Murals might look like a stylish take on the Hades roguelike formula at first glance, but Disney Illusion Island developer Dlala Studios isn't aiming to copy Supermassive's homework. Instead, the studio is looking to put its own spin on the genre, as it fuses dark fairy tales and hews closer to the action-first approach of modern-day Doom and Diablo. One other big difference in Murals is that it'll offer a customizable approach to difficulty, as Dlala Studios says it wants to prioritize player fun over punishing runs--unless you're into that kind of thing.

"There are difficulty selectors, and you can kind of tweak some of the individual settings," Dlala CEO, Aj Grand-Scrutton, said to GameSpot. "We've kind of got some of the high-level ones you'd imagine: enemy damage, enemy health. We've also got stuff that affects the player's health. Something that [design director] Grant Allen was really keen on in Disney Illusion Island, we tried to make it as welcoming as possible.

"And whilst this is obviously a slightly more core genre, we tried to do the same here. When we're building, we don't care about player deaths. Our goal isn't to kill the player; it's to make sure they have fun. We try to make it as customizable as we can so everyone can get through. Even if you're a button-masher, that's a legitimate tactic in our rules."

https://youtu.be/D42nkf8EHMk

Grand-Scrutton added that the moment-to-moment gameplay of roguelikes like Hades inspired the fast, frantic combat in Murals, but the goal was to capture a "persistent, linear" experience within the fairy tale worlds that players will explore. As mentioned above, Doom and Diablo also helped inspire the game's design, and Allen added that an indie game called Blazing Beaks also served as an influence.

"For me, it was kind of like looking at those games and understanding the experimentation that they had," Allen added. "But obviously, it's very finite how long you have those for in those games. It was more like looking at our game as more like a child's science kit."

Revealed during Gamescom Opening Night Live, Murals will see players trek through hand-painted fairy tales that have gone spectacularly wrong. For example, Sleeping Beauty is an insomniac, and Rapunzel's own hair is trying to murder her. As the amnesiac protagonist, it's up to you to defeat distorted legends from lore and take down the enigmatic Creator. Murals will launch for PC in 2027.

Most upcoming games have looked to steer clear of the behemoth that is Grand Theft Auto 6 and avoid the month of November entirely. The upcoming remaster of 2002's Godzilla Destroy All Monsters Melee is a notable exception, and as it turns out, the developers didn't think about GTA 6 at all when choosing its release date.

In an interview with IGN, senior designer at developer Pipeworks Simon Strange revealed GTA's looming release of November 16 wasn't a factor when choosing Godzilla Destroy All Monsters Melee: Remastered's November 3 release date. 

Like others online, the development team got a kick out of kaiju fans celebrating the fact that the King of the Monsters (and Barbie) were the only two pop culture icons brave enough to face off against developer Rockstar's open-world juggernaut.

"Honestly, [it] wasn't even in our heads at all when we were picking the release date," Strange said. "That's not my business. I make the video games. I'm not too worried about when they come out. If Atari had come to us and said, 'Wow, we can't because we think it's going to affect the sales with GTA', we would've had that discussion. But no one ever said anything."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBDD_Q9rSiQ

As Strange points out, November 3 is a special date for the Godzilla fandom. It was on that same day in 1954 that the original Gojira film was released and is regarded as Godzilla's official birthday. Strange said the upcoming remaster arriving on the same day was "respectful," and that at the end of the day, Godzilla fans would show up no matter when it was released.

"I wasn't looking at the calendar and being worried in any way, or thinking about what other games are coming out because the Godzilla fans are very excited for it," Strange said. "They'd buy it on any day that it came out, and putting it out on Godzilla's birthday, that's just respectful."

While Godzilla Destroy All Monsters Melee: Remastered and Barbie Rewind, a collection of classic Barbie games, are both releasing in close proximity to GTA 6, there is one game brave enough to release on the exact same day. Publisher Devolver Digital recently revealed Volvy's Adventure: Reslimed, a "remaster" of a nonexistent remake that will release on Steam November 16.

For those eagerly awaiting GTA 6, Rockstar recently posted a lengthy gameplay presentation that revealed tons of new details.

Fear not, Control fans: Control Resonant will be packed with lore despite the combat-heavy trailers we've seen so far, according to developer Remedy. The lack of focus on story in promotional footage, says Remedy senior communications manager Miika Huttunen, is no reflection of the game's content, but instead a deliberate decision by the team to have the narrative side of the game on lockdown until release. In short: You'll get your fill, you just have to wait.

The sneak peeks we've had of the game so far have been mainly combat-focused, a result of combat being something that doesn't need to be revealed gradually to the player. "There's lots of weird stuff to come," says Huttunen, "plenty of twists and turns and surprises… things to discover. We're asking fans to trust us--we're Remedy. And I hope that, because we're Remedy, we get the benefit of the doubt." 

Dialogue with NPCs, collectibles, and environmental clues will all give fans a new story to piece together.

Lore-related collectibles, like FBC documents and written materials from pre-Hiss-invasion times, are scattered liberally throughout the game. It pays to explore and take your time finding secrets, as the world of Control Resonant is no less carefully crafted than its predecessor, and the story is far from an afterthought. Besides the written word, you'll also find countless places where you can open shortcuts, unpack subtle environmental clues, and have interactions with NPCs who help to expand your understanding of the world.

Huttunen also revealed that Control Resonant will reward players' decisions in dialogue through subtle changes in how other characters react to them, side quest variations, and a slow build of their own personality. The main story will be largely linear and have one distinct ending--though if Remedy's track record is anything to go by, one that players won't see coming. 

The combat we've been shown looks excellent, but there will be plenty of lore, too.

The brief chunk of gameplay we saw at Gamescom already had enough to get fans of the original game wondering how the hell things got so bad, as test-subject-turned-paranatural-protagonist Dylan was shown actively seeking out and consuming the stupefying Mold. Manhattan is unrecognizable, requiring gravity shifts to traverse streets that now point directly up into the sky or curve around to form an unnatural ceiling, and enemies of various grotesque flavors roam free. 

Dylan himself is as much of an enigma as the world around him. You're revealing the story of the wider city--past, present, and future--but also coaxing Dylan's story out one puzzle piece at a time. 

Fights in the demo were fluid and flexible. Using the Aberrant, a shapeshifting melee weapon, Dylan quickly adapted to waves of enemies, building up a Falter gauge to deliver fatal blows, and dashing nimbly between the legs of shambling Mold creatures. It's satisfying, fast-paced, and rewards the aggressive strategist's approach. Using the paranatural abilities to your advantage means your weapon feels like an extension of you, especially as Dylan gains health only by killing enemies. Resonant's combat focuses on aggression, as we previously learned there won't be a parry mechanic.

Before this place got covered in mold it probably looked alright.

In between these bouts--either after a victory, or voluntarily during quieter periods--Dylan can retreat to The Gap. This is a sort of liminal space where you can practice moves in a low-stakes arena of enemy types (useful for learning weaknesses), change his loadout, use new Artifacts for boosts, and upgrade his abilities. It's a peaceful reprieve, but once you return to the real world, there's a penalty: everything has been refreshed and strengthened, designed to level up with you. 

Between the snippets of conversation shown in the demo, the strange and immensely detailed setting, seamless combat against intelligent foes, and a load of new lore to uncover, it seems like Control Resonant might be exactly as good as fans were hoping.

Fans eager to see what Nintendo is cooking up for the 2026 holiday season might not have to wait long, as new evidence is making a September 10 Nintendo Direct look likely. 

That evidence in question is Just Dance: Decades of Hits. A recent leak saw gameplay from the upcoming Ubisoft title circulate online, leading to an official statement from the game's official X account. Far from simply acknowledging the leak, Ubisoft actually told players when they can expect a proper, official look at the game--September 10.

"We're committed to sharing the complete picture with you on September 10, and we sincerely thank you for your patience and continued support in the meantime," Ubisoft's statement reads.

https://twitter.com/justdancegame/status/2093013175197130759?s=20

As highlighted by Nintendo Everything, Just Dance titles frequently appear during Nintendo Directs, with last year's Just Dance 2026 Edition announced during a summer presentation. Nintendo also has a history of premiering a Nintendo Direct ahead of the Tokyo Game Show, which kicks off on September 17 this year.

The September 10 date then is looking promising, especially when combined with Nintendo's previous history. We recently explained why a September Nintendo Direct is likely to happen; there has been an early-to-mid September Nintendo Direct almost every year for the past decade (with a late August direct in 2024 being the one exception).

We'll know if the September 10 date is real by September 9 at the latest, as Nintendo has a history of announcing a Direct with around 24 hours notice. 

Even without taking into account whatever surprises Nintendo is potentially saving for the end of the year or the first half of 2026, the house of Mario already has two exclusive games fans are expecting more details and release dates for--The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake and From Software's The Duskbloods. 

Both are slated to release in 2026 but don't yet have official release dates. In Zelda's case, we know almost nothing about the remake aside from a short teaser that lacked any gameplay, leading to fans wildly speculating on every aspect of information revealed so far. It seems safe to assume Nintendo's next Direct will give fans a more in-depth look. 

