As Silent Hill f fans pore over the slew of previews that went live recently (you can read ours right here), two questions are consistently popping up on social media and fan communities: is the latest mainline Silent Hill really a ‘Soulslike’ game? And if it is, what does the term ‘Soulslike’ even mean anyway?

As we described in IGN’s Silent Hill f hands-on preview, combat itself has a similar feel to Silent Hill 2 Remake’s close-range combat. You can dodge enemy attacks with the DualSense’s circle button and activate a light and heavy attack with R1 and R2, respectively. Your limited reach and lengthy attack motions give a realistic, weighty feel to combat. Heavy attacks, especially, feel slow and need to be timed well, “contributing to the feeling that Hinako is just a teenager with limited strength.”

On top of that, however, Silent Hill f’s combat also features timed dodges and counterattacks, with the latter particularly important in combat sequences. Enemies briefly show a sign when a counterattack can be utilized, but we suggested that “unless you have trained your reflex skills by playing games like of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, you will likely have a hard time reacting.” That’s where the Focus mode comes in, which can be triggered by holding L2. It allows counterattacks to last longer, while also charging up a power attack that staggers an enemy.

While series producer Motoi Okamoto hasn’t specifically mentioned the Soulslike genre, and by our estimation, Silent Hill f is “by no means a Soulslike,” talk of parries and counterattacks come as quite the surprise to Silent Hill fans. The franchise has never been famous for its clunky combat — story and atmosphere have almost always come first — but Okatomo’s suggestion that f’s combat sequences had been ratcheted up because “challenging action games are gaining popularity among younger players nowadays” has pretty much split the fandom.

The legacy of FromSoftware’s Souls series isn’t just defined by the amazing games in its back-catalog, but also the subgenre that’s been given life thanks to its very existence: The Soulslike. While defining one is kinda tricky, there are core elements that tend to apply to Souls games, such as punishing consequences for death, Souls — or a similar currency — gained by defeating enemies that is integral to character progression and can be lost upon death, methodical combat, typically tied to a stamina meter, and checkpoints that reset the world.

For some, however, Soulslike can simply mean tough melee combat that involves learning to predict an enemy’s attack pattern.

In a thread entitled, “Silent Hill f is not ‘souls-like’ and no one here seems to know what that means,” a Redditor said: “Genuinely baffling. This is link [sic] second graders being told to name an object and call a toaster a blender. Like, I don’t think you even know what a Soulslike is.

“Having a dodge roll and hard bosses applies to like 90% of third-person games that exist lol. Like you people cannot be serious. Souls games have heavy and light attack, tight-nit dodge intensive combat. You have frame-perfect dodges […] huge emphasis on stamina management, with shields, break meters, and focus on killing enemies to get c[urrency].

“Silent hill f has like 1.5 of those. This blatant lie needs to stop. Anyone with eyes who isn’t full of sh*t can see this is nothing like a Soulslike.”

It’s the broader confusion between what and what is not indicative of a “Soulslike” game that’s frustrating players, though.

“To be fair, nobody knows what a Soulslike is,” admitted a respondent. “This is clearly demonstrated on the Soulslike sub by daily arguments about whether or not a game is a Soulslike.”

“I’ve sunk hundreds of hours into FromSoftware’s games and Soulslikes like Nioh,” said someone else. “Nothing about Silent Hill f looks like a Soulslike other than there’s a target lock-on system and a stamina meter. Which is in, you know: a million other games that are not goddamn Soulslikes.”

Confusingly, others who have also played Souls-inspired games don’t concur, however, leading to considerable disagreement to what does, and does not, make a Soulslike game. Is it the melee combat? The need to parry? Or does any game that requires players to learn an enemy’s attack pattern count?

“I’m still excited for the game, but the comparisons to Souls combat are really clear guys, like come on…” posited one. “Invincible dodge, lock on system, light and heavy attacks, multiple attempt boss fights testing your combat prowess… Even the combat UI is clearly inspired by action games.”

“People complain about the combat becoming melee-focused like they don’t remember Silent Hill 4. Breakable weapons are essential without the firearms if we still want the game to stay a survival horror,” explained another fan. “This whole situation feels like Silent Hill 2 Remake all over again with almost the same talking points.”

Okamoto said that tougher combat, with the visuals and music’s “juxtaposition between beauty and terror,” along with the “terrible beauty of the game’s monster design,” makes for a terrifying adventure. Even the puzzles are apparently “grounded in psychological anguish and suffering.” Quite how players react to all that when Silent Hill f finally releases next month, of course, remains to be seen.

Silent Hill f takes us to 1960s Japan, where we’ll follow Hinako Shimizu, a teenager struggling under the pressure of expectations from her friends, family, and society. As displayed at the beginning of the Japanese-language reveal trailer back in March, it is the first Silent Hill game to get an 18+ rating certification in Japan. It’s out for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series on September 25.

In case you’re wondering, no, Silent Hill f is not a sequel to any of the existing Silent Hill games, so you can play it even if you’ve never jumped into a Silent Hill game before. Instead, it will offer a standalone story “independent from the series.” That came from publisher Konami itself, which finally confirmed on X/Twitter that the latest instalment of the horror series — which is usually, if not always, set in a sleepy resort town on east-coast America — will be “a completely new title” that “people who have never played the Silent Hill series can enjoy.”

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.

If you’ve played FC 25 online, then chances are you will have encountered input delay, that fraction of a second between pressing the button and a pass or shot on screen being performed, which can often be the difference between a win and a loss.

