The fidelity of Grand Theft Auto 6's world makes random violence look considerably less silly than it did when the characters had boxy claws for hands, but Rockstar isn't stopping players from doing what they want in Vice City and its environs.

We know that because we've seen the GTA 6 leaker shoot up a nudist party, murder the residents of a homeless encampment, and beat a delivery driver to death—quite a contrast with the mission-focused gameplay in the official reveal.

A little devil icon in one of the leaked videos did lead us to wonder if GTA 6 would judge us for antisocial behavior, a la Red Dead Redemption 2's Honor system, but the details that have come out since the reveal suggest that 'Criminal Profiles' aren't quite like that.

According to a preview from TGG on YouTube (embedded above), Rockstar doesn't want to punish players for how they play, or create a situation where they have to grind their reputation up to a 'better' level in order to progress.

Here's the short version of what TGG learned on his trip to Rockstar North:

• There are four main Criminal Profile states: Professional, Aggressive, Violent, and Psycho
• There's also a fifth 'shattered' state where the meter cracks and can't be changed; TGG got the impression that this is for players who clearly don't want to engage with the system
• You can turn off Criminal Profile notifications
• Jason and Lucia can have different Criminal Profile states
• Staying in the Professional state is about "restraint and control" and "not killing or injuring anyone unless you have to"

This all aligns with IGN's learnings, but adds a few new specifics. What neither source came away with are specifics about how or how much Criminal Profiles will affect the story—will it lead to different endings, or just slightly change how NPCs interact with us?—but a comment from GTA 6 co-studio head Rob Nelson suggests that we will notice the effects of our actions.

Asked what he's most proud of in GTA 6, Nelson told TGG that it's "the way the whole thing works together."

"We've got a lot of very complicated systems working in an interconnected way," said Nelson. "You can forget it's a game that has been designed to try and work this way. I think it allows you to sort of roleplay as heavily or as lightly as you want to.

"The idea that you have a fair amount of choice now in terms of the way you can approach situations. You can still cause as much carnage as you can imagine. How does that make you feel if it has an impact on certain things? Do you still want to do it? Do you want to do it more? Do you want to do it less? Do you care at all? It's up to you and what matters to you."

Samurai adventure Onimusha: Way of the Sword notched over a million sales on its launch day, Capcom has announced.

The success is deserved, per our reviewer Wes, who said that Way of the Sword "whips ass" in his 83/100 review. (And if the demo had you worried that it wouldn't be much of a challenge, Wes says not to fret too much: "I died plenty, particularly to bosses that ruthlessly punished my poor parry timing or overeager button mashing.")

According to Capcom, the one million launch day sales for Way of the Sword has put the Onimusha series as a whole at 10 million lifetime sales. The last new game in the main series was Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams, which released 20 years ago.

"In addition to regularly releasing major new titles each year, Capcom is focusing on re-activating IPs that haven't had a new title launch recently," the developer said. "The company is working to further maximize corporate value by leveraging its rich library of content, including this title."

New Lost Planet game when?

It's become a cliche to say that Capcom's on a bit of a run lately, but here's yet another mile marker in the developer's 2020s streak, which has included a pair of well-liked Resident Evil remakes, two new Resident Evil games, Monster Hunter Rise and Wilds, Pragmata, Street Fighter 6, and Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, among other games.

It already felt weird and wonderful to say that PC Gamer has reviewed Metal Gear Solid 4, a game for the personal computer. Now it gets even weirder: MGS4 mods are incoming, with TriggerHappy on YouTube already showing off a custom map in Kojima's 2008 stealth-action classic.

Back in 2021, modder Jayveer showed off a map ported from Metal Gear Arcade into Metal Gear Online 2, the multiplayer accompaniment to MGS4, but to my knowledge, TriggerHappy's is the first demonstration of a custom singleplayer map in MGS4.

It's 55 beautiful seconds of Old Snake crouch walking around Groznyj Grad, the iconic fortress level of Metal Gear Solid 3. Only now it's infested with Gecko walkers mooing their incongruous moos and showing off their distractingly shapely legs. Stupid, sexy Geckos. TriggerHappy laconically describes the gameplay as "initial testing for adding AI to a custom map."

The enemy AI certainly seems to work: Those Geckos are not happy to see Snake, and it's not because they believe a man of his age shouldn't be putting so much stress on his back and knees. It's unclear how TriggerHappy got this custom map working, or how far away we are from widely available map making tools, but this is an exciting first step in the realm of custom content for MGS4.

I've mostly connected Master Collection modding with the essential performance and visual fixes that the community needed to cook up after Volume One's disastrous initial launch. Thankfully, not only has the Volume One situation vastly improved with official patches, but Konami shipped Volume Two (containing MGS4 and Peace Walker) in a much more acceptable condition.

Looking at the MGS4 Nexus, the projects on offer are fairly simple: Custom textures, miscellaneous tweaks, and an FPS unlocker all stood out to me. You can get DLSS5 working in there too, if you're into that sort of thing. Metal Gear is not a series I've ever strongly associated with modding, but I'm excited to see where we might go from here.

In a Gamescom interview with IGN, Saber CCO and former id Software dev Tim Willits said that the company's upcoming Space Marine follow-up is not using generative AI in its development. The studio has otherwise been embracing the technology, which was at the heart of the recent Rideshare Stimulator controversy.

"There is absolutely no generative AI in Space Marine 3 or Hellraiser or Stuntman or Turok or Jurassic Park, or [Saber's John Wick game]," Willits told IGN. "But like we said, we're going to experiment with it. Try it out in Rideshare, see if it works. See if people like it. If they don't like it, we're like, 'All right.'"

It seems that Saber is far more circumspect about using generative AI in its big ticket games, especially when there are license holders like Lionsgate or Paramount to consider.

Warhammer 40K owner Games Workshop, for its part, is enforcing strict internal rules against genAI use in any of its products or advertising, a crowd-pleasing stance that contrasts with rival tabletop giant Wizards of the Coast's willingness to play footsie with AI usage.

But Willits, like Saber CEO Matt Karch, is solidly pro-AI, and sees smaller projects like Rideshare Stimulator as an opportunity to feel it out. "If you're going to experiment, it's a good one to experiment on," Willits said. "If anyone tells you that they have it figured out, they don't. It'll take a couple years and things will settle out and we'll figure it out."

PCG news writer Joshua Wolens had his own conversation with Willits at Gamescom, and touched on similar topics. Willits believes that team size and overspecialization are major contributing factors to the industry's current economic crisis, but also argues that this crisis isn't as bad as it's being presented. Willits also said that, had the OG id Software crew gotten their hands on generative AI back in the day, they would have aggressively used it.

Listen, I'll be the first to admit that I'm a little biased towards parry-based action games. Sekiro will forever be my favourite FromSoftware game because of just how excellently it captured the back-and-forth feeling of swordplay, not only with its timed deflection mechanic, but its mandate to have you keep the pressure on.

But I appreciate that, for some, parry fatigue might be setting in. My fellow writer Mollie Taylor's sick of it, for instance—and I do understand. I think there are some games which use it as a bit of a crutch, and even the ones that don't can wear out their welcome.

Take Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, for instance. I liked it, but I wouldn't want every turn-based RPG I play to have a timed block in it. Still, it's fun to have the occasional one where stats can be overcome with deft enough bumper hands.

But to paint every parry-based system with the same brush seems short-sighted to me, because this deceptively simple mechanic has a ton of juice still left inside it: no other game proves this more than Onimusha: Way of the Sword, which, as far as I'm concerned, has broken new ground in terms of what parries can do.

Onimusha has one parry button, or at least, it has one parry button on the surface: your block, which when timed just as a blow is coming in, will send a series of sparks flying. The trick that Onimusha pulls—and most good parry-based games will do this—is in actually giving you several parry buttons. Onimusha is parries all the way down. You've got:

• The parry. Hit the block button at the right time and see sparks fly.
• Your deflect, an advanced version of the basic parry that requires you to hit another button while blocking.
• The Issin counter, a parry for people with huge cajones with massive risk and massive reward.

This is the trick to making a parry-based action system feel good, like finely-chopping veggies so you don't notice them in your soup. Not only do each of these parry-like mechanics have a unique attack they counter, they also serve different purposes, giving you a toolbox of ripostes to your enemy's assault.

The basic parry builds up a meter, the Blazing State, which increases your damage and stagger—naturally graduating you to the more demanding deflect ability as time goes on once it's full. Deflecting also counters unavoidable attacks.

The genius here is in the back-and-forth minigame between parrying and deflecting, since your Blazing State depletes over time, and refreshing it is easier than building it up from scratch. Meaning that even when your sword's on fire and you're deflecting, you still want to throw in the odd parry to keep your weapon ignited.

Then there's the Issin counter, my beloved. The extremely tight window for using this thing seems too punishing at first, but Onimusha throws in highly-telegraphed attacks for you as a treat—these are Issin bait. Slow, ponderous swings with clean windows that'll have you salivating the moment you see their wind-up.

It's often said that Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is a rhythm game in disguise, and the same is true with Onimusha. And just like DDR has multiple directional arrows to keep things interesting, so too do these games grant you a broad toolkit, one that both locks you into an engaging and fatal game of rock, paper scissors.

There's also that sliding scale of risk, too, the progression from parrying, to deflecting to Issin counters encourages you to make more daring plays. The easiest defensive option gives the smallest reward, whereas an Issin counter shears off a huge chunk of health and stamina from your foe. And even then, both Issin and the deflect are riskier for different reasons! Deflecting has a more complicated set of button presses, like trying to throw out a dragon punch in a fighting game, whereas Issin has strict timing requirements.

Onimusha's at the forefront of parry experimentation, but it's not the only one. My favourite non-standard parry, outside of Onimusha, is in Nine Sols' Unbounded Counter. You hold a different block button, are vulnerable for a short-wind up, and then are given a short window whereupon releasing the button creates a parry. Hold it for too long, and you'll whiff, opening yourself up with another window of vulnerability. It requires you to know an attack's coming three business days in advance, which is why it feels so good to pull off.

Point being, I think the parry gets a bad reputation because it's viewed as an overly simple solution to engaging action combat—fie, I say! I bite my thumb at thee! Parries, like any other game mechanic, can be ham-fisted in their implementation. But they can also be very, very clever.

The reason I don't want parries to go anywhere isn't just because I like them, but because I think there are genuinely so many interesting potential versions of them we're yet to see from inventive devs. I want more games like Onimusha to surprise and delight me, and I want to see what ways a humble defensive button press can be altered to send me to action combat heaven.

At the Game Developers Conference earlier this year, Aggro Crab developer Nick Kaman told me that he thinks there's a lot of meat left on the bone when it comes to co-op "friendslop" games, and that he wants to keep working in the space. Aggro Crab is still down to zig and not zag, though, and will be publishing and supporting a very different sort of game, the upcoming platformer Rebounder.

It's tough enough to stand out in the games market these days, let alone as a 2D platformer, so I'm always excited when one really breaks through and catches my eye. Rebounder is killing it on the art front, presenting everything in this color-limited, comic book, cel-shadey view that I really dig. It dovetails with the story and designs, a sort of blue collar, working class sci-fi reminiscent of Scavenger's Reign, Alien, or Mouthwashing.

"On a remote lunar worksite, valuable resources from an ancient age flow underfoot, and shareholders demand extraction," reads Rebounders' synopsis on Steam. "Contract workers fly-in and fly-out; blue collar labourers from around the galaxy all trekking to the edges of civilization for the next gig.

"A Rebounder runs lines. They pull up their boots each day and speed through hazardous terrain to deliver precious cargo from point A to point B by any means necessary. It’s the gnarliest trade in the universe."

Rebounder looks to be no slouch on the gameplay front either: Its Steam page references kaizo games, hardcore, challenge run fangames/romhacks built out of classic 2D platformers (mostly Super Mario World). It's a style of game I've always loved to watch, but it feels relatively unapproachable for the average Joe. Taking kaizo games' lead as inspiration for a full game strikes me as a brilliant move.

"I think someone got really interested in mario shell jumps," observed top commenter ChampionBob on Rebounder's announcement trailer. Tricky jumps requiring deft manipulation and timing around defeated Koopa shells are a kaizo staple, and Rebounder seems to replicate that style of platforming with its grody little sci-fi bits and bobs.

So it looks rad, the story sounds neat, and it's cribbing notes from a style of fangame that hasn't seen a ton of imitation yet⁠—I'm on board, let's rock. Rebounder is targeting a general 2027 release window, and you can wishlist it on Steam.

If you're sick of parrying in videogames, then Onimusha: Way of the Sword might hit you, dear reader, the wrong way—especially since its roll is extremely slow. The game's introduction to its combat is a competent, though incredibly careful one. It establishes its full suite of defensive abilities with a glacial pace. Like you're a deer and it's afraid you'll bolt into the underbrush.

The problem with this is that it gives the wrong impression. Onimusha's combat is utter action game bliss when it really gets going—but it takes a minute to get there. Not only does it drip-feed you with mechanics, but it starts off with the most ubiquitous one: The parry, or timed block, or deflect—whatever you want to call it.

And listen, parry fatigue is widespread. In fact, one in four action game players has experienced it in the past five years alone. I get it. But if you find yourself afflicted, you should persevere.

The secret that Onimusha keeps, like a hidden oni gauntlet under its cloak, is that this parry with its forgiving timing (and admittedly sick-as-hell sound design) is just one of the many tools that protagonist Musashi has tucked away. A basic percussion drumbeat that's later joined by the other instruments of this rhythm game in disguise.

Though Musashi only starts with the aforementioned timed block, his kit unfolded like a beautiful lotus flower throughout my 30-something hour playthrough. You've got your deflect, a more involved parry that requires you to be holding down the block button first, and you've also got a timed dodge that's better against unarmed attacks. Then there's the Issen.

The Issen is by far my favourite tool of his defensive kit—a reversal that demands you hit an attack button at the last moment, leaving you completely open, with perfect timing. The risk matches the reward, as an Issen can one-shot most regular mooks and deal a hefty amount of stagger and damage both. It'll also give you souls that charge up a super state where you can do it even more.

All of this pairs nicely with the attacks enemies throw at you. There's the interplay between weapon and unarmed attacks—letting you swat aside sword-swipes or dance around fisticuffs. There are grabs, which force you to break rhythm and dodge at the right time to counter them. There's blade barrages, which ask you to remember what button you were just mashing, and blade locks, both of which can trigger randomly.

They might enter a countering stance, requiring you to smash them with your fists to knock them off-balance—or they might throw an un-avoidable attack, forcing you to parry or deflect. Onimusha at its peak never lets you rest for long, and enemies are always throwing out some new combo of threats for you to deal with in the world's deadliest game of rock paper scissors.

As someone very familiar with this genre, a Sekiro sicko with plenty of hours plugged in its imitators, like Lies of P and Nine Sols, I'm happy to say that Onimusha has one of the most textured, compelling combat systems of its ilk. It's really well-designed, which is why it's just a shame it takes so long to get there.