Those eagerly anticipating The Duskbloods got a chance to go hands-on with From Software's latest multiplayer experiment in a recent network test--one that reportedly saw more interest than Elden Ring Nightreign and left us eager to play more. 

In addition to the two games above, Nintendo may also look to celebrate The Legend of Zelda's 40th anniversary. A recent leak showed a special Zelda-themed Switch 2, which could be officially announced at a potential September 10 Nintendo Direct.

The Halo franchise remains synonymous with the Xbox brand, but many might agree that it has seen better days. Xbox's new CEO, Asha Sharma, has now commented on Halo's future, saying in an interview that Halo remains a "very key franchise" for Xbox and that Microsoft is taking a long-term view about reviving it.

"The thing that I am learning about great games is that they have a long history and heritage and we can take a long-term view. I am confident that Halo is a very important part of our portfolio. It is a very key franchise. It represents a very key memory structure and way that people want to play," she told the BBC. "I am focused on that. We'll have more news to share on Halo going forward."

The latest entry in the Halo series was this past July's Halo: Campaign Evolved, a remaster of the 2001 original game released this year to celebrate the game's 25th anniversary. The game, which represented Halo's debut on PlayStation, was generally well-received, but apparently had a slow start for sales.

Industry analyst Rhys Elliott lamented the slowing sales and diminishing profile of Halo as a franchise in general after the series peaked, in his eyes, with Halo 3 and Halo: Reach years ago.

“One can’t help wondering what could have been if Halo had kept the trajectory it had around Halo 3 and Reach. A remake of the game that started it all landing this softly on a new platform makes me pretty sad, as a Halo fan,” he wrote.

There are more Halo games in development, including one that’s been described as “like Fortnite” with regards to its live-service approach. Remakes of Halo 2 and Halo 3 are said to be in the works as well.

Developer Halo Studios has said future Halo games will also be on PlayStation, but those comments came before Sharma became Xbox CEO and pledged to release more exclusive games for Xbox.

Halo co-creator on how to "make a great Halo again"

Halo's co-creator and the designer of Master Chief, Marcus Lehto, said online recently that a "big concern" he foresees about reviving Halo is how much it might cost. He said Microsoft making a "fully featured Halo" game would likely cost between $600 million-$800 million, and take four or more years to make. Lehto, who hasn't worked on Halo in a long time, said he does not anticipate Microsoft spending that much or taking that much time.

In another post, Lehto said a large corporation like Microsoft is a "terribly inefficient machine." He added that a "smaller indie team driven by seasoned devs, filled with a good mix of newer hungry talent as well, and minimal management layers is probably the only viable way to make a great Halo again."

Finally, Lehto revealed that Halo 3's budget was about $40 million for development, with as much as $30 million spent on marketing. He said Halo: Reach, meanwhile, cost about $120 million, though he did not clarify if this was inclusive of both development and marketing expenses.

We're only a few months away from the November launch of Grand Theft Auto 6, and following the recent preview of the game on Netflix, fans have even more questions about Rockstar's highly anticipated game--namely, just how big is the download going to be? We already know that you can preload the game a week before launch, but is that because you'll need multiple days to download all the files?

GTA 6 fans are currently speculating just how big the install is going to be, with the majority of people taking part in a ResetEra poll guessing that it'll clock in between 100GB to 250GB. That's a fairly generous margin--and highly likely--given the history of Rockstar's previous games and the current state of game-install sizes. Considering that GTA 6 is a download-only game--physical copies are just a code in a box--you're going to want to make some space available on your PS5 or Xbox Series X|S.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpPpqZwUwl0

For example, Red Dead Redemption 2 requires approximately 105GB to 150GB, depending on your platform, and was released in 2018. Video games have only gotten bigger and even more detailed since then, leveraging the power of modern hardware to create detailed worlds. High-resolution graphic textures and detailed character models only add to the install-size bloat, with some games even offering options to reduce that digital footprint by selectively installing parts of the experience.

Call of Duty was a prime example, as the game typically offers an option to install it piecemeal. Modern Call of Duty games used to be up to 150GB in size, and once you started slotting in extra content like the Call of Duty HQ unified launcher, shared texture packs for older titles, Call of Duty: Warzone, and carry-forward content, the install size neared 300GB. Fortunately, things started to change with the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, as the developers made big changes to the installation process.

Other game developers have also made an effort to better optimize their titles, as Marvel Rivals is now considerably smaller on PC and consoles, so there's hope that Rockstar Games has used some technical wizardry to make the download more manageable--after all, with the rising price of memory, not everyone has the budget to give their console a quick SSD upgrade just for a single game.

Three US Democratic senators condemned both Discord and Roblox, saying that the voice-chat and game-creation platforms "deserve their day in court" instead of hiding behind private arbitration methods as it relates to child safety.

According to an August 31 Bloomberg report, Democratic senators Dick Durbin (Illinois), Kirsten Gillibrand (New York), and Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut) have filed an amicus brief on August 28 urging the courts to keep the myriad lawsuits Discord and Roblox are facing public.

"Instead of hiding behind the veil of arbitration, Roblox and Discord can be held accountable for their misconduct: misleading parents into thinking their platforms are safe and failing to protect children from sexual abuse," the senators wrote collectively. "Such a requirement would contradict the very concern animating the EFAA in the first place: Companies enforce arbitration to silence and deny justice to survivors of sexual assault and sexual harassment."

Arbitration is a way for lawsuits to get settled privately and outside of a regular courtroom. This would mean that, if Discord and Roblox compelled their victims into arbitration, whatever the aftermath of the lawsuits were would likely be sealed and unknown to the public. These senators don't want that to happen, specifically because of the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act Congress enacted in 2022, which blocks companies facing sexual abuse lawsuits from entering arbitration.

The amicus brief (which is a document filed by someone who wants to give the courts extra information) was filed in a case involving a 13-year-old boy who reportedly met a predator on Roblox and was groomed, coerced, and blackmailed into sending lewd materials over Discord. This is just one of the hundreds of lawsuits both platforms are currently battling.

GameSpot has reached out to Discord and Roblox for comment and will update this story should we get a response back.

While Roblox has been at the center of a congressional investigation and has had several politicians set their sights on the platform, parent company Roblox Corporation has made changes to make the platform safer for children. This includes paying $12 million to do things like adding facial recognition and age-verification systems. The company's co-founder and CEO, David Baszucki, has responded to a lot of the complaints and criticism, but his comments didn't go over well, signalling that maybe Roblox can't make anyone happy right now.

Out of nowhere, Sony has announced that free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) is now on PlayStation 5, allowing people to watch movies and TV shows for free, in exchange for watching ads.

FAST programming is growing in popularity, and some of the current market leaders include Roku, Tubi, and Pluto, among others. FAST content was already on PS5 through dedicated apps for some of those services, but now Sony is launching its own FAST channel. For its part, Microsoft offers some FAST channels apps like Tubi and Pluto on Xbox as well.

Available on PS5 in the US, the new "Live TV on PS5" comes from Sony's own Sony Pictures Television. There are more than 100 live channels, as well as on-demand programming spanning news, sports, movies, TV shows, and anime.

Here's how to access it on your PS5:

1. Go to the Media tab:
2. Select the Live TV on PS5 icon. 
3. Select “Sign In With My PlayStation Account” to connect your PlayStation account and start watching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txpaWqfcFFU

Some of the content available includes movies from MovieSphere, 50 Cent Action, FilmRise Free Movies, Sony One Horror Hits, and Cinevault. Some of the TV shows people can watch include The Walking Dead, Community, Unsolved Mysteries, and Hell's Kitchen. Anime programming available on the service includes Naruto, Sailor Moon, and Death Note, as well as some Crunchyroll channels. For sports fans, programming from Fox Sports, Nascar, NBC Sports Now, and UFC are available. There are also news and weather channels, along with "creator" content like Hot Ones and The Ringer programming.

Live TV on PS5 will be updated over time with more channels and content, while Sony said it’s looking to expand it to Canada and other regions later.

FAST is a growing segment of the entertainment landscape. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Disney and Netflix are also mulling plans for FAST content as well.

Before this, Sony operated the paid live TV service PlayStation Vue, but the company shut it down in 2020 due in part to how expensive it was to operate.

Developer Cold Symmetry continues to tinker with Mortal Shell 2, recently dropping a massive update that makes some substantial changes to its latest souls-like action-RPG. Alongside buffing certain weapons and fixing some glitches, the team has also addressed the game's greedy economy by making a few finite resources more plentiful around the world.

Released on August 29, Mortal Shell 2's Week 1 Update makes some of the game's heaviest weapons stronger to compensate for their slowness. For example, the Obsidian Hammer hits way harder, and The Great Martyr's Blade had its damage output increased to make up for this change missing in the last patch. Overall, Cold Symmetry said that heavier weapons deal way more damage and poise now.

The headlining feature, though, is the overhaul to the economy. Before this patch, Glimpses (a currency used to upgrade your shells) and Tarcores (a currency used to upgrade your Tarstones) were incredibly limited in the world. With this new patch, however, both currencies are much more plentiful in the game.

To start, Tarcores are easier to collect now through a new set of items known as Fragile Tarstones. These pieces of equipment break after their durability depletes and, once broken, they yield Tarcores so you can upgrade your favorite Tarstones to their max levels more reliably.

