Eternal Evil Hits Xbox Series X|S – Vampires Grow Stronger with Your Blood
Imad Khalil, Partner, Human Qube
Eternal Evil is a first-person survival horror game that captures the spirit of the genre’s roots. With two playable characters, limited resources, and a city on the edge of collapse, players must think fast, aim carefully, and survive the night.
In Eternal Evil, Every Mistake Fuels Your Enemy
Vampires don’t just attack – they feed. If you let them get close, they’ll grow faster, tougher and harder to kill. This survival horror FPS turns every encounter into a choice: strike first, or be bled dry.
At the core of Eternal Evil is its “feeding mechanic” – the longer a vampire is on you, the stronger it becomes. What starts as a basic fight can quickly become a deadly chase if you hesitate. You’re not just trying to survive. You’re managing your own downfall.
Every Bullet Matters
Combat is slow, deliberate, and brutal. Ammo is scarce. Headshots are everything. You won’t blast through hordes – you’ll count every round and pray you brought enough.
The game demands tight inventory management, attention to detail, and preparation. Puzzles are embedded in the environment. There are no glowing objectives or quest markers. Progress comes from observation, not hand-holding.
Two Storylines. One Outbreak.
You’ll play as two characters: detective Hank Richards, locked inside a hotel during the first wave of infection, and his ex-military ally Marcus, navigating the city from the outskirts. Each path reveals a different part of the story – and only one of them makes it to the end.
Environments shift from cramped hallways to burned-out streets and abandoned facilities. Enemy placement and pacing are designed to keep tension high throughout both campaigns.
No Shortcuts, No Hand-Holding
There are no tutorials. No mini-maps. No regenerating health. Eternal Evil respects your ability to adapt – and punishes those who don’t.
If you’re stuck on a puzzle, an optional item allows limited auto-solves – but nothing comes free. Everything in Eternal Evil has a cost.
Pure Survival Horror
Eternal Evil doesn’t chase spectacle. It builds fear through restraint. Minimalist UI. Cold, comic-style cutscenes. No noise – just tension.
This is what defined the golden age of survival horror: constant pressure, deliberate pacing, and the kind of dread that doesn’t let go. Eternal Evil is now available on Xbox Series X|S.
In Eternal Evil, you’ll immerse yourself in a dark, blood-soaked atmosphere filled with terrifying enemies and a gripping, mysterious storyline. Armed with a diverse arsenal of firearms, you’ll experience realistic shooting mechanics as you battle evolving ghouls.
The game challenges you with intricate puzzles. As you explore diverse and immersive locations, you’ll manage your inventory carefully, all within a classic survival-horror experience. The game also features a physics-based damage system, allowing for enemy dismemberment, adding to the intense and visceral horror.
Fans of traditional survival-horror gameplay—featuring tight corridors, limited resources, and a constant sense of dread—will feel right at home. The experience pays homage to the golden age of the genre with a modern edge, offering methodical combat, strategic exploration, and a deeply atmospheric world.
Last week, we asked you to highlight expressive faces from the games you love using #PSshare #PSBlog. Here are this week’s highlights:
MrioMoreno5shares Ellie’s face lighting up in The Last of Us Part II.
Couch_Gamer2k23shares Maelle looking apprehensive in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
EmperorHalshares Deacon grimacing while holding a weapon in Days Gone Remastered
xiranticsshares Cait Sith with a cheeky grin in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
player1povshares Raven looking fierce in Stellar Blade
RhodWulfLeonshares Aloy looking wistful in the grass of Horizon Forbidden West
Search #PSshare #PSBlog on Twitter or Instagram to see more entries to this week’s theme. Want to be featured in the next Share of the Week?
THEME: Monochromatic SUBMIT BY: 11:59 PM PT on June 4, 2025
Next week, we’re all about color. Share monochromatic moments from the game of your choice highlighting one color using #PSshare #PSBlog for a chance to be featured.
