As the night draws near, the fangs come out and the darkest of deceptions begins. From its tabletop roots, to its transition into visual novels and action role-playing games, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 raises the stakes in the popular series.
I got to explore a sinister Seattle in this final version of the first-person adventure sequel, to unearth what has come to light in the World of Darkness for its October 21 launch on PlayStation 5.
A living undead world
The Emerald City has adopted a distinct shade of white in Bloodlines 2, following a brutal winter snowstorm, restricting all transport. It’s the perfect setting of isolation for assuming control of a 400-year-old Elder vampire only known as Nomad (or Phyre, for the more familiar), who you can customize via a massive variety of outfits, facial styles, and accessories. These choices can also affect how others react to you – want to get a biker to respect Phyre? Then slipping on a power suit isn’t going to cut it.
After finishing an action-packed tutorial through a derelict building, I was free to explore Seattle’s brightly lit streets, rat-infested back alleys, and impressive skyscrapers. Despite being set in the depths of night, the city heaves with life. Between its varied wanderers, street art, and radio shows broadcasting everything from weather bulletins to the mood of the people, environmental storytelling is everywhere, filling each area with something to pay attention to.
Move like a vampire
From its opening minutes, the game teaches you the importance of verticality, with Phyre’s enhanced jump via a quick double tap of the X button allowing them to scale high fences and reach tall ledges.
Between supernatural leaps, a super-speed dash, the ability to clamber up drainpipes and fire escapes with ease, and being able to glide across the sky without worrying about fall damage, navigating the city was an empowering experience. Especially as I often had to use Phyre’s enhanced senses via R3 to track scents across the rooftops. However, there’s a catch…
Preserve the masquerade
As per the series’ established rules, performing unusual, supernatural, or outright vampiric actions within the public eye is punishable by the Camarilla, the code-enforcing vampire court. This meant my activities had to be governed with caution to prevent hunters from being sent to collect my immortal head. And mortal police roaming these snowy streets will not hesitate to fire if they suspect ill intent.
Supernatural skills
But none of this limited my bloodsucking expression. The fun was in figuring out how to work around the law, supernatural or otherwise, especially as combat is a big part of Bloodlines 2.
Starting off simple, a tap of L1 lets you dodge attacks, while R1 delivers a melee strike. The latter is devastating to humans – often turning them into instant mulch – but will only slightly damage enhanced enemies such as ghouls or other vampires. Given I was fighting around half a dozen brutes at one time, stealth and hit-and-run tactics were essential to survival.
However, Phyre has another trick in their coffin. Pressing R2 activates their telekinesis ability, which can be used to levitate items from a distance, steal weapons from enemies, and even throw their bodies. This allowed me to draw people into the shadows so Phyre could feed, but also, in one instance, gave me the chance to provoke the police into attacking a band of ghouls – leaving me to find a safe spot to watch them wipe each other out.
A clash of clans
Of course, there are other ways to fight, too. The clan you choose at the start of the game determines your ability tree progression and unlockable skills. I bit into Ventrue, which specialises in mental domination perks like temporarily possessing or entrancing enemies, and passive attack resistance.
Other clans offer different talents, such as the brawling Brujah with abilities like Earthshock, a Hulk-like ground-shaking slam. The Tremere clan specialises in ranged attack blood magic, Banu Haqim focuses on stealth perks, including the ability to prevent an enemy from calling for help, the shadow-driven Lasombra clan allows skills designed to trap or scare opponents, and Toreadors are all about overpowering the weak-willed at close quarters. Handily, you can also unlock skills outside of your chosen clan by feeding on people with particular types of blood.
Adding another layer to all of this is Fabien, the vampire detective, unexpectedly trapped in Phyre’s head. During short interludes, I was transported into Fabien’s past, tying a previous case to the current-day mystery of their psychic entanglement, giving access to fresh powers, like reading emotions to glean information from the tight-lipped.
Choose your words carefully
In situations where fists don’t fly, the branching dialogue system nicely changes the pace. When engaging in conversation, you’ll often be given different ways to respond, with Fabien sometimes hinting at the personality you’re facing. It’s important to know when to employ flattery, discretion, directness, or intimidation to yield the best results, as your responses can affect these relationships and how others perceive you as the story progresses,on top of the influence of your clan affiliation.