Glimpses are the same. There's a similar Glimpse Stone that, once shattered, gifts you some Glimpses to max out whatever shell you're maining or interested in. Although Mini-Beacons no longer reward you with Glimpses, you can get some by interacting with the Gloom Siphon at the Marrow Keep after collecting Ova. And while you couldn't refund Glimpses once you invested them into a shell before, a new Mether's Severance item acts as a respec feature, which now lets you refund any Glimpses you poured into any shell.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFBxlvKuHMg&pp=0gcJCSsdAYcqIYzv

Further, the shopkeeper Merrick also sells Glimpse Stones and Tarcores, so you can max level your favorite shells and Tarstones in a single playthrough.

This is such a fundamental and welcome change that makes the economy much more forgiving. Before this patch, experimentation was almost discouraged because of how limited Glimpses and Tarcores were, making a New Game+ almost mandatory if you actually wanted to see the full potential of the shells. Now, with this change, you can flip-flop between shells or just max them all out without having to run through the game again. The same is true of Tarcores, too, so that's cool.

There are a handful of other tweaks in this patch as well. A few bosses have been addressed, some glitches have been ironed out, ripostes deal more damage, and enemies don't chase you forever anymore.

The caveat? The Week 1 Update is currently only available on PC. Cold Symmetry said that because console patch certification takes longer, there's no date for when this update will hit PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. However, the team aims to "get it to consoles" as soon as they can.

You can check the full Week 1 Update patch notes below. Be warned, though, it's long.

Full Mortal Shell 2 Week 1 Update Patch Notes New Items

• Fragile Tarstones - A new class of Tarstone which breaks after losing durability. When breaking, they also yield a tarcore.
• Glimpse Stone - Wears down as you defeat enemies, then breaks into Glimpses
• Egon's Stone - Revive at the entrance of a dungeon at the cost of its durability, and when it breaks it prevents Gloom loss for that death.
• Justicar’s Stone and Gloombound Stone are now fragile, have increased passive effects and added on break effects. Fragile Tarstones are not unique and can be found multiple times during a playthrough. Existing copies of Jusicar’s and Gloombound have been converted to Fragile.
• Certain enemies now drop the new fragile Tarstones, several dungeons now reward them, and Merrick has taken an interest in selling them.

Economy

• Glimpses and Tarcores are no longer finite resources, allowing all shells and Tarstones to be upgraded in a single playthrough.
• Mether's Severance is a shell respec item which can be given to Zhirelle, the shell keeper. In exchange she will sever your bond with a Shell, resetting it and granting you all spent glimpses back.
• Tarstones now yield more tarcores when broken. If your save already has leveled up Tarstones, you’ll find a compensatory cache of Tarcores in your inventory.
• Tarstones and Mether’s Severance can be purchased from Merrick and will restock occasionally when progressing through the game.

Exploration

• New Beacons have appeared throughout Fainweald and Mammon, but are only active during the day.
• Two new cosmetic rewards can be found in the world once completing certain questlines.
• New items have been added to the world, and some problematic chests have been reset.
• Egon's Stone can revive you at a dungeon's entrance when you die inside it, and spares your Gloom for that death when it breaks.
• A teleporter now appears in one dungeon after the Grisha pit fight, removing the walk back entirely.
• You still haven’t found the second Trollweed.

Rewards and Economy

• We have changed how many Tarcores a Tarstone returns when tempered, so anyone who leveled up Tarstones before this patch will find some additional tarcores in their inventory to make up the difference.
• Merrick's stock has expanded, with Glimpse Stones, Egon's Stones and Tarcores once you have gathered enough Ova. The Collector now carries Tarcores as well.
• Dungeon reward chests across the first two regions have been revised, reward placement in Mammon has been updated, and missing rewards in the arena dungeons restored. Some reward chests in the world have been replaced with straightforward pickups.
• Additional rewards, including Glimpses, added to the gloom siphon.
• Mini-Beacons no longer award a Glimpse.

Weapons, Items and Balance

• Obsidian Hammer has had a full balance pass and now hits substantially harder.
• The Great Martyr's Blade deals more damage. It was a pity it didn’t actually make it in the last patch, to make up for it, it’s even stronger now.
• Heavy weapons in general have had a poise and damage pass.
• Salvaged Trebuchaxe: Tiltshot has been redesigned. It was simultaneously overpowered and broken.
• Axatana: its weapon ability now grants invulnerability frames and inflicts Fragile stacks, and its combat Tarstone active triggers correctly.
• Weltcap is stronger in both its active and passive forms.
• Base aggression and disengage ranges have been retuned across the game. Fixed enemies ignoring you while walking to a patrol point, retreating unreasonably far when unable to reposition, and being unable to attack while locked onto a different target.
• Fixed Tarstones continuing to gather experience after reaching maximum level, and missing tooltips on a number of Tarstones.
• Environmental status hazards have been reworked, including a new handler for Stasis.

Shells

• Eredrim: Shoulder Bash no longer leaves your primary weapon permanently stowed.
• Proxima: the same fix applies to Biosampler, she can no longer become stuck in her hook shot, and an arm that was being pulled unnaturally straight has been corrected.
• Genessa: dashes have been fixed, including the corrupted version.
• Losing a Shell no longer breaks her paired animations, and her Intangible upgrade now works during grab attacks
• Fixed astral copies drifting away from their intended target.
• Doubles select targets better and switch targets when their original dies, rather than standing idle.
• Smert: can destroy projectiles while in permanent fight stance.
• Gragu: the Heart of Vatra no longer trails after you in sheep form, and his helmet uses the correct material.
• Blood now marks Shell skins correctly across the roster.
• Fixed Shell summon interactions, and Tarstone summons occasionally targeting you.

Bosses and Minibosses

Most bosses in the game have received a general polish pass and bugfixes.

• The Monolith in particular has received a broad combat polish and bugfix pass. Its laser and spin attacks now have more consistent, readable timings and do not spam (this was a bug). We’ve also refined animation timings, adjusted bad hitboxes and fixed a nasty bug which was causing it to deal double damage on certain hits.
• Zmey’s Tail grab no longer simultaneously takes both the Shell and Harbinger from 100-0. We heard some of you don’t like getting one-shotted, for whatever reason. In night mode it’s ON, though.
• Zmey’s Ring Waves align to the ground properly and his elemental stomps have new effects.
• The Lost Child no longer launches you, or himself, across the arena. He now uses the finished walk animation rather than the placeholder that shipped, his bite anticipation has been retimed, his riposte no longer wobbles as it begins, and a rare case of endless blood effects has been fixed.
• Droeg, the Conquerer has had his arena navigation repaired, his riposte alignment and physical hit reactions corrected, and a substantial visual pass over his fire and snowfall effects that also improve performance.
• Sir Isaac, the Scholar-Prince has had his arena navigation repaired, a stray lunge removed from one second-phase attack, and his phase transition riposte fixed against a wall.
• Hexapod deals considerably more splash damage with his area attack, can no longer interrupt his own shooting attack, and has had one attack retimed to be fairer. His arena is smaller and its beacon light is lit by default, which makes the fight far easier to read. He can no longer wedge himself into the environment during his dive.
• Orrem was displaying the wrong name in game, which has been corrected. Stray effects have been removed from his death animations, the fire on his axe no longer flickers.
• Orrem, the Reclaimed has had his attack and riposte alignment improved.
• Malborn Offspring no longer interrupts his own sword throw, and will reliably pick his sword back up.
• The Warden and Urrig, the Executioner have both been reworked, with retuned attacks, new ice attacks and corrected effects. Urrig's spin now gives a proper warning that it cannot be parried.
• Vrannic, the Grand Illusionist has new projectile VFX trails.
• Magdalena, the Lady of the Woods no longer rotates incorrectly during her charge.
• Bloodcursed Lithopod no longer glitches when colliding with other enemies, no longer nudges you into the air when you are standing still, and has had its damage, turning and jump attacks retuned.
• Tainted Vestige ranged attacks no longer miss without reason, and The Wandering Shepherd now teleports sensibly within his arena.

Bugs, Softlocks and Getting Stuck

• Fixed getting stuck near the closed castle gates
• Fixed getting stuck in a church in the opening region
• Fixed getting stuck in a house in the sunken village dungeon, inside
• Fixed getting stuck in Castigator's Keep by walking through a wall
• Fixed getting stuck in the snow on the approach to Droeg's arena
• Fixed getting stuck in a hole in the ground in Eredrim's castle jail
• Collision holes, ground gaps and missing collision have been patched throughout the first two regions.

Softlocks and Lost Progress

• Fixed an interrupted save being able to destroy your save file. Saves are now written so that a crash or a sudden shutdown cannot leave you with nothing.
• Fixed a bug with Vatra’s Temple where players would be locked out permanently after exploring the area.
• Fixed a potential crash and softlock during Lazlo's Rekindle.
• Fixed a softlock when speaking to the barkeep after Gragu's death but before collecting him.
• Fixed a softlock if you were struck while inside Hilga's Cauldron, and the interface failing to return when you climbed out.
• Fixed declining the cutscene at a Shell unlock leaving you invisible and invulnerable until you restarted.

