Tyshawn Jones spills.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 was a real blast from the past back in 2020. We were just the right age to fall in love with the original games back in 1999 and 2000, and revisiting them 20 years later was a joy.
So of course we want to see more classic Tony Hawk games get the same glossy remaster treatment. And it sounds like we might get our wish if professional skater Tyshawn Jones is to be believed.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Blow It Up is a physics-based destruction game by Brain Seal Ltd. that blends the explosive fun of Angry Birds with a robust physics engine for a thrilling puzzle experience. Set in “Boomtopia”, a land where destruction meets strategy, your mission is to rescue your bomb friends from mischievous oppressors. With seven unique bombs—each with its own strengths, weaknesses, and special abilities—you’ll need to think strategically to clear over 70 challenging levels.
To help you make every explosion count, this guide covers each of your bomb buddies in detail, along with essential tips and tricks. Master their destructive potential, unleash chaos, and take back Boomtopia!
Each level presents a unique challenge, and finding the right weak points in the structures is key to causing maximum destruction. Using your launchpad, your objective is to eliminate all enemies, explode the gifts, and ideally finish with an extra shot remaining—earning you the prestigious gold trophy. If you run out of shots but still manage to explode all gifts, you’ll receive a silver trophy. Simply clearing the level will net you a bronze.
To maximize your impact, carefully aim using the launchpad and activate each bomb’s special ability mid-air at the perfect moment. Since every bomb has its own unique power, let’s break them down one by one:
Dashy is the starting bomb in Blow It Up, known for its versatility. When activated mid-air, it propels in a straight line based on the direction of its velocity at the time of activation. Dashy is great for reaching tough enemies, cleaning up leftovers, or targeting weak points in structures. However, its explosion is one of the weakest in the game, making it less effective in levels with many enemies or dense structures. Use Dashy strategically for its speed and precision, but be mindful of its limited power.
Diggy is a bomb that drops straight down when activated, making it perfect for targeting areas directly below. It’s great for situations where you need to thread the needle—hitting specific targets or enemies on lower levels with precision. While it only has a single explosion, it can cause significant damage in the area of impact. Use Diggy when you need a focused, direct hit, but keep in mind it’s usually not suited for taking out multiple targets at once.
When activated, Gunny fires its two handguns one by one, each shot causing a small explosion upon impact. This makes it perfect for breaking through structures, particularly when targets are aligned in a straight path or when you need to destabilize the foundation of a building. The shots weaken structures and create openings, allowing for precise, strategic destruction—especially when focusing on key points to bring the structure down.
Jetty takes to the skies when activated, flying horizontally and dropping small bombs along its path before eventually falling down. This makes Jetty excellent for targeting multiple enemies or structures arranged horizontally. Its ability to cover a wide area with each drop makes it a versatile, all-around bomb, perfect for dealing with scattered targets or clearing large sections of a level.
Blasty is a remote bomb that explodes immediately upon activation. Its precise detonation makes it perfect for close-range targets, reaching hard-to-access areas (where other bombs would trigger too soon), or even pushing objects when needed. Blasty’s controlled explosion allows for strategic, creative plays in tricky situations.
Chainy & Linky are two bombs connected by a chain. When activated, they break free and move on their own, each following its own path until they reach their target. This unique dynamic allows for creative strategies, as their separate movement can hit multiple targets or cause destruction in different areas of the level.
Puffy is a bomb with a more limited range but a powerful punch. When activated, it releases shrapnel that carries the same momentum as the original bomb, causing the pieces to explode independently. This makes Puffy great for creating large explosions in tight spaces, taking out close-range targets, and cleaning up any remaining enemies or obstacles. Its unique blast pattern allows for focused, impactful destruction.
With all these bombs at your disposal, the key to success is finding the right one for each level’s challenge. Whether you’re looking for precision, wide-ranging destruction, or something in between, there’s a bomb to match your playstyle and the situation at hand. The more you experiment, the better you’ll understand how each bomb’s unique abilities can be used to create the perfect explosion. So, go ahead, blow stuff up, and unleash chaos in Boomtopia! After all, who doesn’t love a good explosion?
Blow it up is available now on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One.
Brain Seal Ltd
STORYLINE
An alien invasion is in full swing—mysterious, powerful creatures have descended upon BOOMTOPIA, stripping it of its natural resources and claiming dominance with their explosive superpowers. As your friends are captured one by one, you’ve had enough. Fueled by determination, you gear up to fight back. The adventure begins, but with chaos all around, can you truly survive the mayhem and rescue all your friends?
