Author: Game Infliction

Since its reveal, Hell is Us has been something of an enigma. As an action-RPG that hones in on detective-style investigations within a hauntingly alluring world filled with weird monsters to explore, it’s a type of game that tasks players to meet it on its strange and unorthodox terms. For its developers, Hell is Us also represents a game that pushes back against contemporary trends of gaming that places its story and gameplay in a neat package and instead trusts players to piece together just what the hell is going on within the corrupted land of Hadea, and how to survive it.

After playing several hours of the opening of Hell is Us along with some mid-game dungeon crawling, I came away with a clearer idea of developer Rogue Factor’s new-weird-influenced take on an action-adventure game that pushes players to mind the finer details of the world and maintain poise during some of the intense engagements. So far, Hell is Us is a game that makes charting out into a familiar yet deeply alien world feel captivating.

Hell is Us takes place in an alternate 1990s where the fictional European country Hadea is in the midst of a civil war following the events of a mysterious, supernatural incursion known as the “calamity.” Playing as Remy, a United Nations peacekeeper and former resident of Hadea, he’s detained by a mysterious organization following his mission into Hadea to find his parents. With the organization and its leader pressing down on Remy, he has to recall the fateful decisions he made with the surviving factions and how he fought off the seemingly otherworldly creatures known as Hollow Walkers.

The main plot of Hell is Us reminded me of a mix between Death Stranding and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which focuses on immersing players into a world that takes a sudden and violent turn to the weird and with a seemingly unreliable protagonist recounting his interpretation of events. Hell is Us fully commits to its premise of a bleak setting and being a stranger in an even stranger land, one that feels familiar with its backwoods and small towns clinging onto survival, but feels so disorientingly strange with the rise of Hollow Walkers and portals that have turned the European countryside into an alien landscape.

What immediately drew me into Hell is Us was its unusual approach to storytelling and immersing players within its strange world. The sense of mystery is palpable in Hell is Us, and I was constantly walking into areas that had grotesque monsters or strange anomalies that drew my eye. I was especially taken in by the plight of the surviving characters, who struggled to endure in their ramshackle sanctuaries held together by duct tape and dwindling hope. This story very much chucks you into the deep end with its narrative and gameplay flow as you explore the different open zones filled with their puzzles and points of interest.

What I found most intriguing, and what I suspect many players will have to come to grips with, is how Hell is Us takes a largely unguided approach to gathering intel and charting out to complete quests with no mini-maps or waypoints to help you in your trek. This very ’90s adventure game approach puts the onus on players to listen to the details that the surviving characters bring up in conversations and read the well-organized intel from Remy’s personal datapad. It’s the type of game that demands a certain level of attention, or else you can find yourself wandering at length to figure out where to go next.

Outer Wilds is a particular example that inspired the dev team for its approach to a largely unguided adventure game that gradually expands in scope as more players use their growing knowledge. Speaking with creative director Jonathan Jacques Belletête, the approach the devs took with Hell is Us was all about trusting players with figuring out the mystery and embracing the campaign’s more methodical approach to progression.

“So at first we really wanted to go full hardcore with this game, like players would have a little notebook and a pen to write notes, because that’s where we came from when we played games in our youth, but what inspired us was the general fatigue we’ve felt with this new contemporary era, like games should never have a problem too big for players to solve because you have to reach every type of player possible,” said the creative director.

Hell is Us is equal parts an investigation game and an action-RPG, and there’s a surprising amount of combat to engage with while you’re on the desolate road. On the surface, Hell is Us has the makings of a soulslike – and it certainly has some of those elements under the hood – but it goes in a direction with combat and power progression that’s more about managing your poise and picking the best moments to strike against enemies that can easily take you out. Some of my favorite moments came using my powered-up weapons to dish out some chunky damage while sending in my drone to stun other enemies off in the wings.

The Hollow Walkers in Hell is Us are some of the most visually distinct and unnerving video game enemies I’ve seen in a long time. They’re highly aggressive and can come in large numbers. Still, things get more unnerving once you face off against the powered-up walkers that can summon support enemies that were very much giving The Angels from Neon Genesis Evangelion vibes. Once these enemies appear, you’ll have to switch up to take them down fast before you can finish off the main walker.