But get there it does. By around the midpoint of the game, Onimusha has shrugged off its unfortunate, hand-holdy AAA introduction and fully started baring its teeth. And it turns a weakness—a propensity for repeat boss and miniboss encounters—into opportunities to flex on old foes.

Once the combat starts clicking, these mandatory rematches start becoming a stage on which to demonstrate your mastery. Enemies that once gave you trouble can be dispatched deftly because you know their dance now, and you've acquired more than enough tools to deal with them. Meeting with these foes again felt like catching up with an old rival and showing off what I'd learned since.

If Onimusha feels unwieldy or over-familiar in the first few hours, I encourage you to stick with it—and if you're skeptical about the raft of parry-based games, I still think you should give this one a go. Slow start aside, it's a best-in-class action game that rewards your investment tenfold.

Every new Rockstar game is more simulation-heavy than the last, and Grand Theft Auto 6 aims to bring players closer to real-life in a variety of ways. One of these is the addition of vehicle refuelling, which will require players to stop off at gas stations (or petrol stations if you're a Brit like me) and watch your disposable income vanish in a stream of fossilised plant matter.

This mechanical tweak has proved somewhat controversial among Grand Theft Auto players, with some believing that refuelling cars will be inconvenient and interrupt the flow of driving and shooting the series is built upon. Yet while Rockstar is sticking to its guns on the matter of refuelling, co-studio head Rob Nelson recently stated that filling up your car won't be a massive drag on your adventure across Vice City.

Nelson's comments come via YouTuber TGG (via GamesRadar+) who recently saw an extended preview of Rockstar's hotly anticipated crime sim, which included refuelling in action. TGG says that gas stations allow players to both repair and refuel cars, and facilitate recharging for electric vehicles alongside refuelling for cars powered by internal combustion engines. Selecting the refuel/recharge option triggers a refuelling cutscene that TGG says lasts around 10 seconds.

The preview was apparently overseen by Nelson, who commented on the refuelling during play. "Hey, that's pretty fast for a fill up," Nelson observed when getting gas. "You can't complain about that." It also appears there is some trepidation within Rockstar about the refuelling, as when discussing the system with TGG, Nelson stated. "We'll see what people say," before asking "Do you think people are going to like it?"

For his part, TGG reckons that "Fuel isn't really going to be an issue unless you're not thinking about what you're doing". And I think this is probably going to be the case for most people unless Rockstar makes the need to refuel too frequent. When Red Dead Redemption 2 arrived in 2018, some players complained about the simulation-heavy elements of that, like how Arthur Morgan moved and having to fiddle around with your saddlebags for inventory management.

Officials with Miami-Dade County have held talks with Rockstar about using facilities and landmarks in the county to promote the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6, according to a recent report by The Miamian, saying it could represent "a unique opportunity to generate revenue for the County while showcasing Miami-Dade to a massive audience." Just one problem: the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office is dead-set against it.

The Miamian report (via RPS) says the county submitted a pitch deck to Rockstar on June 29, after which staff had "some conversations with Rockstar about potential opportunities around the launch of GTA 6," said Carlos Suarez, a spokesperson for Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.

"Nothing has been formally agreed to or approved, and any idea would have to go through the appropriate review and approval process," Suarez said. "Given Miami-Dade's clear influence on the game, we think there could be a unique opportunity to generate revenue for the County while showcasing Miami-Dade to a massive audience."

Miami-Dade is the inspiration for Vice City in the GTA series, and by "inspiration" I mean it basically is Vice City, although Miami exists as a separate city in the game's fiction. Vice City will serve as a central location in GTA 6, and will represent the seat of Vice-Dale County, much as the city of Miami is the county seat of Miami-Dade. Given that, the campaign makes obvious sense, and most of the ideas floated don't sound too overly disruptive.

Some examples:

• A display aircraft wrapped in Vice City logos and a GTA 6-inspired baggage claim at Miami International Airport
• Vice City signage and colors at the Metromover and Metrorail transit stations
• Vice City-inspired installations or public art at PortMiami
• A "family appropriate" celebration of "Miami car culture" with cars, bikes, DJs, food, artists, and branded installations at Tropical Park
• A Vice City Radio Lab at the city's main library, providing access to recording, editing, and digital media equipment to support "music production, podcasting, oral histories, neighborhood storytelling, sound engineering, video-game development, and other creative programming, while reflecting the central role that music and radio play in the GTA experience

The pitch also includes ideas for Rockstar funding permanent upgrades to county infrastructure:

That all sounds pretty cool to me, and some of it is quite civically wholesome, too. Yes, it's all part of the monstrous marketing machine for the biggest videogame of all time, but it also seems like the county is coming at it as a way to celebrate the real people and civic culture that led Rockstar to embrace Miami in the first place, and that counts for something.

The big stumbling block, of course, is that the GTA games are the polar opposite of civic-minded and wholesome, and that's led Miami-Dade Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz to speak out against the idea.

"Grand Theft Auto is a videogame franchise built around criminal activity," Cordero-Stutz told the Miami Herald. "Its fictional world includes murder, robbery, drug trafficking, carjacking, violence against law enforcement, and other conduct that the men and women of the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office work every single day to prevent."

Miami-Dade Commissioner Juan Carlos Bermudez also spoke out against the idea: "We should be promoting the Miami-Dade we have worked so hard to build, not a fictional version of our community defined by crime and violence."

The sheriff isn't wrong. GTA games have always been notoriously violent: Former attorney Jack Thompson, at one time the videogame industry's foremost nemesis, spent years campaigning hard against the games and publisher Take-Two Interactive before he was finally disbarred for his relentless antics and misconduct.

But the game industry, and its audience, have matured in the 25 years (that's right, look it up) since Grand Theft Auto 3 changed everything: GTA is still steeped in criminal violence, but the shock factor—and the hand-wringing over it—are long gone. These days it's completely mainstream, as evidenced by the performance of the GTA 6 reveal showcase on Netflix, which was the platform's biggest show of the week.

Would Miami-Dade have to tone down some of the seedier elements of GTA 6 for its "family appropriate" events? Sure. But I also have no doubt that a significant number of sheriff's deputies and police in the county grew up playing GTA themselves, and I bet an awful lot of them will be calling in sick when GTA 6 drops.

Okay, two things. First: Los Santos Customs will be taking a hiatus next week, as I spend nine days in a row sleeping and attempting to develop the antibodies to counter whatever exotic German illness it is I acquired at Gamescom 2026.

Second: it's snowing in Los Santos, just like the real-life LA.

I have installed WinterV Beta, with the aim of making Grand Theft Auto 5's weather a little more interesting than it usually is. The pitch is simple: what if there was snow? Well, reader, having played a little GTA 5 with WinterV Beta, I can assure you that there very much is snow. Plus, all the world's lighting takes on a kind of a sickly, ochre hue, which is also just like LA.

From the sky: flurries of flakes. On the roads: cars covered in a sheen of powder, tyre-chains inexplicably equipped (the snow does not, in my version of GTA 5 where a significant chunk of the exterior map has absconded to the phantom zone, settle). In the air: a crisp winter chill. Santa Claus is coming to town; fire a truck at him.

I can't tell you if the presence of snow on the city roads impacts car handling because, as we have established, cars in my GTA 5 no longer have handling. Nevertheless, it does change the vibe quite a lot. As someone who's spent a lot of the last month looking at GTA 5—a change is as good as a rest.

But also, it is time for a rest. I will see you the week after next, whereupon we'll probably finally convert this game into GTA 6. I can feel it.

Onimusha: Way of the Sword is the latest victim of the dreaded AAA videogame disease: Padded Runtime Via Unsatisfying Upgrade Materials. It could be a lot worse: thankfully there's no level gating in Onimusha that requires you to accrue an arbitrary set of stats before you can tackle a particular quest. It's not an RPG, and I'm sure as soon as Twitch streamers get their hands on it they'll be flexing on the hardest bosses without ever upgrading their gear by a single percentage point.

But for us mortals, Onimusha's runtime is padded out by a pretty boring hub world full of pretty boring upgrade materials like cotton and iron that you use to very, very slowly increase your damage, health, stamina, and Oni power gauge. It's a dull system that doesn't evolve a single bit over the entire game. There are also rarer upgrade materials that you use to unlock abilities and enhancements on the skill tree.

This structure encourages you to spend quite a few hours playing the least fun bits of Onimusha, but I do have some good news: there's a way to bypass some of the tedium that you can easily overlook.

Buy key upgrade materials from Yorimasa's shrine

A few hours into Onimusha: Way of the Sword, you'll complete a quest to purify Yasui Konpiragu shrine, saving its guardian Oni spirit from an evil Genma infestation. Once done, Yorimasa will begin selling you items for red souls, the standard "currency" you accrue from killing enemies. If you're anything like me, you'll take a cursory look at what's for sale, go "I don't need any of this stuff right now" and then go play about 10 more hours of Onimusha without bothering to revisit the shrine.

Don't do that! Check back in after you complete every major story mission, because Yorimasa's Monument expands the shop inventory several times throughout the game. And after awhile he'll begin stocking some of the key crafting items, including:

• Leather
• Fine Silk
• Tempered Iron
• Tamahagane
• Malacite Mass
• Byakue's Talisman
• Dohatsu-ten's Horn

Yorimasa doesn't sell all these right at the start, but early on you'll probably be getting the basics like cotton cloth and regular iron at a pretty steady clip, and won't need as many of these rarer materials. There are five upgrade tiers for your clothing, sword, and gauntlet, though, each of which require a substantial number of materials to work your way through. Unless you spend hours and hours doing sidequests in Kyoto and chasing down every shiny chest your Oni vision highlights for you, you're going to need more of these items than you accrue naturally throughout the game. (Even putting around 35 hours into Onimusha I didn't quite max out any of my gear.)

By the mid- and late-game, at least, you can supplement your findings with some stock bought from Yorimasa's finite supply. If you have the red souls, I recommend buying as many as you can; hunting for them really drags down Onimusha's pacing.

Unfortunately, this is also a very quick way to go broke.

Okay, so how do I get more red souls?

The higher tier upgrade items can cost upwards of 8,000 souls, so even after spending a few hours on a big story quest killing enemies you'll blow through your soul wallet by upgrading a couple skill tree nodes and buying some materials. If you don't want to run into a late game cash crunch, here are a few tips:

• Spec into the skill tree node that increases red soul rewards: It's not the sexiest option up front, but prioritize this early on so that you start earning more souls sooner so you can buy your way through the skill tree later
• Use Soul Suckers before big fights: These are the sorts of inventory items I have a bad habit of ignoring. Don't be like me: stick the red Soul Sucker in your Hozuki pouch and use it right before you carve through a big pile of scrub Genma to up your payout. If you're confident, it's also worth using one when you've got a Byakue or Dohatsu-ten close to death, then follow-up with the next tip for an even better reward.
• Finish off enemies with the Flashing Void: While you won't get this Oni armament until later in the game, using it as a finisher nets you more red souls. Do that! Otherwise I know you're just going to be sitting on that Oni meter saving it for the "right" moment.
• Upgrade the Reaper's Charm if you really plan to grind: I'll be up front and say that I didn't do this myself, because I didn't get my hands on the Reaper's Charm until I was far enough into Onimusha to be pretty over fighting the basic baddies, and reckoned the investment wouldn't pay out. But if you keep this charm equipped to a slot from the moment you get it, you can maximize your red souls earned with a baseline 15% buff even before taking advantage of the tips above. Just keep in mind there are only so many upgrade materials Yorimasa will sell you before you go all-in grinding for souls.

What's that sound I'm hearing? Could it be the sound of five rings? Well, no, because that's not the kind of rings Musashi wrote about. It's the sound of a desperate bit of wordplay constructed to lead into a post about the launch times and release date for Onimusha: War of the Sword. Musashi's the protagonist of that one. That's the joke. I'm doing my best out here.

If our Wes Fenlon's Onimusha review stirred your appetite for samurai action through its descriptions of the "sublime mix of classic Capcom action and weighty physical swordfighting," you're likely eager to know precisely when you can don the demon gauntlet for yourself. I've gathered the Onimusha unlock times below—and you won't have to endure any more wordplay to get there. I promise. Maybe.

When is the Onimusha: Way of the Sword unlock time?

Onimusha: Way of the Sword launches on PC at 12 am EDT / 5 am BST on Friday, September 4. Unlike consoles where it's launching at midnight in each respective timezone, it's a simultaneous global release on PC—which means, if you're east of a UTC -4 timezone, you'll be playing a few hours later than you would otherwise.

Here's that unlock time for timezones around the globe:

• Los Angeles: 9 pm PDT on Thursday, September 3
• New York: 12 am EDT on Friday, September 4
• London: 5 am BST on Friday, September 4
• Berlin: 6 am CEST on Friday, September 4
• New Delhi: 9:30 am IST on Friday, September 4
• Sydney: 2 pm AEST on Friday, September 4
• Auckland: 4 pm NZST on Friday, September 4

If you're not covered in that list, don't worry about calculating the time yourself. Here's a convenient countdown timer instead. Don't say all I ever did for you was half-baked Book of Five Rings references:

Is there preloading for Onimusha: Way of the Sword?

There is! Unless, for some reason, you're choosing to buy it on the Epic Games Store, where Capcom says preloading isn't available. And maybe you are. I don't know what your life is like.

On Steam with the rest of society, however, you can get your game installed early, so you won't waste any time waiting for all the relevant files to download before you can get to demon-cutting.

The problem with Grand Theft Auto 5, really, is that its world lacks verisimilitude. Unlike GTA 6, which will be more real than real, a psychosis-inducing perfect recreation of reality that we will be both unable and unwilling to tear ourselves from, Los Santos in GTA 5 is just sort of… stagey. It's a big Hollywood set (of Hollywood), all outside and no inside.

I have now added the inside. I installed Open World Interiors, whose aim is to furnish various GTA 5 businesses with actual, inhabitable inside zones. Restaurants, hospitals, gyms—all these and more, so the pitch goes, unfurl beyond you as new territory to explore and conquer.

That's the pitch. In reality, stepping outside of Franklin's Beverly Hills house quickly revealed that a significant chunk of Los Santos had been inexplicably deleted. I do not know where it has gone or why it has gone there. Maybe, one day, it will return.

Some things do work, though! Navigate through the hit squads and flying cars until you find a fast-food joint, and you can now dip inside, at which point you will be confronted by a taster's plate of Los Santos freaks sat in infrangible silence while one of the game's radio stations plays, inscrutably, from somewhere.

So, all well and good—Los Santos has an inside now. Only one thing is broken (apart from the large chunks of the outside that are broken): attempting to enter a gym will send you plummeting into the fathomless void at the secret heart of the world. You will scream. The radio will continue playing. "This is the rhythm of the night," declares Corona as Franklin tumbles, screeching into the void. After falling for some time, he reappears in front of the gym's doors. Los Santos is a mysterious place.