FEATURES
– 7 unique bombs to destroy your enemies.
– Advanced physics simulation where every block behaves naturally.
– Explore a world of adventure and rescue your friends!
– Over 70 levels of mayhem and destruction.
– TNT, confetti and fireworks for more spectacular explosions.
Blow it up is the ultimate explosive experience!!
The post Blow it up: Tips & Tricks appeared first on Xbox Wire.
Here’s one for fans of either Final Fantasy or Wizards of the Coast. The latest Magic: The Gathering crossover finds characters from Final Fantasy making their way to the most famous collectible card game on the market. We’re talking characters like Cloud, Terra, Tidus, and many more, pulled from Final Fantasy 6, 7, 10, and 14. Basically, the gang’s all here. These cards are set to release on June 13, but you can preorder them all right now (see them at Amazon and Best Buy).
Read on for details about what comes in the many bundles on the market. And for more info about the crossover, check out our Magic: The Gathering Final Fantasy Commander Deck reveal feature.
Scroll to the left to see quick buy links for each MTG: FF configuration.
The Starter Kit contains 2 ready-to-play 60-card decks, 2 deck boxes to store them in, 1 Magic play guide booklet, 4 double-sided tokens (2 with each deck), 2 double-sided reference cards to aid you as you play (Turn Order/Attacking & Blocking), and two Magic: The Gathering Arena code cards to unlock both decks for two people to play online. Account registration required. Code expires September 1, 2030. This product does not contain a serialized card (available in English-language Collector Boosters only).
This bundle contains 1 Collector Booster, 9 Play Boosters, 2 Traditional Foil Extended-Art cards, 16 Traditional Foil and 16 nonfoil Full-Art Basic Land cards, 1 oversized Spindown life counter, 1 special foil Final Fantasy card storage box, and 2 reference cards. A serialized card may be found in <0.1% of English-language Collector Boosters only.
This Bundle includes 9 Magic: The Gathering – Final Fantasy Play Boosters (each containing 14 cards), 2 Traditional Foil Extended-Art cards, 16 Traditional Foil and 16 nonfoil Full-Art Basic Land cards, 1 oversized Spindown life counter, 1 Final Fantasy card storage box, and 2 reference cards. This product does not contain a serialized card (available in English-language Collector Boosters only).
Each of the 12 Collector Boosters in this box contain 15 Magic: The Gathering cards and 1 Traditional Foil double-sided token, including 5–6 cards of rarity Rare or higher and 3–6 Uncommon, 3–5 Common, and 1 Full-Art Land cards, with a total of 8–12 Traditional Foil cards and 0–3 cards with a special foil treatment. Serialized card in <0.1% of English-language Collector Boosters only.
Each of the 30 Play Boosters in this box contain 14 Magic: The Gathering cards and 1 Token/Ad card or Art card. (A regular Art card can be found in 30% of packs and a foil-stamped Signature Art card can be found in 5% of packs.) Every pack Includes 1–4 cards of rarity Rare or higher and 3–6 Uncommon, 6–9 Common, and 1 Land cards. One card of any rarity is Traditional Foil. The Land card is also Traditional Foil in 20% of boosters. This product does not contain a serialized card (available in English-language Collector Boosters only).
You can buy the four Commander Decks in a regular bundle, collector’s edition bundle, or individually. Each Commander Deck includes 1 deck of 100 Magic cards (98 nonfoil cards and 2 Traditional Foil Legendary cards), a 2-card Collector Booster Sample Pack (contains 2 alt-border cards, with at least 1 Traditional Foil), 10 double-sided token cards, 1 deck box (can hold 100 sleeved cards), 1 strategy insert, and 1 reference card. This product does not contain a serialized card (available in English-language Collector Boosters only).
Chris Reed is a deals expert and commerce editor for IGN. You can follow him on Bluesky @chrislreed.com.
IGN Fan Fest 2025 is less than a week away and stars from your favorite movies, series, games, and comics have teamed up for what will be our biggest Fan Fest ever.
Starting Monday, February 24, be sure to tune into IGN for tons of exclusive reveals, trailers, clips, gameplay, and spoiler-filled interviews from all the biggest upcoming titles in the world of games and entertainment.
And that’s just a taste of what’s on deck for IGN Fan Fest 2025. Tune in all next week for livestrams focusing on what’s next from ID@Xbox along with horror, anime, games, and entertainment showcases.