Objects and Interactables

• Fixed an iron maiden that could trap you as it opened, a lift lever that snapped the lift back to its starting position, and a wooden lift that could kill you on the way up.
• Fixed a chest that destroyed itself, several chests that became unreliable after loading a save, and offerings failing to register in a locked chest.
• Fixed gates in the Temple of Vatra that could strand your Gloom somewhere you could not reach it, and corrupted gates that would not clear if approached from the sewers.
• Fixed items in the opening region hidden inside collision, which made them impossible to pick up.
• Fixed a ceiling collapse triggering at the wrong moment, and a light puzzle with two candles that had stopped being connected to it.
• Sitting down (hopefully) no longer launches you into the sky, it never happened to us but we saw some of you go flying.

Encounters and Spawning

• Fixed enemies visible before they had spawned in several encounters, and spawn triggers that did not cover the enemies they were meant to.
• Fixed being able to lure Vellen, High Lord of Mammon out of his arena, and being able to interact with a traversal point during a boss fight.
• Fixed resting at one late Beacon drawing enemies onto you, and mis-referenced spawners in a late encounter.
• Fixed an infinite Ossinite farm, an exploit that allowed unlimited healing, and shield-carrying enemies becoming effectively immortal against one type of projectile.
• Fixed personal items being unavailable until a restart if you had played the prologue.
• The Wandering Shepherd's Sheep properly respawn when playing NG+.

We Found Out About the Grishas

• Fixed a Grisha that respawned indefinitely in one dungeon, astral Grishas spawning embedded in the floor, and enemies becoming stuck on geometry. (rip Grishamancer)
• The Grisha PP item active is now stronger, its passive spawning has been fixed, and its summon no longer displays attack warnings intended for enemies.

Parrying, Dodging and Ripostes

• Player riposte damage now scales with enemy health, so the damage keeps up properly with late game, NG+, and Night Mode.
• Invulnerability windows are now consistent between ripostes, and last through to the end of the animation rather than expiring partway.
• Many player riposte recoveries end sooner, so control returns to you faster.
• Riposte animations across the entire enemy roster now behave when your back is to a wall, rather than sliding you through it.
• Riposte damage is now calculated and applied by the riposte itself, which resolves cases where it applied twice or not at all.
• Fixed Proxima's riposte alignment against 

Enemy Tracking and Hit Detection

• Enemy tracking and magnetism maximums have been restricted, and will continue to be adjusted on an individual basis in future patches.
• Fixed projectiles that failed to register against enemy weak points, and sidearm projectiles choosing the wrong target.
• Fixed brigand shield collision that could launch you into the air, and projectiles failing to appear in the shield.
• Several enemies, including Lithopods, now align to sloped ground correctly, and dungeon champions now stand on the ground.
• Fallen wooden bridges are now easier to hit, and destructible carts use better collision.
• Fixed corrosion failing to apply after a projectile had been reused.

Story, Characters and Scenes

• Characters no longer turn, stare, drift or fade at the wrong moment across a long list of scenes, including Rickart in The Search and Resignation, Eredrim in Immaculate Path, Tiel in The Bottle, and Vratko during his dance.
• Fixed overlapping and skippable dialogue in several memories, and retimed voice and sound in The Vision, The Search and The Censer.
• Fixed story moments taking too long to appear.
• Milos no longer falls silent at random, and greets you properly before moving on.
• Zhirelle's dialogue is now cleared before a memory begins.
• Merrick, Vratko and Egon can no longer be interrupted while dying.
• Franz's conversations now trigger in the correct order, and he returns to his crank after being interrupted.
• Marigold no longer starts two conversations at once, and the barkeeper no longer speaks to you through the tavern wall.
• Baghead can no longer be damaged, and his ending no longer unlocks early.
• Grisha Hunters now hold their weapons, Grisha Pups have new reactions, and the Grisha Matron can be harmed by ranged weapons.
• Larreth, the Brigand King now appears without his helmet, and his guards no longer vanish if you kill him first.
• Ruk's greetings react to your progress, and his dialogue no longer remains on screen when you enter a boss fight.
• Egon's interactions now refresh after offerings, and interaction problems with Gorf have been resolved.
• Corrected a subtitle that did not match the recorded line in Ruk's dialogue about the Lost Child, along with a considerable number of typos and missing punctuation.

Interface and Map

• Weapon level now appears in the inventory slot.
• Fixed the map offering objectives you had already completed.
• Fixed the camera key appearing blank in the launcher on mouse and keyboard, and the interact key ignoring your rebinding.
• Fixed resetting "hide subtitles" to its default hiding the subtitles instead.
• Fixed the Change Shade option disappearing after opening the Change Masks menu.
• Fixed overlapping text in the Shell revive message in Simplified Chinese, long Tarstone names colliding with the temper notification, panels and icons overlapping at higher interface scales, and misaligned details on Mether's Breath.
• Added a tutorial scale setting, with a separate one for console, and polished a number of tutorials.
• Clearer colorblind setting descriptions, an updated open gate icon, and proper icons when a mask unlocks.

Audio

• New riposte stingers, and restored missing riposte audio for the Bloodcursed Lithopod.
• New sounds for Fragile Tarstones wearing down and breaking.
• Enemies can now be given an audible warning for unparryable attacks.
• Ambient sound no longer stacks when several sources overlap.
• Village dance music no longer collapses to a single point as you approach.
• You no longer continue bleating after transforming back from a sheep.
• Reprocessed older voice recordings.
• Added several missing sounds including the Marrow Keep elevator lever.
• Fixed Lazlo's armor loop.
• Fixed the saved audio device being selected at startup when it no longer exists.
• New speaker presets.

Performance

• Fewer enemies in some of the busiest areas, where the crowd was costing frame rate rather than adding difficulty. Spawners in the dense prison area have been rebuilt.
• Fixed the significant hitch shortly after the shader compilation screen. That work now happens while you are still in the menu.
• Fixed the frame rate drop when cleansing tar gates.
• Fixed flickering textures.
• Several rounds of dungeon lighting optimisation, and optimisation passes over Droeg's effects, the final boss arena, lightning, village buildings, stairs, books and library interiors.
• The arrow volleys in the final siege no longer arrive all at once.
• Reduced background work across weapons, hit detection and movement, returning a meaningful amount of frame time on console.
• Improved rendering of destructible objects.
• Fixed corrupted terrain in several places and rebuilt the affected landscapes.

Crashes and Stability

• A substantial number of crash fixes, covering enemy spawning, audio, attribute changes, interface loading, save loading and shutdown.
• Removed some settings that were implicated in graphics driver crashes, and added a crash diagnostics option.
• Crash reports now carry considerably more context, which makes the crashes that remain much easier for us to locate.
• Improved handling of Steam ownership checks, and updated to the current Steamworks release for better Steam Deck detection and controller support.

Options, Platforms and Controls

• Increased Geometry Budgets, a new graphics option. Off by default, which uses less video memory; turn it on if you have memory to spare.
• Frame generation has been reworked. It now applies after a reload rather than conflicting in real time, which the description states, and it no longer switches on before the world has finished loading. NVIDIA frame generation can now be selected on a much wider range of cards.
• Switch Pro and Switch Pro 2 controllers are supported, with an option to swap their glyphs. Steam Deck and Steam Controller now display the correct buttons.
• The game now defaults to your monitor's native resolution, and pauses when a system overlay opens.
• Fixed issue with raytracing options not working as intended
• Fixed post-process options that had no effect, and firing not working on some controllers.
• Rumble now triggers correctly for riposte damage, held attacks, Beacon interactions and dungeon transitions, and has had a broad pass across sidearms, items and Shell abilities.

Miscellaneous

• Mutton is now immune to damage, he’s been through enough.

Known Issues

• Possible Malborn Offspring bug when using Grisha Remnant Summon during boss fight

The price of an Xbox console today is higher than ever, and it was Microsoft's own massive push into the AI space that led to this, at least in part. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has now reacted to this ironic development, saying in an interview that she thinks it's great that GPUs are being used for technology outside of gaming, even if it means Xbox consoles are more expensive than ever.

"Gaming has always been a proving ground for the GPU. I think it is wonderful that there are more uses for this technology around the world," she told the BBC. "AI is fundamentally changing a lot of things. So our job as Xbox, as we continue on our next generation, is to take into consideration what's happening in the world and build the best experience for our players."

Following multiple rounds of price increases, the cheapest new Xbox--the Xbox Series S--now sells for $500, which is $200 more than what it cost at launch in 2020. Sharma said that for the next generation of consoles, including Microsoft's Helix platform, the company will need to think more about "efficiency and affordability, alongside performance."

Sharma also stated that Helix may not be a single device but rather a group of systems. "We've been hard at work on a great next generation, a great family of devices for Helix, and we'll share more soon," she said.

"We will of course continue to push the boundaries of performance. We've talked about being able to not only play your console games but also play your PC games on your console. I think in addition, all of the industry needs to innovate on affordability and efficiency. That is something that we have not had to [before]."

