There’s a new version of Resident Evil 2 made specifically for arcades, and an early version of it is already playable at Namco Funscape in the UK.
Resident Evil 2: Dead Shot, as this on-rails lightgun iteration is known, is the product of a collaboration between Bandai Namco and Capcom to create a fresh arcade iteration of the latter’s survival horror classic.
IGN has visited Namco Funscape in Romford, north-east London, and gone hands-on with Resident Evil 2: Dead Shot ourselves — as you can see in our first footage above.
In it, we can see that Dead Shot has split Resident Evil 2’s narrative into five episodes, with the first two already unlocked. It’s believed that this arcade cabinet has been installed within Namco Funscape for testing, with early bugs ironed out after public play.
Dead Shot’s first episode is its prologue, with a second episode titled “Hunted”. Loading up the prologue, the game then introduces Resident Evil 2’s setting to players: “Leon and Claire find one another on the streets of Raccoon City. Chased by zombies, they evacuate to the police department only to discover further horrors within.”
As you select your episode, a zombified hand shatters through the screen, pulling you (and your co-op partner) in.
The opening section sees Leon and Claire fighting their way into the Raccoon City Police Department, past zombie cops and zombie dogs. The game’s visuals appear to be based on Capcom’s 2019 Resident Evil 2 Remake.
Once inside the building, the pair introduce themselves to each other before more zombie cops interrupt the party. Still, there’s time for a little bit of exposition from just-about-still-alive cop Marvin Branagh, before the action continues.
As with other arcade lightgun games, you’ll need to point the gun away from the screen and pull the trigger to reload. You’ll automatically reload when you run out of bullets, but manual reloading is faster.
It’s unclear how long Resident Evil 2: Dead Shot will remain playable at Namco Funscape, but if you’re headed down in the near future look out for the neon red-lit cabinet with images of Leon, Claire and Ada Wong.
It’s intriguing to see the Resident Evil series featuring Raccoon City here once again, ahead of the franchise’s 30th anniversary next year, and the launch of Resident Evil: Requiem.
The Edge of Fate is a title that’s perhaps a bit too on the nose for a game balanced on a blade honed by years of iteration but also worn dull by time. In the storied and rich tradition of Destiny 2, this latest expansion once again takes a few major steps back after finally feeling like maybe it’d found its footing. The 14-mission campaign is monotonous and padded to the gills with busywork (despite having a sometimes-compelling story), the RPG and buildcrafting rework is locked behind one of the worst grinds Destiny has ever seen, and the new planetoid of Kepler isn’t up to Bungie’s usual standards. But even as it stumbles in its attempt to redefine itself after the excellent ending to its original story in The Final Shape last year, I do admire the risks The Edge of Fate takes, both in the bold new direction of its story and the unexpected mechanics it tries throughout its experimental campaign – though it doesn’t exactly nail either one. I still need to play through the raid before my final review, but the 20 hours I’ve spent with it so far feel like that messy spot the MCU was in after Endgame, fumbling for what comes next following a conclusion that felt pretty, well… conclusive.
I wish I could say The Edge of Fate picks up where The Final Shape left off, or that it can easily be enjoyed on its own, but both of those are extremely not true. If you haven’t been playing every little scrap of seasonal content in the past year, you’ll certainly be off to a rocky start – there’s a new antagonist wearing the face and voice of an old character, godlike beings formerly relegated to vendors and goofy gameshow hosts who have been repositioned as omniscient puppetmasters who we’re now supposed to take seriously, and about 30 minutes of nearly nonstop info dumping, which feels like something out of a pulp sci-fi novel as voices explain how “dark matter” is totally different from “the darkness” and other such gobbledygook. It’s such a terrible opening, I feared the worst for a series that’s missed the storytelling mark more often than it’s hit by a pretty wide margin. But a weak first couple of hours makes way for a tale that was actually much better than I was expecting thanks to a very strong new supporting character in Lodi, who is shrouded in a mystery involving time travel, and a completely unexpected backstory finally given to one of Destiny’s longstanding cast members that really blew me away.
There’s still plenty of wonky dialogue, less interesting characters like Orin who mostly just fill space, and an overreliance on established lore across over a decade of content that can leave even longtime fans scratching their heads – plus, in an effort to make the new baddie intimidating, they do one of my biggest story pet peeves and retcon it so that actually all of the stuff that’s ever happened was all part of their master plan (insert massive eyeroll here). But on the whole, this is one of the better stories Destiny has pulled off, and I’m especially impressed by how many massive swings are taken to make me care about the next saga in this weird universe. This is perhaps best showcased by Lodi, who manages to effortlessly feel like an invaluable part of the cast despite literally showing up out of nowhere.