Crimson Desert is like the videogame version of a 6-in-1 shampoo—it does just about everything, and with its upcoming DLC Charting the Unknown, I guess that also includes The Sims.

Today's State of Play showed off a trailer with what we can expect to see, and there's a lot. Like building a whole-ass castle, for example. It looks like you can go pretty ham on some Sims-style building within those stony walls, too—the trailer shows a tool which you can drag to build walls and rooms inside the castle. Yup, just like The Sims! There's a whole bunch of furniture as well, including a slightly unusual framed portrait of a tiger that Kliff has deigned to display outside his home, for whatever reason.

It looks like you'll be able to build a village around this castle as well, perhaps similar to the Greymanes camp you form in the main game. There are people cooking, little village stalls, and plenty of chatter that seems to be happening either within the castle walls or just outside of them. How different it'll be to the Greymane's camp remains to be seen, but it is looking like a surprisingly cosy endeavour.

Something I am curious about, though, is the fact it looks like Kliff can romance (or at least gussy up to) other characters. There's a tiny snippet of him offering flowers to one of the game's witches—something she seems pretty darn jazzed about, by the way—though it's unclear what purpose it actually serves. I wonder how Kliff would actually rizz anyone in Crimson Desert, for how limited his dialogue is.

Some other bits I noticed include:

• Running on water
• Underwater traversal, including grabbing onto a shark like some sort of aquatic Uber
• Both a traditional looking ship and something more steampunk-looking
• Fellow Greymane Andrew cheffing it up in the castle
• Some crazy laser-eyed mechanical cyclops monster

The most surprising part of all of this, though? Charting the Unknown is set to release October 15. Yes, this October. A mere seven months after launching and somehow cooked up in the midst of a dizzying number of patches and tweaks that have contorted Crimson Desert into something that is completely unlike the game I reviewed back in March.

How Pearl Abyss has managed to do all of this is beyond me, but hey, it's coming pretty darn soon. I am admittedly pretty giddy at the idea of going full Sims-esque castle building, so I'll undoubtedly be returning to Pywel before long.

We're long past the days of assuming the Steam Deck can comfortably handle the new big-budget action game of the moment, but here's a nice surprise: Valve's handheld is not a bad way to play Onimusha: Way of the Sword.

It's not quite the optimization darling that Resident Evil Requiem was earlier this year, but it's much better news than Monster Hunter Wilds or Dragon's Dogma 2. After testing Onimusha in its taxing Kyoto hub area, I'd add this to the win column for Capcom's proprietary engine.

To set expectations: Onimusha is a stubbornly 30-40 fps game on Deck. It can get as high as the 50s and 60s in the right conditions—turning FSR 3.1.4 upscaling on while in corridor areas outside the main hub—but you will eventually shoot back down to the 30s when there's a lot of action on screen. So if you're of the mind that a lower, stable framerate is ultimately the most comfortable way to play a game, then you can confidently lock it at 30 fps and turn off the performance overlay.

That's how I played a decent chunk of it over the last few days, pausing here and there to see which graphical bumps I could get away with. The default configuration cranks everything down to its lowest setting, but I made a few tweaks that meaningfully improve the picture quality without ruining the stable framerate:

• Texture quality: Low > Medium
• Upscaling: Off
• Resolution: 1280 x 800
• Frame Rate: 30

Perhaps a few more of the "lows" could become "mediums" without a problem, but truthfully, low already looks pretty good on the Deck's small screen. Capcom has done well not to compromise on the most important part of the picture: Musashi Miyamoto. His model is still nicely detailed, as are the cloth sims of his flowy cloak. That said, upgrading the texture quality to Medium solves the problem of some prominent world objects being noticeably blurry, but that's my only complaint with low preset so far.

Perhaps a controversial choice, but I say turn off Onimusha's FSR 3.1.4 upscaling and take the frames hit. The ghosting effect around moving objects (and especially Musashi's hair) is distracting and ugly, and the gains aren't even that impressive. If 40 is your sweet spot, you'll get it more often with FSR.

I'm only 6 hours into the story, so maybe this changes, but Onimusha isn't so fast-paced that I feel bogged down by the 30 fps lock. Last night I took down the first genuinely challenging boss of the game, Rasho-gan, on the Deck, then switched to my RTX 5090 PC to fight him again. It looked nicer, but I didn't feel a significant advantage.

For my money, Onimusha is the ideal definition of Deck "playable". The performance isn't so impressive that I'd choose to play it handheld when my PC is sitting right there, but it's good enough that I'd happily slice up Genma from the comfort of a hotel room.

Some players came away from Onimusha's demo worried that the game would be too easy, a concern I've addressed in-depth based on my own time with the game. The good news is that I think the challenge level is well-judged for most people, and Onimusha does have a hard mode.

For those who hoped to jump right into the hardest possible difficulty from the main menu, though, I've got some bad news: you're going to have to beat the game first.

Onimusha: Way of the Sword's default difficulty options

Story: "A difficulty level that lets you focus on the story. Recommended for action game beginners."

• Musashi deals more damage and stamina damage and takes less from enemy attacks
• Action prompts default to on, showing button icons for how to deal with incoming enemy attacks

Action: "A difficulty level for those who like challenging battles. This difficulty level will keep you on your toes. Recommended for experienced action game players."

You can freely change between these two options from save points throughout the game.

Individually adjustable difficulty tweaks:

• Action prompts
• Tips (tutorial messages)
• Navigation UI icons

How to unlock Onimusha: Way of the Sword's Hard mode

There's just one way to unlock Onimusha's harder difficulty level: Finishing the game. No shortcuts, sorry! Here's the in-game description:

Carnage: "A difficulty level where a single hit could mean death. A high-stakes mode where carelessness can kill, but victory is all the sweeter."

If you choose this difficulty, it's locked in. You can't change to Story or Action. But you do get a bit of a leg up, because Carnage is a New Game+ mode that carries over some of your progress from a completed save.

What does the hard mode New Game+ carry over?

• Awakened Oni abilities
• Enhanced basic and special abilities
• Acquired Hozuki Pouches and upgrades
• Items, offerings, and "some" materials
• Charms and charm upgrades
• Unlocked outfits
• Tutorial drills and boss rematch unlocks and completion
• Genma Notes and rescued Lion Dogs

There's a lot that doesn't carry over to NG+:

• Story and sidequest progress
• Clothing, sword, and gauntlet upgrades
• Materials for those equipment upgrades
• Red souls used for upgrades, skill unlocks and buying materials
• Spirit Mirror save points
• Oni bow
• Progression of items buyable with red souls

Back in June, Capcom revealed Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance, a "massive," Iceborne-style expansion promising new and returning monsters, new regions to hunt in, and—of course—new combat options. In the announcement trailer, Capcom offered a brief glimpse at the Boost Bracer, an enigmatic new mechanic that seemed to augment hunter fighting styles with additional jolts of combustion-fueled power.

Three months later, we're now getting our first real insight into how the Boost Bracer works and how we can expect it to alter the flow of hunting in Wilds. Earlier today, Capcom uploaded both a video overview of Boost Bracer mechanics and a great sword-focused boost action breakdown, with similar videos expected for each other weapon type.

Having watched both, I feel safe in saying Capcom's borrowing some pages from one of its other flashy action franchises: With the Boost Bracer, Ascendance has more than a little Devil May Cry in the mix.

The overview video sticks to the broadest possible strokes, but from what we can tell, early impressions of the Boost Bracer as being 'a thing on your arm that makes your attacks go crazy' seem right on the money.

The most basic component of Boost Bracer combat is the Boost Driver: a new kind of attack that each weapon type will have its own version of. Based on a gauge seen in the great sword video, Boost Drivers seem to operate on a charge system similar to the wirebug charges that powered switch skills in Monster Hunter Rise.

In fact, some of the Boost Drivers shown in the videos appear to be returning switch skills; as a hammer main, I'm extremely pleased to see Impact Crater making a reappearance. Unlike wirebugs, however, deploying a Boost Driver will temporarily enter the hunter into a new Boost state, which is—by all appearances—a sort of sicko mode for lizard swordfights.

As the videos explain, being boosted offers a number of benefits: Guarding will be more effective. Some weapon combos will be extended with dramatic new attacks, like an explosive final shot that bow users will be able to tag onto their power volley combos. Some existing attacks will be enhanced with greater impact: a boosted dual blade demon combo was augmented with echoing slashes after each attack, while the charge blade's elemental discharge produced… even more discharge. (Sorry.)

Capcom says "boost can also be activated during certain actions," with footage indicating that the boost state input can be woven on command into great sword charges, sword and shield plunging thrusts, gunlance guards, and likely many more maneuvers.

As a system for layering explosive, enhanced variations into combat—and a healthy dose of added visual flair—there are some undeniable shades of Devil May Cry in the Boost Bracer. It's not quite the Exceed system, but I think Nero would approve. Maybe? I don't know. The boy is troubled.

I'm withholding judgment until I can try the Boost Bracer for myself, but so far, I'm pleased with what I'm seeing. It seems like a bit more of an intuitive concept for adding over-the-top attacks than Rise's bug-powered ninja maneuvers, and it looks like less of a disruption to the moment-to-moment flow of MonHun combat than the Clutch Claw proved to be in Iceborne.

I just hope those boosted actions aren't too effective—if the combination of the Boost Bracer and Focus Mode trivializes Master Rank, it'll feel like a pretty major misfire. But something tells me an elder dragon will be making me regret those words by this time next year.

Monster Hunter Rise: Ascendance will launch sometime in 2027. You can wishlist it on Steam now.

We saw many things during Grand Theft Auto 6's weird Netflix reveal, and it's official: GTA is simmy now. The gendarmes will meticulously document your physical appearance, and escaping them will necessitate changing it up. Jason and Lucia will also, the prophets tell us, feel the effects of sleeplessness and bad diet, just like mortals.

One thing we haven't seen from official sources: cars needing petrol. That particularly sim-ish feature has only been part of contraband GTA 6 leaks. Nevertheless, I have completely internalised this mechanic into my vision of the game. If you can't trust anonymous online weirdos trying to flog you some crypto thing, who can you trust?

So, naturally, I had to incorporate a working gas mechanic into my ongoing quest to turn GTA 5 into GTA 6 or kill it by trying. I installed Fumes – Animated Persistent Fuel, whose functions are thus: "Every vanilla and online vehicle carries a real fuel tank. It empties as you drive and it is still empty when you come back to that car tomorrow.

"Refuelling is not a menu," it says, casting subtle shade on all those non-hardcore car-gassing mechanics out there. "Get out, walk to the pump, take the nozzle off it—it goes in your hand and the hose comes with you on a real physics rope." Yes. All of these things are refuelling, to me.

It works like this: on your minimap, while driving, a new meter now tracks how much petrol your car's got left in it. Run out, and your journey's at an end. You know, like how cars work.

This was difficult to test. As we've already well-established, my current installation of GTA 5 is a nightmare merry-go-round of frictionless cars and increasingly contradictory mods. To actually acquire a car, I first had to figure out how to make one stop, and how to make sure it did not get immediately detonated by the hordes of hitmen and ambient gang violence that have become the burden of my Los Santos life. It's harder than it sounds: even throwing myself beneath a car's wheels didn't really help. Yes, the driver would get out to ask if I was okay (I was not), but the car would keep going.

I eventually commandeered one, however, by teleporting (Franklin can teleport now). The mod worked! Also, numerous other mods I already had installed kept throwing errors, which is probably fine. But amid the error messages and chaos, I managed to make it to a petrol station, in order to test the mod's robust in-person refuelling mechanics.

Never mind.

Netflix's exclusivity deal for the Grand Theft Auto 6 reveal in August struck me as a little silly. Sure, it'd probably make "a little pocket change," as PC Gamer's Harvey Randall put it at the time, but a video that would remain exclusive for only six hours? Not days? How much of an impact could that really have?

Well, uh, quite a lot, as it turns out. We already knew that Netflix was probably pretty happy with how it all worked out, but a Variety report nails it down more specifically and impressively, saying Netflix pulled in 31.1 million views with the GTA 6 reveal between its August 27 debut and August 30, which is when the window for its weekly top 10 ranking closes.

That's not just a huge number, it makes the reveal showcase Netflix's most-watched title of the week, topping the English-language film list, where it was classified, in 87 out of 93 countries.

It's not a direct comparison because of the differences in how they count "views," but that Netflix number—again, over just four days—is almost double the 17 million views YouTube has put up in total since the showcase went live on that platform.

Here it is, if you haven't seen it—although given those viewership numbers, my guess is that if you wanted to see it, you likely already have.

The GTA 6 reveal was a unique phenomenon, not the sort of thing that's easily duplicated year over year, but it was obviously a big win for Netflix, which got to be the tip of a very pointy spear for a short but lucrative stretch of time. Take-Two hasn't said what it got out of the deal, although I imagine money would figure prominently.

But the scale of its success makes me wonder if maybe we'll see more of this in the future: GTA is a rare bird but I could see Microsoft setting something up for future Call of Duty reveals, possibly, or Sony opting for a similar exclusivity window for particularly important State of Play showcases. Gaming is mainstream now—maybe this is what that ultimately looks like.

Rockstar announced today that Nopixel V is "the next evolution of the GTA 5 roleplay community," which has led to some head-scratching from casual GTA RP followers (like myself), because Nopixel V isn't something you or I can just jump into and play.

Nopixel Studios runs both public and private GTA 5 roleplaying servers, and Nopixel V is the latest version of its modded sandbox. The Nopixel V beta was developed in collaboration with Rockstar, and will be accessible through the Rockstar Games Launcher, but only for invited streamers, a list of whom can be found on the Nopixel website.

"Over time, access [to Nopixel V] will expand, including more phases of invites," Nopixel announced on its Discord server earlier in August. However, "for everyone on nopixel Public and nopixel 4.0, nothing changes."

So, at least for now, it doesn't sound like there's a way into the Nopixel V improv troupe other than being called up from one of the minor leagues. Rockstar's announcement thus focuses not on the opportunity to play Nopixel V, but to watch it being played by streamers.

Those details aren't too surprising once unpicked—streaming and server whitelisting are endemic to the GTA roleplaying scene—but the impending release of GTA 6 contributed to some of the head-scratching. One might expect talk of "the next evolution" of GTA roleplaying to have something to do with the big new GTA game releasing in a couple months, but alas, Rockstar has yet to announce any plans for GTA Online as it relates to GTA 6. (Nor has it given GTA 6 a PC release date.)

It may be a long time before we can go on Vice City escapades with friends, in-character or otherwise, but in the meantime, Nopixel V does sound exciting for the RP scene it concerns.

"Collaboration with Rockstar Games has been an important part of bringing this release to life," the Nopixel team writes. "Since the start of Nopixel V, our teams have worked together to develop new capabilities and refine a set of development tools which have enabled us to push the boundaries of what's possible in Grand Theft Auto 5."

Invited players will start streaming Nopixel V on September 8, and the modders are sharing details about the project throughout this week. Their first post discusses Nopixel V's modifications to the GTA 5 map, which include the addition of 1,000 ownable properties.