Put your vampiric powers through their paces when Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 releases on October 21.
The Nintendo Switch-era has been a frustrating one for Pokemon fans. The evolutionary line from Sword and Shield, to Pokemon Legends: Arceus, to Scarlet and Violet was one of slow but steady progress as Game Freak refined its ideas for how capturing, exploring, and battling should look in a fully 3D world. But this era has also played host to a major downhill slide in terms of overall polish, appearance, and performance across those three games. Pokemon Legends: Z-A, I’m happy to report, puts an end to that slide on basically all counts. It continues to successfully experiment with Pokemon’s gameplay by translating its carefully cultivated turn-based battle system into an action-based one. And it does so while scaling back its ambitions for a massive world to a more manageable size, resulting in a tighter, more polished, and far more fun Pokemon than we’ve seen in several years.
Pokemon Legends: Z-A takes place entirely within the bounds of Lumiose City, a Paris-inspired metropolis that I fondly remember from Pokemon X and Y, the events of which took place five years prior to this new story. A sudden rash of Wild Pokemon invading its city limits has resulted in conflicts between them and the people that live there, and necessitates “Wild Zones” within the city to keep them separate. It’s into this tense environment that you show up via train: a young adult (For real! Not a ten-year-old child! Your peers talk about getting jobs and paying rent! Holy Sharpedo!) with seemingly no agenda or reason to be in Lumiose beyond casual tourism. You’re immediately adopted by a group that refers to itself as Team MZ, which is dedicated to protecting the city by day, and becoming strong enough to do so effectively by climbing the ranks of a local competition every night: the Z-A Royale.
Never before has a Pokemon game’s setting been so integral to its story and themes. The way its characters and story focused so tightly on Lumiose as a place and a community reminded me in many ways of the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series. By not asking you to cross vast distances on a fairly abstract badge-collecting journey all by yourself, Z-A is able to tell the stories of more characters in more detail. You have a crew of pals who hang out at a hotel with you, and who constantly show up in the city to help you out in battle or with whatever else you need. Unlike rivals in past games, they’re given more space to develop as characters and actually have a relationship with you beyond throwaway lines about type alignments.
Z-A is also stuffed with side quests that give you ample opportunity to get to know the inhabitants of Lumiose. Delightfully, most of them aren’t Pokemon trainers. You’ll help a Furfrou groomer teach her Scyther styling techniques, and a perfume maker sample Pokemon odors for her wares. A cafe worker needs you to lure Trubbish away from her cafe, and an electrical worker needs you to chase off Pokemon messing with his elevator (er, “Holovator”). To keep the comparisons to Yakuza going, the vast majority of these side quests are, frankly, pretty silly. They often feature creative or weird scenarios that are resolved by your character, like Kiryu, inexplicably being far and away the toughest person in the room. There are over 100 of these side quests, and they involve all sorts of tasks, such as battles, catching certain Pokemon, teaching Pokemon specific moves, trading, evolving, acquiring certain items, doing parkour, and a lot more. It took me 35 hours to roll credits while mostly staying on top of side quests as they gradually popped up during the campaign, but I still haven’t managed to finish every single one in the post-game.
Never has a Pokemon game’s setting been so integral to its story and themes.
Also like the Yakuza games (this is the last comparison, I swear), Z-A’s plot is civic-minded. Rather than just being about becoming stronger or filling up a monster encyclopedia, your goal is centered around training to protect the city you now call home. As you grow, you encounter a cast of characters with different ideas about what Lumiose City needs to thrive, some of whom clash with one another. Z-A wrestles with some actual, real-world ideas as it questions what it means when multiple groups of people (or, I guess, creatures) inhabit the same space but have very different needs, and who should be prioritized when those needs conflict. Z-A doesn’t come away with easy answers, but it does provide some pretty interesting metaphors for real-world issues both civic and environmental, and above all else, emphasizes compassion for others in trying to solve them.
(Also there’s a literal benevolent Japanese mafia faction in this game. Okay, now I’m done for real, I promise.)