The actual campaign, and especially the planet it takes place on, fare less well though. Kepler is Destiny’s first foray beyond the celestial bodies in our immediate solar system, so one might hope to marvel at places that feel new and alien, but instead we get an overly familiar setting that reuses assets we’ve seen a hundred times and slaps them onto loads of rocky cliffs and caves filled with big yellow warts. For an excursion that’s supposed to be a bold frontier that represents the future for the shooter, this is definitely one of the most lackluster settings they’ve added – to the point where I sometimes forgot The Edge of Fate was supposed to take place on a new planetoid. Seemingly in an effort to disguise how small the new area is, you aren’t allowed to summon your sparrow, which is instead replaced with a host of gimmicky abilities you have to use to access certain parts of the map, like one where you turn yourself into a tiny ball and squeeze through narrow passageways, Samus-style. This structure has the vaguest possible resemblance to a metroidvania, but usually only succeeds in making the trek back and forth to complete humdrum quests more irritating.
The new abilities can interrupt the flow of combat in an odd way.
Although these new abilities are generally irksome when they’re required to get around, they’re much more welcome in the context of solving puzzles during story missions. One such ability has you picking up a portal gun that lets you teleport to otherwise inaccessible areas, while another lets you shift the positioning of objects in the environment to create platforms or clear obstructions. So there are times where you find some loot just out of reach and have to use a combination of the Samus-ball and the other two to clear the way, which can be pretty neat. Unfortunately, these puzzles are so incredibly easy to solve they often feel more like busywork to artificially stretch out the adventure’s 8-hour runtime than anything of note, and since you can only use these abilities by finding specific nodes that grant you their power for a short time, I spent about 95% of my time running around searching for the tools needed to complete puzzles, and only the other 5% actually solving them.
And even though I admire that Bungie has tried to incorporate these same tools into combat, they usually only serve to interrupt the flow in an odd way. For example, it’s really weird that in order to kill certain enemies or progress a boss to its next DPS phase, you’ve gotta turn yourself into a little ball of light and roll around collecting items while enemies absolutely lather you in gunfire you’ve little hope of dodging. This awkwardness is magnified by the fact that they reuse these three tricks nonstop throughout the journey on Kepler, and it starts to feel needlessly repetitive in pretty short order. Still, I’ve been saying for some time now that Destiny’s been resting on the laurels of its awesome gunplay for far too long and needs a shot in the arm to keep my interest, and these puzzle-forward abilities are at the very least an interesting attempt at doing just that, even if the execution is not always successful. Here’s hoping this is the prototype for something more engaging and fleshed out in future expansions.
The wonky abilities and forgettable location aren’t the only reasons the 14 main missions in The Edge of Fate’s story are quite underwhelming though, as characters fill empty space with exposition as you fight bosses that are carbon copies of bad guys we’ve slain repeatedly throughout the years. To its credit, there are a few new enemies here and there, like flying aliens called corsairs and little robot bees that swarm you, but their impact on moment-to-moment gameplay is pretty minor when you spend 90% of the time shooting the exact same Fallen and Vex we’ve been murdering for over a decade. Even worse than the main missions though are the handful of side quests that have you literally retreading the same places you visited in story missions to scan objects and hear some more characters chatting over comms before learning you’ve completed the quest unceremoniously. Even for a game that has struggled to make interesting supplemental content, these are some of the most boring we’ve been subjected to, offering almost no benefit for completing them to boot.
The biggest changes to Destiny 2 since The Final Shape are the reworks to guns and armor, which have been overhauled yet again. I’m not one of those players who frets when updates and power creep invalidate my hard-earned loadout, so I don’t actually mind most of the changes here. A new tier system provides extremely clear labels to just how good your loot is, so you can spend less time sweating over stuff you just dismantle, and adding set bonuses to armor is a feature I’ve craved in Destiny for many years that finally gives me a real reason to hunt for different armor sets instead of finding one good set and never taking it off. The problem is that, at least right now, there isn’t enough loot to chase, with just a handful of armor sets and a little over 30 weapons added to the pool at this point, so I didn’t feel much of an incentive to rip and replace my current loadout just yet.
The real issue is that even if I did feel compelled to hunt down the new gear available, the insane, painful grind to do so is in no way worth the effort required. Once you’ve completed The Edge of Fate’s campaign, you’re directed towards various playlists containing old content that you’re asked to replay over and over again, slowly upping your power level until you can complete activities that grant higher tier loot. What’s more, even these high level activities are just pulling from the exact same legacy content that has already been one of the main ways you’re expected to engage with Destiny 2 for years now. I was truly shocked to find that after I’d rolled credits on the new story, I was almost immediately loaded into a story mission from 2021. The new loot system has basically turned the endgame of Destiny 2 into an almost endless hamster wheel where you’re force fed the old content made arbitrarily more difficult based on the world tier and modifiers in play, all so you can get slightly better versions of existing weapons that have little use beyond (you guessed it) grinding more difficult versions of those same activities. Destiny has suffered through some pretty egregious grinds over the years, but this might just be the most brutal and ill-conceived one yet, and it almost immediately made me accept the fact that I’ll likely never have any high tier items until they decide to respect my time.
The final activity on my checklist before slapping a final score on this review is to play the new raid, The Desert Perpetual, which at the time of this writing was only very recently beaten by the Destiny community’s brave day-one raiders. I’ll be hopping in shortly to see what pleasant surprises, if any, are to be found. For now, The Edge of Fate strikes me as incredibly just okay, with some new experiments that don’t always work, a neat story attached to a weak campaign, and some cool tweaks to the loot game that are hidden behind the most monstrous and boring grind Destiny has ever had.