The Plague Tale series were puzzle-stealth games about kids trying to survive a Horrible History version of France during the Hundred Years War, sneaking past soldiers and using light to frighten hordes of rats that could strip them to bones in an instant. I loved their atmosphere of pulpy Grand Guignol supernatural history, but didn't love a lot of the actual videogame parts.

Too often a fussy sneaking section would end with an accidental step over an arbitrary line, then back to a checkpoint at the start of the area. In the second game, A Plague Tale: Requiem, I once had to skip through two cutscenes to get back to the beginning of the section I died at—a sin I might have uninstalled the game for if I were less invested in the story.

If you were expecting another game of hide and squeak from this spin-off, you'll be disappointed. Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy is a prequel that takes pirate-adjacent smuggler Sophia, a popular character introduced in the second game, and dives into her past without feeling the need to throw in a plague, slingshot, alchemy, or other hallmarks of the series. Though it does include stealth in the back half, the focus of Resonance is a Mediterranean treasure hunt with a brand new sword combat system. It's Tomb Raider with stabbing instead of shooting.

Lara Corsair

The stabbing's quite good. I'm sick of parrying in games, but while the enemies in Resonance have a stagger bar that fills the more of their combos you deflect, you can also fill the bar by picking up a random object and smashing it in someone's face. Grabbing a bottle and hurling it into a soldier's gob makes you feel like a proper rogue, and there's a meaty kick too, which not only staggers enemies (and makes ones with shields drop their guard), but can push them off ledges to their death if you can't be bothered mastering parry and dodge timings.

I liked the kick so much it was the first thing I upgraded with the "resonance points" you earn from defeating groups of enemies or finding seashells lying on the ground. Though it's linear, sometimes a side passage or optional puzzle will hand out rewards like resonance points, a new sword, or jewellery that might increase your crit chance or parry timing window. Sophia actually wears the jewellery you find, and by the end of the game I'd put on so many bracelets it was a wonder she could lift her arms.

The Minoan ruins you're exploring are gated by puzzles that can usually be solved by manipulating lenses to shine light at the right spot or standing on symbols in sequence. It's pretty rote stuff, with a couple of properly bullshit leap-of-logic headslappers thrown in to keep you on your toes. (The Black Temple door puzzle can go and do one.)

The structure will feel familiar to anyone who has played prestige videogames with cinematic pretensions. You struggle through a crack squeeze so the camera can be nicely lined up to show you an impressive vista that's just finished loading; you slide down or fall off things so the previous area can be dumped from memory safe in the knowledge you can't turn around and go back. Where the first two Plague Tale games were mid-budget medieval Last of Us minus Joel, this is more of a mid-budget melee-combat Uncharted.

Don't mess with the bull

The predictable structure is the worst thing about it. Though Sophia has a book of clues and a special sphere that lets her read hidden messages and manipulate beams of light to get ahead of the generic soldiers racing to the treasure, every time you arrive in a new area it turns out you've been beaten. The soldiers have rammed through a wall or found an inlet so you've got opponents to fight, and previous plunderers have also made it through and filled the area with precarious scaffolding so you've got something to platform off and have collapse beneath you. It really dampens the exploration vibe to know you'll never actually win the race, because if you did the formula would break.

Still, Resonance is a competent example of the playbook it's following. A gorgeous one, too. Characters look great, with expressive faces and glistening eyes, and the contrast between bright blue-water outdoors and tunnels full of bones lit by glowing spores emphasizes the claustrophobia as you descend further into the ruins. Returning composer Olivier Deriviere has turned in another banger, moving on from spooky strings to Greek-Cypriot chorals that suit the change in location.

While plenty of things have changed, and this time the checkpoints are well-placed enough that I didn't ragequit even once, Resonance does preserve the series' trend of getting more gruesome as it goes on. By the final hours it's essentially a horror game. The jolly pirate treasure hunt becomes a mythic journey to the heart of darkness, and while it'll seem a weird shift if this is your first Plague Tale, the series has always been bleak and wilfully ambiguous about what's really going on. We finish these games with as many questions as answers, and that one defiantly arthouse element is a valuable thing Resonance has chosen to preserve as it otherwise shifts to popcorn blockbuster.

If Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve isn't one of your most anticipated releases in this fall's overstuffed launch calendar, I'm just going to say it: It should be. You might be wondering, 'But isn't Ace Combat just, like, planes?' And it is. But it's some of videogames' most ridiculously indulgent anime-ass melodrama, mediated through high-g fighter jet maneuvers and the constant refrain of a missile lock alert. It's like if all of Metal Gear was dogfighting, and in our hands-on AC8 preview, it continued to leave a very strong impression.

As of today, I've got even more reasons to be excited for October's next entry—and a few causes for concern. This morning, Bandai Namco published an "Online 101" video providing a primer on AC8's multiplayer offerings, all of which I'm pleased to report are accessed through online lobbies where you can mingle with other players as your very own Ace Combat pilotsona.

AC8's multiplayer seems to take place in a sort of pocket airbase universe where nobody exists except fighter pilots and the people who facilitate things that fighter pilots do. There, after creating your pilot-self by choosing from a selection of pilot-core faces and features, you can mill around with your fellow pilot-kin, communicating via a rich gestural pilot dialect of emotes. There is a stage for pilots to stand on. There is an arcade for pilots to play, and there the pilots can play Pac-Man. For these creatures, it is a sort of Eden.

But the true place of your pilotsona is in the air, and AC8's multiplayer matches are based around two primary modes: Co-Op Assault is a competitive PvE mode, where two teams of four pilots aim to earn the highest score within a time limit by destroying hostile NPC forces.

Co-Op Warfare adds PvP to the mix. It's still a score race, but both competing teams will be dogfighting in the same airspace as they try to outscore their opponents. As pilots destroy NPC targets, they'll earn a higher threat level. The higher your threat level, the more points you earn—and the more points you'll award the other team if they shoot you down.

After returning to the airbase from either mode, there's a chance you'll be offered access to special time-limited missions with extra rewards: That could be Scramble, where you and your matchmade wingmen will duel a squad of NPC aces, or Emergency Sortie, where you'll instead be tasked with destroying "iconic colossal weapons from the Ace Combat series"—like that giant horrid railgun, or that big, wretched drone full of smaller, wretched drones.

Bandai Namco also teased limited-time PvP modes, like straightforward 4v4 deathmatches of eight-pilot free-for-alls.

Ranking up will unlock new aircraft, upgrade parts, aircraft-specific performance enhancements, and both pilot and jet customization options—which brings me to the less thrilling portion of the video. As is apparently inescapable, even Ace Combat is going to have battle passes now, but it sounds like players won't be locked out of any aircraft rewards after each two-month premium pass season expires: "Any aircraft DLC included in the premium pass will be available for purchase separately after the season ends," Bandai Namco said.

That's something, I guess. But it brings me no joy to know that the pure, innocent spirit of my pilotsona will be tainted by the blight of microtransaction schemes. They deserve better than this.

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve launches on Steam on October 1.

The recent GTA 6 "extended look" on Netflix wasn't very clear on whether you can swap between its protagonists Jason and Lucia at will. Apart from a moment where the camera pulls away from Lucia and back down to Jason miles away, there wasn't a lot of swapping going on, especially during the action.

According to an interview on Famitsu with Rockstar North's co-studio head Rob Nelson (translated by GamesRadar+), the ability to swap characters will depend on the mission and where you're at in the story.

"During the story, there are times where you can't switch from one character for some reason," he said. "There are some missions where you are free to switch as much as you want, but there are some sections where we want you to experience it from a certain character's perspective, like GTA 5, so we limit switching."

As an example, Nelson said you used to be able to swap between Jason and Lucia during a mission early on in the game, but the team decided it would make more sense for Jason to take the lead with his military background. Other missions, like the one we saw in the extended look where the two are escaping a bank robbery, will do the swapping for you. After firing at the cops as Jason in the backseat, you'll be put in the driver's seat as Lucia so you can make your getaway.

The mission where Jason and Lucia are under attack at the end of the extended look, however, will let you freely swap between them, Nelson said. We don't see this actually happen, but I think I can see how it would play out, especially if part of the objective is to survive long enough to reunite the two by the end.

Nelson makes it sound like the in-mission hot swapping will be reserved for pivotal moments in the story and everything else will be locked to one or the other. I had hoped that maybe GTA 6 would be a co-op game disguised as a singleplayer game, but it looks like we'll have to play by Rockstar's rules. That said, we already know you'll be able to freely swap outside of missions thanks to Dazed's preview of the game, so there will be plenty of time to see what kind of mayhem you can cause with that kind of power at least.

Moon Studios announced today that its upcoming action RPG No Rest for the Wicked will not go into 1.0 release in October as planned, but will instead launch in March 2027, following an open beta test currently slated for December.

"The honest truth is that we're a small team, and we're holding our games to a standard we won't compromise on," the studio wrote in a Steam update. "We're close, but close isn't good enough for our full 1.0 launch. The extra time will help us improve performance, tighten the class system, and polish the whole game to the standard you all deserve. We'd rather take a few more months than ship something that we know isn’t quite perfect yet.

"This extra time also means more closed and open beta tests in the coming months, which means you, our community, can get your hands on it and help us shape the final 1.0 build." That will include the open beta in December, details of which will be shared in the future.

I should note here that absolutely no mention was made of Grand Theft Auto 6, which comes to consoles in November, in either the Steam update or a video message posted by Moon Studios chief Thomas Mahler. Some studios have made a point of avoiding the GTA 6 behemoth, others are theatrically charging straight at it; it's impossible to say how much of a role Rockstar's monster played in the decision to push No Rest for the Wicked into 2027, if any, but at the very least I imagine it has to be considered a nice side effect.

Regardless, this really isn't the most devastating delay of all time. No Rest for the Wicked launched into early access on Steam more than two years ago, in April 2024, and has since seen significant updates, drawn in nearly 65,000 user reviews, and sold more than a million copies. Moon Studios chief Thomas Mahler warned in January that once 1.0 hits, No Rest for the Wicked's price will be increased from its current $40 to $60.

I imagine it like one of the cutscenes that play in Civilization when you construct a wonder of the world. A scant few days ago, humanity put its differences aside. The guns fell silent. Nary a harsh word was said. For a shining moment, we were one—ensconced in the warm glow of our television sets and monitors as we took in our first legitimate glimpse of Grand Theft Auto 6.

I guess people without Netflix subscriptions continued shooting each other.

Anyway, amid the hullabaloo we got our first insight into how GTA 6's wanted system will work. Seems simmy. Cops will now remember things like your physical description and the clothes you're wearing as they work to bring you to justice, and it all, in general, seems a bit deeper and more involved than in GTAs of yore.

So I brought it to the GTAs of yore: VI Wanted System does what it says on the tin—it brings a facsimile of GTA 6's cop-suspicion mechanics to GTA 5. Clothes, hair, and what-have-you all factor into the police's hunt. Losing the heat doesn't mean you're free anymore: you'll have to anonymise yourself to evade pursuit entirely.

I immediately put it to the test by opening fire on all and sundry in downtown Los Santos. Very quickly, the cops had my physical description and knew the expensive clothes I was wearing. This did not, necessarily, help them find me, as they were too busy dealing with their frictionless vehicles, ongoing gang warfare, and ambient hit squads that were also out to kill me. Nevertheless, they theoretically had a better chance of pinning me down than before.

My attempts to lose the heat by dipping into a clothing store were foiled by the store's 'no selling to people flanked by angry, armed cops' rule, so I was forced to dash home through the cacophonous and exploding streets of Los Santos in order to find a new shirt. This helped, somewhat, but the rest of me remained an issue.

San Andreas' barbers are less strict about their clientele, it seems, because I was able to get a haircut just fine, the probably offensively camp stylist remarking that my outfit was "Goooooorgeous" in what felt like a divine stamp of approval on my effort to avoid being punished for murder.

I tested the system to breaking point by standing in front of the police station. They did not recognise me. They did recognise that I had a shotgun equipped and which I had forgotten how to holster using a keyboard. The cops began to shoot me to death. I considered my mission successful.

When Capcom released a demo for Onimusha: Way of the Sword a few months ago, a vocal portion of action game fans landed somewhere between concerned and crestfallen—enemies just weren't aggressive enough, leaving them worried the final game would be unchallenging to the point of boredom. There was enough heat that Capcom producer Akihito Kadowaki decided to respond in a video, not to say that they'd be making the game harder, but that the demo was "just a slice of the early part of the story" and that "in the final game, the bosses and the regular Genma will put up a tougher fight."

Now that I've played the full game, I can back that statement up. Onimusha kicked my ass plenty.

As the demo hinted at, though, the first few hours of Onimusha are quite easy if you have any experience with action games, particularly if you're used to managing stamina meters in soulslikes or dying from just a couple hits. And on the whole, the game isn't as punishing or demanding as FromSoftware's Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice or the Nioh games. But across nearly 40 hours of playtime I died plenty, particularly to bosses that ruthlessly punished my poor parry timing or overeager button mashing. Even the basic mobs took me down more than a few times when I leapt into the fray just a bit too cocky or impatient.

That said, let me try to address the specific complaints I saw from players when Onimusha's demo set off this wave of concerns.

Concern: Way of the Sword needs a harder difficulty option

It has one! Unfortunately, though, you have to beat the game to unlock it, and Way of the Sword is not short. I think Capcom would've been wise to make this option available from the start.

Concern: Enemies are too passive

I saw the video above spread around as evidence that Onimusha's enemies are far too passive, attacking one at a time instead of as a group. This fear should mostly be put to rest by full game. It holds true that when a group surrounds you, they won't all attack simultaneously, but after the opening couple hours, which essentially serve as an introduction to Onimusha's key combat mechanics one at a time, you'll usually be fighting mixed groups of enemies that keep you on your toes.

The basic, weak Genma will begin an encounter by dashing behind you, encircling you and then menacing their blades in what I think is a fun nod to how these battles are often depicted in samurai films. They're no threat by themselves and are clearly fodder for you to enjoy slicing to pieces. That said, they do offer some resistance: if you open with a heavy attack, which is vertical, they'll usually sidestep it. Sometimes they'll block multiple attacks in a row, pushing you to either wear through their stamina meter with repeated blows, back off and parry them, or break through their guard with a shoulder check you'll unlock a few hours in.

Most of the challenge will come from the enemies the weak Genma are paired with. Each group usually has at least one "heavy" who you can't just take down by button mashing: they'll parry, hit you with attacks that you can't block, or use grab moves that deal big damage.

Often you've got archers or flying Genma in the background throwing projectiles at you. And when you're focused on the big guys, that's when the basic Genma will work up the courage to try to stab you in the back, leading to many opportunities for Onimusha's exquisite animations to shine: Musashi will stick his sword behind his back to parry an attack coming from behind him in a thrilling bit of "hell yeah I'm a samurai" defense.