Elden Ring Nightreign is out, and players are already diving into the shifting lands to fight the Nightlord. If they warmed up a bit on the original Elden Ring, though, they might be finding themselves a little turned around by some control changes.
While the controls in Elden Ring Nightreign are mostly the same as the original Elden Ring, a few changes have been made, either to accommodate new abilities or simply move things around a bit. Some of these are just for new moves, or updated versions of old tools. One in particular, though, seems to be causing at least a little confusion: the flask.
In FromSoftware’s Souls games and Elden Ring, the “flask” is a mainstay of your kit: a refillable potion holder that acts as your main source of healing in combat. Usually, the flask is one of several consumables, and you’d cycle through them and use them mid-combat. In Elden Ring Nightreign, the flask is a static element. You hit the left-most face button (X or Square, depending on your controller) to drink it, by default, while Up on the D-Pad becomes your ‘use item’ option.
Alongside the flask, there’s now the Nightreign-specific super-sprint mapped to L3. Though you won’t have your trusty steed Torrent in Nightreign, FromSoftware has instead given players a surprisingly fast sprint option. The wrinkle is, there’s also a sprint option from the traditional method of holding your dodge button. And as one player notes, they keep defaulting to the original Elden Ring sprint, rather than the new one.
The really odd change, though, is that there doesn’t seem to be a way to crouch now. I booted up Elden Ring Nightreign myself just to check and, sure enough, I couldn’t find a crouch option anywhere in the controller settings. While it was clicking in the left-stick on controller, by default, it seems like the option didn’t just move, but was completely ejected. Granted, Elden Ring Nightreign does seem like it’s more about moving fast and wiping out enemies than sneaking around.
Other players report that mouse-and-keyboard default controls also feel strange in comparison to the original Elden Ring. Granted, this is not the first time FromSoftware has shifted control schemes. Every Souls or Souls-like usually has some degree of change, especially for games like Bloodborne, which have very notable mechanical and systemic differences from other FromSoft Souls-likes.
Ultimately, controls are re-bindable, so you can still make things fit as comfortably in your hands as you’d like. Maybe take this article as a PSA, then, to spend some time acquainting yourself with your control scheme for Elden Ring Nightreign and fine-tuning it before heading out on your first venture. And maybe spare some sympathy for a player who keeps accidentally chugging their Estus mid-fight. We’ve all been there.
I have spun out on wet tarmac again and I am furious with myself. JDM: Japanese Drift Master requires a different mentality to most other racing games. Drifting around a corner is not the side gimmick that you’ll do a few times during races. Drifting is the race. In this self-described “simcade” game, you’ve got to slide around the bendy roads of sunny (and rainy) Japan while delivering sushi and chasing boy racers for style points. It all adds up to some remarkably weighty speedfreakery that is bitingly frustrating when I’m bad at it, and rumblingly compelling when I’m good at it.
One should really never the doubt the tenacity of modders. Elden Ring Nightreign is now live, and within 24 hours of its launch, one well-known FromSoftware game modder has already demonstrated a Duos mode mod.
Luke Yui, the modder behind popular co-op mods for games like Elden Ring and Armored Core VI, uploaded a short video to their YouTube channel yesterday. It shows off an Elden Ring Nightreign two-player mod, allowing just two Nightfarers to team up rather than forcing the choice between one or three.
It’s important to note that, as of this writing, this is not a public or playable mod, but a short demonstration from Yui. They noted that the mod runs without connecting to the matchmaking server, so while it’s possible to use additional mods during gameplay, that also means you’re not running through the normal channels. Whether this becomes a real solve or just an interesting curiosity, we’ll have to see.
While Elden Ring Nightreign can be played solo or in a group of three, there’s no option to run it with just two players; you’d need to either kick your friend and run solo, or matchmake and find a third. It might sound like a small hindrance, but for those who like to play with just one pal, it can be a frustration.