Stonemaier Games has an all-star lineup, including titles such as Wingspan, Scythe, and Viticulture. Vantage is the publisher’s latest hotly anticipated release, and it’s the culmination of eight years of work from studio head Jamey Stegmaier. It’s a game full of secrets and exploration, capturing some of the same vibes as mystery box series like Lost and Scavenger’s Reign. It also just may be Stonemaier’s most revelatory game yet.
Vantage begins with a simple premise. Players take on the role of crew members of an intergalactic spaceship en route to an uncharted planet. Before landing on the destination, something goes wrong, and everyone bails in isolated escapade pods. You are now hurtling towards this heretofore unexplored world with zero understanding of what you will find.
That’s the setup. While each player receives an individual named character with a specialty, there’s no lengthy backstory. You don’t even know what organization, government, or coalition you work for. Beyond a relatively light ruleset, you know nothing.
This is the mystique of Vantage. It’s an open-world exploration board game built atop the bones of video games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Subnautica. This style of board game isn’t novel. There have been some popular entries in recent years, including the fantastic Sleeping Gods and 7th Continent. But those other tabletop games are based on a foundation of historical reality with a fictional layer on top. Vantage turns this idea on its head, providing no footing for understanding or tradition. Everything is weird and unusual, sometimes bearing a resemblance to what we know, but even then, this is often used as a device to subvert expectations.
Each player arrives on the planet at a randomized location. You are lost, like detritus heaved into the wind and violently scattered across a foreign body. Your position, and the conduit for the bulk of interaction, is the location card. This large rectangular card depicts your current perspective in the first person. This is your vantage.
Each card lists a half-dozen actions, each mapped to a separate skill. These categories are broad in application, with titles such as “take”, “look”, and “help”. They are denoted by colors, with the specific use of each category given a name corresponding to the circumstances you’re currently in.
This means the location card will often list a separate colored action for each of the six categories. For example, the overpower action may be displayed as a red “steal” on the card, while the blue move could be listed as “chase”. This is where the game is murky, requiring players to lean on intuition by studying the card’s artwork and trying to infer a sense of context.
After selecting the action you want to perform, another player picks up the narrative booklet of the same color and flips to the entry with the same number as your location card. Each action type has its own bespoke book of story entries, making for a massive amount of content on the whole.
Each action type has its own bespoke book of story entries, making for a massive amount of content on the whole.
The story entries list a difficulty and a brief description of what you are trying to do. So the steal example above could be: 4 – steal the satchel laying next to the sleeping sentient. Tests in this game are straightforward. You roll a handful of dice equal to the difficulty of the action, and then either lose health, stamina, or morale based on the roll. Some dice results avoid losing any vital signs, and are typically the best possible outcome.
Cleverly, your character – as well as other cards you may have attained on your journey, such as items or other followers – may store rolled dice so you don’t have to suffer the consequence. Other players may even absorb some of these dice depending on their abilities, effectively representing support or encouragement. This is the main throughline of the system, performing actions and then eating the results while hopefully maintaining enough mental and physical integrity to keep the adventure going. The more tools and followers you can amass during the journey, the more complex your system of mitigation becomes allowing for more interesting abilities and effects.
Crucially, you never fail an action in Vantage. Every test automatically succeeds, with the tension residing completely around the cost. If any of your three core stats is lowered to zero, whether as the result of a roll or triggered effect, the mission immediately ends. The action system is also where the core frustrations may arise. The fuzzy context regarding descriptors, such as what “steal” actually means, and not knowing how many dice will be rolled prior to the selection, can feel too unpredictable. This approach folds into the central philosophy of discovery quite neatly, but it’s not a particularly strategic system and can sometimes take you by surprise. This can lead to abrupt endings that are unsatisfying.
One of Vantage’s most compelling details is the mission. You are assigned a random goal at the outset of play that the whole group must work towards. This could be something like “attain two artifacts” or “build a home”. These are invented to avoid spoiling content, but the actual missions parallel this methodology. In pursuing your goal, you may also come across a destiny. Destinies are organically discovered objectives which can be pursued in tandem with your mission. They’re more impactful emotionally, as they arise naturally through play and often flow from actions. As a device to spur creative dynamic interest, they’re superb.
While I don’t view the murkiness of Vantage’s action system as a substantial flaw, I do have a more critical view of the destiny and mission structure. Mostly, this system is problematic in conjunction with the unique format of multiplayer play. Since each player is scattered in an unknown land, sessions can often feel as though several characters are playing their own separate games. This leads to slow progress, uneven investment, and a finish that can be unsatisfying. In one session, a player was pursuing a series of odd developments and weird discoveries. They were learning a mysterious craft and building a life for themselves on the planet. Meanwhile, another player on a completely separate side of the world accomplished our goal and triggered the end game. The first player was never able to pursue their own interests and felt as though they were not linked to the greater story at all.