Sharma said the "crisis" currently affecting the market for hardware and components is creating a situation in whichMicrosoft needs to innovate to give players more choice in "how they play their console and how they purchase their console."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92NCgo5zce0

For the latest Xbox price hike, Microsoft specifically directed people to consider using a Buy Now, Pay Later service or that they should buy a console through a provider offering 0% APR introductory financing. Microsoft also said people can buy a certified refurbished console to help get into gaming more affordably.

The most expensive Xbox console ever, the 25th-anniversary translucent green console, just launched at $900 and sold out immediately. Additionally, Xbox console sales in the US recently doubled, so there have been some positive signs for Xbox hardware lately, but the overall trends in hardware spending have been negative.

It's not just Xbox facing these issues, of course. Sony has raised the price of the PlayStation 5 multiple times, too, while Nintendo will hike the price of the Switch 2 on September 1.

"Fighting is everything" is a phrase protagonist Miyamoto Musashi uses to explain his ethos, but it's an ideology that doubles as an accurate description of Onimusha: Way of the Sword, too. After a disappointing 20-year hiatus, Capcom's samurai series returns in fine form, ditching the fixed camera angles and pre-rendered backgrounds of its forebears for a modern reinvention where combat is king. 

The fifth mainline entry in the series still maintains key aspects of Onimusha's distinct identity, mixing Japanese history and mythology with the studio's penchant for inventive creature design, but infuses these aspects with layered melee skirmishes shaped by the past 20 years of action games. The shift to a semi-open-world structure is a stumbling block, but Way of the Sword still marks an excellent return for the long-dormant series by evolving its swordplay with captivating aplomb.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbikE6l6nU0

Musashi himself is, of course, known for his combat prowess: a legendary samurai from Japanese history who's widely regarded as the greatest swordsman who ever lived. Much like previous protagonist Samanosuke Akechi–who's loosely based on the Sengoku period's Akechi Hidemitsu–Capcom was influenced by the fables, legends, and real stories of Musashi when creating the character. 

While he's only in his early 20s in Way of the Sword, the cockiness, confidence, and swagger of someone who would eventually go undefeated in 62 sword duels is immediately apparent. There's a Harrison Ford-esque roguishness about him that's easy to fall in love with, and this is aided immensely by not just Yoshimasa Hosoya's voice performance–I played the Japanese-language version–but also the game's excellent facial-capture animation. Every subtle raise of an eyebrow, smirk of the mouth, and clench of the jaw is evident and lends Masashi a ton of character even when he's not speaking. 

It also helps that he's modeled after the late, great Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune, best known for his collaborations with Akira Kurosawa on films such as Seven Samurai and Yojimbo, and who also played Musashi in Hiroshi Inagaki's Samurai trilogy.

Onimusha has a long history of using the likenesses of real actors, including Yusaku Matsuda and Jean Reno, but the leap in quality over the past 20 years is undeniable in Way of the Sword. I'm not overly familiar with Mifune's earlier work, yet his mannerisms shine through both in cutscenes and gameplay, from his wide-eyed intensity to the way he shrugs his shoulders and scratches the back of his neck. 

At the beginning of the game, Musashi arrives in Edo-era Kyoto, looking to prove himself as a warrior without equal. After defeating a clan leader in a fierce duel, he's set upon by an invading force of demonic Genma and is only able to fight back after being granted an Oni gauntlet by a mysterious figure. 

Unlike previous protagonists such as Samanosuke and Jubei Yagyu, who wanted to use their Oni powers to save the world, Musashi wants to rid himself of the gauntlet. The way of the sword is traversed on one's own strength, so Musashi feels having these powers at his disposal is essentially cheating and doesn't represent his true skill as a swordsman. 

Watching Musashi navigate this stance while newfound allies are relying on him to save Kyoto is one of the more compelling aspects of the game's narrative. Musashi has his own ethos, but he's also not the kind of samurai who adheres to a strict bushido code. When it's a matter of life or death, he'll break the rules, which feels very human and fits his rogueish attitude. 

The rest of the story is fairly straightforward, with some comically evil villains adding entertainment value and impetus to the game's many battles. It's standard popcorn fare–not quite as corny as Resident Evil, and there are some killer lines, but it's not something you'll remember for long outside of some of its performances. There are some pacing issues early on, too. Control is frequently wrestled away from you during the first couple of hours as you're dragged from one exposition-heavy cutscene to the next. It's not a great first impression but does eventually relent, settling into a decent groove with conflict at the forefront.

Any action game worth its salt lives and dies on how good its combat feels, and in this regard, Way of the Sword positively thrives. It's not a combo-laden action game like Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden, nor is it as punishing and methodical as the many souls-likes that have emerged since Onimusha last appeared. Instead, it falls somewhere in the middle.

You've got your standard light and heavy attacks, and transitioning between them to create various combos is seamless and feels suitably hefty. Musashi moves like a regular person–you can clearly see him swinging his katana like he has to put some muscle behind each strike–and this makes his swordplay very deliberate, emphasizing defense as the ultimate key to unlocking your full offensive arsenal. 

You can block and parry almost any attack, with the latter opening up your opponents for swift retribution. You can also deflect attacks, which doesn't create the same opportunity to counter but does take a decent chunk out of the enemy's stamina meter. Once this is fully depleted, your foes enter an exhausted state where you're able to deal significant damage–even slowing down time so you can select a specific body part to target during boss fights, such as a pesky tail that you can slice off to prevent certain attacks, or a limb that grants a confluence of souls for you to absorb.

You can dodge attacks, too, performing a stylish Reflex Dodge if you evade an unarmed enemy strike at just the right time. This is also the only way to reverse grab attacks, just as deflecting is the only way to counter unavoidable attacks. Way of the Sword's combat is built around reading and reacting to the enemy's various tells and then responding in devastating fashion. Button mashing is quickly punished, but once you've got a handle on its slower cadence, there are stylish thrills to be had in each and every battle. 

If you're feeling particularly brave, you can even utilize an Onimusha mainstay: the Issen attack. By striking just before an enemy attack lands, you'll hit back with a deadly counter that instantly kills most regular enemies. The timing on this is much more precise than either parries, deflects, or Reflex Dodges, but the reward is much greater, especially once you've unlocked the ability to chain multiple Issen attacks in a row by rhythmically timing your button presses. 

All of this feels incredibly satisfying in action, mixing nuanced depth with some of the best animation work in the genre. As someone who loves parries, Way of the Sword executes them like no other game I can recall. Rather than enemy attacks simply bouncing off Musashi's katana, you lock weapons with a palpable heft, sending a barrage of sparks flying as they slide against each other before Musashi uses the enemy's momentum to reposition them. It's very much coded in classic samurai cinema, producing these dramatic sword clashes within the flow of combat. 

Chaining together parries and deflects also builds a meter that activates Blazing State, coating Musashi's katana in a blue flame that boosts your attack power and causes enemies to drop more souls when they die, such as yellow ones that replenish your health and blue ones that power your Oni Armaments. While the younger Musashi hasn't yet created the Niten Ichi-ryu style of dual-wielding he's famous for, his familiarity with multiple weapon types is well realized. 

You gradually gain access to more Oni Armaments throughout the course of the game, letting you unleash temporary attacks with a varied pool of weapons. The Two Celestials , for instance, are a pair of blades that deal straight damage and extract yellow souls from the Genma, while the Wind-Whipper is a naginata that conjures whirlwinds to wipe out groups of enemies. Elsewhere, the Earth-Shaker hammers excel at inflicting significant stamina damage, and the Firebird Flute summons flaming birds when played, allowing you to launch them at enemies. 

Choosing which Oni Armament to utilize for each situation becomes a key part of your approach to combat, although Musashi isn't opposed to using unconventional means either. Tables can be flipped and deployed as large shields before being booted at enemies, food carts can be rammed into startled mobs, and you can parry Genma into standing torches, setting them on fire in the process.

Unfortunately, the sheer excellence of Way of the Sword's combat is also the only thing keeping the game afloat when mired in its disappointing structure. Eastern Kyoto is established early as a semi-open-world hub, and while there are traditional levels, a large chunk of the game takes place within this open area. You'll find side quests, collectibles, and upgrade materials, and while the map starts small and gradually opens up, it's never particularly large. This works in the game's favor, however, as the side quests therein are dull and uninspired. 

A subset of optional missions called "Mysteries of Kyoto" has you helping citizens and relaying their stories to Murasaki Shikibu, the historical author of The Tale of Genji. These yarns are rooted in Japanese mythology, covering the likes of the Three Worms, the Faceless, and the Night Parade, but calling them mysteries is a glaring misnomer. 

The culprit is always just another Genma you need to kill, and the same rings true in the rest of the game's side quests as well. Someone asks for your help, so you head to a location and dispatch every enemy you can find. The worst of these is a series of archery quests where you return to previous locations to shoot down specific Genma using your bow. You're rewarded with upgrade materials for completing these quests, so skipping them puts you at a huge disadvantage. The one saving grace is that there aren't many side quests, and engaging in more combat isn't inherently bad, but Way of the Sword's optional excursions are still incredibly formulaic and make the entire hub feel superfluous. 