As the game goes on, basic enemies will steadily begin to use unblockable attacks, show up wearing armor or toting shields, and even absorb the souls you've just loosed from the guts of their allies.

I can see some players still being unsatisfied that the groups don't attack en masse—compared to a Dark Souls mob, it doesn't feel like the bad guys here are out to kick your fucking teeth in. But their actions feel fitting for a game where you're playing Japan's most famous swordsman empowered by a magic demon gauntlet: you're the apex predator and they're the prey. Later in the game you'll even get an ability that makes weaker enemies fall over in fear when you slaughter one of their friends.

The real challenge is in the boss fights, and Onimusha has a lot of those.

Concern: You can just button mash

This might get you through the first couple hours, but it's certainly not going to work against bosses, and even regular mobs will begin to punish you for too much sloppy mashing.

There are plenty of weak enemies you can dispatch with a basic three hit combo, but while you're smashing that button another enemy will probably come in swinging with an attack you need to dodge or parry. At first it's quite safe to block most attacks, but you'll eventually have to deal with attacks that deplete your entire stamina meter if you block them—they have to be parried or deflected.

And again, at first you can parry all day, but deflecting becomes more important as you face enemies that need their guard broken before you can meaningfully hurt them. The timing on deflection is actually easier to pull off, but it introduces another in-the-moment consideration of which skill to deploy.

The flow of most boss fights is very Sekiro-esque: You need to learn their attacks and repeatedly parry and deflect to drain their stamina bar, opening them up to a big hit. Mashing or constantly blocking will get you killed real quick in these fights, particularly because when bosses smash your stamina gauge they'll steal a chunk of souls and power up, swinging the fight in their favor.

Concern: Combat feels too slow

Onimusha: Way of the Sword is definitely a slower-paced swordfighting game than Team Ninja's soulslikes, and it's practically glacial compared to Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden. I love this about it: the game feels like a heightened representation of the samurai film duels that inspired it, emphasizing the weight behind each strike and physical bodies holding each blade. No action game has had animations like these, or the physics to really sell them.

Slower doesn't mean slow, at least in my mind—there are bosses that demand extremely quick reactions if you don't want to end up dead, and 'issen,' the game's most advanced and riskiest technique, requires you to push the attack button just before an enemy hits you to perform an instant riposte.

If the general feel of movement and combat in the demo weren't for you, I'm not sure the full game would change your mind. If Onimusha's demo left you cold because you thought it was too easy, though, I think you'll still find plenty of challenge, at least from the boss fights—unless you can beat Sekiro's bosses without taking a single hit, in which case you'll probably sleepwalk through Way of the Sword.

A thing that often happens in this line of work is: a developer or PR person enthusiastically trying to convince you that a not-especially-interesting game is actually incredibly innovative and exciting. The Gamescom demo for Nekome: Nazi Hunter is the first time I have been in the reverse position: I thought the game was interesting, well-timed, and politically bold—the studio was keen to convince me it wasn't.

The demo of Nekome I played goes hard. The Nazi haut-monde—an identikit line-up of chisel-jawed pigs—has gathered for a sumptuous dinner, and to chortle with one another about European death camps and the inevitable victory of the Aryan race over its lessers. Only one figure stands out: the meek waiter, with dark hair and skin, who caps off the boss Nazi's opening speech by revealing a severed Wehrmacht head beneath a silver cloche.

Under your control, he proceeds to stab every unarmed Nazi in the room to death.

The devs at ProbablyMonsters told me afterwards that they were not "political" and that Nekome was not making a political statement. Well, they had me fooled.

But let's get mechanical. I suspect a lot of people will, justifiably, find the deficiencies of Nekome's movement and combat too much to bear. In the demo I played, it all just felt a little off—animations did not blend together nicely, the camera would get hung up on objects and enemies, and the actual process of beating a fascist to death erupted in clunky staccato movements rather than the fluid, dancelike combat of Arkham. It's by no means dreadful, but it doesn't feel great to play.

But man, it has style. It's pure grindhouse, and the safe-to-discuss, entirely non-political influences ProbablyMonsters was happy to speak to me about—like Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds—are on happy display. Every fascist is a fountain of gore waiting to happen; once you beat them to within an inch of their life, you can unleash finishers whereby Vano—the game's young Romani protagonist whose entire family was murdered in front of him in an act of senseless Nazi violence—will use a knife to unzip his enemies in dramatic fashion.

Kill enough Nazis, and you can dip into a focus mode, whereby you can select distinct Nazi body parts on which to vent your righteous fury. Once your foes are dead, you will find yourself constantly confronted with prompts to "desecrate corpse" as you stumble over their remains during combat. Take the game's advice, and Vano will do a little extra violence. As a treat.

All of this is punctuated by cinematic touches. Frame lines on Nekome's 'film reel' will become visible as Vano's violence reaches more absurd heights, as if the game simply can't contain his rage.

All very fun and gleefully OTT, yes, but the bit where Nekome really got me leaning forward—where I became convinced this might be a game that had something to say, was when it transplanted the action from Europe over to the US of A. It's not just SS men Vano cuts up, he also takes on the German American Bund: the real-life pro-Nazi organisation that attempted to work its tendrils into the USA in the years leading up to the Second World War.

American fascists attack Vano's WW1-vet mentor, so off he goes to their offices to do what he does best, muttering that "These Americans have sworn themselves to a morally bankrupt cause," as he smashes up their printing presses and beats them to death with fists, bottles, and, at one point, a free-standing ashtray.

It's stylish, fun, janky and, during a time of worldwide far-right revival, deeply cathartic. I found myself bemused to be told by Nekome's makers that their game about slaughtering hordes of European and American Nazis—at a time when European and American Nazis are a lot more prominent in real life than they have been for a while—had no explicit politics whatsoever.

They did tell me one thing, though, when I asked if Vano's bloody quest for vengeance would leave me filled with regret by the game's end: "I don't think you'll feel bad about killing Nazis in this game." Well, that'll have to do.

It is high time I paid for my crimes. There are things I've done that can't be forgiven, mostly relating to that time I drove a Chinese anti-air missile truck into Beverly Hills, and someone should make me face consequences for that.

Alas, in GTA 5, no one will unless I make them. So I made them. I have installed Ambient Hit Squads, a mod inspired by Red Dead Redemption 2 that will dispatch armed men to eliminate you every so often as you're out exploring the game's world.

This functions more or less as it should in my nightmare-frankenstein version of GTA, already lumbering under so many mods. Once in a while, my map will bloom with red dots as armed assassins arrive to kill me, and the clatter of gunfire will join the now-constant chorus of cars ramming each other, pedestrians, geometry, me, and themselves.

But of course, these hitmen have to navigate this reality too. For the guys who are just there—just men on the ground running at me, that's not so much of a problem. For the ones in helicopters, it is an irresolvable problem.

They are trapped in a new circle of hell, constantly trying to orient their choppers toward me while other mods wrestle to send them unstoppably forwards. This is, at least, very funny, and has the effect of making the helicopters look like they are piloted by drunk drivers as they bob up and down through the sky.

And as for the guys on the ground? Well, I just shoot my car gun at them.

Original story:

The Grand Theft Auto 6 leak party is presumably over: The Netflix showcase has wrapped, and Cyberleek has made off with more than $200,000 in a perfectly predictable yet somehow still very lucrative rug pull. I imagine the leaker is now looking for a good hole to hide in, and for their sake it better be a deep one because it sounds like Take-Two's hunt is zeroing in on something.

Take-Two Interactive filed subpoena requests with Discord and Microsoft shortly after the GTA 6 leaks began to flow, seeking "business records and investigative records associated with Microsoft’s internal investigation of the 'cyberleek' persona sufficient to identify the user(s)," as well as detailed information on potentially thousands of users who interacted with certain Discord servers. Subsequent subpoenas seeking similar information were filed with X and YouTube.

Those requests were very broad, but a newer filing made on August 28 (via TorrentFreak) is much narrower: "Take-Two has identified one additional Discord user and obtained additional identifying information for a previously identified Discord user, as well as additional information concerning the community servers identified in its prior subpoena for which it now seeks more targeted information. These additional accounts and server are believed to be involved in the same infringing activity as that described in Take-Two's first request."

A footnote adds that "Take-Two's investigation of the infringement at issue is rapidly evolving and ongoing," and says the information sought by this subpoena is different from what was covered in the first, "and provides additional clarifying information regarding one of the user IDs specified in the first subpoena."

Also interesting is that while previous subpoena filings were public, the details in this one are sealed. A motion requesting the seal remain intact argues that the filing in question is "not subject to the presumption of public access," and says that even if it was, Take-Two's "countervailing interests" would take precedence because the document "reveals highly sensitive, confidential information about an ongoing investigation into copyright infringement and the misappropriation of Take-Two’s confidential information."

"Public disclosure of this information could compromise Take-Two's ongoing investigation and even tip off the alleged infringers as to the nature and progress of Take-Two's investigation and information Take-Two has gathered about the infringement, creating a substantial risk that the infringers will delete, destroy, or otherwise conceal evidence of their infringing activities, and/or take further steps to evade identification."

At this point, a ruling on the request to keep the document sealed hasn't been made, and the subpoena itself hasn't been issued.

Also on August 28, Take-Two withdrew its request for a DMCA subpoena filing with Google, repeating that the situation "has been (and is) evolving rapidly as new information becomes available."

Miyamoto Musashi, the legend goes, defeated his rival Sasaki Ganryu with a single blow to the head using nothing but a crude wooden sword carved from an oar.

This is, of course, ridiculous: In truth Musashi first parried dozens of Ganryu's strikes, softened him up with a flourish of reflex combos, and then ran him through with the Flashing Void, a spear harnessed from the power of lightning in an ancient demonic hellforge. He was perhaps a bit too modest to recount the more baroque details of the battle in his memoirs, but blessedly Capcom is less bashful.

Onimusha: Way of the Sword whips ass.

I've been told that two words don't qualify as a review, though, so let's talk caveats. I'd put the action in this long, long-awaited reboot up against the best Capcom's ever made, though it's spread out across a 10K that should be a sprint. It begins with a foundation of weighty swordplay that made me feel the muscle and bone behind each strike, and eventually challenged me to parry increasingly ostentatious bosses with a patience and precision I haven't exercised since Sekiro. The reward each and every time was the exhilaration of locking in and nailing the timing, graduating from a quick game over to a calm, clean execution.

Well, not that calm—other than the adrenaline a few of Onimusha's harder fights left pulsing in my hypothalamus, this game sets itself apart from FromSoftware's taciturn tone with a swagger reminiscent of early 2000s Capcom. One of its great strengths is the use of legendary actor Toshiro Mifune's likeness as Musashi, an act of digital necromancy that could've easily left a rotten stink if it wasn't handled precisely this deftly. But it doesn't just work, it makes the game.

I loved Onimusha's lavishly animated cutscenes just as much as the combat: Musashi is brash, fiery, and incredibly expressive, tilting his head with a cocky boast, cartoonishly gawping at monsters, contorting his whole face into a snarl when he gets his blood up. A throwaway moment where he scratches the back of his head exactly like the real Mifune does so much to make Way of the Sword feel like an homage to bloody '70s samurai flicks down to its bones.

Onimusha needed to nail that authenticity, because the dozen samurai roles I've seen Mifune in add up to significantly less screen time than the 35-odd hours I spent finishing the story and a healthy chunk of sidequests. Too long? Yep! Unfortunately the Capcom that made Resident Evil 9 and Pragmata lean, briskly paced adventures wasn't talking to the Capcom that thought Onimusha needed a dull hub world, grindy crafting materials and bosses that show up for an encore to an encore to an encore well after I stopped applauding.

Kyoto drift

There's a distinct whiff of modern videogame bloat to Way of the Sword compared to the tight 3 ½ and 8 ½ hours of the now-vintage Onimusha 1&2. It spends its first third steadily introducing new combat mechanics and devoting quite a bit of time to how a young, not-yet-famous Musashi finds himself wearing a magic gauntlet that absorbs the souls of the demonic Genma trying to move into east Kyoto. The initial pacing means it's slow to really show its teeth, though I found that a nice change from the soulslikes that are now legion.

Onimusha wants you to feel cool from the start: Duels with the basic Genma tend to feel more empowering than challenging, which narratively dovetails nicely with Musashi's gauntlet steroids but means only boss fights really allow the swordplay to shine until the midgame.

In between major plot beats that whisk Musashi off to new environments like a bamboo grove and a sunset-drenched mountain fortress, there's busywork to do in feudal Kyoto. And it sure is bogged down by dreary, muddy streets that immediately blur together. There are engaging moments here and there when a trinket on the other side of a wall enticed me to find a ladder that led to a hidden crawlspace to a gate I could unlock from the inside, but these detours never really rose above the bar of not outright boring.

Kyoto mostly exists as a vessel for upgrade materials, scattered in plain sight and squirreled away in corners that are occasionally more fun to track down. These items and the gangs of Genma roving the streets respawn periodically, which ended up reinforcing how insignificant most of my time spent in Kyoto felt. Same with the trifling basic sidequests, delivered by nameless NPCs that give you an icon on the map; there's not even an attempt to offer hints for you to puzzle out a location yourself.

Oni-curious

You can sense the nervousness behind this whole side of the game: that players needed something to keep them playing longer, so how about collecting dozens and dozens of pieces of leather and iron to upgrade the stats on their gear 2% at a time? What about an exciting boss that gets some new moves the second time, and then really drags down the pacing each time you fight it again? Even Capcom seemed to know it didn't nail the balance here, considering how many times the writers have Musashi grumble about having to fight someone he's already whooped.

Strip out 90% of the upgrade economy and corresponding time spent in Kyoto and Onimusha: Way of the Sword would be a much leaner game. And a better one, with just a brisk hour or so of scraps in between showstopper bosses.

What saves Kyoto from being a total waste are the Curious Cases, a fancier set of sidequests delivered to Musashi by poet Lady Murasaki, a pioneering 11th century author.

These vignettes are a touch more involved, calling on a recurring cast of Kyoto's citizens to deliver morbidly funny Japanese fables. Each concludes with Murasaki commenting on the story as she writes them into legend. I rarely go digging into a menu to read up on extra lore, but I devoured every bit of it in Onimusha—the care put into the mythology does so much to make this feel like a jidaigeki historical drama as much as an action game. There are only a handful of Curious Cases in the whole game, yet they each left more of an impression on me than any sidequest I encountered in 25 hours with last year's Assassin's Creed Shadows.

Sword is life

Onimusha's crafting-driven bloat would've annoyed me more if every boss that awaited wasn't such a thrill to take down. The heavy clank of steel-on-steel and the way the camera pivots around Musashi as he redirects the enemy's blade in a shower of sparks was still triggering something primal within me 30 hours in. (Should I buy a sword? Surely a katana would fix me.)

The elegance of the combat is that each duel demands the same thing—precisely parrying a few times to build up a "burning" meter for your blade to deal more damage, then using the deflect technique, an extra button press with slightly more generous timing, to sap the enemy's stamina and deliver a critical hit—but executing that plan is never so simple. When I fumbled my parry timing and blocked instead, bosses punished me by smashing my own stamina meter, turning the fight into an oh shit oh hell panic.