Vantage tries to correct for this. It allows you to keep playing if you’d like, but this rarely feels satisfying. Should we all have sat by, spending another hour or so wandering around while we waited for the other player to reach the conclusion of their own goals? It’s not a great position to be in.
The isolated positioning of players works much better when pursuing a destiny or mission that can be accomplished in pieces. Occasionally, narrative will align perfectly with players calling out landmarks they’re near and trying to orient themselves. Sometimes you have to work together across massive distances. When this occurs it’s magical. Everything feels right and Vantage is hitting its peak. These moments, however, emerge unpredictably. This is why the game works much more reliably with lower player counts, or even as a solo board game. With no downtime, the tempo just hums along and the exploration is wholly immersive.
Beyond the unique approach of scattered perspectives and its quirky take on mission objectives, Vantage’s real innovation is in how it approaches discovery. Most games of this ilk are campaign board games that ask you to commit to a scenario and play it over a handful of sessions. Vantage shoves its gameplay into a single two- or three-hour engagement. Although, that’s not the whole story.
While a game begins and wraps in a single session, the true experience of Vantage is one of extended play. The knowledge you gain is the primary achievement and what you take with you. In future sessions you’ll learn more about the world, various key locations, and the mysterious nature of “the traveler” who continually reaches out to you. It’s a single-session game on the surface, with a campaign format smuggled in. This is frankly brilliant. Much of this rides on the sheer amount of content offered and the compelling nature of discovering it. The things you will find are wild and powerful, often impressing beyond expectation.
It’s a single-session game on the surface, with a campaign format smuggled in. This is frankly brilliant.
This box will stand up to dozens and dozens of hours of play. There are hundreds of locations and hundreds of items and characters and creatures to discover. Every time you arrive at a location you can only trigger a single action. You cannot engage in a second action on that card in the same session. This is artificial, but it highlights how every single set-piece has multiple things to discover. Returning to previously seen spots yields new revelations.
This is subtle, but perhaps the design’s strongest mechanical trick. One of the weaknesses of games like 7th Continent is that you must retread previously broken ground. Many locations in that game lose their wonder and spontaneity upon repeated play. Vantage overcomes that problem by presenting richer locations, as well as mission objectives that can be accomplished in many different ways. It’s structurally very different to locate two artifacts on a planet that holds dozens, than it is to locate a temple at a specific location.
All of this ties in with the core motif of creativity. The rulebook explicitly suggests you may bring your own personal goals into a session and even forego the assigned mission. The nature of play reinforces this as well, as the outcome of any particular objective is a sparse section of text lacking fanfare. Vantage is about the journey and your agency in shaping it. This cuts right to the spirit of the design, highlighting that the central experience is yours, and yours alone. Make of Vantage what you will. What I make of Vantage is that it’s one of the best games of 2025.
I am a long-time fan of Capcom’s Street Fighter series, having hurled my first Hadouken all the way back on the Super Nintendo with Street Fighter 2 Turbo, and have loved the fighters ever since. These days, folks are mostly playing Street Fighter 6, but I’ve been dabbling back with its predecessor. Instead of pressing buttons and inputting directions on my controller’s D-pad, I’ve been playing cards and rolling dice with Kess Entertainment’s Street Fighter V: Champion Edition – Legends board game. While I may have had a fine enough time with it, it always felt more in line with another of Capcom’s series than it did with the one-on-one brawler that is Street Fighter.
Street Fighter V Legends is a cooperative board game in which one to four players work together to take down one of the heads of the evil Shadaloo organization, led by the evil M. Bison. Among them are Bison himself, Balrog, Vega, and Sagat. Each player selects a character to play as from the roster of the original eight world warriors: Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Guile, Dhalsim, Blanka, E. Honda, or Zangief, with each character bringing their unique attacks that fans of the video games will instantly recognize.
With your character selected, you then get to choose a deck of cards that represents your fighting style – one of my favorite aspects of the game. In Street Fighter, the actions you can take on your turn are based on cards that you draw and play from these respective decks of cards, with each deck tailored to different strategies and named after common terms in the fighting game communities that have built up around the video games.
Take, for instance, the “Shoto” deck, which has more projectile cards, as though you are spamming Ryu or Ken’s Hadoukens. Or there’s the Rushdown deck, which is more about maneuvering around opponents and hitting them hard with attacks like the Cross Up.
With your character selected, you then choose a deck of cards that represents your fighting style – one of my favorite aspects of the game.
On each turn, players place down and activate two of these cards from their hands, rolling dice to dish out damage, and with each card adding various resources to their available pool, which can then be spent to use their character’s special abilities. These resources include punches, kicks, and my personal favorite, joysticks. The six included decks offer some sense of asymmetry to how a character can play. I wish this was pushed a little farther to highlight further the different playstyles used in competitions, but their inclusion is still a neat easter egg that I appreciate.
Games of Street Fighter V take place in one of four possible stages that you build from poster-board tiles that come with the game. Each stage has some unique rules that go with it, as well. It would be too easy if the big bad were out from the get-go for you and your friends to take out. Instead, you need to prove yourself first and get strong by taking out various minions that spawn on the board, or fighting your rival (an AI-controlled Street Fighter character assigned to each player at the start of the game). Taking out these enemies earns you EX bars that can be used to upgrade your character’s abilities, putting you in a better spot for when the Nemesis boss character appears.