The game's traditional levels are much better, often evoking a specific mood or atmosphere. One sees you venture into an underground lab where a particularly twisted Genma is conducting experiments, fusing humans, animals, and her own kind together to create unsettling monstrosities. Here, Capcom leans into its horror tendencies, casting shadows across the lab's shoji to highlight the mutations happening just out of sight, while kimonos hang from the rafters as evidence of the people who were kidnapped and brought to this malevolent place. It's an eerie and atmospheric location to explore.

Elsewhere, you'll make the gradual trek up the slopes of Mount Oe during twilight, fighting through smaller forts and dodging giant, rolling logs to reach the palatial castle nestled at the top. If the whole game was just more levels like these, I would have very few complaints. Way of the Sword's combat is exceptional, and it features some of the best boss fights I've ever seen, but there's always this nagging feeling that it could've been even better.

It feels odd to be disappointed by a game with so many moments I absolutely adore, but that's what happens when the potential to be greater is so obvious. The uninspired semi-open-world is a misstep that doesn't justify its existence, yet Way of the Sword is still a fantastic and welcome return for the series, led by outstanding combat that firmly places it in the upper echelon of modern action games. Fighting is everything, after all, and there's nothing else quite like Musashi's brand of calculated violence.

Very few of the many stories you'll encounter in The Blood of Dawnwalker end happily. It seems foolish to expect anything else from a dark, medieval action-RPG about a secluded valley ruled over by vampires who demand blood and subservience from its human populace. While hoping for anyone to get out unscathed is perhaps naive, it's impressive that developer Rebel Wolves manages to give just about every story enough depth and nuance to keep all that death and tragedy compelling all the way through.

Dawnwalker is composed of what feels like a ridiculous number of quests. Due to its structure, they seem haphazardly constructed at first, with no dedicated throughline; only a story you construct by taking on whatever tasks you think are worth your limited time. What's shocking is that these quests, from the intricate stories of rebels fighting to free the valley and vampires following shadowy agendas, to the momentary tidbits of setup from a group of soldiers by the side of the road before you start hacking them apart with your sword, are so well-written. To the game's credit, there's a good chance you'll want to do everything in Dawnwalker. The fact that you can't is part of what makes it so compelling.

https://youtu.be/947maH4t22E

Dawnwalker's story is built on a ticking clock, and that feature is among the game's best ideas. You play as Coen, a human who loses his family to Brencis, the valley's vampire sovereign. Coen quickly comes to realize that Brencis is set to host a feast in 30 in-game days, so you have that long to make preparations and storm the castle to free the captured humans, doing whatever you can to strengthen yourself, gather allies, and figure out a plan before time runs out.

Time advances when you take on or complete quests and activities. Each of these takes an allotted amount of time, so you're always weighing whether you want to dedicate time to one quest over another. Dilly dallying with other activities while a quest is active can change the situation or even cause it to end in failure, so stacking up 50 things to do is a bad idea. While you have enough time on your hands that you're not forced to consider every single hour you spend along the way, the sense that the clock is against you gives everything you do in Dawnwalker the feeling of weight and importance. It also might make you think twice about stopping to lend a hand to a minor character you meet, or choosing a merciful but time-consuming option over a more expedient but harmful one.

Time also dictates the way that you address quests. At the end of the tutorial section, Coen is forcibly turned into a vampire, but thanks to this world's supernatural rules, he unexpectedly becomes a Dawnwalker--he transforms into a vampire when night falls but reverts to a human under the sun. During the day, the human Coen can do things like interact with shopkeepers or make his way into occupied settlements, looking like any other person; if he gets into a fight with Brencis's soldiers, he does it with a sword. At night, Coen is more deadly in a fight, but often more noticeable, and enemies tend to attack on sight. An area might be public during the day and off limits at night, so when you decide to solve a problem can change how you do so. And of course, some events only take place during the day, while others only happen at night.

The smartest way time is deployed against you is in Dawnwalker's progression system. Leveling happens passively as you gain experience points for completing quests and defeating enemies, kicking up your overall stats, but to unlock new abilities in combat or enhance elements like your life total and stamina bar, you need to do more. To add skills for the human Coen, you'll need to find and read books and manuals; for the vampire Coen, your skills unlock as you consume the blood of humans, animals, and other vampires. And unlocking perks costs points you'll earn from leveling, as well as time. 

This means that making yourself stronger forces tradeoffs. Do you want to power yourself up at the risk of failing or delaying a quest? I found that I was always sitting on perk points in Dawnwalker, waiting for when I was sure they wouldn't cost me key opportunities. As a result, sometimes I undertook quests without maximizing my capabilities. That push and pull makes leveling up a deliberate and important decision about how it might impact Coen's overall goal.

Where this leveling system falls down is in what it actually offers. Coen has three different skill trees from which you can purchase perks, each keyed to a different part of his character. Coen's a gifted swordsman and can use his claws as a vampire, while he gets access to witchcraft powers when he's human. 

The system presents you with a lot of options, many of which can be upgraded several times, and it feels purposely designed to create choice paralysis. Since you probably aren't investing in everything due to the time it'll cost, you're forced to think about what upgrades are going to matter most to you, and whether you're leaning too hard on one set of perks over the others, which might leave you vulnerable during certain times of day.

The trouble is that the trees are filled with upgrades that don't always feel meaningful. Part of the weakness is that abilities are equipped into slots in your menu, and in order to equip more of them, you have to also unlock new slots by spending perk points and time. The limitation can incentivize you to equip a couple of active and passive abilities and never change them, effectively making the ones you don't equip dead spots on the tree. And since, for most abilities, you need to first find books to unlock them, you might be barred from a perk forever, or long enough that it doesn't matter enough to pursue it. 

Requiring so much thought about how you build Coen makes it easy to disregard a lot of your options, not out of purposefully constructing a character, but because of the quests you might choose arbitrarily throughout the game. I never did much with his witchcraft abilities, for instance, since they required me to spend health it often felt like Human Coen couldn't spare, and because their books weren't as easily available. I spent perk points on witchcraft abilities I never actually used much, and in the end wound up ignoring a lot of that skill tree in favor of the more practical sword skills.

And while you'll unlock some fun combat abilities, the fact that you might only use a couple of them for huge swathes of the game weakens Dawnwalker somewhat, because you'll be doing a ton of fighting. Brencis's soldiers dominate the valley, and while you'll talk your way through a lot of situations, combat is the main thrust of Dawnwalker's gameplay, so the rhythm of using the same few abilities can get stale.

Dawnwalker's combat is pretty good nevertheless, bolstered by its focus on being directional. Coen swings his attacks in a particular direction, depending on where you hold the left analog stick, and the idea is that you want to beat an enemy's guard by swinging to avoid their blocks. In practice, directional swings are more haphazard and tough to use well, but also don't really matter. Where the directional combat really shines is in your defense--if you push the analog stick in the direction your opponent is swinging from and hit the block button at the right time, you can parry their blow and counterattack. 

How you fight is dictated by a stamina meter, and you use stamina for attacks, dodges, and Coen's "omniblock," which deflects any incoming blow. Blocking directionally, however, uses no stamina and actually kicks off its recovery, so in order to keep up the speed of a fight you need to be executing skillful blocks, lest you run out of stamina and get overwhelmed. Enemies often come at Coen in groups, too, so you have to watch out for people coming from the sides, who you can deflect away and hit briefly before returning to your main target.

It's a great system that gives fights the rhythm of a duel, with the back-and-forth between you and your opponent requiring quick reactions on your part, and all happening fast enough that you're rarely waiting for an attack to parry. With multiple enemies, you have to pay close attention, and I genuinely felt like a world-class swordsman as I turned away opponent after opponent. Trading blows and parries builds up "activation points" that can be spent on special abilities like stunning enemies or hitting several at a time. And even though you'll play through hundreds of battles, the focus on quick reactions and executing on openings keeps them exciting, even when you're facing groups of soldiers who have been fighting more or less the same way for 40 hours.

What irritations derive from combat come from the fact that you do so much of it, and how it feels is mostly dictated by the kinds of enemies coming for you. The directional combat approach is engaging, but it also means that fighting as Human Coen and Vampire Coen are very similar in function, despite their differences. As a vampire, Coen can fight with his claws, but they deflect blows from soldiers and monsters the same way a sword does. The major differences come from which special abilities you can use, which are often unblockable or interrupt enemy attacks. That fact can downgrade their use from being a tactical deployment at a key moment, to something you hit as soon as an activation point pops up and a move's cooldown runs out. Even though the human and vampire are intended to feel different, one more calculated and the other more aggressive, they wind up playing more or less the same way, especially over a long time.

Another big difference in the two sides of combat comes from how you manage health. Vampire Coen has a bunch of perks that increase his survivability. You start with an ability that lets you briefly chomp on an enemy's neck to suck some of their blood and restore your health, which is a huge boon in the early game. The vampire side also has some extremely powerful perks like passive health regeneration, as well as ones that give health back when you parry and when you attack with your claws. You also get bonuses from weapons and armor that passively boost a bunch of traits, including health. By the end of the game, I felt functionally unkillable as a vampire as my health often regenerated faster than enemies could damage me.