Take one of the minibosses that Onimusha reheats three too many times: Byakue, a demon carrying a giant axe whose entire body is covered in ofuda talismans. When Byakue broke my guard, its axe split in half to reveal a jagged maw that sucked down souls and sent it into a primal rage. I learned to start watching for new moves in that state: a grab where it used its flowing paper-flesh mane to bludgeon me, and an explosive slam that caused the earth to erupt with poisonous Malice.

Where other action games like Nioh ask you to nail multiple complex button inputs in the heat of the moment to parry, recover stamina, and swap sword stances, Onimusha's happy to keep swordplay simpler mechanically but more cinematically rewarding. Crossing blades will either prompt you to mash the attack quickly to overpower your enemy or to lock into a brief minigame of alternating light and heavy attacks until you outmaneuver them and deliver a vicious blow; both moves are easy but look and feel badass thanks to the detailed physics and animations that send enemies staggering or leave them bisected anime-style, crown to jewels.

What this Onimusha does differently from every other game of its kind is embrace the physicality of the brawl. The way Musashi braces for an impact; the way he shifts to an overhead strike for a heavy attack that's easy for enemies to sidestep if you don't lead with a lighter horizontal swipe; the way walls and boards you can pry off the ground are an opportunity to deal quick and ruthless stagger damage. Way of the Sword toys with the idea of making these physics interactions its specialty, but it never really commits to them, with boss fights mostly falling back on more straightforward 'git gud' tests of patience and timing. It leaves a lot on the table for a sequel to build on, but even with their full potential unrealized the physics still make Musashi feel like he has a body. Literally built different, etc.

Strategic complexity comes mostly from the secondary weapons, Musashi's Oni Armaments; most of them play a key role, from peeling health or power souls off an enemy to smashing half their stamina meter in a single hit. It's so tempting to wait to use these until the perfect moment, but holding onto that meter just a little too long risks a boss getting in a clean hit and stealing the souls for themselves. It's a dance of patience and aggression that was still tripping me up when I had a boss down to the last 10% of their health, then suddenly lost my rhythm and was dead seconds later.

There's a fantastic clarity to all of the action: you could teach a Videogames 101 course using the boss attack patterns (tricky, but always learnable) in Way of the Sword, and the instant post-meter burn regret of popping too early. This is the kind of stuff Capcom's designers have excelled at for decades, just with a bit more emphasis on patience and timing than usual.

The panache and silliness of old Onimusha still comes through in much of the character design, too—just wait for the boss who's basically a demigod rockstar riffing on the Japanese high school delinquent trope, exaggerated pompadour and all.

Samurai spirit

I was pleased by how beautifully this action ran on my 9070 XT, often hitting 120 fps with all the settings turned up and AMD FSR4 set to quality. Other than brief hitches when loading or transitioning between cutscenes, performance is fantastic. And I think this is the best-looking RE Engine game Capcom's made when it comes to the facial animations, art direction and cutscenes—which makes it an extra shame that so much of the game takes place in a perpetually overcast, muddy Kyoto. Truly a baffling choice.

A shorter, more linear Onimusha with less time spent picking up boring junk would've truly been all killer no filler—but even with the filler, it's going to be a strong contender for the best combat of the year. But that's a box I really expected Capcom to check from the moment it brought Onimusha back to life.

More impressive is the lengths to which it goes to live up to Toshiro Mifune's resurrection. This series started with the fun but shallow premise of digitizing a famous actor as a samurai. Way of the Sword asks how to imbue that idea with purpose: What if the emotional core of the story revolved around Musashi's fabled journey from arrogant vagabond to a noble warrior? What if one of the other figures it plucked from history was the inventor of Kabuki, at this point a ferocious young girl who cares more about the people of Kyoto than Musashi does? What if the big bad, another famous Japanese warrior, was an absolute motherfucker? This is the most fun I've had with a game's alternate history since Command & Conquer Red Alert's campy FMVs, and pushes the game up a tier from period action game to proper period piece. Bring on Way of the Two Swords with haste.

Games get remade for all sorts of reasons, but I think you'd struggle to find one with as heartwarming a basis as this. The Battle of Olympus—a side-scrolling platformer originally released on the NES in 1988, is getting a remake early next year created by its original husband-and-wife team.

Admittedly, that statement is slightly misleading. Per Time Extension, programmer Yukio Horimoto and artist Reiko Oshida (now also Horimoto) were not actually married when they made The Battle of Olympus—though they were in a romantic relationship at the time of the game's development.

"We fell in love and wanted to make our game together, so we talked about the game concept for a long time," Horimoto explained to VG247 in an interview from several years back. "I like Greek myths and legends, so we decided to base our game on those legends. Given those circumstances, we talked about the game and our mood influenced it."

Alongside Greek myth, The Battle of Olympus is heavily inspired by The Legend of Zelda 2, with Horimoto stating that he directly imitated many of that game's actions. " I wanted to make the same kind of game, and so many parts of the game, like the player's attacking motion, ducking motion, and jumping motion: They were all influenced by The Legend of Zelda."

As for the remake, the Steam page describes it as a "handcrafted Steam remake", with Yukio and Reiko Horimoto's reformed Infinity Co "personally recreated in the code, redrawing the pixel art, and refining the game for modern PC players while preserving the spirit, atmosphere and challenge of the original."

Interestingly, this isn't the first time a veteran game developer couple has remade a gaming classic. A few years back, Sierra founders Ken and Roberta Williams returned to game development for a shiny redux of Colossal Cave Adventure (with the abridged name Colossal Cave). Unlike The Battle of Olympus, Colossal Cave wasn't the Williams' original design. The OG text adventure was made in the mid '70s by Will Crowther and Don Woods.

Like the Williams', Yukio and Reiko Horimoto have been fairly active in game development in recent years, having directed the fashion model sims Model Debut #nicola and its sequel in 2019 and 2021. It seems the pair plan to retire from game development for good after the The Battle of Olympus, however, as the Steam page says the remake will be the duo's "final major game product".

The Battle of Olympus will release into Steam early access in January 2027.

There was surprise and delight when Summer Game Fest brought the reveal of 1666: Amsterdam, the long awaited dream project from Assassin's Creed co-creator Patrice Désilets. But the mood quickly changed when eager players began exploring a playable prologue for the witchy action-adventure that was released alongside the announcement and began spotting in-game assets that had the distinct whiff of generative AI.

Désilets' studio Panache Digital Games copped to using AI in the production of certain assets, then apologised and promised to remove those elements in time for the early access launch. With that launch happening last week, Désilets now says that Panache has decoupled AI from its pipeline entirely and it won't be using AI in future.

Speaking to GamesRadar+, Désilets stressed that Panache was done with generative AI, and claimed that most of the AI used occurred in the early stages of the project. "Yes, we use some AI in the process, mostly at the beginning," Désilets explained. "In conception and pre-production. It's been totally removed and we won't be using any AI anymore."

As someone who likes their art made by, y'know, artists, I'm glad that Panache has done what it can to scrape generative AI out of 1666: Amsterdam. That said, it irks me when developers say they only used AI at the concepting stage of development, because that's the most fun and rewarding part of any creative project.

That's the part where most of the imaginative work happens, where you're most creatively free and unshackled from the discipline and hard choices required to actually finish the darn thing. Handing that phase over to the mediocrity machine seems like such a betrayal of the creative process to me. It also raises an interesting philosophical point: can you reasonably say a game has no generative AI in it if you used the technology to help imagine the thing in the first place?

Either way, 1666: Amsterdam is now out in early access, and the Steam page does not have an AI disclosure on it. With or without AI, players currently seem divided over Amsterdam as an experience. The game currently sits at a 'Mixed' rating with 66% positive reviews, with users praising the setting and exploration elements, while cruising clunky combat and a general lack of polish.

There are big-budget blockbusters, and then there's GTA 6. If you want any sense of just how big this thing is, look no further than a recent interview Rockstar North co-head Aaron Garbut gave The New York Times (via Techradar). In it, he said the studio dedicated an entire new team solely to making NPCs.

"We art-directed each individual one of them," Garbut said in the interview. "Every room in the game, somebody thought about this … Who's sitting where, what they're drinking, the marks that are left on the table. The pictures on the wall will have the people that are in that room, with their tattoos on their arms and their family behind them.

"That whole thing has been made, and built, and photographed, and placed in this random room in a random building in a huge city, in a world." He revealed that GTA 6 has over 600,000 animations—double the amount Red Dead Redemption 2 had, both of which dwarf GTA 5's 55,000. Considering the game's map is also three times as big as Red Dead 2's, it seems like the game operates on an unprecedented level of scale and fidelity.

This all lines up with what PC Gamer's US editor-in-chief Tyler Wilde said of the game in the wake of recent leaks earlier this month: even if GTA 6 doesn't reinvent the open world crime-'em-up, it "will be impressive for the same reason Rockstar games typically are: The absurd amount of effort and money the studio puts into making them as big and detailed as the mainstream hardware of the day can manage."

A native PC port of Nintendo's 1999 platformer Donkey Kong 64 is finally here, and the team that pulled it off is proud to say that they used zero generative AI tools in the process.

DK64 Rekongpiled, a recompilation or translation of the game's code for modern hardware (as opposed to emulation), dropped today. All you need is an original Donkey Kong 64 ROM to get it running.

In a post on Bluesky (and also in the trailer), contributor 2dos wrote that "no generative AI [was] used at any point in the process."

Everything in the original game is still there, including its old fuzzy 3D graphics, bouncy soundtrack, and the rest of the things that made Donkey Kong 64 an innovative and sometimes maddening game. It all runs at high resolutions and high framerates like any other modern PC game. You can even play with a mouse now, too.

The port is here just two months after a group of programmers decided to take the project on after seeing another group heavily use AI vibe code in the process. At the time, contributor 2dos wrote in the N64 Recomp Discord server that the competing project's use of AI would "make it progressively harder to manage as time goes on."

"Our DK64 recompilation project is backed by folks who have worked on and tinkered with the backend of the DK64 code for well over a decade, and do not rely on vibe coding to make code changes," they wrote.

Piles of ports using generative AI programming tools like Claude have shown up in emulation and hacking communities a lot in the last few years because it allows programmers to put them together in a fraction of the time. Experienced programmers, like the ones working on DK64 Rekongpiled, see far too many problems with the bugs and other problems vibe coding creates.

Instead, they prefer to do it as cleanly as possible using their own skills from messing with the game's code. Some of the same people who worked on the port previously worked on the DK64 Randomizer.

The release trailer for DK64 Rekongpiled features a goofy but exceptionally charming little scene where the villain King K. Rool—voiced by 2dos, of course—realizes his plan to keep people from playing the classic game on PC has been foiled by some pesky programmers. His henchman, also voiced by 2dos, can't believe they got it to run in 4K at 200 frames per second and ditches his boss to go play it himself.

Generative AI couldn't make anything as convincing as that, if you ask me.

Nodusfall may look like developer miHoYo has slapped an Elden Ring-colored paint job onto Monster Hunter, but there's some signature HoYo innovation to find in between all those beastly battles and dark fantasy landscapes in its reveal trailer.

While there aren't an awful lot of specifics about the game right now, I've scraped together every gameplay clip and interview available to help explain what HoYo's breakup with anime girls is all about. From betas, to gacha, to gameplay and story, here's everything we know about Nodusfall so far.

Nodusfall release date speculation

Nodusfall release date details and speculation

Nodusfall doesn't have a solid release date yet—it doesn't even have a release year. That's typical for a HoYo game, though. It doesn't tend to announce release dates until a game's final round of beta testing is coming up.

Even though there's no release window HoYo's ever-reliable pattern of three open betas before release lets us predict that Nodusfall will launch sometime in 2028. Especially as its next game, Petit Planet, is out this winter, and Honkai: Nexus Anima seems set for a 2027 release, having just finished its second open beta.

The only thing that might throw a spanner in the works is that Nodusfall isn't your typical character/critter collector that HoYo is known for. So it might not be so typical when it comes to beta testing either.

Nodusfall beta and pre-registration

Speaking of betas, you can visit the official Nodusfall site and do a two-for-one combo by pre-registering and then answering a questionnaire for possible beta selection right after. The site mentions that this is for future betas, not for one ongoing right now. So you won't be fighting those Nodusfall bosses just yet no matter how furiously fast you refresh your inbox.

Nodusfall trailers

If you want a refresh on its gorgeous dark fantasy visuals and otherworldly boss designs that'd make Elden Ring and Diablo blush, here's the reveal trailer above. There's not much gameplay here, but what there is definitely throws up inevitable comparisons to co-op combat seen in the Monster Hunter series.

Nodusfall story and setting

The story of Nodusfall unfolds across a dark fantasy "mythic continent" teeming with corrupted legendary creatures, whose designs take inspiration from both Eastern and Western mythology. Like manticores, dragons, and giant bears. You take on the role of a "Weaver," a being "enlightened by the divine" and entrusted with sacred missions to restore order to the continent corrupted by the "Dreadnodi". So basically, you're a big important badass with divine magic powers and chunky weapons whose mission is to blast scary monsters to get new gear save the world.

On your way to annihilating ethereal beasts and untold horrors, you'll journey through distinct regions with landscapes and cultures that take equal inspiration from various real-life cultures and mythologies, with more regions set to launch post-release. My fellow Genshin Impact players will be familiar with this formula.

Thanks to its reveal trailer, we know that some of Nodusfall's landscapes include golden hills, fiery skies, dreary moors, misty forests, dusty deserts, and gargantuan canyons. So far so Elden Ring, but it sounds like there's more variety in the works.

What I'm most interested in seeing is just how dark Nodusfall ends up being. The reveal trailer suggested a mature story, which isn't a first for HoYo—Genshin has dropped its fair share of dark lore and ran—but not shifting to a wisecrack or bonkers anime moment right after would be new.

Nodusfall gameplay

Breaking from the single-player teambuilding mold that HoYo is known for, Nodusfall is actually a free-to-play co-op action game that pits you and your squad against mythical creatures. Pick a character, build a loadout, and work with up to three other players to defeat difficult bosses and get the resources needed to unlock new skills and forge new weapons.

Why yes, it is eyebrow-raisingly similar to Monster Hunter, but there are some key differences. Such as:

• Powerful "Divine Skills" collected from bosses
  • This might be how you transform into other forms mid-combat, as seen in the reveal trailer
• Finishing blow cinematics when an enemy's weakness is revealed
  • Both solo and co-op finishers
• Emphasis on squad variety required to defeat hard bosses, like an MMO
• PvP mode, where you can take control of a boss, or fight a player controlling a boss

And although not expanded on, Nodusfall's official site claims that you can "switch roles and loadouts at will". Which presumably means you're not locked to playing just one character or build per account.