Bison, Balrog, Sagat, and Vega – the Nemesis characters – each have their own set of abilities that are triggered depending on what is pulled from the Nemesis deck, which also determines where new minions spawn. Once you and your team manage to deal enough damage to knock out the nemesis, you win – but if even one of your team is taken out, then it’s game over. The general flow of the game is pretty simple, and by the second or third turn through, everyone I played with had a good grasp on how the game worked, and things went pretty quickly.
Moving my character around, hurling fireballs, and beating up minions was fun, which caused my friends and me to, on more than one occasion, yell out the signature moves as we performed them. The lack of enemy variety is a bit of a bummer, with only three minion factions to pick from, each with only two options. That means you will quickly run out of new enemies to fight against, made worse by the fact that each game only has you go up against one of the three factions.
Maps aren’t overly large, which is nice. It’s never a hassle to get to the various objectives or wherever you want to go, and the additional few “Hard” Nemesis cards you can mix into the deck do increase the challenge, but I wouldn’t turn down more offerings or tweaks to increase the difficulty or complexity of the game. If you are just looking for a game to beat up thugs with your friends, Street Fighter is fine enough now and then.
I have played a good number of board game adaptations of popular video games, from Resident Evil to Slay the Spire, and even ones like Guilty Gear Strive that are also based on a fighting game. But Street Fighter V: Champion Edition – Legends feels the most disjointed and confused as to what it wants to be. Looking at just the gameplay, the concept of running around with your friends, taking out small minions before tackling the stage’s boss is far more in line with, say, Capcom’s Final Fight series of beat-’em-ups. A series, mind you, whose characters have made the jump into Street Fighter previously, such as the ninja Guy. But Street Fighter has always been about duking it out with your friend in a 1v1 fight, and by making this a strictly cooperative game, both of those core components of the game are missing.
This disparity includes even those little easter eggs that I mentioned, like the various fight style decks and joystick resource on the cards. These little nods will be appreciated most by members of the fighting game community and glossed over by others who would appreciate this game more for what it is, rather than the package we got that honestly feels like it simply got the Street Fighter V property slapped on top of a different game and called it a day.
The long-running Hunter x Hunter series recently received a new video game adaptation with Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact. With a beloved brand and a notable fighting game developer on board, you might hope this would go off without a hitch.
Yet in the days since launch, Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact has been the subject of discourse and criticism within the fighting game community. Its gameplay hearkens back to the kind of scrappy, seemingly overpowered bouts many enjoy in this particular environment, but several issues have been holding Nen x Impact back; namely, the netcode.
Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact is a tag-team fighting game that went live five days ago on July 16 and, at the time of writing, has a little over 140 total reviews on Steam. While the ratio of positive-to-negative reviews favors the former, it’s at a roughly 2:1 ratio, leaving Nen x Impact at an overall “Mixed.”
Multiple reviews, even the positive ones, note issues specifically with the netcode. While there are issues taken with a slim single-player offering and other points, netcode is a primary concern.
On the flip-side, the majority in positive reviews do enjoy the fighting quite a bit. “I can’t help it man, its my favorite fighting game ever. nothing else comes close in terms of how freeform you can be, how explosive it is, how impressive it feels and looks to do well,” one reviewer wrote.
just to clarify i still really like the core gameplay of nen impact, had a lot of fun labbing stuff, but the netcode constantly fluctuates 3-6f of rollback even against people close to you, it doesnt work right and i dont think its a good consumer product as of the current patch
It’s honestly a shame, because Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact does have some incredible potential. It’s based on Hunter x Hunter, for one thing; an anime series that has a wide cast of characters, each with their own unique powers that could make for a rich environment of playstyles and designs. Seeing Biscuit Krueger, Hisoka, Kurapika, and more face-off is already fun, especially since shonen fighting games can range from stellar to less-than-stellar.
Nen x Impact also inherits a legacy from its developer, Eighting. It’s a studio known in fighting game circles for its contributions to the craft, most notably with its work on Marvel Vs. Capcom 3. Watch some clips of Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact, and it’s not hard to see the MvC3 influence.
This should be a match made in Hunter x Hunter heaven. But instead, Nen x Impact has struggled to find a foothold due to online frustrations. It’s the kind of issue that is, as fighting game commentator Sajam put it, thankfully an outlier these days, but can still be a major blocker for any game trying to keep an audience. In-person and local competition is still huge for fighting games, but online play has been a core part of keeping a game’s community alive and thriving. Bushiroad and Eighting even pushed the original 2024 launch date of Nen x Impact back in order to implement rollback netcode.
The developer published a statement on July 16, confirming both an issue where “excessive rollback frames occur during matches” and one where “matches forcibly terminate due to desynchronization errors.” The team confirms it’s investigating these issues and is working on a resolution. Meanwhile, the studio is recommending players fight under “a stable and reliable internet connection whenever possible,” and will introduce a feature in an upcoming update to view “more detailed information” regarding an opponent’s connection quality and region.