As a human, fights are much more harrowing, since your healing options are limited to eating food between fights and using items equipped to quick slots during combat. You can't refill your quick slots while fighting, so you have to manage them carefully, and food is less effective in combat, pushing you to rely on medicines you can craft. Where you can restore health through combat abilities reliably as a vampire all game, as a human, you have to wait for openings to use a medicine, and make sure you pack enough to stay alive. This makes fighting as a human tough and active in interesting ways, but also incentivizes you to take on whatever battles you can with your safer and more powerful vampire abilities.

Dawnwalker does include a decently granular difficulty system that you can adjust throughout the game, and it's definitely something you should mess with. You can separately adjust combat difficulty, dictating things like parry windows and the damage enemies inflict, and RPG difficulty, which governs elements like Coen's stamina costs and healing. At the default difficulty settings, it felt easy for the balance to get thrown off, so adjusting both was useful to keep Dawnwalker from getting frustratingly difficult or feeling too easy.

While they don't always fire on all cylinders, what's notable about all these systems is how intricate and deliberate they are, how much the game wants you to think about the ways you interact with them, and how many cool swings they take. It's fun to think so deeply about how and when to level up, what armor and weapon bonuses are most important to your build, and what preparations you're going to need for a fight before you undertake it. Those elements give Dawnwalker's RPG systems a lot more depth and thoughtfulness than games in the genre often have.

Holding it all together are the many, many cool stories you'll find along the way. The valley is absolutely littered with quests, and to their credit, they all feel like they're worth doing. What's more, you have a ton of freedom about what you actually get up to as you push toward your goal of saving people, and you won't always know how a quest might provide you with friends who can help you later, or unlock new information and further steps. But the fact that they so often do helps stop most quests from seeming like detours, and instead, weaves them together to tell Coen's story through your very specific path through the game. Everything has an air of being consequential, especially because Coen and others are constantly mentioning important tidbits gleaned from other quests, or the consequences of past actions.

Writing and voice acting is also strong throughout the game, making so much of what might otherwise be mundane open-world content unexpectedly compelling. Brencis has three lieutenants who run his operations in the valley, doing things like recruiting soldiers, gathering the blood of peasants, and keeping the masses entertained and docile. Disrupting those operations can eventually draw them out, triggering quests that give you opportunities to kill them so you won't have to face Brencis at full strength. And even a lot of these activities, which are ostensibly of the base-clearing variety, throw in interesting little stories. You might run into a mother trying to convince her soldier son to desert, and then get the choice to try to talk him into it through reasoning, intimidation, or bribery, lowering the difficulty of the battle against his remaining squad. Or you might find that, after clearing a few camps where peasants are paid to gather leeches to help store blood for the vampires, the commoners you're ostensibly trying to help at the remaining camps have taken up arms to help defend their livelihoods against you.

The quests tied to each of Brencis's lieutenants are some of the best in the game, giving you opportunities to catch each one when they're vulnerable, and giving you a deep look into who they are. They're also full of tough, interesting choices, like when you're approached by a vassal of one lieutenant who wants to help you win a duel against him by poisoning the blood he drinks--which means poisoning an innocent person. How you deal with situations has material consequences and creates some great, small-scale dramas. A lot of the quests in Dawnwalker are still sticking with me days later, and I want to dive back in to follow the many plot threads that I missed or cut short.

Dawnwalker also throws in a very good idea to mess with the formula of giving you all these tough choices to make: the fact that you're a vampire. Often when talking to people, you'll see an option on your list of responses: "Give in to the hunger." As your health gets lower and you get hungrier, that option becomes more prevalent. It might hop around the list to try to trick you into selecting it, and other options might briefly change into the hunger option. If your health is low enough, you might not get the choice at all--the hunger will take over and your murderous nature will take out that character.

It's a great idea that creates interesting and serious consequences. Killing someone, either on purpose or by accident, might wall off a quest you needed that person to complete, or change its circumstances. At the very least, people who would have played a larger part in the story won't be around later if they're dead. It injects a fun, unexpected drama into a game where you're already constantly choosing how you want to deal with people and what you're willing to do to achieve your goals.

What's disappointing about the idea is that it's so easy to circumvent. I experienced Coen losing control during a Dawnwalker preview event, but playing it for review, it never happened again. The game puts up plenty of guard rails to help you avoid being forced into that situation, whether it's animals or other people you can briefly feed on, health bar enhancements that make it tougher to fall so low you can't stop yourself, or passive healing that lessens the risk. So I never got challenged by my vampire nature in a way that was out of my hands. It's a shame, because being forced to balance your health or perform well in a fight because of the risk you might pose to regular people is a great idea, and I wish Dawnwalker leaned into it more.

The game can also be a bit technically shaky, although its issues never reached above minor frustrations for me. Objects and textures pop in frequently, animations can hitch in conversations, some platforming sections see Coen slipping off walls or falling through the ground haphazardly, and hit boxes are occasionally a little finicky in combat. The limitations mostly result in briefly irritating sections, but they happen often enough to be notable, if not dealbreaking. Rebel Wolves has already patched out a lot of issues and plans a Day One update that should help things even more, but it's worth noting that you're going to see some jank that will affect the experience, so save often.

Overall, The Blood of Dawnwalker is an incredibly ambitious, deeply interesting first game from Rebel Wolves. Not every good idea lands and not every envelope is pushed as far as it could be, but the potential of the game is vast, and there's a huge amount to lean into and love. And it's all bolstered by excellent writing that makes for one of the deepest and most interesting game worlds I've run across in some time. The Blood of Dawnwalker is the kind of RPG that feels great to get lost in, that digs into your mind and stays there, and which is worth scouring and savoring.

This November will mark the sixth anniversary of the PlayStation 5 console's launch, but in the years since its arrival, the gaming market has changed dramatically. The trend of consoles becoming cheaper over time has vanished this generation, as the PS5 now costs more today than it did in 2020, and the expectation is that Sony's hardware sales could slow down over time. Sony doesn't seem too worried about that, as company president and CEO Hiroki Totoki explained that there's no need to "aggressively" sell the console.

"We are in the latter half of the lifetime cycle of a PS console," Totoki said to the Wall Street Journal. "That means that we do not need to aggressively sell the console today. And rather than that, we're focusing on recurring revenue from the current user base. And already, PS Plus has more than 125 million MAU (monthly active users) today. And how to monetize from the users is quite important for us."

https://youtu.be/obR5p5AzR_s

Totoki wasn't clear by what he meant exactly in terms of aggressive PS5 sales, although it likely comes down to Sony not needing to discount the console or even sell it at a loss to draw in new users.

Sony has been pretty open about its plans to increase revenue from the players it does have, and these numbers have been growing steadily over the last couple of years. PlayStation Plus is required to access online services for the vast majority of games available on the console, while higher tiers tempt potential subscribers with access to an expanded library of games via the PS Plus Game Catalog.

At the same time, Sony is preparing to move toward an all-digital future, as over 80% of games purchased for the console are done so through its digital storefront. Once Sony begins to phase out game discs starting January 2028, plugging that gap should result in a sizable jump in its profits.

PS5 lifetime sales have reached 95.3 million units sold as of July 31, 2026. At the same time, the company is starting to feel the pressure from rising prices. Compared with the same period in 2025, console sales declined by 36% in the last quarter.

The company still has an active PS4 userbase to monetize as well, and despite its decision to end PS5 disc production being met with a lot of criticism, digital game sales increased from 78% to 82% during the recent financial quarter. It's worth noting that profits during this period did increase by 37% thanks mostly to US tariff refunds and favorable exchange rates, but none of these refunds will be passed back to consumers.

The upcoming Fable reboot from developer Playground Games will have a main story that should take about 15-20 hours to complete, the developers have stated. However, as with any game, your mileage may vary, and Playground believes the new Fable game can be played forever if players want to.

Associate game director Will Kennedy told Polygon, "We have around 15-20 hours of mainline quest gameplay." He added that the game has another 15-20 hours worth of "side and open-world exploration content gameplay."

"And then, of course, the life systems are limitless, so you can play them for as long as you want," he added.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M79EnEkZ-cc

Associate game director Craig Littler, meanwhile, added, "You can literally play it forever if that's what you want to do."

The Fable reboot launches in February 2027. It was originally scheduled to launch in 2026, but Playground delayed it to 2027 to avoid a "chaotic window," and we all know that means GTA 6.

Gameplay combat footage from Fable emerged online recently from Gamescom, and it looked rough, but GameSpot’s own hands-on time with the game told a different story.

Fable launches February 23, 2027 for Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PC.

One of the things people have said about GTA 6 following the "extended look" trailer is that the game looks too much like GTA 5. One person who thinks that's a bunch of baloney is Ned Luke, the actor who played Michael in GTA 5.

Appearing in a recent stream with Party Chat and House of Highlights, Luke said, "This looks nothing like Grand Theft Auto 5." His message to people who think GTA 6 looks like GTA 5? "I think they're out of their minds," he said.

Lucia and Jason in GTA 6.

He added that Michael's character model "never looked that good," comparing his character to those in GTA 6. You can see Luke's reaction to the new footage below, in which he also praises GTA 6's "jiggle physics."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp24Bhi8adc

GTA 6 carries forward Rockstar's formula for GTA games--having players explore a big, open world and running from the law--so in that respect, GTA 6 does indeed look like another GTA game. But it's plainly obvious to see the numerous upgrades and enhancements that Rockstar's teams have made to graphics, fidelity, and more.