Just like any twitch FPS or frame-perfect fighting game, EA’s football simulation relies on the actions being performed by its characters feeling as responsive as possible in order for the playing field to feel fair. The developer knows this, and so has put an extensive amount of research into solving this often-vocalised concern among the Ultimate Team community ahead of FC 26’s launch.

“We really needed to understand the root of the problem”, senior producer Sam Rivera told IGN. “We worked with pro players, we gathered data from players all around the world to try to understand the issues, but we didn’t want to only listen to the feedback. We wanted to experience input delay ourselves. So we also traveled to Europe to meet with pro players at their eSports studios. We actually met with content creators at their homes, and we learned a lot.”

Through this research, EA discovered that the issues were manyfold, both at the player and developer end of the pipeline. On the player side, there are things you can do to minimise the chances of input delay occurring. It may seem obvious to some, but connecting to the internet via Ethernet cable is much more stable than Wi-Fi.

“If you play on Wi-Fi, you can have jitter and packet loss, which can create a very delayed experience”, explained Rivera. “We know that more than 50% of FC players are playing on Wi-Fi, so we recommend that [connecting via ethernet] if possible. And then things like TV settings. If you’re playing outside of game mode on a normal TV, you can get anywhere between 20 to over 100 milliseconds delaying your experience, regardless of your connection, regardless of the game, just because of the TV. So there are a lot of things that go into the equation, but what are the causes of delay when you are playing in a high-quality or good connection, or when you’re playing offline?”

Yes, input delay is not strictly an internet-based issue. With players reporting the phenomenon in offline play too, it led Rivera and the team to look into the construction of the game itself to see what was causing the issue:

“First is limited animation coverage. Sometimes we request actions in the game that are very difficult to perform. So if there’s a very fast incoming ball and I want to go for a long pass backwards, that is very difficult, and sometimes there are no animations for that. So it is like in real life, very difficult to perform. It’s difficult for us to capture those animations. However, this year we’re adding many new animations as well to make sure we have more coverage in general.”

“The next one is the animation system box,” Rivera conitnued. “Our animation system is perhaps one of the most complicated systems in the game, and it has to solve every request, every shot, every pass, considering what animations are available, where the opponents are, how the ball is moving, and all of that.

“And sometimes there can be a bug. So, for example, you may want to take a shot immediately, but then the system may decide to delay the shot slightly, to prefer to use the strong foot instead of taking it earlier but with the weaker foot. So things like that happen often, not very often. But when you play 20 matches on your weekend, you will experience it a few times. So this year, we’re fixing dozens of those problems in the game.”

Improvements are on the way in FC 26, then, and from the short amount of time I spent playing it, it did feel noticeably smooth and responsive — with the new one-frame passes and shots being a real highlight. But will input delay ever be an issue that’s completely eradicated?

“Well, it depends”, Rivera responded. “There are many factors that go into input delay. There are factors that are sometimes internal, sometimes external. Then there’s not a simple fix other than providing more information to the community, trying to help with their setups as well, making sure everyone has the right setup. But at least we think that there’s a big opportunity. There’s a big opportunity there. We have done a very good step in FC 26 to create a more responsive game.”

Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.

Tim Sweeney, boss of Epic Games, has denied claims published by The Wall Street Journal of frustration within the company regarding its working relationship with Disney.

Yesterday, a WSJ report offered fresh detail on Fortnite’s mysterious upcoming Disney mode, developed following the latter’s $1.5bn investment in Epic Games. The offering won’t launch until “fall 2026 at the earliest,” the report stated, with some Epic executives complaining about “the slow pace of the decision-making at Disney, with signoffs needed from so many different divisions.”

It’s this claim that Sweeney has now refuted, via a post on social media that brands the suggestion as “BS.”

“The anonymous quote is BS,” Sweeney wrote. “The speed of Disney and Epic collaborations like Darth Vader has been awesome and is around 10x the ordinary speed of media company dealings in this business. We even provided a statement to the writer of this article saying so, but they chose not to print it.”

Epic Games’ big Disney collaboration was announced in February 2024, though details on it have remained largely under-wraps. Initial concept artwork for the project featured a virtual Disneyland-style environment, with hubs themed around Disney’s main brands. Exactly what players will do in it, however, remains to be seen.

WSJ’s report states that the project is being overseen within Disney by Josh D’Amaro, head of Disney parks and resorts, who has visited Sweeney and spent time hiking with the CEO. One alleged concern around the project has been its fan-created elements, with questions raised over who might legally own a dance that utilises Disney characters.

Epic Games and Disney have forged a deep collaboration in recent years, with Marvel and Star Wars themed seasons, and countless characters now available as Fortnite skins, now including a selection from Pixar films, and even Disney classic animation, too.

The companies recently used Fortnite to test an AI-powered Darth Vader, who could chat away with players using generative speech. Upon launch, the concept required an urgent fix after fans quickly got Darth Vader saying things he shouldn’t, though ultimately more than 10 million players spoke with the Sith Lord.

This week sees Fortnite shift into its next season, which sees its main battle royale Island infested with mutant bugs, and additional characters from Halo brought in to help. Meanwhile, in the game’s OG mode, the action moves into Fortnite’s well-loved Season 5, which should see the appearance of Kevin the Cube — though Epic Games is doing fun things with this re-run’s storyline, so perhaps not.

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social