The question now is whether these fixes can arrive fast enough, before other games steal the spotlight. The tag fighter genre is starting to get a little crowded, as both Riot’s 2XKO and now Arc System Works’ Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls loom on the horizon. It would be exciting for MvC3 fans and Hunter x Hunter fans alike to see Eighting get Nen x Impact to a stable place, but it seems like the road there could be longer than some would hope.
The Dying Light series quickly earned its place in the pantheon of great zombie games by blending brutal first-person combat with satisfying parkour movement – all set within dangerous open worlds. The series has thus far delivered on offering a slick and thrilling survival experience, but with the upcoming Dying Light: The Beast, we see developer Techland return to its roots for a more focused concept that lets an amped up returning protagonist Kyle Crane loose in an even more hostile setting.
I got to spend over four hours playing the opening of Dying Light: The Beast, getting reacquainted with Kyle Crane as he comes to grips with a more feral world after the events of the second game. Playing The Beast was very much like a turbo-charged version of the original game, so much so that you may as well call it Super Dying Light. So with that, here are six of the most exciting and game-changing upgrades that the upcoming sequel brings to the table.
1. A More Focused Story, and the Return of Kyle Crane
Dying Light 2 took a bold step towards building an RPG-style story with game-changing events defined by your choices. While certainly ambitious, it didn’t quite reach its full potential in the broader sense. For The Beast, we instead see a more defined story about the return of Kyle Crane, who has undergone some horrific experiments following the shocking ending of the Dying Light 1 expansion The Following. Now hellbent on revenge against the mysterious antagonist known as The Baron, Crane has to relearn his skills as a survivalist while leveraging some powerful abilities to level the playing field.
Several interactions with key characters also play out in Mass Effect-style chats.
The Beast draws inspiration from Dying Light 2 and does more to make Kyle a more central figure within his story. Along with new third-person cutscenes, there are now more opportunities to help build Crane’s understanding of the state of things in Castor Woods. Several interactions with key characters also play out in Mass Effect-style chats, which can give you more insight into plot developments and to pick up on Dying Light lore. I really appreciate the more focused take on storytelling and character growth from these moments, especially with Kyle Crane front and center. And it’s a cool opportunity to catch up on what’s changed in the world following the events of Dying Light 2.
2. You Hit the Ground Running
Dying Light: The Beast does well to show its teeth early, making the point that this is a more brutal take on the series. Many of the combat encounters in the opening show how aggressive and imposing the infected can be, with even the common foes managing to get the jump on me when I let my guard down. Fortunately, Kyle Crane is a far more capable survivalist than before. So much so that many abilities locked off in different skill trees from previous games, such as the parkour-based high jumps and pulling off counter grabs, are a part of Crane’s core kit and can be used immediately. Furthermore, you can even use new takedowns on weakened enemies, which act as glory kills for the lesser and more elite infected.
I certainly appreciated being able to do so without having to endure much of a retread of the familiar power grind back to securing vital skills. This made me feel a bit more confident to face down foes armed with a hammer or machete, thanks to some amped-up beast powers running through Crane’s body. That said, I still sometimes felt overwhelmed by combat encounters and had to make tactical retreats often to heal. But thankfully, new skills that can be unlocked can help level the playing field, such as the return of the flying drop kick and the array of new beast powers that Kyle can unleash.
3. A More Organized Way to Acquire New Skills
The previous games featured skills spread across the combat, parkour, and survival trees, with your playstyle defining growth for each. Dying Light: The Beast ditches the specialized leveling system in favor of more traditional leveling, with earned skill points spent across the different combat and traversal branches at your leisure. This helps to even out character growth, with The Beast avoiding the lopsided growth that could occur in the first two Dying Lights.
However, the special Beast skill tree will require some more effort to unlock, as only by defeating the various Chimera bosses hidden throughout Castor Woods, which reveal themselves during story missions and hidden locations. Once you defeat one, Crane will acquire a sample of the Chimera, which will expand his more powerful skills.
4. Going Beast Mode
Dying Light: The Beast finally grants players new abilities and skills that have been long-teased throughout the series. As a powered-up state that goes into effect once you’ve dished out or sustained enough damage, Crane will automatically enter beast mode, amping up his melee strikes and agility in ways that let you cut loose against common and elite foes alike. Additional Beast powers add new abilities like a running jump, a ground slam, and even the ability to pick up boulders and toss them at foes, just like those annoying bruiser enemies from earlier games.
The developers even likened beast mode to acquiring a power pellet in Pac-Man.
The Dying Light series has always balanced that sense of power with feeling vulnerable in a fight, but entering beast mode offers up a satisfying burst of strength that not only comes in clutch, but can also lead to a fantastic finish to a fight. The developers even likened the mode to acquiring a power pellet in Pac-Man, which will turn your enemies into weaklings in no time. And while beast mode can come in handy, it’ll unfortunately activate the moment the meter is filled, which can lead to some awkward moments where the action is winding down and you’re still pumped up.