Speaking to IGN, Elden Ring Nightreign director Junya Ishizaki said the team “kind of overlooked and neglected the duos aspect,” but it was something the Nightreign team was looking at and considering for post-launch support. With this much desire for a duos-specific mode, I’d imagine it’s hard not to take notice.
Elden Ring Nightreign might replace its source material’s sprawling RPG exploration with a mad dash around tightly-nestled hotspots, but under the bonnet, this is still essentially just Elden Ring with a quicker sprint and character models of hitherto-unseen birdpeople. Even the system requirements are, save for a minor CPU bump, a copy and paste job, confirming the feathers aren’t even that high-poly.
As a result, this spinoff runs equally well on the Steam Deck, even appearing to take advantage of the same SteamOS/Proton tweak that made Elden Ring less stutter-prone on Valve’s handheld specifically. My Steam Deck settings guide for the base game works here too, though having been yanked around Limveld at greave-splintering speeds by loothounds Nic and Ollie, I actually think further quality cuts could be prudent. This is FromSoft at their paciest, and it makes sense to help framerates keep up.
It’s early days for Elden Ring Nightreign, but already developer FromSoftware has announced a patch that will make solo play easier.
Patch 1.02, due out next week, will include bug fixes as well as improvements for solo expeditions, FromSoftware announced in a post on social media.
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. We’ve already reported on Elden Ring Nightreign’s ‘mixed’ Steam user review rating, with most of the complaints revolving around a lack of a duos option as well as no voice chat.
Playing Elden Ring Nightreign solo is proving to be a particularly difficult experience. 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.”
It seems FromSoftware is moving fast to address solo play. According to the early patch notes, below, next week’s update will add the effect “Automatic Revival Upon Defeat,” which allows revival once per night boss battle, to solo expeditions, and will increase the amount of runs gained.
Despite these issues, Elden Ring Nightreign has enjoyed a massive launch on Steam, with an incredible 313,593 peak concurrent users on Steam overnight. That was enough to make Elden Ring Nightreign one of the most-played games on Valve’s platform.
Elden Ring Nightreign update 1.02 early patch notes:
The following improvements for solo expeditions will be added to the game: – The effect “Automatic Revival Upon Defeat”, which allows revival once per night boss battle, will be added to solo expeditions. – The amount of runes gained will be increased. Thank you for your support.
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.
After four years of service, Square Enix and FuturLab have released the last content update for PowerWash Simulator, titled ‘The Muckingham Files 6’.
Fittingly described as the “final stop” on the PowerWash journey, this free update leaves us with a mucky tube train in need of a scrubbing and the Sculpture Park — a new location where you’ll have to blast away the dirt on a few pieces of artwork. Both of these fresh locales hide a handful of Easter eggs for PowerWash Simulator 2 (which still isn’t confirmed for Switch 2, but we remain hopeful), so be sure to pay attention to the details.
How to Survive Your First Run in Elden Ring Nightreign
As the saying goes, the night is dark and full of terrors. That adage is proven true time and time again in Elden Ring Nightreign, the latest game from the merciless game design wizards at FromSoftware. Taking a page (or, rather, multiple pages) from their entire catalog dating back to the first Dark Souls, Nightreign somehow manages to offer an experience that simultaneously feels familiar and brand-new.
A lot of the familiarity is due to the fact that the environments, weapons, and combat look and feel a lot like Elden Ring. On the flip side, the game’s multiplayer-only focus and its bevy of new gameplay mechanics, from wall-jumping up cliffsides to sprinting around the countryside, almost make Nightreign feel like a totally different game than anything From has made before. Of course, there’s one way in which Nightreign feels like every other game in FromSoftware’s oeuvre: It’s going to kick your butt and it’s going to kick it often.
The basic gist of the game is this: three players swoop into Limveld to survive for two in-game nights as they battle their way around the map, leveling up and collecting gear so they can eventually defeat the Night Lord on the third night. It’s obviously much, much more detailed than that, so we’ll leave it to you to read the Elden Ring Nightreign: Answering 20 Burning Questions feature we wrote earlier this year while we focus on something more important. Namely, helping you to stay alive.