Much like a souls game, stamina management is critical for survival, and I found myself constantly having to be decisive with my skills so as not to overexte nd myself against unforgiving enemies. One interesting wrinkle that took me time to get used to was the fact that health and stamina share a single bar. With your health being your primary source, the more health you lose in a fight, the less stamina you’ll have to fight.

While you have limited health items, the Lymbic Pulse skill is the best way to help you stay in the fight. Similar to Nioh 1 and 2, activating the pulse immediately after seeing a glow around Remy will instantly restore health and stamina based on the attacks you dish out. It’s a very risk-reward approach to combat, and depending on how intense the combat gets, it can be easy to forget to hit the pulse and lose out on health. I found the engagements surprisingly challenging and unrelenting, yet I still felt good about scraping through once I figured out how best to clear out the foes.

Combat took the most time for me to get used to, as it’s far more survival- and resource-driven than Dark Souls or Elden Ring. Some battles were so unforgiving that I felt unfairly outmatched by the numbers and aggression of the walkers. Still, I managed to rally and rethink my approach by going for it. According to the creative director, he likened their approach to combat with the act of boxing, which is also about managing stamina and dealing with decisive blows when you can.

“This is us trying to put our own spin on third-person melee combat, and we’re always a bit inspired by From Software, but it was important for us to put our spin on,” he said. “Like in real life, you pretty much just have one hit point, right? It’s all stamina, and when once you’re tired and you get hit, you’re done. Like, I boxed for a very long time, and when your stamina is done, you’re done. So that’s where we were coming at it. The more damage you take and the more health you lose, that’ll directly affect your efficiency in combat, but we also added in our balance to that with the Lymbic Pulse, to help your restore your health when you do take those risks to lay in damage – and that gives us a bit of a signature to the game as well.”

I was thoroughly impressed with the visuals and atmosphere of Hell is Us, and it presents such a compelling yet still bizarre mix of fantasy and science fiction. Along with the other games mentioned, another piece of media that served as a key influence was Alex Garland’s 2018 film Annihilation, which dealt with exploring an environment that underwent radical and violent change. It presents such an intriguing setting, but at times, the hardened and traditional adventure game approach Hell is Us takes to taking in the details and surviving this world felt a bit too stoic for its own good.

Still, I was very invested in the bizarre, new-weird setting that Rogue Factor has crafted, and it so far has the makings of being one of 2025’s more original and creative takes on the action-RPG experience. Given that this year saw the rise of Blue Prince’s reinvention of a roguelite puzzle adventure, it’d be fitting for Hell is Us to succeed with its own reinvention with its new type of role-playing experience.

This week, Capcom released a detailed analysis of Monster Hunter Wilds’ play data. Bearing the official-sounding name of “The Forbidden Lands White Paper 1,” the Japanese-language report covers player activities after MHW’s April 4 update, and reveals that Hunters have very strong preferences when it comes to the in-game food.

As well as adding new quests and monsters, Monster Hunter Wilds’ free April 4 update introduced the Grand Hub, an area where players can gather and meet up. The Grand Hub also has a canteen, where you can exchange Meal Vouchers for dishes from each region of The Forbidden Lands. Eating a hearty meal in Monster Hunter Wilds gives you various buffs depending on the dish, so the Grand Hub and Meal Vouchers provide a quick way to get your character ready before setting off on quests with other players (without having to trek out to a specific region to eat a particular cuisine). Meal Vouchers can pop up as daily login bonuses or as Arena quest rewards.

As reported by Automaton Japan, the Forbidden Lands White Paper 1 revealed usage data for each of the four regional Meal Vouchers. Spring Kunafa Cuisine was the most popular by far, accounting for a staggering 87.8% of voucher usage. This was distantly followed by Fresh Sild Cuisine (8.2%), Colorful Suja Cuisine (3.5%) and Hot Azuz Cuisine (with only 0.5%).

The report gives a major reason for the Spring Kunafa Cuisine voucher’s landslide victory. Five of these vouchers were given out to players at the time of the April 4 update, and it seems many players used up these freebies. Spring Kunafa Cuisine vouchers have a chance to give one of three buffs, and the report suggests that the Defender Meal (Hi) buff is likely popular with players taking on tough quests as it greatly reduces damage from monster attacks.