One sour note in all this is the lack of voice acting. I’ll be honest, I’ve played Pokemon games so often and for so long without it that Z-A not having voice acting didn’t really bother me during all the time I spent running around, doing sidequests, and reading main quest text boxes. Where it did become a problem, however, was during the major story cutscenes, where characters dramatically move their mouths and flail their arms around while absolutely no sound comes out. This wacky pantomime was jarring and immersion-breaking. I don’t know what Game Freak was thinking here. It’s long past time Pokemon caught up to every other story-heavy game and hired some dang voice actors, at least for major cutscenes.
Speaking of Game Freak needing to play catch-up, take a deep breath with me, because we gotta talk about performance.
It’s… fine? It’s fine. It’s actually fine.
On the Nintendo Switch 2, Z-A runs at a smooth and consistent 60 FPS. NPCs and objects do still pop in rather suddenly and a bit too close for comfort, but it’s substantially better than the wonky phasing in and out at spitting distance we saw in Scarlet and Violet. I didn’t see any character animations move at agonizingly slow framerates. I didn’t personally run into any game breaking bugs. None of my Pokemon got stuck in the floor or the wall. The loading screens are almost too fast to read the tips shown on them. Taken all together, I was able to play through the entire game barely thinking about performance, which is so much more than I could say for Z-A’s two predecessors.
That doesn’t mean Z-A looks great, though. One major, oft-pointed-out problem with Z-A is that it takes place entirely in a plain, unattractive city. Most of the time, you will be looking at the same five or six building exteriors, all of which are flat, ugly images with no detail or depth: just some windows and balconies painted onto a wall, Looney Tunes-style. There’s some variety in town, like a Wild Zone that gets covered in snow, a graveyard, and a sandy area, but for the most part, Lumiose is made up of a lot of the same parks, the same cafes, and the same paving stones again and again and again. You can’t go inside most buildings.
But not all of Z-A is aesthetically disagreeable. The building interiors you do get to see are detailed, colorful, cozy-looking, and not repetitive. Character models are more expressive than before, too, and there’s a wider visual variety in NPC designs than ever before thanks to small, long overdue touches like distinct facial features and differently colored outfits within trainer classes. Your own character’s face customization capabilities continue to improve from past games as well. Outfit customization is pretty good, with lots of options to choose from, no gender-locked clothing, and the ability to mix and match colors of jackets, shirts, belts, and other items in certain cases for a wider variety of looks.
Lumiose is visually uninteresting, but that doesn’t mean it’s uninteresting to explore.
While I’ve dinged Lumiose for being visually uninteresting, that’s not synonymous with it being uninteresting to explore. Z-A mostly solves one of the biggest issues I had with both Arceus and Scarlet/Violet: they were both big, empty worlds devoid of real reasons to explore beyond the surface. Those two predecessors tried to capture the vast scale of the Pokemon world, but the actual open areas lacked real detail. Much of their maps consisted of enormous fields full of the same Pokemon and meaningless items sort of scattered randomly around. Their caves were empty tunnels, their mountaintops often barren, and their landmarks rarely offered an interesting reward for visiting. Why even have a giant world if you’re going to make it so boring? Z-A isn’t like that.
By shrinking the world down to a manageable size, Game Freak was able to find the time, or ideas, or whatever it was that was lacking before to fill it with thoughtfully placed rewards. Sometimes those are items such as TMs or collectible Colorful Screws that wait at the end of Z-A’s rather amusingly cumbersome platforming segments. But more often those rewards are rare Pokemon. You see, while most Pokemon are confined to Wild Zones, some monsters do still lurk in the city streets, and they’re genuinely exciting to find. At first, you’ll only see common Pokemon: Pidgeys and Fletchlings pecking around in parks, Kakuna dangling out of trees, maybe a Trubbish munching on some garbage. But explore enough, and you’ll start to find alleyways, courtyards, and rooftops hiding rarer monsters: an Ariados dropping suddenly from a sewer ceiling, Gastly leaping out from a dark corner at night, a single Eevee trotting down a narrow backroad. I squealed once when I saw a single, rare Dratini on a rooftop I’d worked painstakingly hard to reach. It’s moments like these that really flesh out Lumiose and make it such a delight to explore.