Hopefully these tips will not only help you survive the night’s terrors but can even give you a fighting chance at taking down the first Night Lord on your first try. [Editor’s Note: you won’t, but it’s nice to have dreams.]
Take a Few Minutes to Get Acclimated
As mentioned above, there are a number of new gameplay mechanics introduced in Elden Ring Nightreign that might take longtime players some time to get used to. You can sprint, you can climb up to high areas thanks to a double wall jump, and you’ve got a number of new attacks like Character Skills and Ultimate Arts to play with. Thankfully, the game does offer a tutorial of sorts when you fire it up for the first time, so you can learn the basics.
The Roundtable Hold has also returned from Elden Ring, offering a new area to test your skills against dummies (while also allowing you to tweak the combat settings to your heart’s desire). Finally, you can also launch a solo mission from the Hold; while we can essentially guarantee you won’t survive the first night, it’s a great way to get your bearings and figure out the new mechanics.
Find Your Fighter (and Your Friends)
When you start Nightreign, you’ll see that there are six different characters to choose from, each with a different gameplay style (there are two more that are unlocked after you defeat your first Night Lord). A very quick breakdown: Ironeye is a ranged fighter, Guardian is the defensive bulwark, Raider acts as massive, up-close-and-person brawler, Executor is a high-dexterity Cuisinart, Recluse is an elemental sorceress, and Wylder is an all-around, middle-of-the-road fighter.
It’s worth experimenting at the aforementioned training ground to see if any of them strike your fancy, but a lot of your decision will boil down to choosing a character that compliments the others in your group of three. We found great success in using two melee fighters in Raider and Wylder, with Ironeye hanging back and reviving us with his arrows whenever we fell (in addition to taking off big chunks of enemy health with his Ultimate Art). It’s definitely worth experimenting and mixing things up the more you play though. Or, hey, try going with three of the same character just to see what happens!
Use Your Map and Plot a Course
After you land in Limveld, it’s natural to want to get fighting. After all, you’ve got a storm closing in on you! However, it’s always good to take a minute to check your map to see what’s nearby. Flask upgrades found in chapels always come in very handy, as do easy-to-defeat mini-bosses (lol “easy”) often found under churches that can help you get a few levels right off the bat. The pin system in Nightreign works quite well, as your teammates can essentially accept your pin to prioritize it on the directional map at the top of their screen. While plotting a course is helpful, the most important survival tip is knowing when you’re better off turning tail and running away from a mini-boss that’s too powerful – or any time you’re stuck in a bad situation.
Bigger Isn’t Always Better
If RPGs have taught us gamers anything over the years, we should always pick up gear with bigger numbers. While that might sometimes be the case when it comes to Nightreign’s weapons(particularly the ones you get from defeating bosses and mini-bosses), there’s a new strategy at play here. In addition to raw attack power, each weapon possesses passive bonuses that you’ll get just for having them in your inventory. So take a minute to look past that red number that’s lower than the one you’re already holding and see if this so-called weaker weapon can provide an advantage to your build – even if you never swing it – that might help you make it just a little further.
Communication is Key
We all know that communication is essential in multiplayer games, but I’m convinced that it might be more important in Nightreign than any other. Breaking free from the group and going your own way is almost always a recipe for disaster, both for you and for whatever unfortunate teammate comes to rescue you (I’ve been on both sides of that equation). There will also be plenty of times when you’ll pick up an item that would be better suited to a teammate’s character. And while Nightreign does offer a number of great, easy-to-use non-verbal communication tools (like the pins mentioned above), they’ll never be as good as good old-fashioned microphones and party chat.
