Slice ‘n’ dice.
Dotemu and The Game Kitchen have released a new patch for Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, adding in a whole bunch of new features, fixes, and improvements.
Perhaps most crucially, however, is the addition of a new performance mode targeting 60fps, but there’s a catch… As detailed in Dotemu’s announcement post, the game will default at 30fps on the Switch, while it’s recommended that only those on the Switch 2 activate the 60fps option.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Stay in this weekend and explore some fun games with Free Play Days! The Escapists: The Walking Dead and Empyreal are available this weekend for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, Standard and Core members to play from Thursday September 11 until Sunday, September 14.
Bad North and Rogue Waters are free to play for all Xbox members, each with a two-hour timed trial during Free Play Days (Xbox Game Pass Game Pass Ultimate, Standard and Core membership not required).
Find and install the games on each of the individual game details page on Xbox.com. Clicking through will send you to the Microsoft Store, where you must be signed in to see the option to install with your Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, Standard and Core membership. To download on console, click on the Subscriptions tab in the Xbox Store and navigate down to the Free Play Days collection on your Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S.
Purchase the game and other editions at a limited time discount and continue playing while keeping your Gamerscore and achievements earned during the event! Please note that discounts, percentages, and title availability may vary by title and region.
Team17 Digital Ltd
The Escapists: The Walking Dead
What do you get when a smash-hit indie prison game merges with one of the biggest zombie franchises of all time? Find out in The Escapists: The Walking Dead. This unique 8-bit pixel art survival game that sees you playing as Rick Grimes, in charge of a band of survivors including many of the original comic book cast. Work out how to escape from each zombie infested area drawn directly from the comics and try to keep as many people alive as you can.
Raw Fury
Bad North
Your home is under attack. The king is dead at the hands of Viking invaders. Hope is a distant glimmer in the fog, fading fast with every passing moment. As you rise to take your father’s place as ruler, it will fall to you to stage your defenses. But make no mistake – this is no fight for victory, but a desperate grasp for survival.
Tripwire Interactive LLC
Rogue Waters
Optimized for Xbox Series X|S, Smart Delivery, Xbox Play Anywhere
Rogue Waters is an addictive Tactical Turn-Based Rogue-lite pirate adventure. Play as Captain Cutter, commanding your ship and crew through procedurally generated encounters to seek revenge. Free to play during Xbox’s Free Play Days and 50% OFF to buy! The high seas await. Will ye heed the call?
Secret Mode
Empyreal
Optimized for Xbox Series X|S
Delve into a world of cosmic secrets and high stakes combat with Empyreal, the sci-fi action RPG that puts your skills to the ultimate test. As a mercenary hired to explore a colossal and dangerous Monolith, you’ll uncover the mysteries of an ancient, lost civilization. Featuring a deep combat system, extensive character customization, and an innovative “Cartogram” system that ensures every run is a unique experience, Empyreal is a journey of discovery, survival, and enlightenment.
Don’t miss out on these exciting Free Play Days for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, Standard and Core members! Learn more about Free Play Days here and stay tuned to Xbox Wire to find out about future Free Play Days and all the latest Xbox gaming news.
The post Free Play Days – The Escapists: The Walking Dead, Bad North, Rogue Waters and Empyreal appeared first on Xbox Wire.
Where do you go after making Dorfromantik, the 14th best puzzle game on PC? Unto infinity, chick. Unto infinity, and all the uranium-packed celestial masses it contains. Berlin-based Toukana Interactive are back with Star Birds – another “soft strategy” sim and laidback resource management game, in which you take charge of an avian asteroid-mining operation.
Fish It! will have you clicking away for hours as you try to catch all the variations available in the game. As of the time of writing this, Fish It! claims to have over 1,000,000 variations for you to collect. With new updates planned for the Roblox experience’s future, it looks like that number will only continue to increase. So with that in mind, why not use a few codes to help you along the way?
Before you can use codes, you’ll need to reach level 10, so make sure you spend some time hooking as many fish as possible before trying them out.
These codes can no longer be redeemed, but they’re listed here so you can still try if you like!
Lauren Harper is an Associate Guides Editor. She loves a variety of games but is especially fond of puzzles, horrors, and point-and-click adventures.
