netflix's first MMO to a new, indu🌊🐎stry-encompassing union
"Something for true collectors": CD Projekt CEO shares his nostalgia for the "super retro" Witcher comics that are coming out in English for the first time
news That Geralt has seen some stuff...
Assassin's Creed Shadows has an innovative accessibility feature for hard-of-hearing and neurodiverse players, and I hope it becomes the industry standard
news A real game changer
Assassin's Creed Shadows' day-one patch removes blood and makes shrines indestructible following backlash
news You can no longer destroy objไects in shrines and unarmed NPCs won't show any blood if you꧋ attack them
Assassin's Creed Shadows draws attention of Japan's Prime Minister, who says "defacing a shrine is out of the question" in real life, but politicians acknowledge "freedom of expression must be respected" in the game
news Ubisoft has reportedly released 🌺a day-one patch that limits bloodshed and destruction in the sacred sites🅷
Tech analysis finds Assassin's Creed Shadows is "one of the largest" PS5 Pro upgrades yet, and praises "a generational divide in lighting fidelity"
news It looks gorgeous
