During today’s Xbox Developer Director, we saw a new trailer for South of Midnight complete with a release date of April 8, 2025.
In the trailer, we saw a good look at Hazel’s powers, which blend the traditional craft of weaving with magic to allow her to fight, conjure things, and overcome environmental obstacles. As she fights, Hazel “unravels” enemies to destroy them in action combat, and has some elements of customization in her fighting style that can help her counter different types of enemies.
Hazel will visit different different regions ruled by magical creatures, each one with a different Southern Gothic history that she’ll need to heal by collecting their fragmented memories. In the trailer, we got a look at several of these creatures, including a real big bird and a massive crocodile covered in spikes with giant trees going out of its back.
It must have been tough for chocolate lovers to get any chocolate when Willy Wonka was hiding golden tickets inside the wrappers.
Joking aside, that’s more or less been the vibe from Prismatic Evolutions, the just-released, mega-hyped Pokémon card set that’s memorable for its heavy representation of the fan-favourite Pokémon Eevee, and all its evolutionary forms. The 180+ card set was smoke-signaled by The Pokémon Company a little under four months out from its January 2025 release, and fans have anticipated it as the de facto set to look out for, largely due to its similarity to the most popular TCG expansion from the company’s previous card generation, Evolving Skies.
If there’s one element of the Assassin’s Creed series that has evolved significantly, it’s the combat. While earlier games established the franchises’ trademark stealth skillset – skulking across rooftops and expertly luring unsuspecting foes into bushes – later instalments introduced a more direct approach, with explosive entrances and confrontational hand-to-hand fights. While previous games have chosen to lean more heavily in one of those directions, Assassin’s Creed Shadows offers the opportunity to indulge in both in a refreshing and incredibly seamless way.
During a recent preview, Xbox Wire got to spend a few hours with Assassin’s Creed Shadows, playing through the prologue missions of the two protagonists, Naoe and Yasuke, and spending some time getting to grips with their two contrasting but complimentary combat styles. We also got to freely explore the game’s open world – which takes us to a gorgeous recreation of Feudal Japan, a new, long-requested setting for the series. What we found was a game that takes Assassin’s Creed forward by respecting multiple facets of its past.
Sneak or Siege – The Choice is Yours
The contrast between the two characters’ combat styles was a standout aspect for me while playing Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Naoe and Yasuke both have their own distinct way of doing things, and this is immediately prevalent as soon as you start playing with either of them. This not only separates two wildly different ways of playing into distinct entities, it also gives two characters a fighting style that complements their narratives and personalities, an approach that Assassin’s Creed has taken before, but never as intensely.
Naoe feels like a ‘classic’ Assassin’s Creed character, and she performs at her best shrouded in silence and darkness. She can navigate rooftops and trees with ease and, of course, has her trusty Hidden Blade for swift, brutal takedowns. She’s also equipped with a grappling hook to reach high spots quickly, smoke bombs for distraction or stealthy attacks, and kunai to throw. Naoe can hold her own in close quarters combat in a pinch, with the option to wield similarly effective katana and kurisarigama swords, but her strength is in that familiar assassin’s approach. She feels absolutely badass to wield with this arsenal – a tad squishy if she’s overwhelmed and out in the open – but it’s very easy to regain the element of surprise and recalculate her attacks.
Yasuke’s combat is a stark variation, with a lot of focus on ground combat and confrontational brawling. He compliments Naoe’s stealth with pure brawn, equipped with heavy sword and parrying skills, a naginata spear – which deals strong, sweeping attacks to multiple enemies within range – and a Portuguese firearm, a teppo, for devastating ranged blows. There is rarely a cause for retreating to the shadows for Yasuke – the only entrance he needs to scout for is the one he plans to shoulder barge through before launching into an all-out siege, swinging at anything in his path. Yasuke can climb to a more Assassin-friendly perch in a pinch, but his strengths lie in well… his strength.
Best of all, I never felt the need to “main” one of these characters. Assassin’s Creed Shadows allows you to switch between them at will, so it doesn’t feel as though you’re hard committing to one or the other. That said, if you’re a big fan of either classic stealth characters – your Ezios and Altairs – or later, more aggressive leads like Edward and Eívor, there’s always the option to stick solely with what you love best.