In fact, there’s so much to see that I’ve somehow gotten this far into my review without digging into Z-A’s most revelatory change yet: the battle system. Pokemon is an action game now! They threw the last of the turn-based elements out the window! It’s great!
It’s genuinely impressive how well Game Freak managed to translate a familiar system of monsters, moves, status effects, items, and types into a completely different genre. Instead of taking turns, you move your character around the battlefield while the monsters are fighting. Your Pokemon will follow you by default, giving you an indirect and interesting way to control their positioning somewhat and even dodge your opponent’s moves. If you hold down ZL, your Pokemon will instead square up with its opponent and you can select and use moves. If you’re in a battle against a wild Pokemon, you’ll need to do all this while also moving your character out of danger, as they can damage and even knock you out, adding an interesting new layer of strategy to how you position yourself, and thus your monster, for optimal offense and defense.
It’s impressive how well Game Freak managed to translate combat into a completely different genre.
I was concerned, based on early trailers, that all this would amount to just smashing the same offensive moves into opponents with little actual strategy, but that’s far from the case. The indirect movement system, while a little clunky to get used to, introduces an interesting strategic layer of positioning as you play with the flow of dodging and attacking. The moves themselves are delightfully complex in both their variety and the ways Game Freak has changed them to fit the action genre while keeping their spirit alive. Short-range moves, for instance, can be used very quickly, but put you in danger of being hit. Long-range moves take a bit of time to wind up, but you stay at a distance while you do them. Moves like Protect and Detect have been reconfigured to be used almost like a parry. Fire Spin and Sand Trap form areas-of-effect on the ground you can try and lure enemies to stand in, while Spikes throws a bunch of hazards all over the place.
Status effects have been overhauled, too: paralysis slows you down significantly, while confusion sometimes causes your Pokemon to wander off in weird directions. Mega Evolutions also got a revamp that adds even more complex layers including a meter to fill, the ability to Mega Evolve multiple different Pokemon in the same battle, and Plus Moves, which are essentially moves with the power of a Mega Evolved Pokemon but usable by any monster on your team under the right conditions.
One of the best parts of this system is how it still rewards past Pokemon knowledge even in this entirely new framing, with everything working roughly how you’d guess it might. While I hope Pokemon doesn’t fully abandon turn-based battles, I would love it if the Legends spin-off series adopts this action system going forward and continues to refine it – Arceus introduced a revolutionary new system for catching Pokemon, so it feels like a fitting that Z-A has revolutionized the other key half of the series. Besides, I cannot wait to watch the competitive community get its hooks into this and see what meta develops.
Until then, we have the campaign’s own challenges to overcome. Even casual players are likely to breeze through some of it – the Z-A Royale, for instance, has you collecting points by defeating trainers until you get enough to instigate a Promotion Match and move up a rank. These battles are a joke. The Battle Zones you fight through to collect points try to shake things up by allowing you to sneak up on enemy trainers for an advantage attack, or be snuck up on yourself. But it’s trivially easy to sneak up on opponents and knock out their first monster in a single blow, then thrash their second immediately after.
To an extent, that may be intended, as you can increase monetary rewards from Battle Zones by beating as many trainers as possible before daybreak, so you’re encouraged to just Rapidash your way through battles. But the Z-A Royale’s relative ease nonetheless mutes the accomplishment of ranking up, particularly in light of the fact that the story actually forces you to jump a whopping 17 ranks at once at one point. Would the story have been an agonizing 100 hours long instead of a normal 30 hours if Z-A had not done this? Yes. Does it still feel real silly when it happens and make the Royale into a bit of a joke? Also yes.
But it’s not all a walk in the PokePark. You’ll still find challenge in other places, such as Wild Areas, where a powerful Alpha Pokemon can summon a gang of smaller guys to overwhelm you if you’re not careful. Most difficult, and most fun, are the story battles against Rogue Mega Evolved Pokemon. These monsters are big and mean, deliberately going directly after your trainer a lot of the time and forcing you to carefully balance dodging attacks yourself and positioning your Pokemon well to slowly whittle down a big health bar. Some of the Rogue Mega Evolutions have devastating second phase attacks, such as turning the entire arena into a bullet hell, making copies of themselves, or spontaneously popping up behind you for a painful swipe attack. Game Freak really goes out of its way to ensure all its new Mega Evolutions get their moment to shine through these encounters. Just wait until you see Mega Starmie!