An equal number of these regional meal tickets have not been distributed though, which is thought to be why Sild, Suja, and Azuz lag behind so significantly. The data on the Pick-a-Meal Voucher usage gives a much clearer picture of which dishes players actually like and dislike.

As the name suggests, Pick-a-Meal Vouchers allow the player to choose a dish from any region. When using these vouchers, players’ top pick was Hot Azuz Cuisine at 41.3%, followed by Colorful Suja Cuisine (28.3%), Spring Kunafa Cuisine (19%) and Fresh Sild Cuisine (12%).

The white paper suggests that players chose to chow down on Azuz dishes due to the Tumbler Meal (Hi) buff, which greatly improves evasion. It notes that performing successful Discerning Dodges is particularly important for bow users as it fills up the Trick Arrow Gauge. The second most popular, Colorful Suja Cuisine, is well-suited to offensive players looking to max out their rewards, as bonuses from this cuisine include Caprice Meal (Hi), which ups your attack damage at random intervals, and Exploiter Meal, which increases the rewards you get from destroying monster wounds (you also get the chance to watch your character dig into some huge sushi rolls).

Although players are likely choosing which meals to eat based on the buffs that they give, the Pick-a-Meal coupon usage data has attracted some amusement from players as it seems to suggest that Sild Cuisine is unpopular. Most of the food in Monster Hunter Wilds looks mouth-wateringly delicious, with Kunafa’s banquet cutscene even making some players so hungry that Nepalese restaurants in Japan sold out of cheese naan.

However, due to Sild’s location in the barren ruins of Wyveria, the food is very simple and includes unripe-looking fruits and vegetables, such as white tomatoes and raw garlic bulbs. This stands in stark contrast to the indulgent feasts of the other regions, with the Sild cuisine being deemed “unappetizing” in comparison by players, such as in the following Reddit thread.

It seems that Capcom will release future “White Papers” on Monster Hunter Wilds, so it will be interesting to see if people’s in-game eating habits change in the future. Monster Hunter Wilds just got a new update on May 28, which even adds Street Fighter’s Akuma to the game — here’s what’s new in Version 1.011.

Verity Townsend is a Japan-based freelance writer who previously served as editor, contributor and translator for the game news site Automaton West. She has also written about Japanese culture and movies for various publications.

Elden Ring Nightreign has enjoyed a massive launch on Steam, but the excitement was tarnished by a ‘mixed’ user review rating.

FromSoftware’s co-op spin-off saw an incredible 313,593 peak concurrent users on Steam overnight, enough to make Elden Ring Nightreign one of the most-played games on Valve’s platform.

But it also came with a number of negative reviews (67% of the reviews are positive so far), most of which point out Elden Ring Nightreign’s lack of duos, or two-player co-op, and voice chat.

Elden Ring Nightreign drops players into the shifting lands of Limveld, exploring and fighting for survival either solo or in groups of three. There is no way to play two-player co-op.

As explained in IGN’s Elden Ring Nightreign review: “Let’s get the most important caveat out of the way first: if you are hoping to tackle Nightreign entirely solo, and are anything less than a hardcore Elden Ring player that actively seeks out ways to make that already difficult game even more challenging, Nightreign isn’t for you. Yes, there is technically a single-player option, but it is so poorly balanced that I would be shocked if it isn’t patched and adjusted within the first month of release. And this is coming from someone who lives and breathes these types of games.”

In IGN’s interview with Elden Ring Nightreign director Junya Ishizaki, the Nightreign lead developer discussed the choice to lean on solos and trios as the core experience options. When asked why there’s no option for a pair of players to drop in together without a matchmade third player, Ishizaki said it was overlooked.

“The simple answer is that this is simply something that was overlooked during development as just a two-player option, so we’re very sorry about that,” said Ishizaki. “As we said before, we set out to make this a multiplayer co-op game for three players, balanced for three players, so that was the main focus and it’s at the core of Nightreign.

“Of course, I myself as a player understand that and often want times where I’m just playing myself, so this is something that we considered from the start,” Ishizaki continued.