Switching between the two also lends itself naturally to roleplaying in a way that Assassin’s Creed games have rarely allowed for. Initially, I chose to take on missions as Naoe, favouring that slick, stealthy assassin outfit. After getting to know the characters a little more, I found myself choosing who to play based on the narrative, as well as their abilities.
To give an example of this: At one point, I managed to talk myself out of a combat situation entirely, choosing to assign a more calculated resolve to Naoe’s character than I would have engaging in the same conversation with Yasuke, who, in my mind, would have just thrown a punch. In another scenario, I took Yasuke on a quest to find someone in a hidden gambling den, and felt like his approach of smashing in with a firearm raised might be more fun than a sneaky extraction mission as Naoe.
Switching between both protagonists while out in the world is incredibly convenient and barely interrupts the flow of your play – once you change character, the one you picked appears exactly where the previous one was standing, so you can immediately crack on with whatever you were doing, whether you need to scale a building, enter dialogue with a certain character or barge into a stronghold for a brawl.
As I did this, I realised I’m intertwining my own story with the one that Assassin’s Creed Shadows is weaving. The result is a highly personalized adventure that you have control of every step of the way, with the ability to change it up whenever and wherever you feel it necessary, and we can’t wait to play more.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows launches on Xbox Series X|S on March 20.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 3 won’t be a PlayStation 6 exclusive despite Final Fantasy 7 Remake originally launching only on PS4 and its sequel Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth originally launching only on PS5, Square Enix has said.
Speaking to 4Gamer and translated by Genki on X/Twitter, Final Fantasy series producer Yoshinori Kitase and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth director Naoki Hamaguchi said the PlayStation exclusivity tradition will be broken amid a wider shift to multiplatform releases.
4Gamer therefore asked if fans will need to buy a third generation of consoles in order to close out the story, but Kitase said definitively this won’t be the case. “No, you can rest assured about the next one,” he said.
Where were you on October 11th last year? If you were Edwin, Brendy, or myself – which, statistically, you are not – you were writing news articles about one of three aspirant spiritual successors to detective RPGDisco Elysium. It was an “I’m Spartacus”-ass day of press releases, culminating in the announcement of a project from former ZA/UM writers Argo Tuulik and Olga Moskvina.
Before that came sci-fi RPG XXX Nightshift, and before that was an unnamed “psychogeographic RPG” from newly formed Longdue. We now know that it’s called Hopetown, and Longdue are set to launch a crowdfunding campaign which you can “pre-register” for here, should you wish. Here’s the sell:
Warner Bros. Games boss David Haddad is set to leave the company, according to a new report.
Variety said Haddad will leave his role as president of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment after 12 years of leading Warner Bros. Games.
The company has had a troubled 12 months, first with the catastrophic release of Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, then the disappointing release of Smash Bros.-style brawler MultiVersus.
Speaking in a financial call, Warner Bros. Discovery President and CEO David Zaslav said: “We recognise [the games business] is substantially underperforming its potential right now.”
Since then, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League post-launch content has come to an end with the delivery of its year one roadmap. Warner Bros. has yet to announce Rocksteady’s next game, but it is reportedly helping out on a director’s cut of Hogwarts Legacy. The legendary British studio has suffered a number of layoffs in recent months.
During the same financial call, Zaslav said Warner Bros. was doubling down on four games: Hogwarts Legacy (a sequel is already in the works), Mortal Kombat, Game of Thrones, and DC, “in particular Batman.” Warner Bros. recently published VR game Batman: Arkham Shadow exclusively on the Meta Quest 3, and has a Wonder Woman game in the works at Monolith Productions.
“We are focusing our development efforts on those core franchises, with proven studios to improve our success ratio,” Zaslav added.
According to Variety, Haddad will stay on with Warner Bros. discovery for the next three months as the company looks for his replacement during an apparent quieter release schedule.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Dwarf Fortress‘s Adventure mode – a procedurally generated campaign that lets you approach the famously dense colony sim like a more traditional roguelite – is now out as a free update on Steam. The game represents perhaps the most cavernous, yawping blind spot in my entire pile of shame. I do own it, but I’m yet to play. I’ve already read a great deal of extended wordery on its merits – please, sell it to me in the comments in seven words or less. Here’s a trailer:
In a new interview with Google Cloud Japan, Kazuki Abe, a technical director at Capcom who has worked on huge titles like Monster Hunter: World and Exoprimal, explained how the company is experimenting with implementing AI in its game development processes.