Be sure to check back later this week for the full Fan Fest schedule along with information on how you can tune in and not miss a moment.
Monster Hunter Wilds adds various new tinctures of wyvern, toad monster and arachnid to the fantasy creature chopper’s vaunted eco-stew, but that additional variety isn’t quite apparent from the weapon types. They’re fancier-looking with tweaked or expanded movesets, but it’s a familiar line-up beneath the extra layers of flesh and metal. I recognise most from my ancient PSP copy of Monster Hunter Freedom 2, released in 2007.
Capcom have thrown in a few novelties such as Monster Hunter 4’s Insect Glaive over the intervening years, but according to Wilds director Yuya Tokuda, the developers currently feel it’s more important to trick out and rebalance the existing wargear than give you entire new ways to play.
Sweet D(ream)S.
Ever since Nintendo gave us our first official look at the Switch 2 (even before, if you were paying attention to the leaks), we have been wondering what that mysterious new USB-C port on the top of the console is for.
Logic would suggest that it’s for charging in tabletop mode — something that we haven’t been able to do with any ‘Switch 1’ model so far — but last week’s patent which showed the console working when flipped upside down had us (and the rest of the internet, it seems) wondering if the original, lower port might be the real star of the show.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
The wait is finally over—Avowed, Obsidian Entertainment’s highly anticipated fantasy RPG has officially launched! Step into the breathtaking Living Lands, a wild and mysterious island located in the Pillars of Eternity world of Eora, and embark on a journey filled with danger, discovery, and adventure.
Play today on Xbox Series X|S, the Xbox app for Windows PC, Battle.net, Steam, and cloud, to experience Obsidian’s latest RPG adventure. Available day one on Game Pass!
The Living Lands is a frontier unlike any other. This rugged and untamed island has become a haven for exiles, dreamers, and adventurers seeking a fresh start. Its vibrant regions and scattered settlements pulse with life, each hiding untold stories and ancient secrets waiting to be uncovered.
But this land of promise is fraught with peril. The Dreamscourge, a devastating soul-plague, is driving settlers to madness and turning them against one another. The very land itself resists colonization, haunted by echoes of lives long past. As an envoy chosen by a foreign emperor and blessed by a mysterious god, you are thrust into the heart of this chaos. With divine powers at your fingertips and the will to shape your own destiny, you’ll confront ancient threats, unravel mysteries, and decide the fate of the Living Lands. Will you unite its people or watch as their struggles tear them apart? The choices you make will define the future of the Living Lands—and the person you become.
In Avowed, the power of choice is yours. Create a character and shape your playstyle with four expansive skill trees—Fighter, Ranger, Wizard, and Godlike. Using two separate weapon loadouts, you can play as a stealthy sniper armed with dual pistols and a longbow or a spell-slinging barbarian wielding an axe and a grimoire, or whatever combination of loadouts you choose. This means that the possibilities are endless. Your choices define who you are and how you’ll tackle the challenges ahead.
But you’re not alone on this journey. Your companions each bring their own skills, personalities, and deeply personal stories:
Their history, relationships, and perspectives intertwine with your story, adding depth and weight to every decision you make. Will you earn their trust, challenge their beliefs, or forge something more profound? How you guide your companions—and how they influence you—shapes the adventure in unexpected ways.
Avowed is a game built to immerse you in its world. The Living Lands is a sprawling playground for adventurers, rewarding exploration at every turn. Traverse rugged cliffs, wade through winding rivers, and uncover unique hidden treasures—from ancient elemental weapons to fragments of God Shrine Totems that come together to create powerful new abilities.
Combat is equally immersive, offering a seamless blend of magic, melee, and ranged attacks. Unleash shockwaves with Grimoire Snap, trade health for devastating power with Blood Magic, wield weapons you have upgraded and enchanted, or mix and match abilities to create a playstyle that’s entirely your own. Every encounter is an opportunity to experiment, strategize, and push the boundaries of your party’s potential.
At the heart of Avowed lies its dedication to player choice. Inspired by the freedom of tabletop RPGs, the game puts the power in your hands. Your decisions ripple across the Living Lands, shaping alliances, influencing factions, and determining the fate of your companions. Whether you negotiate peace, spark conflict, or carve your own path through the chaos, your actions leave a lasting impact on the world of Eora.
This seamless blend of storytelling, exploration, and creativity makes Avowed an unforgettable RPG experience, one where every choice matters and every discovery feels personal.