“And so we did put a lot of effort into creating this experience that was playable for solo players in as much as the rules and new systems allowed. So in putting all our efforts into that aspect, we kind of overlooked and neglected the duos aspect, but this is something that we are looking at and considering for post-launch support as well.”

This means that if you’re playing with just your favorite duos partner, you have to accept a random third into your game. Playing trios is very much what Elden Ring Nightreign is built around.

Clearly, some players are unhappy with the situation. “Elden Ring co-op, but not really,” reads one negative Steam review. “You need three people, two isn’t allowed. And why? Because. How can something like this happen? I’m deeply disappointed and thought about a refund.”

“No duo option, had random people join to just run off and do their own thing,” reads another negative review. “Let me duo with my mate…”

“If you don’t have two other friends to play with in voice chat, don’t waste your time,” another negative review said. “Game is Elden Ring, but 3p, and the solo queue is abysmal (queuing up to play with randoms). Without VC it’s super hard to coordinate where to go, where chests/consumables are, trying to drop items for teammates, etc. Even though I really love Elden Ring and roguelites in general as well as Nightreign’s syle of gameplay, I wouldn’t see myself ever playing this game again without friends in VC, or if 1p experience wasn’t as hard as a ‘level 1 Elden Ring any% speedrun.’

“I think no matter how good you are at the game, it doesn’t matter if you’re bad at teamwork, especially in an environment where communicating is close to nonexistent (pins in a punishing fast-paced PvE game isn’t it lol).”

The voice chat issue keeps cropping up. Here’s another negative review:

“Impossible to make progress without voice chat. If you have three friends you can talk to and play regularly, you will have a great time, the connection is smooth, the map is full of events and the game loop is very interesting.

“However I am a 41-year-old man and I don’t have friends to regularly play this with, let alone two others (you need three people to go in as a team, two won’t work either).

“Even if they bring voice chat in the game (I’m not sure how there isn’t one at the moment) you won’t really enjoy this as much as if you were trying to fight with buddies, as your responsiveness with randoms will affect how you feel about your game a lot.

“Playing it solo queue with randoms is hard, it’s hard to communicate, it’s hard to share items, it’s hard to discuss tactics or decide on the next area to farm, it’s just hard.

“TL;DR, if you don’t have two more friends you can group up with regularly, it’s not fun.”

As Ishizaki suggested in our interview, duos is something FromSoftware may add to Elden Ring Nightreign in the future. Until then, you’re faced with solo or three-player only.

Ahead of the launch of Elden Ring Nightreign, FromSoftware warned PC gamers that they may experience framerate drops if they’re using “the latest graphics cards.”

In a vague note to fans included with Elden Ring Nightreigh’s day-one patch notes, FromSoftware said it was investigating the cause, and suggested those affected drop the graphics settings down from the default “High” to “Medium” or “Low” and lowering the screen resolution, as well as installing the latest drivers for your graphics card.

Check out these crucial Elden Ring Nightreign tips and tricks we put together from the network test — and keep an eye on the IGN Nightreign wiki for plenty more guides when the game launches.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Seemingly born of a drunken night between Animal Crossing and The Legend of Zelda, Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is the latest take on blending easygoing life simulation and deep dungeon-delving. With its dangerously bingeable RPG mechanics and seemingly endless supply of charm, this cozy adventure stole plenty of my own time almost without me even noticing. The characters and story are both wonderfully goofy and much more substantial than I’m used to seeing in this genre, the process of leveling up your various individual jobs is really easy to get lost in, and it absolutely nails the balance between slice-of-life cozy activities, village building, and its more action-packed tasks, so I never found myself bored by any of them. After more than 50 hours chopping trees and slaying bosses, this has quickly become one of my favorite games of the year.