5. Re-embracing Survival Horror by Adding More Danger
One moment that instills a sense of dread for every Dying Light player is right when nightfall hits. In that moment, the game transitions into a full-on survival horror experience as the powerful, volatile infected come out to play. While Dying Light 2 eased the tension of nighttime gameplay to make it more approachable, this ultimately came at the expense of its larger experience. This was later patched with further updates, and The Beast fully embraces the original vision of survival during the night.
Even with Crane’s enhanced beast powers and arsenal of weapons, I still found myself rattled when it came to trying to find safety during the evening. During one particular instance, I found myself trapped on the rooftops of the Old Town district, and I was surrounded by three volatile infected that were actively on the hunt for me after I mistimed my jump and landed into the streets below. The volatile are more aggressive and intelligent than ever, and the nighttime is seriously unsettling to explore. Still, The Beast manages to strike a great balance with making you capable of surviving the odds, but totally vulnerable when left to fend for yourself.
6. This Is Not an Expansion, but a Proper Sequel
A prevailing worry other fans, including myself, had with Dying Light: The Beast was that it was going to be a more bite-sized follow-up, but after my hands-on time, developer Techland had proven me wrong with the upcoming standalone game. The scale of The Beast is much closer to the original Dying Light, which the devs have stated was the sweet spot when it came to playing the more aggressive take on their open-world survival game.
What makes Dying Light: The Beast work well, based on my limited time with it, is that it combines the best aspects of both the original and the first sequel. It adopts a more thoughtful approach to presenting its main narrative and characters from the second, while retaining the more confident and hard-hitting, tense action from the original. Without the decision paralysis that could come from Dying Light 2’s complex narrative, The Beast goes all-in on Crane’s revenge story that’s chock-full of the thrills and scares that the series is all about – and that seems to be what fans are most looking forward to with the next entry in this series.
Ready or Not‘s console port finally released last week, and it’s already surpassed one million sales. Combined with sales of its early access PC version, which released in December 2023, the game has now topped 10 million units sold.
“When we launched Ready or Not on PC, it took about 36 days to reach 1 million units sold,” said VOID CEO, Julio Rodriguez. “On console, it took about 3.6 days. I’m incredibly proud of the team and what we’ve accomplished together. It’s a huge moment — and one we don’t take for granted.”
Rodriguez then went on to thank Ready or Not’s players and “everyone who believed in the project.”
Last week, July 15, VOID Interactive proceeded with changes introduced to controversial shooter Ready or Not despite widespread condemnation from fans who claimed the developer was “censoring” the game’s gore and violence by “appeasing console market regulators.”
At the time, VOID insisted the changes were “small enough that most people here wouldn’t notice if we didn’t say anything,” but it “wanted to be transparent” with its players. Players disagreed, and the news caused Ready or Not’s Steam user review rating to plummet to “mostly negative” for recent reviews. Up until the controversy, it had accured a “Mostly Positive” rating.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Amazon selling anything for near MSRP Pokémon TCG related is a miracle in itself, but this Black Bolt ETB is available right now for just under $79. I loved opening Black Bolt and White Flare, and it’s certainly one of the best Scarlet and Violet sets to collect Illustration Rares from. This is a good deal in the current climate, snap this up.
Pokémon TCG Stock Update
Amazon is finally killing it for Pokémon TCG elite trainer box stock and pricing, and some are the closest to MSRP the big box retailer has been for weeks. Not only is the Black Bolt ETB vastly undercutting the secondary market, Paradox Rift ETB is even cheaper (And an overlooked set in my opinion, stock up now).
There’s other great deals on ex boxes too, which are also near MSRP and around the same or just under listings on TCG Player. The sealed market is becoming more competitive, so it’s more important than ever to give eBay a quick check before hitting buy.
Nintendo Switch 2 Stock Updates
As predicted, Nintendo Switch 2’s launch window is seeing stock shortages. If you didn’t preorder at launch, you’ve probably been waiting for stock drops since launch. Amazon currently has it’s invitation system in place for both the standard console SKU and the Mario Kart world bundle, so it’s always worth getting on the waiting list whilst you wait. If successful, your purchase link will be live for 72 hours.
The Legend of Zelda Hardcover Book Sale
Nearly every The Legend of Zelda hardcover book you need for your collection is available in this sale with some cracking discounts. It includes my favorite one, Hyrule Historia, that fills in more than a few gaps in the LoZ lore, although the timeline has already been slightly retconned. It also includes full and expanded official guides for Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.
KRK Kreate Powered Studio Monitors
I can personally guarantee a set of powered studio monitors will sound better than almost any sound system with or without a subwoofer. The new line of KRK Kreate studio monitors aren’t just for recording music (Although they’d do an amazing job), they’re a versatile sound option for content creation, editing, gaming, watching TV and movies and more. Buyers can even teather to them via Bluetooth for no fuss connections.
I’ve been using the 8-inch speaker models for a couple of weeks now, and they destory my soundbar and subwoofer combo that cost’s nearly double the price of these. There’s precision adjustments knobs on the back, which I keep mostly in neutral with volume up by half for a crisp flat sound with the right amount of bass. Although that can be cranked up when needed.