The developers of Hellraiser: Revival intend to push its M Rating as far as it can with the upcoming video game adaptation.
Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival is a story-driven, single-player survival horror action game set in the Hellraiser universe. It’s developed by Boss Team Games, creator of the recently delisted Evil Dead: The Game, and is due out on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and PC via Steam.
Hellraiser, for the uninitiated, is a cult classic horror franchise made up of 11 films and various comic books, all based on The Hellbound Heart novella by English author Clive Barker. The star of the show is Pinhead, a ‘Cenobite’ who harvests human souls to torture in sadistic experiments. And you can see that in action in the trailer, which — content warning! — contains as much sex as it does body horror.
Hellraiser: Revival is not for the faint of heart. If you’re wondering just how extreme the game gets, be sure to check out IGN’s hands-on Hellraiser: Revival preview for all the gory details. But in short, expect body horror, sex, no holds barred nudity, nightmarish scenes, and a healthy dose of hell.
It’s ‘Resident Evil For Sickos,’ we said coming out of our time with Hellraiser, but just how extreme can the developers at Saber Interactive take it? In an interview with IGN, Saber development chief Tim Willits said the studio plans to push Hellraiser as far as the people who make the rules around an M Rating will let them.
“We are going to go as far as we possibly can, as far as the people that make rules will let us go,” Willits insisted. “And I hope that we can make one version, but we are willing to go as far as we possibly can go.”
Of course, what we’ve seen of Hellraiser: Revival so far is in keeping with Clive Barker’s cult classic Hellraiser movies, so tonally, there’s no real difference. But there’s something unique about seeing and doing all this horrific stuff from a first-person perspective that’s a bit more in your face than watching a film in a theater or at home.
“We want to be a responsible publisher / developer, but we are going to push it as far as we possibly can in the context of the game and the movie.”
Clive Barker is working with Saber on Hellraiser: Revival to ensure it fits with his vision for the universe. This back and forth should result in a game fans of the movies will get a real kick out of, Willits added.
“He’s come back and said, ‘Yeah, Pinhead wouldn’t do that,’” Willits explained. “And he’s come back and said, ‘Yeah, you got to tweak this a little bit.’ Because this is his world and he knows stuff that we don’t even think about.
“And he’s been really fast too. Sometimes when you work with famous people you throw something over and then six months later they come back and they complain about something. No, he’s that on it.”
Doug Bradley, the original actor behind the Cenobite leader Pinhead, has reprised his role for the game, adding to the authenticity of the project.
Here’s the official blurb:
Discover the tale of Aidan, who must unlock the dark powers of the Genesis Configuration, a mysterious puzzle box, to help his girlfriend from a hellish abyss. As Aidan, you’ll harness the box’s infernal abilities to survive your pact with the sinister Pinhead and battle against the twisted cult that worships him and the Cenobites. Fail, and your suffering will be legendary, even in Hell.
Hellraiser was thrust back into the public consciousness in 2022 with a franchise reboot film. IGN’s Hellraiser review returned an 8/10. We said: “Hellraiser is a reinvigorated reboot that gets the blood pumping, starting with Jamie Clayton’s worthy Pinhead performance that sets a fresh tone with immense reverence paid to Clive Barker’s works.”
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.
Borderlands 4 is out now. Our Borderlands 4 review is not, because we have only just been sent a review code. I fear I was unduly forgiving of Team Cherry last week for not supplying Silksong code before release – they’re a cute, tiny indie, after all, albeit a cute, tiny indie with the power to break Steam – so let’s take a firmer stance this time: bad! Wrong! Don’t you know you’re suffocating games journalism, Gearbox and 2K Games, you swaggering chancers? Whither accountability and transparency in a time of choosy PR departments?
I should teach you all a lesson by diverting your brand power and googlejuice towards some other game instead. I think I will, actually. What else is on sale today. Ah yes, Try To Drive.
Don’t get your Robotniks in a twist.
Sega has dropped some details regarding the demo for the upcoming Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds.