“One of the most time-consuming and labor intensive parts of game development is coming up with hundreds of thousands of unique ideas,” Abe explained (via Automaton). He added that designs for things like televisions require their own unique designs, logos, and shape. “Including unused ones, we ended up having to come up with hundreds of thousands of ideas,” he continued.
Multiple proposals are needed for the thousands to tens of thousands of these kinds of objects per game, and each proposal includes illustrations needed to communicate the idea to the art director and artists as well as text, Abe explained.
Seeing room for efficiency improvements, Abe created a system where generative AI could read various game design documents and an AI could output the ideas, enhancing development speed and efficiency, delivering feedback for itself in the process and further refining output.
His prototype, which taps into multiple AI models such as Google Gemini Pro, Gemini Flash, and Imagen has apparently received positive feedback from internal development teams. The result of implementing the AI model would ultimately “reduce costs significantly” compared to doing them all by hand, while also improving quality.
Right now, Capcom’s experimentation with AI models appears to be limited to just this system, leaving other aspects of game development, such as ideation, gameplay, programming, and character design firmly in the hands of humans.
Sayem is a freelancer based in the UK, covering tech & hardware. You can get in touch with him at @sayem.zone on Bluesky.
After many weeks of teases, The Pokémon Company has finally revealed when we can expect to see Trading Card Game Pocket‘s next expansion and the long-awaited trade feature. Surprise! They’re both arriving next week!
Trading will be the first to be added to the card-collecting app, with the feature going live on Tuesday 28th January. As specified in the info dump from TPC last week, trades can be made between friends and only with cards of the same rarity (◇1-◇4 and ☆1). As expected, consumable items will be required to make a trade, so prepare for even more currencies to keep track of.
Twenty years ago, the original Monster Hunter first introduced players to its ever-expanding arsenal of weapons and memorable monsters. Since then, the series has grown in popularity around the world, and been refined into one of the finest multiplayer experiences gaming has to offer. There’s still a special satisfaction that comes from taking down an unfathomably huge creature by the skin of your teeth, coordinating with your fellow hunters, and using everyone’s weaponry and abilities skillfully to topple the most fearsome foes out there.
To celebrate 20 years of the series – and Monster Hunter Wilds’ upcoming February 28 release – let’s examine how the series evolved alongside PlayStation since its 2004 debut.
Monster Hunter | PS2
The biggest behemoths often emerge from humble beginnings. The game that started it all was released in Japan in March of 2004, with a North American release a few months later in September and a European release in March of 2005. It introduced the core gameplay that would define Monster Hunter in the decades to come: quest-driven progression, resource gathering and management, weapon and armor crafting, and the need to approach and attack ferocious monsters with strategy, planning, and perseverance to succeed.
By the series’ current standards, Monster Hunter looks a bit sparse, with only seven weapon types and thirty monsters (including many now-famous creatures like the Rathalos), but the game offered quite a bit of variety in quest types and difficulty. Also, the game was designed around online multiplayer when that was still somewhat of a novelty, even offering special event quests that could only be played online.
Monster Hunter did very well in Japan, and while Capcom worked on the follow-up, they released Monster Hunter G, an upgrade with improvements, new features, more monsters, and higher-difficulty quests.
Monster Hunter Dos | PS2
The true Monster Hunter sequel would emerge late into the PS2 era–and only in Japan. Monster Hunter Dos released for the PlayStation 2 in February of 2006, with new weapons, the additions of subquests, a unique day/night and season system, and the addition of armor upgrades, among numerous other small tweaks and improvements. Monster Hunter Dos was warmly received in Japan, and was the final Monster Hunter game on the PS2. But for the larger global market–and the future of Monster Hunter–Capcom was looking towards the PlayStation Portable.