Personally I use an audio splitter so my Krate 8s can handle my Nano QuadCortex guitar amp moddler, my TV audio and gaming PC audio for the best experience. For me, going from a 3-inch to 8-inch speaker option is night and day. The clarity difference and range is top-tier, not to mention the jack, XLR and aux outputs available on each monitor that fits in perfectly in everyone’s setup. You’re getting top-of-the-range brand quality without the “gaming” brand tax, it’s a win-win.
Apple AirPods Pro 2
AirPods Pro 2 are one of those earbuds I keep noticing for their mix of sound quality and thoughtful features. At $199, they offer a strong balance of value and performance. The active noise cancellation blocks out a lot of background noise while adaptive audio automatically adjusts based on your surroundings. You get four sizes of silicone tips for a customizable fit, and once those are set they stay comfortable even through longer listening sessions. The personalized spatial audio and hearing aid features add extra depth, giving them more flexibility than just a standard pair of wireless earbuds.
INIU Portable Charger 10000mAh 45W
This is ideal for carrying around when you’ve forgot to stick your phone on charge overnight, 45W is more than enough power to charge anything whilst using it, from phones to Nintendo Switch 2. So who can argue for $12?
Donkey Kong Bananza
If you own a Switch 2 and not Donkey Kong Bananza, there’s something a-miss. We’ve given it a rare 10/10, and is officially Nintendo’s latest handheld’s first killer app and system seller. It’s from the same team behind Super Mario Odyssey and takes full advantage of the power packed into Nintendo Switch 2. Just get it, play it, then thank me later.
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has chalked up Star Wars Outlaws‘ lackluster performance to the “choppy waters” of the sci-fi saga’s fandom.
Addressing shareholders at a recent Q&A, Guillemot didn’t reflect on the game’s own performance issues, bugs, or complaints about repetitive gameplay, instead saying: “Outlaws was released at a time when the brand that it belonged to was in a bit of choppy waters.”
I’s true that the Star Wars brand has taken a bit of a battering of late, with a middling reception to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and lower-than-hoped viewership of various Disney+ spin-offs like Book of Boba Fett and The Acolyte. But attributing Outlaws’ mixed reception to broader issues with the fandom has raised a few eyebrows among fans for feeling slightly reductive.
Guillemot did not make note of the game’s own technical problems on arrival, for example. IGN’s own Star Wars Outlaws review — in which we awarded the sci-fi game a “Good” 7/10 — highlighted repetitive combat and “a few too many bugs at launch.”
Star Wars Outlaws got its first story expansion in May with the release of the A Pirate’s Fortune DLC on PlayStation, Xbox and PC. A Pirate’s Fortune gives players the chance to join forces with Hondo Ohnaka, head of the Ohnaka Gang. Hondo will be a name familiar to Star Wars: The Clone Wars fans and readers of the 2017 comic book series Star Wars: Darth Maul, and has even done time as one of the animatronic characters at the Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge attraction. This time around he’ll be Kay’s ally as she takes on Stinger Tash and her gang, the Rokana Raiders, checks out a mysterious tomb and does some smuggling for the Miyuki Trade League.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
The Chinese Room, the acclaimed British indie studio behind last year’s oil rig horror game Still Wakes the Deep, has now officially cut ties with its former parent company Sumo Digital.
The studio, which also developed indie darlings Dear Esther and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, has now completed a management buyout, a spokesperson for The Chinese Room has confirmed to IGN.
Today’s news follows an uncertain few months for the Brighton-based studio, after Sumo’s previous announcement it would be refocusing its efforts “exclusively on development services for partners”, rather than continuing its work on original franchises.
In a message to press today, The Chinese Room said it had looked “increasingly likely” the company would be sold off by Sumo Digital, likely to a private equity firm or another overseas buyer — Sumo itself having been acquired by Chinese giant Tencent in 2018.
Instead, The Chinese Room will now be run as an indepedent entity headed up by studio director Ed Daly, following a deal facilitated by venture capital firm Hiro Capital.
“This management buyout allows us to scratch the creative itch of continuing to work on new, original intellectual property, but also to partner with other studios on other projects when they fit in with our vision,” Daly said. “This is what we are doing and we want to carry on doing it, so we’re happy to carry on in this vein.”
Following the launch of Still Wakes the Deep and last month’s DLC pack Siren’s Rest, The Chinese Room now has two new IPs in the works, it was revealed today.
Next to launch, however, will be the long-gestating Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, set to be published by Paradox Interactive this coming October.
“The Chinese Room is a huge British success story that has rightly been recognised as a unique creative force capable of competing on the world stage,” said Spike Laurie, a partner at Hiro Capital. “From hiring British people to making games set in the UK, they’ve been one of our foremost creative studios and now they are once again in charge of their own destiny while remaining British.
“We are at risk of overlooking these creative gems and letting them be sold to overseas corporations,” Laurie continued. “That is a travesty for the $5.5 billion British gaming industry which has a world-renowned reputation. We need to nurture this talent and support it through difficult times, because it is one of our leading creative exports.”
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