As you’ll no doubt already be aware, a demo for the game was confirmed a little while back, and we have also had a stress test available to try out for a little bit. Now, though, starting on the dates compiled below, the game’s official demo will be available to play for Switch 1 owners:
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Endless Legend 2 is a fantasy turn-based strategy game, and the next title from Amplitude Studios who previously made Humankind and Endless Space. At launch it will feature five asymmetrical factions, tactical battles, multiple victory types (including seven different variations of the narrative victory condition), and countless hours of replayability as players explore and conquer Saiadha, a mysterious oceanic paradise going through cataclysmic change. Like the studios’ previous works, Endless Legend 2 represents a definitive step forward in the strategy genre through brand-new mechanics, such as Tidefall.
Endless Legend 2 represents a specific style of strategy game you’ll have seen before that sometimes goes by another name, 4X games, a phrase coined a while ago to talk about the early Civilization titles. The four Xs represent distinct pillars: Explore, Expand, Exploit, and Exterminate.
These days, the genre has evolved beyond this moniker — but that first phase, explore, remains a core design pillar of any strategy game. It’s the part that often struggles beyond the early portions of a campaign and this is one of the reasons the Tidefall mechanic emerged in Endless Legend 2. It represents a momentous event in-game where the oceans recede, revealing new lands, opportunities, and dangers.
“Based on the decades of feedback Amplitude has collected since their first 4X game, we’ve found that players often find the exploration phase to be the most fun,” says Endless Legend 2’s Game Director Derek Paxton. “They would play for a while, then get bored when the full map is revealed and all the territory is claimed. At this point your options are to switch to either a full-on warmonger, or stay within your borders and try playing ‘tall’.”
“We wanted to solve this by revealing new land as the game went on. Introducing new exploration phases and new opportunities to claim territory and expand. The biggest part of this is Tidefall, which can make strategic chokepoint cities obsolete or turn safe cities in your backlines into exposed targets as new land bridges are formed to other islands and empires.”
While there’s less land to explore to begin with, starting in a smaller area does give you plenty of room to grow, explore, and adjust to your faction’s strengths and weaknesses in a relatively safe environment. Once the first Tidefall happens, the map opens up, changing the strategic landscape permanently.
This change brings about new challenges – never mind that other major empires might have access to your lands now, but the environment also gets more dangerous. Fortresses guarded by NPC armies will need conquering, and after the third Tidefall event, menacing Doomwraiths will emerge from the planet’s depths, endangering areas you may have previously thought safe.
Disrupting the state of the game and player momentum isn’t something that should be done lightly, or too frequently. The Tidefall mechanic has gone through a few iterations in terms of impact and frequency, but through extensive testing Amplitude feels like they’ve found a good sweet spot.
“We started with eight Tidefalls and slowly reduced them as we went through playtesting,” says Paxton. “The more we had, the less land each revealed. We opted to go for fewer with bigger impacts instead of more frequent with smaller effects. When Tidefall happened, we wanted the game to change.”
There are now three Tidefall events per game, and the length between them will vary depending on the map size. On average settings, it’s between 40 – 50 turns. But it’s not just about pacing — the broader impact of Tidefalls was also examined closely.
“We even considered having the technology eras tied to Tidefall or having Tidefall be destructive (if the oceans came back, for example). But in the end, we decided to keep it solely as a reward because it wasn’t fun to invest in building an empire, just to have something outside of the player’s control set back their progress”.
“The only remnant of that idea that remains is that all tiles adjacent to water (oceans, lakes, or rivers) get a food bonus. As Tidefall occurs, the oceans go away and the rivers dry up, removing these bonuses. So coastal or river cities accustomed to these bonuses for growth will lose them.”
This feeds into two of the other pillars – Expand and Exploit. While the consequences of Tidefalls won’t be game breaking, they will add just enough tension to your campaign that you will need to plan around this eventually, typically by expanding outward and searching for new or better sources of growth for your empire.
As long as you respect the Tidefall, it can be planned for and some of the chaos that comes with the receding oceans can be managed. You’ll know, for example, that a coastal city at the start of a game won’t remain as such, and that far away island will be accessible eventually. There are other things to keep in mind as well:
“On the Strategic map it’s good to keep an eye on areas of the fog of war that are golden,” says Paxton. “We call this the ‘Haze’ and it indicates that this is the edge of unrevealed lands that Tidefall has exposed, and where new dangers can come from.”