There should have been two major extraction shooters launching in the last quarter of this year. One of them is Arc Raiders, which is in fact coming out later this month. The other is Marathon, which, well, you know. Interestingly, though, with both games hosting tests earlier in the year, there was an opportunity for Arc Raiders’ developers to learn something from Marathon.
An impressive new mod for The Simpsons Hit & Run has rebuilt the game to instead feature Futurama, catching the attention of the cult classic’s original lead designer.
Futurama Hit & Run, as the mod is called, is available now in demo form as a free download — you’ll just need a copy of the original Simpsons game on PC in order to play.
The Simpsons Hit & Run originally launched for PC, PlayStation 2, GameCube and Xbox back in 2003, and was heavily inspired by the Grand Theft Auto games of the era. Gameplay for this Futurama mod also feels familiar, as you run around as Fry and complete missions for characters such as Bender, Professor Farnsworth and Dr. Zoidberg.
ANNONCE 📣 🎮 : La démo de Futurama Hit & Run, sera disponible le 19 octobre ! Une idée juste parfaite ! 🚀 pic.twitter.com/cy8WBhoLYL
There’s driving too, of course — with Fry able to zoom around a section of New New York in a hover car. One particular mission has Fry escorting Bender back to the Planet Express headquarters while avoiding police in hover cop cars. But there’s no sign yet of actual flying — perhaps in future.
Currently, the demo includes four story missions, plus a set of street races, vehicles, costumes and other Easter eggs to find and unlock. The demo also comes with an acknowledgement that it currently uses AI-generated dialogue as a “temporary placeholder.” The mod team states: “Professional voice artists are already engaged, and their recordings will replace the placeholder content in a future update.”
Response to the demo has been positive, not least from Joe McGinn, who worked on the original The Simpsons: Hit & Run over two decades ago. “As the lead designer of the original game, I can only say… this looks awesome!” McGinn wrote in a comment on the mod’s trailer. “I want to play it.”
Though I deeply wish for it to not be the case, unfortunately the reality you and I find ourselves in is one where AI is being forced into every single crevice the worst corporations you know can fit it in to. It hasn’t completely dominated any of the arts just yet, but its usage is becoming more and more common. If you’re one such developer considering doing so, voluntarily, I would normally offer you some potentially unkind words, but instead I’ll point you towards the one and only Nobuo Uematsu, whose stance on AI is one I’m quite fond of.
It’s time to talk trademarks again, as Nintendo of America has had a new filing for ‘Virtual Console’ bumped up to the pending phase. But let’s be clear right from the jump, it probably doesn’t mean what you’re thinking.
As brought to our attention by @MikeOdysseyYT on X, the trademark was initially submitted on 21st April 2025, and got boosted up to the pending phase last week on 17th October. The application pertains to two different goods and services classes: IC 009 for “Recorded electronic game programs; downloadable electronic game programs; recorded video game programs” and the like, and IC 041 for “Providing non-downloadable online electronic publications, namely online journals and interactive online blogs featuring user generated or specified content in the field of video games and online publications in the nature of e-books in the field of video games” amongst other things.
Here’s your weekly Pokémon TCG pricewatch and stock update, and it’s an absolute banger. Amazon seem to be listening to me and the rest of community calling out their ridiculously high pricing on Pokémon TCG right now, but probably not. Regardless, we’re seeing their exclusive Blaziken ex and Volcanion ex Premium Collection in stock for MSRP. That’s right, no price hikes and no where near it’s market value that’s north of $90. Could this mean something positive for the future of Pokémon TCG at Amazon?
TL;DR: Deals for Today
Unfortunatley that’s where the hope ends for big box retailers. TCGplayer is cheaper on every in-stock Pokémon sealed product on Amazon right now. There’s usually one or two, but it’s looking grim for them. For you it’s great, as you’re getting the proper market value from Prismatic Evolutions Booster Bundles ($59.96) and Surprise Boxes ($43).
