Team Ninja and Koei Tecmo have surprise-released Ninja Gaiden 2: Black, an Unreal Engine 5 version of Xbox 360 hack-and-slasher Ninja Gaiden 2. It’s out right now on Microsoft’s Game Pass service. I’d say it has materialised from the darkness like a ninja, but there are a lot of ninjas in circulation right now and my analogy-jitsu gauge is running dry. So instead, I’m going to say that it has materialised from the darkness like a resurfacing duck, its beak stuffed with pond vegetation. The pond vegetation, here, stands for “tweaks to the weapons upgrade system”. Here’s a trailer.
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.