Fantasy Life i starts out as a pretty straightforward life sim: You’re introduced to the Life system in the first few hours, which has you switching between jobs where you’ll mine for ore, catch fish, and do favors for townsfolk. But just as I started to think “ah, okay, I’ve seen this sort of thing before,” it threw a curveball into that formula in the form of a giant open-world map full of brightly colored monsters to battle and puzzles to solve. Then, just a few hours after that, it sent me to an island to build my own village, lulling me back into a false sense of understanding before once again pulling the rug out from under me by introducing roguelike dungeon-crawling mechanics. This process of familiarity followed by delightful surprise repeats itself again and again, to the point where I was never sure what the next hour would bring. Chopping trees to increase my Woodcutter skill and gather wood seems like a fairly straightforward affair… until you run into a giant, ominous tree boss that doesn’t want to be cut down. Even after the credits have come and gone, Fantasy Life i continues to introduce new things to chase, which is just nuts.

But what’s more shocking is just how well many of these disparate activities work. It’s usually a pretty big red flag when a game tries to cram this much in, as it risks spreading itself too thin and not doing any one of them particularly well – but by the time I found myself delving into procedurally generated dungeons filled with a mix of combat encounters and cozy activities reimagined as boss fights, like a fishing minigame against an extremely elusive mega-fish, I was in disbelief by how well Fantasy Life i pulled everything off. The more classic life sim stuff, like leveling up various career paths (cooking, blacksmithing, mining, etc.), doing errands for villagers in exchange for new furniture and money, and building up your own home to put all your stuff in are all on par with some of the best in the genre. At the same time, the combat, open-world exploration, and RPG pursuit of new gear and skills may be quite simplified and mostly stress-free compared to full-on action-adventure games, but they are still engaging and have been nicely tuned to match the otherwise low stakes sensibilities. Both halves work on their own, and it’s all unified by a universally laid back vibe.

Fantasy Life i also has a surprisingly full story involving time travel, dragons, magic, and the strange mysteries of a fantasy land called Reveria, where devoting yourself to one or more of the 14 jobs, called Lives, that have existed since time immemorial is a core part of the area’s ancient culture. It’s silly, over-the-top, and fairly predictable, but also much better written than I was expecting and had enough interesting moments to keep me invested throughout its fairly short runtime. The know-it-all archaeologist, Edward, is an entertaining companion to have at your side during the plot’s most important moments, and a smarmy-mouthed bird named Trip never wears out his welcome with sassy banter as your sidekick. The third act does drag a bit and ends in just about the most cliche way imaginable, but it’s still more substantial and mostly successful in a genre where story is typically the last priority (if it’s even a focus at all), so it was a nice change to see it leaned into here.

Though you’ll spend some of your time saving the world in the main story, much more of your attention will be paid to the day-to-day business of leveling up your skills and helping out the residents of Reveria. Like any good life sim, once you start the grind it’s quite difficult to put down, as you leap from one profession to the other, unlocking new abilities, materials, and schematics as you go. For example, you might be asked to craft a bow to complete a quest and discover you need to harvest a new type of wood to do so, but you can’t do that until you craft a new ax, which requires some other ingredients altogether. This then leads you on a series of quests where you’re gathering materials and crafting one upgrade after another, leveling up your abilities along the way to make the going easier, until by the time you’ve crafted the bow you originally set out to make, you’ve now got about 20 other things on your checklist to pursue. The actual mechanics of doing all these cozy chores is nothing we haven’t seen in plenty of other life sims – you’ll catch bugs, reel in fish with a rod, and play a crafting minigame when it’s time to put it all together. But it’s all still oddly hypnotizing, like how I can never seem to pull myself away from the mundane day-to-day of The Sims.

That said, the grind in Fantasy Life i is pretty intense, and I did find myself occasionally annoyed by just how many trees I was expected to chop down and vegetables I was asked to farm in order to make what I needed for the next mission or upgrade. It can be especially irksome when it comes time to craft, since every crafting Life has an identical minigame where you spam one button. But Fantasy Life i walks this line pretty deftly, with options like the ability to skip the crafting minigames as you progress in each discipline, or allowing you to purchase raw materials that you’d rather not spend the time harvesting ad nauseum. This ultimately lets you avoid the more monotonous parts of the grind, setting your attention on hunting down the rare materials that can only be acquired from special resource nodes hidden in the world or by killing rare creatures.