Whether you’re a longtime fan of Obsidian Entertainment or new to Eora, Avowed invites you to dive into a world of wonder, danger, and opportunity. With its vibrant setting, unforgettable characters, and deeply immersive gameplay, this is the role-playing experience you’ve been waiting for.
The Living Lands are calling. Gather your courage, forge your path, and let the adventure begin!
Avowed is available now for Xbox Series X|S, the Xbox app for Windows PC, Battle.net, Steam, cloud, and with Game Pass. Avowed also supports Xbox Play Anywhere, meaning when you buy the game through the store on Xbox or Windows, it’s yours to play on Xbox and Windows PC at no additional cost, and your game progress and achievements are saved across Xbox and Windows PC.
When you purchase Avowed on Battle.net or Xbox, or have an Xbox Game Pass membership (PC or Ultimate only), and connect your Battle.net and Xbox accounts, it’s also yours to play on Battle.net, Xbox and Xbox App for Windows at no additional cost. Avowed lets you pick up where you left off, bringing all of your saves, game add-ons, and Xbox achievement progress with you.
Xbox Game Studios
Welcome to the Living Lands, a mysterious island filled with adventure and danger.
Set in the fictional world of Eora that was first introduced to players in the Pillars of Eternity franchise, Avowed is a first-person fantasy action RPG from the award-winning team at Obsidian Entertainment.
You are the envoy of Aedyr, a distant land, sent to investigate rumors of a spreading plague throughout the Living Lands – an island full of mysteries and secrets, danger and adventure, and choices and consequences, and untamed wilderness. You discover a personal connection to the Living Lands and an ancient secret that threatens to destroy everything. Can you save this unknown frontier and your soul from the forces threatening to tear them asunder?
The Weird and Wonderful Living Lands
The Living Lands is a place that feels foreign yet somewhat intrinsic to you as it feels the island itself is calling out to you for help. Explore an island home to many different environments and landscapes, each with their own unique ecosystem.
Visceral Combat to Play Your Way
Mix and match swords, spells, guns, and shields to fight your way. Dig into your grimoire for spells to trap, freeze or burn enemies, bash them with your shield, or use range bows to attack from a distance.
Companions as part of your journey
Companions from a spread of species will fight alongside you, with their own unique set of abilities. From a former mercenary to an eccentric wizard, they will be part of your journey with your choices shaping them as you help them with their quests.
Xbox Game Studios
The Weird and Wonderful Living Lands
The Living Lands is a place that feels foreign yet somewhat intrinsic to you as it feels the island itself is calling out to you for help. Explore an island home to many different environments and landscapes, each with their own unique ecosystem.
Visceral Combat to Play Your Way
Mix and match swords, spells, guns, and shields to fight your way. Dig into your grimoire for spells to trap, freeze or burn enemies, bash them with your shield, or use range bows to attack from a distance.
Companions as part of your journey
Companions from a spread of species will fight alongside you, with their own unique set of abilities. From a former mercenary to an eccentric wizard, they will be part of your journey with your choices shaping them as you help them with their quests.
The post Avowed Is Available Now – Your Journey Awaits appeared first on Xbox Wire.
It’s always cool when a game designer takes one neat thing out of a complex genre and turns it into an entire game. That’s how we got the MOBA, after all — breaking just the heroes out of an RTS. Enter Fellowship, a so-called Multiplayer Online Dungeon Adventure that’s going to pluck out team-based dungeon raids that are the beating heart of modern MMOs and turn them into a streamlined game – without the hundred hours of leveling up before you get to the best stuff.
After some time with a development version of Fellowship I have to say that the concept turned out just as cool as it sounds: It’s no-nonsense, endlessly scaling dungeon runs in a four player team of a tank, a healer, and two damage heroes from among a selection of unique classes. In a group you make yourself, or with a team from a handy group finder, you jump in with your chosen role in either short-and-sweet one boss Adventures or longer multi-boss dungeons—letting you tune your gameplay time depending on whether you’ve got ten minutes or an hour to kill.
At the end you pick up your loot, tweak your talents, kick up the difficulty, and go again.
I was a bit skeptical that you can have a real authentic, MMO-style dungeon experience without, you know, the MMO, but Fellowship really effectively delivered. You move through the environment clearing out packs of enemy minions in order to get at the bosses, and all the classic stuff you’d expect is there: You’ve got to watch your tank’s threat and manage aggro, try to make life easy for the healer, keep track of enemy abilities to interrupt the nasty ones, and know how to best use your class’ attacks in a good rotation.