Cooperation? Collaboration? Yep, Do Those
Sticking together and communicating won’t matter much if you’re not actually working together. There are plenty of examples in Nightreign where three heads are better than one. For example, we found great success when our Ironeye plinked away at an enemy’s shield from the front, allowing us melee gents to circle around and attack from the back. There were also a number of occasions in which one of us would find an item that would provide a minor passive upgrade to our character but would be much better in the hands of another. Timing our Ultimate Arts made a huge difference in some boss battles, as one Ultimate would stun the boss and allow the others to land theirs without the risk of missing and wasting it.
If at First You Don’t Succeed…
The tips above are definitely going to be helpful, but let’s be real: you’re probably going to die a few times before you even get to the first Night Lord (a three-headed, sword-wielding canine named Gladius) – and then die again a few times before you can defeat him.
It’s OK though! Not only will every run reward you with precious Relics that can give your character a boost heading into the next run, you’re almost guaranteed to learn something along the way that will help you the next time.
We’ll see you in Limveld, Nightfarer!
[Editor’s Note: a tip of the cap to Will for not try to work “Night Train” by Guns N’ Roses or “Midnight Train to Georgia” by Gladys Knight and The Pips into this Nightreign feature. Woo woo!]
ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN is a standalone adventure within the ELDEN RING universe, crafted to offer players a new gaming experience by reimagining the game’s core design.
RISE TOGETHER
Join forces with other players to take on the creeping night and the dangers within featuring 3-player co-op.
BECOME A HERO
Take command of uniquely skilled heroes, each possessing their own abilities and distinct flair. While individually formidable, their skills create powerful synergies when they unite as a team.
TAKE ON THE NIGHT
Overcome a relentless environmental threat that sweeps through a land that changes between each game session and defeat the magnificent boss of that night!
*There is also a Deluxe Edition product available. Please be careful not to purchase the same content twice.
Helldivers 2’s ongoing Galactic War appears to have reached another turning point, with the Federation declaring victory over the Illuminate.
“The Illuminate have retreated from Super Earth battlespace,” reads the in-universe message to the game’s community. “The Heart of Democracy has been defended. The Battle of Super Earth is won.”
The Illuminate’s invasion certainly took its toll on Super Earth, with only two Mega Cities left standing: Prosperity City and Equality-on-Sea.
“Remaining Illuminate forces were last observed making FTL jumps from Super Earth orbit,” the message continues. “The enemy has also vacated New Haven, Pilen V, and Widow’s Harbor, burning the surface of those planets as they fled. No stations detect Illuminate forces — the enemy has gone into hiding. They will be found.
“After days of nonstop fighting, Super Earth stands. The mettle of Managed Democracy has been tested; the will of the people has overcome the enemy. The Helldivers have achieved victory.”
The thing is, no-one actually believes the Helldivers have achieved a long-lasting victory here. As is developer Arrowhead’s way, Federation communication is by default propaganda, and further turmoil is almost certainly coming down the pipe. And players really want to chase the Illuminate as they retreat, potentially to their home planet to stamp them out for good.
Meanwhile, an in-game message revealed the President of Super Earth was killed while fighting back the Illuminate forces. But again, there was a healthy dose of scepticism from players, with some saying it might have been an Illuminate communication in disguise. What’s really going on here?
In the days since the Heart of Democracy update went live, players have fought to hold the various Mega Cities of Super Earth, which correspond to major cities in real-life. York Supreme, for example, corresponds roughly to New York, and Remembrance to Buenos Aires. As the invasion continued, more and more cities fell, leaving only Equality-On-Sea (Shanghai) and Super Earth’s capital, Prosperity City (Stockholm) standing.
Efforts rallied behind Equality-On-Sea to make a last stand. But Equality-On-Sea never hit 100%; the current arc closed with the cities’ percentage meter at 99.9783%. Many of the negative reviews are in Chinese, and while the machine translation doesn’t seem accurate enough to quote, there are some recurring points one can easily glean: frustration over driving the narrative, the perception of a thumb on the scale from Arrowhead, and repeat mentions of “99.9783%.”
What’s next? Well, for a start, the Federation needs a new president. Let’s see what Game Master Joel has up his sleeve.
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.