The tech experts at Digital Foundry claimed that GTA 6 is the most visually advanced game of all time.

Not only is GTA 6 going to be a more visually and technically impressive game, but it's also bigger and more robust. GTA 6's map is 3X bigger than Red Dead Redemption 2's. Additionally, the game has “well over 600,000 animations,” compared to 55,000 in GTA 5 and 300,000 in Red Dead Redemption 2.

GTA 6 launches on November 19 for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. The game is coming to market with enormous hype behind it and lofty expectations after GTA 5 sold more than 230 million copies. According to Sensor Tower's data, GTA 6 has already picked up 4.55 million sales via preorders, generating close to $450 million in revenue.

Reviews are already rolling in for Grand Theft Auto VI, but not the way you think. Letterboxd, a social media site focused on journaling films, is allowing users to log the GTA 6 extended-look trailer that premiered on Netflix last week. That means people can rate the 25-plus minute advertisement like a movie and even offer up their two cents--with humorous effect.

One of the most popular reviews is from user eddyburback, who wrote: "Structure was a mess, narrative was vague and confusing (felt like a trailer instead of a movie), animation looked like a video game. I would be embarrassed to release this film." As if you didn't need to know they were joking, they added that the "gameplay looked incredible" for GTA 6. Meanwhile, another top critique notes that it's unbelievable "the trailer starts with Cyberleek's execution." That's a reference to the unknown person(s) behind the ongoing GTA 6 leaks over the past couple of weeks.

Memes are addressed on Letterboxd, too, as user Albert typed, "GTA in Letterboxd before GTA VI." Speaking of which, user Atrius questioned the GTA 6 trailer on the site: "So we are logging ads now?" User Stephanie Gillespie took the opportunity seriously and provided a strong critique of the presentation: "Legitimately embarrassing. Where Rockstar used to do these fascinating trailers that talked you through tech and mechanics to really show why their games are interesting, this is just ... A bunch of limply edited-together footage of Grand Theft Auto." There's plenty more from Gillespie, too, who gave the whole thing one star (out of five on Letterboxd).

Last but not least, a user jokingly noted that the extended GTA 6 trailer is "Netflix's Oscar contender for best short film." This hasn't been the only way the game has been referenced to the movie industry lately, either. Last week, people compared Jason Duval's voice to Tom Hardy's Bane character in The Dark Knight Rises, since they both incomprehensibly mumble.

We have compiled 29 big takeaways from the latest GTA 6 trailer, as well as learned that a playthrough can take roughly 80 hours. There also will be no microtransactions in GTA 6 when it launches November 19 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.

GTA 6: 268 Screenshots To Ease The Wait View Images

Microsoft is encouraging people to buy the Xbox edition of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 by offering a special perk that players can't get on other console systems.

People who preorder any edition of MW4 on a Microsoft Store--including Xbox or PC--will get a $5 digital credit back. Customers on PC will get a pop-up notification from the Xbox app within 35 days of MW4's launch on October 23 with their Xbox gift card; a similar pop-up notification will appear on Xbox as well.

https://twitter.com/CallofDuty/status/2093776106465673515

The fine print states that the promotional gift credit must be redeemed by December 15, 2026, and used within 90 days of redemption. $5 isn't a whole lot, but it's also not nothing. In this economy? We'll take it.

While the $5 credit is exclusive to Xbox consoles and the Xbox app on PC, Microsoft and Activision are bringing back the "loyalty discount" for the game's $100 Vault Edition on all platforms.

To be eligible for a 10% discount on MW4's Vault Edition--bringing the price down to $90--players need to have met a few requirements. First, they can get the discount if they own and have played any edition of the games listed below, or if they claimed and played any of those games via PlayStation Plus. Additionally, existing Game Pass Ultimate, Premium, and PC subscribers are eligible for the discount if they played one of the titles.

The fine print also states that the loyalty discount only applies to preorders on the same platform account where they owned and played one of the qualifying titles. MW4 is the first Call of Duty game since 2013 that won't be on PS4 or Xbox One, so anyone who played a qualifying game on a previous-generation console also gets the loyalty discount. None of the qualifying games were available on a Nintendo platform, so seemingly Switch 2 owners can't get the discount.

You can visit Activision's support site to learn more.

Microsoft owns the Call of Duty series, and the company makes the most money when people buy games on its own platforms, so it makes sense to see Microsoft offer up the $5 credit. Microsoft won't remove Call of Duty from PlayStation, though, because there is simply too much money to be made.

And this year, as mentioned, MW4 is coming to Switch 2. That's a big deal (and another source of revenue for Microsoft) because the Call of Duty series hasn't come to a Nintendo platform since 2013's Call of Duty: Ghosts.

Qualifying Call of Duty games for the Loyalty Discount

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019)
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered (2020)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
• Call of Duty: Vanguard
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (2022)
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III (2023)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 7

Sony has announced that there will be not one, but two, PlayStation State of Play events this week. The back-to-back broadcasts will feature "updates from studios around the world," Sony said in its announcement.

The first event, kicking off at 6 AM PT / 9 AM ET on September 3, will feature updates from Sony's own development teams and third-party partners. The event will conclude with an "extended look" at Final Fantasy VII: Revelation.

State of Play x2

Right after the first event will be a second State of Play, a State of Play Japan, hosted by Yuki Kaji. This event will provide "deep dives into upcoming games from game studios in Japan and Asia, including new gameplay, announcements, and more." There will be English subtitles available.

Sony did not provide any details on how long these State of Play broadcasts will be, but keep checking back with GameSpot for all the news and more.

Weapons director Zach Cregger's Resident Evil movie hits theaters on September 17, and analysts predict it will set a record for the franchise. While the majority of the live-action movies turned a decent profit off of a relatively small budget, Cregger's take on the IP is currently projected to have the best opening weekend by a comfortable margin.

That's according to the official publication of the National Association of Theater Owners, Box Office Pro. The survival-horror movie is predicted to bring in between $40 and $50 million in its North American opening weekend, which would be almost double Resident Evil: Afterlife's $26.6 million weekend from way back in 2010. The new Resident Evil movie also has a brisk running time of around 95 minutes, so that should allow theater owners to screen the film several times a day to maximize ticket sales.

If Resident Evil does hit that $40 million or more mark, it'll be on par with the opening weekend of his last release, Weapons. The 2025 film made $43.5 million at its debut and went on to earn an impressive $270 million at the global box office. If the predictions are on the money, Cregger's Resident Evil will perform a lot better than 2021's Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, which was a box office bomb that made only $42 million during its theatrical run.

But can Resident Evil maintain its momentum past the opening weekend? It's not unusual for movies to lose gas quickly after the first week, but Cregger's films generally tend to have long legs. 2016's Resident Evil: The Final Chapter is currently the best-performing Resident Evil movie with a global box office haul of $312.2 million.

Resident Evil Movies Global Box Office Results

• Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2017) – $312.2 million
• Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010) – $300.2 million
• Resident Evil: Retribution (2012) – $240 million
• Resident Evil: Extinction (2007) – $148 million
• Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004) – $129 million
• Resident Evil (2002) – $103 million
• Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021) – $42 million

Resident Evil could also have the potential for repeat viewings, as Cregger has crafted an original story that draws on the franchise he's a massive fan of, and early trailers have shown off several Easter eggs. The film stars Austin Abrams as an "idiot” courier who wanders into Raccoon City at the worst possible time, and the cast also includes Zach Cherry, Johnno Wilson, Paul Walter Hauser, and Kali Reis.

Chicken cookies! Crumbl has revealed a Minecraft collaboration that introduces six different desserts based on the sandbox game to the menu starting today. Yes, they're all square shaped, and no, there isn't a chicken jockey. Available tomorrow, August 31, through September 5, the four-sided treats include a cookie butter cookie with a chicken topper, a Creeper Key lime sandwich, and a lemon poppyseed cookie topped with a boxy bee. 

Those three treats are joined by an Enderman cookies-and-cream sandwich, which has purple marshmallow mousse in the middle. Who knew those weirdos could have such a tasty-sounding filling? Meanwhile, the pig-themed dessert is a cherry blossom cookie, with maraschino cherries and cherry cream cheese frosting as two of the key ingredients. Last but not least, there's a grass block cake that features a cinnamon vanilla base, brown cream cheese frosting, and lawn-textured frosting.

These special Minecraft treats will be available at Crumbl from August 31 through September 5.

The partnership doesn't stop there, either. Crumbl notes that there will be Minecraft mystery spoons, with a special exclusive one for the first 200 people who pick up a six-pack of the crossover cookie treats. 

Minecraft is not a new kid on the block when it comes to crossovers. Bluey came to the hugely popular game earlier this year, and there have been Minecraft Crocs available in the past. This new collaboration with Crumbl follows Krispy Kreme offering up special Pokemon doughnuts.

Looking ahead, Minecraft Dungeons II is set to launch September 29 on PC, PS5, Switch 2, and Xbox Series X|S.

45 Best Minecraft Mods To Build With In 2026 View Images