In practice, judging from hands-on impressions and what little gameplay there is right now, Nodusfall looks like it's actually a mix of Elden Ring, an MMO, and Monster Hunter—not just a Monster Hunter wannabe. Yeah, this may just sound like even more games that Nodusfall is riffing on, but if there's one thing I've learned about playing HoYo games over the years it's that you should never doubt its ability to innovate on the familiar and create one heck of a satisfying combat loop.

We played Nodusfall

PC Gamer's Fraser Brown played Nodusfall right after its reveal and was pretty impressed, even as a HoYo skeptic. "First of all: Nodusfall is not remotely a soulslike," Fraser says in his Nodusfall preview. "Monster Hunter is a closer relative. Solo adventurers and groups can select contracts, and then go out into the world to hunt down big beasties. These are lengthy, elaborate fights with multiple phases, taking place in spacious outdoor areas."

"I became rather fond of the clash mechanic, where you charge up a strong attack, and release it right as the monster is about to hit you, countering the attack. It helps that I looked stylish doing it, with my already massive sword growing, transforming into a magical, glowing WMD."

Is Nodusfall gacha?

There is no character gacha in Nodusfall, which means you'll never have to rely on luck (or piles of cash) to get new characters—they're all obtained by simply playing the story. No official line on if anything else will be linked to gacha systems, but HoYo has stated that cosmetic monetization is "an important avenue" that it'll be considering for Nodusfall.

So no, Nodusfall is not a gacha game in the traditional sense, but it may end up incorporating some RNG pulls elsewhere. Maybe for exclusive cosmetics similar to Where Winds Meet, or maybe even some special type of gear. Or maybe we'll get the biggest win of all and Nodusfall will be entirely gacha-free! (Please let me dream.)

One of the most intriguing creative decisions Rockstar made with Grand Theft Auto 6 is reducing the number of playable characters from three to two. Since sequels typically operate on the rule of 'bigger is better', the logical progression would have been to add even more playable characters to the roster.

It turns out that Rockstar did indeed consider this. Speaking to IGN, studio co-head Rod Nelson explained that a GTA with four protagonists was on the table. But Rockstar decided against it due to concerns about spreading the player's attention too thin.

"As the narrative unfolds, we're quite conscious to try and make sure that players have enough time with each character," Nelson explained. "After doing GTA 5, we talked about different ideas of 'Do we have more characters? How do we follow up three characters? Is it four characters now?' But we worried about diluting the amount of player time with each, and therefore player connection with those characters."

This fear of diluting that time spent with each character is also what led Rockstar down the path of two protagonists. "The question became: how do you make players feel like 'I love them both'" Nelson adds. "Chemistry is a notoriously hard thing to do in any sort of entertainment. Either the characters and the actors that embody them have it—or they don't."

Nelson adds that "everyone involved worked at that pretty hard" and believes that the team eventually "got it." Having watched the extended trailer that recently aired on Netflix—the relationship between the two characters was certainly the element that stood out most to me.

For example, there's a moment toward the end of the trailer where Lucia gets beaten up and tossed down a flight of stairs. In the spectrum of horrible things that can happen to a GTA character, this is relatively minor. But I was surprisingly shocked by it, because everything shown up to that point had invested me in Lucia and Jason's relationship—more than I ever felt about any of the characters in Grand Theft Auto 5.

Obviously, there's plenty more to Grand Theft Auto 6 than just its two protagonists, like its world that's three times the size of Red Dead Redemptions 2's, and the fact it has a more nuanced version of the honor system seen in Rockstar's most recent Wild West adventure. But I increasingly believe it will be that central partnership that defines it over the other GTA games, especially since Rockstar appears to be sticking to the script when it comes to campaign mission design.

EA has confirmed that leaked footage of Motive's Iron Man game is real, after an unauthorised version of a trailer for the superhero game appeared online on Friday.

"Well, that didn't go as planned," EA wrote on the official X account for Marvel's Iron Man in response to the leaked video (via IGN). "But now you know, and we've got a lot more to show you. See you when we're ready."

The trailer, which is clearly built from work-in-progress footage of the game, shows two and a half minutes of both cutscenes and in-game action. We see Tony Stark flying around what appears to be New York, battling enemies both on the ground and in midair, and paying a visit to the S.H.I.E.L.D helicarrier as it drifts through the sky.

My immediate reaction to the footage was 'Yeah, I'd play that.' Even though there's a lot of missing detail to the world, like low-resolution textures, unfinished cutscenes, etc, Iron Man's flying looks very slick and the combat seems to have considerable nuance to it. Iron Man's suit is loaded with gadgets like rockets, cluster missiles, repulsor blasts etc. But Stark is equally capable of beating enemies to a pulp and tossing them around—including one sweet manoeuvre where he suddenly bursts forward and slams an enemy into a wall.

The footage also shows what appears to be a suit customisation system—which makes sense given how Stark is constantly tinkering with his gear. Stark himself seems similar to his MCU equivalent in appearance, though he is apparently not modelled after Robert Downey Jr. The game does ape other elements of the MCU films, like the holograph-ringed closeups of RDJ's face in the movies.

The trailer is labelled "Aug26 Test", suggesting it is a recent creation. It also has placeholder text for a release window, so it might have been eventually intended to kick off EA's marketing cycle for the game. It certainly aligns with the game's development timeline. Marvel's Iron Man was announced back in 2022, so it's been in development for at least four years. Given how games tend to come together at the very last minute, the footage could well represent a build that's much further along than it initially appears.

EA's Iron Man game was part of a suite of superhero titles planned for development at EA. But not all of these are still in production. The company's Black Panther game announced in 2023 was cancelled last year. More recently, EA employees have been bracing for the worst following reported plans for massive cuts at the publisher after its recent buyout. But for now, at least, it seems Marvel's Iron Man is unaffected.

As expected, the GTA 6 Extended Look blew up the internet yesterday, and along with reactions to the huge open world, the missions we saw, and the features revealed in the 26-minute video, there's also been a lot of discussion about one element of the game in particular.

Jason.

While everyone seems to enjoy what they've seen of GTA 6's Lucia, especially her murking a guy with a high-heeled shoe and racking a shotgun with one hand, the internet seems a bit split when it comes to the other member of the playable duo.

After past memorable Rockstar characters like Niko, Michael, Franklin, Trevor, and of course John and Arthur from the Red Dead Redemption series, a lot of the reactions to Jason have been less than enthusiastic.

"I feel like half this [subreddit] could voice-act Jason better than whoever this is," one Reddit post is titled.

"The voice did not feel smooth at all and in my opinion the character felt very bland," kebualen19

Commented in another post that is simply titled "Jason's voice."

"He seems heavily sedated," said Final-Tower6331.

Our own website commenters, when they had something to say about Jason, weren't too keen on the lad.

PC Gamer commenter Cephelapoid said "I don't know the voice actor, and I don't mean to be rude, but it's a total miss for me. Very boring delivery, with little to no emotion. From what we heard it just seems like the character is incredibly dull."

Another commenter, GeraltOfButleria, wasn't a fan either: "Jason's voice actor was a bit of a mumblemouth, really weird choice."

And commenter Truzen: "I wish Jason was a little more flushed out in his [voice acting] as he feels so flat, as opposed to Lucia."

Not everyone was so anti-Jason, however. In a Reddit post titled "I don't agree with the Jason criticism," Low_Mouse_197 writes, "I see some people criticizing Jason as being monotone and kind of dull. To me he seems like an emotionally detached dude who has 'seen some shit' during his military service. It just seems like good characterization for a GTA protagonist… they aren't exactly supposed to be well adjusted individuals, so the fact he seems kind of 'cold' or 'simple' fits very well."

Many Reddit users also point out that this isn't the first time a Rockstar character initially appeared to be a bit boring in a trailer, but changed their minds once they'd played the full game.

"Makes me think of how people hated Arthur when they first saw him in the RDR2 trailers, look how that turned out," said YoursTruly2729.

The PC Gamer team was a bit divided on Jason, too. I thought his character seemed a bit dull in the video and his voice is so distractingly deep that every time he talked I was reminded of Jame Gumb from Silence of the Lambs. "Put the f**king lotion in the basket!" I was left hoping Lucia could dump his ass and date someone else for the duration.

Tim said he liked Lucia but "Jason, on the other hand, felt very generic 2000s videogame dude, remarkable only for his startlingly deep voice. More time with him will hopefully reveal hidden depths."

On the other hand, in our work Slack, Lincoln revealed himself as a J-fan, saying he was "charmed by Jason's dope energy," adding "I like that he's just an archetypal Guy."

"If he's a Wife Guy he can stay, that's how you earn redemption for being Template Man," said Lauren.

Tyler said Jason was growing on him, too, though "His personality is kinda at odds with the things he's doing in the game. He doesn't strike me as a backflip into the ocean kinda guy."

"I went to high school with so many dudes who presented as low energy plainfaced Present Individuals who would do a backflip off a dock in a second given an excuse," Lincoln said. "I know this man."

Ted didn't offer an opinion on Jason either way, but at least finds his relationship with Lucia convincing. "If nothing else, it was so real when Lucia asked which dress he preferred, she clearly disagreed with his pick, he went all 'then the other one I guess,' and she wound up wearing a completely different, third dress. Been there."

What do you think of Jason so far? I whipped up a quick poll so you can share your vote, and please feel free to elaborate more in the comments below.

Nodusfall has been Gamescom's biggest surprise: a new co-op action romp from the masters of gacha, HoYoverse, which seemingly does away with so much of what we all associate with the developer.

HoYoverse's games are normally vibrant anime affairs full of waifus and himbos waiting to be collected by thirsty players. Even as the genres and systems change from game to game, the studio has a distinct style and design philosophy—one that's been incredibly successful.

Instead of resting on its laurels, however, HoYoverse is taking a big swing with Nodusfall. One of the most fundamental changes is that characters are not obtained through random draws. This is not your typical gacha game. Indeed, HoYoverse hasn't confirmed any gacha mechanics yet—though we do know that cosmetic monetisation is being considered.

When it was first unveiled during Gamescom's Opening Night Live, the immediate comparisons being bandied around were Elden Ring and Monster Hunter, both of which are fair comparisons but which don't really tell the whole story. That they are inspirations seems undeniable, but Nodusfall is absolutely doing its own thing here.

First of all: Nodusfall is not remotely a soulslike. What it has in common with Elden Ring, then, is largely aesthetic and vibes. As HoYoverse describes it, the world of Nodusfall is one where "divine authority has crumbled and order has collapsed". It's simultaneously bleak and beautiful.

Monster Hunter is a closer relative. Solo adventurers and groups can select contracts, and then go out into the world to hunt down big beasties. These are lengthy, elaborate fights with multiple phases, taking place in spacious outdoor areas. So yeah, this all felt immediately evocative of Monster Hunter. But the similarities largely end there.

My four-player crew started off in a hub area, where we could select and customise our characters—one of which had two classes, while the rest had one. I opted for a serious looking lad with a big sword, serving as the group's tank. So you're not just creating a customisable blank slate who is defined by whatever weapon they happen to be holding.

Each character has dramatically different combat styles and unique mechanics, so while I was going to spend the next 30 minutes blocking damage with my huge weapon and sticking to foes like angry velcro, another member of the party was going to spend that same time hanging back and healing my reckless ass. Nodusfall isn't an RPG, but it does have an RPG's role-based classes.

Our HoYoverse babysitter led us to our battles—three boss-style scraps with an escalating level of challenge, culminating in a massive brawl against a huge dragon and its giant, heavily-armoured rider. There wasn't much time for faffing in the open area, though I did clock other creatures ambling around—but we were here for larger prey.

Even as a slow tank, I was surprisingly agile. Unless you've volunteered for healer duty, Nodusfall is a brisk, relentless kind of action game, where you'll be stringing together impressively flashy combos as you keep an eye on your skill cooldowns. And all the while, you'll feel like a human shaped missile, always launching yourself at whatever creature is in your sights.

It's more aggressive and spammy than Monster Hunter, but some precision is still required. I became rather fond of the clash mechanic, where you charge up a strong attack, and release it right as the monster is about to hit you, countering the attack. It helps that I looked stylish doing it, with my already massive sword growing, transforming into a magical, glowing WMD.

When you're picking your character you can also select an ultimate, with the game letting you know which ones are a best fit for your role. I'm still very pleased with my choice, which transformed me into a towering, dual-wielding knight with a whole bunch of new—and extremely potent—skills. I became a dervish of devastation, leaping around with my spinning attacks and filling the area with explosive magic.

This was handy when the dragon and its rider split up, leaving us juggling two tricky foes—one airborne and one grounded. My ultimate whittled the rider down, then my team joined forces to deal out some divine retribution, summoning a huge ghostly warrior to absolutely pummel the knight. He still had a sliver of health, however, and used the last of his strength to consume his dragon. Now he was on his own, though, and we made short work of him.

Nodusfall's scraps are energetic, dramatic spectacles and I really appreciate the pure focus on the simple joy of whacking big monsters. I suspect the full game will be a lot more dense with systems—even if HoYoverse is trying something new, it's still HoYoverse—but it's got an extremely fun, straightforward core and a low barrier for entry. Got a free hour and some free pals? Go murder a dragon.

Nodusfall doesn't yet have a release date. On its official website , HoYoverse suggests following the official social channels for news about beta access.

Florida is a vast and wonderful menagerie. It is home to over a billion species (I didn't research that claim and nor should you), ranging from alligators to snakes to… alligators. Grand Theft Auto 6, I must assume, will be basically like a trip to the zoo with gun crime.

GTA 5, though? It does its best, but the animal quotient is low. In fairness, Los Santos, like its real-life counterpart, was not built to sustain life. But like so many things, this can be rectified through mods.

I have installed DogDog (it's about dogs), which is both a fan-made modification of the videogame Grand Theft Auto 5, and the source of history's most perfect English sentence: "You can summon your favorite dogs in any quantity you desire."

But it undersells itself. DogDog allows you to summon dogs(dogs), yes, but not just them. In addition to a small legion of loyal canines, you can also manifest cats, cows, lions, and—the following is based on the verified personal experience of this reporter—at minimum one chimpanzee.

Combo this dizzy-making new power with one of our previously installed mods, 2gether, and you can patrol the roadways of Los Santos with the entire cast of Homeward Bound at your back while a partying great ape sits on your back like you are a majestic and powerful steed. Which you are. Believe in yourself.

One issue with this—and sorry to be a bummer—is that, yes, there are still gang wars happening and flying cars loose from the surly bonds of Earth. So sometimes, ah, well, look: sometimes bad things happen to the animals. You have to try to walk them out in nature. It's where they belong, I suppose.

The veil between satire and reality has seemed so thin for such a long time now that I find myself double checking every other news post I see just to make sure it's not something from The Onion—sadly it never is. But I guess it could be worse, I could be the one who has to write the satire, I could be the one who has to write scripts for GTA 6.

It's certainly a tall order, especially right now, but if someone's able to do it I'm confident in Rockstar, who should be able to pull off some meta-commentary about the make-believe state of Leonida, based on Florida, and the US at large.