“Also, if players have river cities that are counting on the food bonuses from the river, building a Dam will ensure that the river remains after Tidefall. Or you can build a Dam for a river that flows into your enemy’s lands and deprive them of their food bonuses without waiting for Tidefall to happen.”
The world of Saiadha is waiting – there are other factions to subdue, and a mystery that lies in the heart of the world to unravel. Whichever way you choose to approach the game, make sure you prepare for Tidefall.
Endless Legend 2 (Game Preview) releases for Xbox on PC, PC Game Pass, and Game Pass Ultimate on September 22, 2025.
The post How Endless Legend 2 Raises the Tide on Turn-Based Strategy Games appeared first on Xbox Wire.
Ubisoft employees have raised concerns around the company’s partnership with Saudi Arabia to create new Assassin’s Creed Mirage DLC, a fresh report has revealed.
The upcoming content was first reported on back in January by a French financial newspaper, Les Echoes, which stated that the DLC had received funding from Saudi Arabia’s controversial Public Investment Fund (PIF). Ubisoft did not respond to me when asked for comment on that report at the time.
Months later, Ubisoft quietly announced the DLC itself in late August, in a social media post sent out early one Saturday morning. The brief reveal confirmed that the add-on would see Mirage hero Basim visiting AlUla, an ancient site that’s now one of Saudi Arabia’s cultural highlights.
In an internal Q&A shared with Ubisoft staff and published by GameFile, an employee asked if management believed partnering with Saudi Arabia, specifically following the killing and dismemberment of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, would tarnish the company’s image.
Management responded by addressing the fact that Guillemot had recently visited Saudi Arabia as part of a delegation alongside French president Emmanual Macron, but dismissed this as a “classic diplomatic tool for expanding France’s influence and reach around the world” that would help disseminate the country’s values.
As for the origins of the DLC, the management response to the query simply stated Ubisoft did “not comment on rumors.”
Assassin’s Creed Mirage players, we have a surprise coming your way later this year!
📖 New story chapter & missions set in 9th century AlUla
🎮 Gameplay improvements for the base game and the new location
🎁 All for freeStay tuned! pic.twitter.com/8CjB3MRvfR
— Assassin’s Creed (@assassinscreed) August 23, 2025
Ubisoft management also attempted to draw a distinction between the country’s leader and chairman of the PIF, Saudi crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman, and the PIF itself. “The latter’s money is not MBS’s, and talking with partners who do not share our democratic values does not mean abandoning them,” the company’s response reads.
GameFile reports that Guillemot visited Saudi Arabia again last month to speak at the New Global Sport Conference and announce Mirage’s AlUla DLC at the event (something which also explains the unusual timing of the news being made public at the same time, albeit with no mention of Guillemot’s speech).
“We are working with AlUla, which is a UNESCO site, which is not known yet very much,” Guillemote said, announcing the DLC at the Saudi event. “But we are creating content that will be given for free to players that play Mirage, and they will be able to go in that site.
“As you can see, they will be able to play there, to have a story in this environment. I am sure they will love this region, just also because it has been done with specialists [of] archaeology, really people that know what happened then and why it was so important.”
IGN recently asked Ubisoft for more detail on the matter and was told that, as with every Assassin’s Creed game, it had creative control on the proposed content. This title update to Assassin’s Creed Mirage was “made possible thanks to the support of local and international organisations,” Ubisoft added, “through access to experts, historians and resources to ensure the creation of an authentic and accurate setting.”
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
CD Projekt have rolled out a fresh Cyberpunk 2077 patch with fixes and tweaks for some of update 2.3’s additions. The most noteworthy is what sounds like a pretty hefty revamp of how the autodrive function goes about conveying your ride from A to B.
If you missed it arriving back in July, update 2.3 was the final set of new stuff CD Projekt plan to add to the first Cyberpunk, a game they’ve been physically unable to stop themselves from delving back into over the past couple of years, despite Cyberpunk 2 having been in the works for a little while now. To be fair, most of its contents were vehicle and photo mode-related, with the autodrive function and similar Delamain taxi system heaflining alongside some new rides.