You’re also given a small patch of land and asked to fill it with homes for both you and the friends you make along the way, decorating and upgrading the homestead as you go. If you’ve played Animal Crossing, then you’ll feel immediately familiar with this part of the formula as it follows the script written by its peers almost to the letter. You’ll craft furniture to customize your home, give fellow villagers gifts to improve your friendship and get goodies in return, and decorate the town to get a better ranking and unlock new things to add to your little community, like an art museum for residents to peruse. This aspect is a lot more shallow than something like New Horizons – residents don’t have much unique dialogue, there aren’t different weather or seasonal patterns, and there’s far less to do when managing the quite compact area you’re allowed to settle. But it’s definitely still serviceable and a nice way to spend your time in between hard shifts at the smithing forge and adventuring out in the world. Plus, you need a place to store all the loot and ornate furniture it likely took you a dozen or more hours to collect.

Of course, Animal Crossing doesn’t then also have simple combat, a large open-world area, and even a roguelike mode to grind to your heart’s content. Fantasy Life i leans into the action-adventure RPG side of things harder than I’ve seen in other hybrid life sims, with four of the 14 Lives devoted just to combat. There’s the Paladin, a classic sword-and-board class; the Mercenary, which trades the shield for an even bigger sword; the Hunter, a ranged bow class; and the obligatory magic-based class, the Magician – all of which are chock full of compelling abilities to unlock that make your battles easier.

It’s also pretty neat how the adventuring components feed right back into the life sim mechanics, encouraging you to return back to town and craft a new sword or staff to improve your combat efficacy as you slay beasts and complete quests to advance these careers. There’s not a whole lot to fighting beyond dodging, blocking, and spamming the same attacks, plus it’s always extremely easy to the point where I never really felt imperiled, but it’s still nice to take a breather from collecting fruit and watering plants to slap around a giant red dragon for awhile.

The open areas you’re let loose to explore are brimming with resources to collect, enemies to fight, and the rare, extremely light puzzle to solve. They are very effective as a more adventurous outlet after hours of crafting and chatting with townsfolk. You’ll scale mountains to reach a rare mineral you saw glinting in the distance, chase down mimics filled with loot, and find little shrines that unlock companion characters when you complete their minigame, like a game of Simon Says or a winning a timed boss battle. These companions will join your homestead and accompany you on your adventures, and are a really awesome addition to both adventuring and leveling up your life sim skills. You can have up to three tag along with you at a time, too, each of whom specializes in a Life and will aid you in practicing it. For example, a Woodcutting companion will help you chop down trees, and a Tailor companion will help you craft new clothes. There are a ton to discover (I found over thirty in my time playing) and picking favorites that are best-suited to help out with whatever you’re doing is really satisfying. Unfortunately, they also do that thing where they repeat the same one or two voice lines every couple of seconds, so that aid came at the price of me losing my sanity and shouting “please shut up” the longer I played.

There’s also a very dope roguelike mode that cleverly reimagines what a procedurally generated dungeon can be in a game where most of your skills are gardening, fishing, and other disciplines that would seemingly be useless in a fight. But these are no ordinary dungeons, as each node on the map has a different Life-related objective to be completed before you can move on to the next zone. One room might require you to gather each vegetable, while another may challenge you to fish every sea creature out of the waters before you can advance – and the whole map must be cleared within a time limit, so you’ve gotta pick your battles when choosing what to collect and what to pass up on. While these levels are much more linear than the open-world map, they also give you a more predictable way to grind for XP and resources, and are an infinitely repeatable option once you’ve investigated every other nook and cranny.

Like many life sims, Fantasy Life i also has multiplayer that’s unfortunately treated mostly as an afterthought. You can have friends or strangers visit your settlement to show off what you’ve built, but they aren’t able to do a whole lot except look around, which makes the whole thing a bit pointless. They can also accompany you to one of the maps to assist with cozy activities or help you take down bosses in the open world, but for whatever reason these sessions are timed; they force you to end the activity after 30 minutes, regroup, and launch again, which is just really odd. Probably the best use of multiplayer is in the roguelike dungeons, where a group of four can clear out the map pretty quickly, and you are given better rewards based on how many players are with you. It’s really nice to be able to adventure with friends, but in a game that nails most of what it attempts, this aspect definitely feels a bit barebones.