Behind the wheel of an elemental mage-type character, I had plenty of abilities to manage even at the starting level. My character built up charges that could be used to call down big freezing meteors or channel icy blasts. Our healer, meanwhile, could summon plants that either damaged or healed. It was clear in my short time that each class has a nice, clear vision for what it can and can’t do. The thing my squishy mage couldn’t do, by the way, was survive if I took boss aggro. Sorry, tank.
Speaking of bosses, I saw four interesting setpiece fights that ran the gamut of stuff I expect from modern dungeon runs. In a ghost pirate dungeon we battled a skeletal shipmaster that required quick reflexes as it tossed our ghosts in and out of our bodies. There was a giant treasure construct that couldn’t be tanked—instead, our tank had to roll around a ball to collect the bits of treasure we were knocking off of it. There was also a giant zombie that summoned the tides, requiring us to shackle ourselves to an anchor and dodge sharks.
It wasn’t all gimmicks, though, and the developers were clear they wanted to strike a balance between fights that require reflexes and understanding clever mechanics with those that really push your ability to play your class’ skills to the limit. They gave me a good example of the second with a nasty warlock boss, whose up-tempo barrage of skills and summons needed constant interruption even as he created zones that either forced us to group up… or to run away at top speed.
What I especially liked is how Fellowship will be structured. Dungeon difficulty scales from one up to six levels, gradually adding new enemy abilities to learn, mechanics to understand, and taking off the training wheels one by one until you hit the intended difficulty. From there, though, it ramps up for dozens of levels, each with their own unique combination of two or more curses that have their own downsides and upsides. One of those, for example, could sprinkle nasty Empowered minions among the normal enemy packs—but when you beat them you’d get a short-time buff that let you clear trash even faster or take a handy boost into a boss.
The concept of a game focusing on infinitely scaling dungeons, familiar yet dangerous in new ways, is a really cool one. Combine that with the developers’ big plans for competitive seasons, where players can start fresh to race up the leaderboards for world first kills on each boss, and I think I’m pretty excited to gear up, spec out, and take on the challenges in Fellowship when it launches this year.
It was only last week that newly Sega-less Company Of Heroes developer Relic Entertainment announced plans for various smaller strategy game projects. Now, here we are with Earth Vs Mars, a boldly-coloured B-movie homage to Advance Wars in which you can splice units with animals to create tactical monstrosities such as “Squirrel-Cows” and “Cheetah-Flies”. Advance Wars aside, the new game harkens back to Relic’s 2003 RTS oddity Impossible Creatures. The trailer below doesn’t contain any Chihuahua Whales, but it’s hopefully just a matter of time.
This past weekend saw the first round of network tests for Elden Ring Nightreign, the upcoming standalone multiplayer game spun out of FromSoftware’s magnum opus. Unlike last year’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, Nightreign resembles Elden Ring in name and appearance only, trading its parent game’s open world structure for a streamlined survival format in which three-player teams have to drop into gradually shrinking maps to fight off groups of enemies and increasingly challenging bosses. It’s a design that undoubtedly suggests the developers were inspired by the hugely popular Fortnite – unsurprising, considering Epic’s battle royale has been enjoyed by no less than 200 million players this month alone.
But Nightreign bears an even greater resemblance to another game, one not nearly as famous and much more disliked: 2013’s God of War: Ascension. And that’s a good thing.
Released between 2010’s God of War 3 and 2018’s Norse-flavored God of War reboot, Ascension was a prequel set before the original Greek mythology trilogy that followed Kratos as he tried to break his oath with his soon-to-be-predecessor, Aries. Unable to live up to the initial trilogy’s epic finale, and fueling desire to shake up a tried-and-tested formula, God of War: Ascension quickly became known as the black sheep of the franchise. A half-decent appetizer to an amazing main course.
It’s an understandable reputation, but also unfair. Although Kratos’ confrontation with the Furies in Ascension obviously didn’t reach the same heights as his five-stage fight with Zeus, this divisive prequel still had some truly jaw-dropping set-pieces, including the Prison of the Damned, a labyrinthine dungeon carved into the skin and bones of an immobilized, 100-armed giant. But, more importantly, Ascension also deserves credit for trying something the franchise had not done before, and hasn’t since: multiplayer.