"That’s a question a lot of people ask: how do you deal with satire in today’s world?" Rockstar North's co-studio head, Ron Nelson, tells IGN. "I think there’s always stuff to satirize. As long as humans are humans, other humans will figure out ways to satirize what we do."

Sure, they'll always be people who will satirize the world around them, but the key here is doing it well enough that it doesn't make players' eyes permanently roll into the back of their heads, while also holding up against the test of time. Rockstar surely wants people to play and enjoy GTA 6 beyond 2026.

"We have to be careful that what we’re choosing to satirize is not going to feel dated in a weird way," Nelson explains. "I think those broader things are OK to satirize, but very specific political issues or memes will date fast. Even the way our characters speak, we think about it a lot so that they're not using extremely contemporary slang. Even though our characters are a certain age, they need to feel somewhat timeless."

That probably means we won't be seeing any brainrot or references to the orange man in GTA 6, and you know what? Thank god—sometimes art doesn't need to fully imitate life.

Two wrongs don't make a right, but one huge wrong and then a lot of little rights can make it feel better. According to Rockstar North's co-studio head Rob Nelson (via IGN) GTA 6 will be getting this treatment, just a little bit more nuanced.

Think Red Dead Redemption 2's Honor System and then ramp it up a bit. While Arthur Morgan could really game the system, doing the most heinous crimes before working his way back into the good graces of all, Jason and Lucia won't have it quite that easy.

"There isn’t a right or wrong way to play this game, but consistent actions may have an impact in terms of how the world reacts to you and how the narrative plays out," Nelson says. Alongside the classic Wanted Level, players will also have to pay attention to their Criminal Profile.

But here's where the nuance comes in: doing bad things doesn't necessarily count against your Criminal Profile. If you're in a situation where violence is the only logical and safe next step then sure, start shooting, but if you're the aggressor or have even escalated a situation beyond any reasonable amount? NPCs will remember that.

One way to even it out, however, is by Lucia or Jason doing small acts of kindness. Apparently things like throwing your rubbish away in bins or being nice to animals will count in your favour. See, everyone wins when you recycle.

This isn't Rockstar trying to teach its players mortality, I think we all know it's too late for that, but it is an attempt to make Jason and Lucia's actions a little more realistic. "You are playing as criminals on the run, but the narrative is such that it makes most sense for them to do what they need to do while not drawing unnecessary attention (even though sometimes that happens)," Nelson explains.

It's also just a smart move not to be too much of an asshole when walking around the fictional not-Florida, Leonida. Instead of just having to worry about the police coming for you, now some locals will pick a fight if you taunt them too much, or just a little bit. "I think in previous GTA games you were a bit all-powerful,” Nelson adds. “You were the only one with an invisible arsenal hidden away. Apart from the police, everyone would run in terror from you if you started acting out. This world in GTA 6 is not like that."

But if the noise, violence, and trigger-happy locals of Leonida all get too much for you then you'll be able to just head back to your safehouses, which also take something from RDR2 as they act "closer to the camps in terms of how interactive they are and how much they feel like your home."

One of the more confusing elements of the Grand Theft Auto 6 extended look is the fact that it debuted on Netflix, of all sites. Why? While it's harder to pin down the reasons Take-Two went for it, I can at least suss out that Netflix is probably feeling very happy with its end of the bargain.

That's per GamesBeat, which pulled the numbers from Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm. According to them, the average user count on mobile increased by 50% when compared to the past 12 Thursdays—meanwhile, the average web user count went up a stonking 125%.

This was enough of a bump to cause issues for some viewers, though Netflix otherwise held up reasonably well. That's great news for the streaming platform, which has presumably been struggling to keep up with that ever-enshittifying perpetual growth mindset—introducing ads over the past few years, ramping up prices, and toying with generative AI to make those aforementioned ads even more annoying. We can, sadly, expect more of this in the future.

As for what Take-Two got out of it, it's hard to say, given CEO Strauss Zelnick has been tight-lipped on the particulars. It could be Netflix paid a lump sum to the publisher as part of the temporary exclusivity deal, though the kind of payout they'd have to offer Take-Two to get Zelnick interested would be pretty major, given Take-Two's worth an eye-watering $43.5 billion at the time of writing.

Then again, the preview was only Netflix-exclusive for six whole hours, meaning you'd likely only shell out for a new subscription if you were ravenous for more news—or just didn't want to spend an evening dodging spoilers before you sat down and watched the thing yourself. It is, after all, already on YouTube.

Which means that Take-Two had very little to lose by saying "yes" other than consumer goodwill. And given the self-styled "Robin Hood" of gaming (these airquotes are so heavy), Cyberleek, has seemingly grabbed the bag and ran? I'm not sure the front against GTA 6 is particularly unified. Chances are that folks are going to buy this game regardless of what Take-Two does.

Netflix's 26-minute "Extended Look" at GTA 6 is now on YouTube, so if you missed the reveal earlier today because you don't have a Netflix subscription and you don't tend to watch stolen and reposted videos, you can see it now, for free (and guilt free).

The feature contains nearly a half-hour of new footage of Grand Theft Auto 6, and was posted on Netflix earlier today. As Rockstar announced, the exclusive feature would make its way to YouTube six hours later, and now it has. Take a look:

Naturally we were keen to check it out, and came away with some interesting new details about the game, like how character swapping works, the different sorts of activities there are (like racing, kayaking, and scuba diving), and how Lucia racks a shotgun with one hand and is thus proven to be the cool one of the duo.

You can check out all our observations here in our GTA 6 reveal liveblog. Morgan also had some thoughts about how the missions looked, we all chimed in on whether our expectations were met, and we published a collection of all the GTA 6 details we spotted.

Of course, Netflix isn't the only one showing off: we've been seeing footage of GTA 6 since last week due to the cyberleek drama, though we're not sure how long that's going to continue.

After having one too many "wait, I know this song" moments during Netflix's extended Grand Theft Auto 6 preview, I couldn't resist piecing together a playlist of possible songs we'll hear on the in-game radio. After all, who drives around Vice City (or in real life, for that matter) without their favorite jams?

So, just as we've done with possible GTA 6 cars and its map, I've drummed up a playlist of songs we've heard in Rockstar's few trailers and even bundled them all together for you on Spotify. I can't promise they'll all be included on the GTA 6 radio, but they've at least appeared in official footage.

Note: It took me a minute to realize it, but an extended version of the Grand Theft Auto 6 theme from the second trailer also plays in the Netflix video. There's no official upload from Rockstar available though, so I haven't included it in my Spotify playlist.

Alright, we've finally seen some real, official, brand new GTA 6 gameplay. Regardless of any more leaks springing, there's something concrete out there for us to pull apart. I was expecting some disembodied commentary voiceover but it was actually just pure cutscenes and gameplay for 26 minutes. The timeline jumped around a whole lot so Jason and Lucia's story still isn't super clear, but we can still make sense of a bunch of combat and crime features that were included.

It does initially look like a prettier, bigger GTA 5, but there are places where Rockstar has borrowed from Red Dead Redemption 2 to good effect too. Here's all the biggest bits you'll want to know about GTA 6 from the reveal (and yes, some do overlap with stuff we saw from those leaks).

Watch the gameplay reveal here

Major features in the GTA 6 gameplay reveal

Tons of Vice City side activities

What we didn't see in the reveal

More details we spotted in the reveal

Those are all the biggest takeaways that we learned from the gameplay reveal, but here are a bunch more smaller bits that we spotted:

• Pet dogs (of course) for good karma
• Some destructible walls in the drug deal combat scene
• Slow-mo kill cam
• Breaking into a car with a "slim jim" crowbar required a tiny quicktime interaction
• Fridges have a drink selection menu, some with gameplay effects
• Driving navigation has a modern 3D style map view for certain buildings, like Lucia's apartment
• Lots of disguises and wigs for Lucia
• Obligatory car chase plus shooting out the window
• Six total stars for your "wanted" level
• Driving course races and motocross too
• Shooting gallery courses
• Swapping gear and outfits on the fly
• Some melee combat has quicktime events also
• Influencer gags "Chat what do I do?!"
• Wow, that hair tech, seriously
• Body part targeting on enemies

The big Netflix showcase isn't the only GTA 6 news coming out today. Some YouTubers and streamers were given a special look at the game by Rockstar, and they learned some interesting things from the studio.

Like YouTuber TGG, who says he visited Rockstar North and saw three hours of the game (as spotted by Kotaku). He asked Rockstar about the size of the map and came back with some useful comparisons:

"The map is twice the size of GTA 5's map. Three times the size of Red Dead Redemption 2's map. Vice City itself is twice the size of Los Santos, and Vice City and its surroundings suburbs is 11 times bigger than Los Santos and its surroundings."

Wowza. For those wondering if TGG has the sizes of GTA 5 and RDR2 mixed up there, I think it's the case that RDR2 feels bigger because it's more densely packed and you travel more slowly through it, but GTA 5 has always been bigger overall. And if GTA 6 is twice that, well, that sounds like a landmass Rockstar could build upon for years and years.

I'm most excited about the size of Vice City itself, though—these days Los Santos feels a little too small to meaningfully mimic Los Angeles, but Vice City is looking absolutely massive.

There's a lot more GTA 6 stuff to read today, including a live blog chronicling details from the Netflix stream and my thoughts on the missions we saw live.

Ever since Rockstar opened pre-orders, I've been ritualistically checking every potential avenue for a more substantial look at GTA 6. I can't say the Rockstar-Netflix collab was the route I expected for the next reveal, but the day is finally here, and we've got 26 minutes of new GTA 6 footage to unpack.

It's a lot for any one person to pick apart, but fortunately I work with a bunch of GTA brains and suspect the lot of you reading this are too. I've asked my colleagues to share some of those highlights, but I also want to hear from you—the reader. What do you think of the latest GTA 6 reveal? Have a scroll through our thoughts, and let us know in the comments.

Tell us how you're feeling after the latest GTA 6 reveal

Well, now that you know how Tim feels, what did you think of the GTA 6 reveal? Is it everything you've ever wanted—the stuff your gamer hopes and dreams are made of? Disappointing? Are you still on the fence or cautiously optimistic? Don't be shy, tell us about it in the comments.

The big gameplay reveal for GTA 6 has come and gone, and I'm surprised by how mixed I am on it.

In some ways, I'm more excited than ever play it. Vice City gives an amazing first impression—I'm already convinced it'll be the special sort of open world that you just want to exist in. Rockstar is packing it full of little activities and human touches that might make GTA 6 a borderline life sim: eating, drinking, sleeping, recreation, hanging out with buds, skydiving, dirt bike racing, and store robbing (I didn't say the activities were all aspirational). I'm seeing a lot of stuff I want to do.

That stuff looks so good it's almost overwhelming, but the bits in between all that—those fragments of story missions—were less impressive. I was hoping 13 years would change the shape of GTA's authored action, but Rockstar is still very much working with the same tools.

In the first mission we see Jason and Lucia doing a drug deal for Boobie Ike, and I bet you can guess what happens: The pair exchange some uneasy words with the buyer, then the deal goes wrong when the cops show up. Our heroes shoot their way out of the building.

A mission shown off later in the video takes place further in the story: Jason and Lucia are more established, taking on a job as security detail for some corpo bigwig. There's some walking, some talking, a speech about a company's new US headquarters, then the party is interrupted by professional killers with guns. The pair shoot their way out of the building.

This isn't just a trend throughout this gameplay reveal. Rockstar missions have had this pattern since the early GTA days: meet a weird new character, talk and drive with them for a while, then shoot 18 people, mission over. It's as if Rockstar believes every story beat has to check off the same bullet points. The format wore especially thin in Red Dead 2's overly long story, so much that I've struggled to replay the whole thing despite loving everything else about it.

My hope is that the majority of GTA 6 can buck this trend, and that today's reveal prioritized action for the sake of spectacle. I want to see quieter moments—missions centered around choices, mysteries, or just having fun. I know it's GTA, but wouldn't the explosions of action be more thrilling if they weren't always expected?

We've got a lot of GTA 6 reading for you today, including a live blog that catalogued details from the reveal as they happened.

Well, I think we all knew we'd end up here eventually, right?

It seems that Cyberleek, perpetrator of the last week's GTA 6 leaks and perhaps the world's least-convincing self-appointed champion of consumer rights, may not have ultimately been encouraging the use of their $CYBERLEEK cryptocurrency for benevolent purposes: As of this morning, it seems the leaker has cashed out on their scheme to the tune of over $200,000 in a rug pull that just about everyone saw coming.

Since their first leaked GTA 6 gameplay video, Cyberleek used the uploaded illicit footage as a platform for users to buy and trade $CYBERLEEK, a token minted on the Solana blockchain. Eventually, Cyberleek allowed viewers to use the cryptocurrency to vote on the subject of their next leak video.

By doing so, Cyberleek claimed viewers would be supporting "a secret project" to fight for a generic slate of consumerist talking points, and that the funding would be "directed toward the infrastructure needed to strike, as well as the security and protection required to withstand the inevitable corporate counterattacks."

If that doesn't pass the smell test to you, you aren't alone: As their leaks continued and Take-Two's legal manhunt intensified, Cyberleek's pleas for support became increasingly desperate—and increasingly corny, as public sentiment steadily soured on their compulsive crypto hucksterism.

That skepticism was apparently well-placed, because it looks like Cyberleek finally cashed out on their scheme early this morning. As spotted by user Vice Cit on Gtaforums.com, a series of transactions occurred starting today at roughly 3:27 am EDT, resulting in one $CYBERLEEK trader earning an estimated $270,000—and tanking the token's value for everyone else.

To understand what exactly happened here, let me offer some context about the token itself. It was minted by a walletholder on the Solana blockchain 12 days ago, and after its minting, the walletholder—presumably Cyberleek themself—placed the initial supply of the token along with an amount of an another cryptocurrency into what's called a "liquidity pool" on the Raydium platform, making that walletholder a "liquidity provider," or LP.

When currencies are traded through a Raydium liquidity pool, transaction fees are charged which are then split between its LPs. Which means that, by encouraging viewers to buy and trade tokens from that liquidity pool, Cyberleek was generating profits for its LPs.

Unsurprisingly, it was the same walletholder that initially minted the $CYBERLEEK token that initiated a fee collection transaction from the Raydium liquidity pool early this morning, receiving over $200,000 of $CYBERLEEK that they had accrued in transaction fees. That walletholder then immediately cashed out all that $CYBERLEEK for alternative currencies, which were quickly squirrelled away into a handful of different wallets.

In the aftermath, the value of $CYBERLEEK has plunged by roughly 40% for anyone who made the questionable choice to acquire any. But that's not Cyberleek's problem anymore. They're sitting on a nice new chunk of change (which they'll presumably need for their eventual legal fees, if you can count that as a "secret project").

For the rest of us, let this be a valuable lesson: Don't listen when a weird onion on the internet says to buy his special secret money. Not again, anyway.