Monster Hunter Freedom | PSP
Even before Monster Hunter Dos launched, Capcom wanted players to be able to take the hunt on the go. Monster Hunter Freedom, known as Monster Hunter Portable in Japan, launched in December of 2005 in Japan and in May of 2006 for the rest of the world. It was based heavily on the aforementioned Monster Hunter G, offering up both new monsters (including the debut of Yian Garuga) and high-level “G” rank quests for players to enjoy
In retrospect, it’s easy to see why the PSP felt like a true “home” for Monster Hunter: the PSP’s capability for adhoc local network play, along with its advanced graphical capabilities and analog control, fit the gameplay of Monster Hunter like a vambrace. It was followed up by Monster Hunter Freedom 2, which took cues from Monster Hunter Dos by expanding the weapon repertoire (adding series staples like the Hunting Horn and Gunlance to the armory) and revisiting Dos’s various locales.
Monster Hunter Freedom Unite | PSP
“Phenomenon” is exactly the word to describe how huge the follow-up to Monster Hunter Freedom became in Japan. Monster Hunter Freedom Unite released in 2008 in Japan as Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G, expanding on the success of the previous game and transforming Monster Hunter into a household name. Freedom Unite would go on to sell a whopping 3.8 million copies globally, with many of those sales coming from Japan.
Building on Freedom 2, Freedom Unite offered a host of quality-of-life improvements to the core experience while adding more environments, more monsters, additional monster behaviors, and a host of new high-difficulty quests. It introduced the concept of CPU-controlled helper characters by giving solo players use of a Felyne companion to aid in battle–a feature which later games in the series would build upon.
Monster Hunter Portable 3rd | PSP
Hitting the PSP at the end of 2010, Monster Hunter Portable 3rd is another Japan-exclusive Monster Hunter title–though that didn’t stop it from becoming one of Capcom’s fastest-selling games ever. Portable 3rd pushed the PSP to the maximum, showcasing some of the best-looking visuals on the system and setting a standard for high-quality visual designs that the series would continue in later installments. Portable 3rd also marked the first appearance of Zinogre, a fan-favorite monster to this day.
Monster Hunter World | PS4
If there’s a turning point where the fervor for Monster Hunter became global, it’s probably 2018’s Monster Hunter World. Headlined by the fearsome Elder Dragon Nergigante, Monster Hunter World was a tremendous evolution of the series both graphically and gameplay-wise, using the PS4 to create a seamless hunting experience–in more ways than one.
Not only were the tutorials and early-game experience improved for series novices, but the various “zones” that made up the large hunting environments (and necessitated transitional load times) were streamlined into one big, open space for an epic monster pursuit. And, for the first time ever, a Monster Hunter game was released simultaneously worldwide, allowing players from all over the globe to team up and experience the thrill of devising new hunting strategies together. True to the name of the game’s setting, it felt like a New World had opened up for the Monster Hunter series.
Monster Hunter World proved to be so successful globally that an expansion, Iceborne, released the next year, reintroducing some of the cold-weather mechanics seen in previous Monster Hunter titles. Monster Hunter World continues to have an active player base to this day.
Monster Hunter Rise | PS5, PS4
Monster Hunter Rise, alongside its main monster Magnamalo, vaulted onto PS5 and PS4 in early 2023. It brought with it a host of unique gameplay additions: the fast-traveling, aerial-launching Wirebugs, a new type of Canyne companion called a Palamute, and “Rampage” battles where hunters were tasked with protecting the village of Kamura from an onslaught of several monsters all at once–including particularly dangerous Apex monsters. Plus, alongside hunting and capturing monsters, you could actually commandeer the huge beasts for a brief time with the Wyvern Riding feature.
The already massive adventure grew even bigger with the Sunbreak expansion, taking hunters to the far-away Kingdom, adding several new monsters (including new leading beastie Malzeno), additional hunting locales, and numerous new skills for all of the weapons.
Monster Hunter Wilds | PS5
The evolution of Monster Hunter from cult favorite to Japanese sensation to global popularity has been quite a ride, and the anticipation for the upcoming Monster Hunter Wilds has already hit a fever pitch. From striking new weather effects to new abilities enabled by a birdlike mount called a Seikret, there’s a mountain of new features for players to consider.
Last year’s closed beta drew plenty of interest from old and new players alike. Fortunately for those of you itching to get that Hunting Horn back out for a trip to the Forbidden Lands, you won’t have to wait too much longer– Monster Hunter Wilds will be releasing on February 28.