As you make your way through the Prison of the Damned in Ascension’s story, you encounter a chained up NPC who lets out a premature “You saved me!” before being crushed by the level’s boss. Open up the multiplayer mode after reaching this point in the campaign and you’ll find this same NPC is now your player character. Having been teleported to Olympus seconds before your demise, you must pledge allegiance to one of four gods – Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, or Aries – each of whom will provide you with unique weapons, armor pieces, and magic attacks. These are the tools with which you wage war across five different multiplayer modes, four of which are competitive PvP.
The fifth mode, Trial of the Gods, is cooperative PvE. And also basically Elden Ring Nightreign.
Gameplay previews of Nightreign posted ahead of the network tests by prominent “Soulsborne” YouTubers like VaatiyVidya and Iron Pineapple, as well IGN’s own coverage, have revealed the similarities between FromSoftware’s latest and live service games like Fortnite. Much like those games, Nightreign offers a cocktail of randomized loot, resource management, and environmental hazards that damage a player’s health and limit their area of movement, making runs more challenging as they go on. Nightreign even pays homage to one of Fortnite’s most iconic images, having players drop into the level from the sky, taxied by spirit birds to a position of their choosing.
You won’t find any “where are we dropping?” action in God of War: Ascension, but go beyond Nightreign’s battle royale-like surface and you’ll find much more common ground. Both Nightreign and Ascension’s Trial of the Gods mode are co-op experiences where teams of two or more face increasingly tougher foes. Both grant players the unexpected but welcome opportunity to take on bosses from previous games, be they Hercules from God of War 3 or the Nameless King from Dark Souls 3. Both have a countdown (although Ascension’s can be paused by defeating enemies) and both take place on maps that are either small or shrinking. And both are multiplayer games developed by studios known for their well-crafted single-player experiences, and were made without oversight from their series’ creators; Elden Ring director Hidetaka Miyazaki is working on an as of yet unknown project, while the directors of the original God of War trilogy – David Jaffe, Cory Barlog, and Stig Asmussen – had all left Sony Santa Monica at the time of Ascension’s creation to pursue opportunities elsewhere.
Above all, Nightreign appears to evoke the same response from players as Ascension’s Trial of the Gods did. Those who participated in FromSoftware’s network test invariably describe their runs as a frantic and exhilarating race against the clock. In contrast to the comparatively cozy vibes of the base game, where players are able to tackle every scenario in a variety of ways, using a variety of weapons and abilities and taking all the time they need, Nightreign forces players to act on instinct by picking up the pace and limiting their resources – constraints that, in VaatiVidya’s words, were “made in the name of speed and efficiency.” To make up for the absence of Torrent, for instance, players now channel their inner spirit horse, being able to run faster and jump higher.
Ascension’s multiplayer also adjusted its single player blueprint for the sake of tighter pacing, and even used similar techniques to those adopted by Nightreign: it increased the player’s run speed, extended their jumps, automated parkour, and provided them with a grapple attack they could use to pull objects towards them (a mechanic also used by Nightreign’s Wylder character). New moves like this are a lifesaver, because while the combat isn’t too difficult on its own – what with the franchise being a power fantasy and all – Trial of the Gods throws so many enemies at you that every second counts. As a result, you and your teammate find yourselves sprinting around like hungry wolves, or terminators, or, well, Kratoses, hacking and slashing your way through armies without calculated ruthlessness.
Nightreign’s resemblance to Ascension is unexpected not only because much of the latter has been forgotten, but also because the Soulslike genre Elden Ring is part of essentially started out as God of War’s complete antithesis. Where one lets you pretend to be a warrior so powerful he can kill literal gods, the other turns you into a nameless, accursed undead for whom even regular enemies pose a considerable challenge. One rarely shows its game over screen, the other beats you over the head with it until you start crying, laughing, and crying again.
Yet this challenge, so utterly rage-inducing in FromSoftware’s earlier games, has gradually decreased in recent years as fans “got good” and developers provided them with better weapons and spells, culminating in the numerous game-breaking builds that have been put together since Elden Ring launched. Without access to these builds, Nightreign promises to reintroduce a degree of challenge. At the same time, those that have indeed gotten good will be able to enjoy the same thing God of War: Ascension offered: the chance to feel like a vengeful Spartan short on time.
Tim Brinkhof is a freelance writer specializing in art and history. After studying journalism at NYU, he has gone on to write for Vox, Vulture, Slate, Polygon, GQ, Esquire and more