Blaziken ex & Volcanion ex Premium Collection
Trainers and collectors will get five Destined Rivals Boosters and five Journey Together Boosters in this bad boy, so that’s about the right kind of ball park for ten booster packs, plus you’re getting the promo Volcanion ex and Blaziken ex promo card and a jumbo version of Blaziken ex.
I think these promo’s would work great together in a fire-themed deck. Use Blazikens Seething Spirit to grab fire energy from your discard pile to build up Volcanion. In the meantime Volcanion can burn opposing Pokémon then use Scorching Cyclone for 160 damage then transfer all it’s energy to a benched Pokémon. So many possibilities here.
Poké Price Check: Mega Evolution In Stock
Mega Evolution seems to be a well-printed start to the next era of Pokémon TCG. I’m seeing boosters in convienience stores and some products on physical shelves, not to mention the Booster Bundle ($52.89), Gardevoir ETB ($88.81) and Three Booster Blister ($28.90) available on Amazon. Like the rest of the products in this carousel though, the cheapest is TCGplayer right now.
Christian Wait is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything collectable and deals. Christian has over 7 years of experience in the Gaming and Tech industry with bylines at Mashable and Pocket-Tactics. Christian also makes hand-painted collectibles for Saber Miniatures. Christian is also the author of “Pokemon Ultimate Unofficial Gaming Guide by GamesWarrior”. Find Christian on X @ChrisReggieWait.
Sequels! More often than not, they’re completely unnecessary, but until we’re at a point where we don’t have to bow to the whims of the free market, studios of all sizes will likely continue to push them out. Right now people like familiarity, there’s a risk in paying for something new. What if the thing you’re buying is a waste of what little money you have? Ah, but a sequel to a thing I already like, more of the thing I know enjoy, that’s the stuff. So it’s quite refreshing to see Dead Cells developer Motion Twin completely ignore that, and put their heart into making something new, a topic the studio spoke about their feelings on in a recent interview.
Let’s get this over with early: Bloodlines 2 probably should not have been called Bloodlines 2. Shared setting and a couple brief, questionable cameos (plus one utterly rubbish bit of cosmetic DLC) aside, there is little tying this game to Troika’s original janky cult hit FPS/RPG hybrid. This is not an RPG with deep mechanics, a wide variety of character builds or dialogue that reacts to mechanical choices. If that is what you need out of a game bearing this most hallowed of names, then you will be disappointed and frustrated.
But if you are willing to lay decades of dreams to rest and approach it purely on its own terms, you might find an entertaining if flawed romp through the World Of Darkness. A brawl-heavy, linear action game punctuated with Telltale-esque reactive dialogue and held together by a surprisingly compelling, century-spanning undead detective mystery.
The third instalment of Frontier Developments’ moreish dinosaur park sim, Jurassic World Evolution 3, is almost here. You’ll get to manage your very own park full of dinosaurs in this much-anticipated park management simulator sequel that yes, really does feature the Megalodon this time. Gulp.
Jurassic World Evolution 3 will be open its doors again for players on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X and S on October 21. As a global release, it’ll unlock simultaneously for all players regardless of where they are in the world — here’s when that will be in your timezone (and unfortunately, no, there’s no way to unlock the game in early access ahead of its street date).
“Just about everything I’ve seen so far of Jurassic World Evolution 3 has me excited to thrill my guests and make my lawyers nervous,” we wrote in IGN’s Jurassic World Evolution 3’s final preview. “From dino breeding to dramatic and different new park locations to extremely robust customization tools, it feels like it truly deserves its spot at the table with Planet Zoo and Planet Coaster now, rather than relying on the, you know, freakin’ dinosaurs to make up for some of what it was missing.”
Jurassic World Evolution 3 Launch Times
Tuesday, October 21, 2025
PDT (San Francisco):
7am
EDT (New York):
10am
BST (London):
3pm
CEST (Paris, Rome, Berlin):
4pm
EEST (Turkey):
5pm
HKT (Hong Kong):
8pm
CST (Beijing):
8pm
JST (Tokyo):
11pm
Wednesday, October 22, 2025
AEST (Sydney):
12am midnight
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.
