Capcom has been on an historic run over the last few years, delivering hit after hit during a period when many other publishers are struggling to keep their heads above water. This year alone, Capcom has released Resident Evil: Requiem, Pragmata, and Onimusha: Way of the Sword, all of which landed to both critical acclaim and commercial success.

So now is obviously the perfect time to wade into the not-at-all controversial topic of AI-powered game development.

Yesterday, Capcom held its own tech conference titled "Capcom Open Conference RE: 2026" during which programmer Satoshi Ishida gave a talk detailing the company's future plans for its proprietary RE: Engine—which powers all the publisher's modern games. During this talk, Ishida revealed Capcom's intentions to gradually transform RE Engine into an "AI-generation game engine."

Now, it's important to stress here that what Capcom appears to mean here is an engine for the AI generation, rather than a generative AI engine. As reported by Gamebiz (via IGN), Capcom's plans are more nuanced and detailed than slapping ChatGPT into its game development workflows.

During the talk, Ishida stated that the project is called "REX", and it involves six different programs that will integrate AI and machine-learning technology into RE Engine. Some of these are designed for enhancing program performance during development. Re:Dox, for example, is a data handling program designed to translate different types of data into a common set of rules for faster processing, while RE:UI is built to provide AI-assisted optimisation the RE: engine's development tools—sort-of like adding DLSS support for Blender.

Alongside these are tools designed to make the process of game development itself faster. There's a program called RE: Runtime, which apparently allows the engine to animate large numbers of objects and characters in groups—rather than running those real-time animations individually. Most intriguing is RE: Flows. This is apparently designed to simplify the implementation of game mechanic ideas, then convert them into a standardised programming language. This sounds vibe coding-adjacent to me, though it's hard to say for certain without seeing it in action.

According to Gamebiz, Capcom says it wants to integrate all these ideas into RE Engine for several reasons. First, modern games are so massive and technically complex that data management is a huge challenge and making changes to that data takes a long time. Second, more than 2,000 people now use RE Engine, including people from many different nationalities, so Capcom wants to create a system that is universally understandable. Third, AI technology is rapidly evolving and is essential for streamlining development—a somewhat arbitrary justification that I'm not convinced by.

Broadly though, these plans fall in line with Capcom's previously declared stance on AI, where the publisher stated it "will not implement assets generated by AI into our game content", but would use it to "enhance efficiency and boost productivity" in its development pipeline. Certainly, none of these tools appear designed to create art or character models and so forth, though it seems like some of them would require AI generated or AI assisted code to function.

It's also worth noting that Capcom's approach to development has worked pretty well for it over the last ten years, earning a reputation as one of the most reliable developers around. While I can understand the desire to make game development faster and more efficient, as the old adage goes, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".

I was brought up with the mindset that when you start something you should see it through to the end, even if it gets a bit tricky. So perhaps that's why Resident Evil dropping its in-built Roman numerals irks me so.

It all started with Resident Evil: 7 Biohazard where the Roman numerals for seven were shoved into the 'Evil' and then continued with Resident Evil: Village. So, in the lead up to Resident Evil 9 I was on tenterhooks, eager to find out how Capcom was going to incorporate IX into its title.

I had my own theories, settling on Helix or Appendix as my favourite options. It made sense in my head, what with their respective links to DNA as well as the T-virus, and an icky body part that simultaneously means something that comes at the end of a story—I really liked appendix.

Alas, we didn't get either or those—we didn't get an IX at all—we got Resident Evil Requiem.

I made my peace with Requiem, it has cool connotations for the game, referring to a prayer for the soul of the deceased or a general act of remembering someone who has died. I also saw one promotional image that turned the 'q' in Requiem into the number nine, so that's something, maybe. But wait, there's more.

Resident Evil's executive producer Jun Takeuchi has revealed in chat with Japanese press for RE's 30th anniversary (via GamesRadar) that the name Requiem holds much more than just the above, bog-standard meaning:

"Let me give you a hint: 'Requiem' isn't just a title chosen for its meaning of 'requiem.' The spelling of Requiem (REQUIEM) contains not only the 'RE (response)' mentioned earlier, but also a 'Q (question).' In other words, this 'Requiem' presents both an 'answer' and a 'question.' I will explain the meaning of that at some point in the future."

Yeah, I don't think I'm entirely on board with this breakdown of Requiem. I guess it makes sense but it's also giving off GCSE English blue curtain vibes. I am, however, intrigued to find out more about this in the future, and perhaps we can also discover what the rest of Requiem stands for. Who knows, it could go something like: 'U' for you the player, 'I' for me, the player, 'E' for evil residents, and 'M' for me, the player, again (I get two because I'm special).

Today's basically a national holiday for Resident Evil fans. September 30 marks 28 years since the day the cop inside Leon S Kennedy died, the day he'll never forget; when Raccoon City was wiped out by Umbrella's classic mishandling of bioweapons in Resident Evil 2.

So to celebrate the day that made Leon S Kennedy who he is, I've collated all the most traumatic experiences I've had in Resident Evil games:

But enough about me and all my trauma, what about you guys? I'd be morbidly interested to know what your most traumatic memories from Resident Evil are. But please, no more chase scenes, my heart can't take it.

I wouldn't take the overtime.

The fact that Bryan was forced down this spiral of blood, guts, and tears just because he thought he could make a bit more cash is simultaneously the most realistic and tragic aspect of the new Resident Evil movie.

And honestly, I get it. Who doesn't need a bit of extra money right now? So if my hands were really tied and I didn't have any choice about taking the package into Raccoon City, here's what I'd really do differently.

Spoilers ahead for the Resident Evil film

• Don't call and drive. Even if your girlfriend's angry at you, jeopardising your safety on an icy road is never the answer.
• I wouldn't have thrown the ladder at the dog because that's not nice. Although I also wouldn't get that close to it.
• Getting a snack is a good shout although I'd miss out the milk as I'm lactose intolerant.
• No way in hell I'd open the door in the RV.
• I'd have snatched those car keys so fast.
• In the interest of preserving bullets, I'd have taken a close range shot at the padlock first.
• Take the stairs, man. Yes, I would have complained about it the whole way up, but the elevator is out of order for a reason.
• I would like to think that I'd tell the scientists I was infected and hopefully reason with them to give me the antidote, but in all honestly I probably would have gone out like Bryan.

But the main difference between Bryan and I (other than taking the overtime), would be that I would not have followed that lady into the woods. I know that's bad after hitting her with my car, and I would call for help. But come on: anyone who just walks off a hit like that is not alright and should not be buckled into the passenger seat next to you. That's scary movie rule number one.

You may have qualms about my top picks for changeable Resident Evil villains, but I will die on this hill. Let me tell you why.

Donna Beneviento would be the easiest to change, for sure. I could already tell in Resident Evil Village that her heart wasn't in it, and I think all I'd have to do is say some nice things about her dolls and then bingo, she's on a better, healthier path.

Surprisingly, I think the same goes for Alex Wesker. Yes, she's got a god-complex, but I think I could use that to my advantage, because at the end of the day all a god-complex is is a need to be liked mixed in with some good old fashioned narcissism, and I've managed a fair few people with that. Plus I have low blood iron so she probably wouldn't want to snatch my body.

Then we get into trickier territory. Albert Wesker and T-00 (Mr. X).

My first step with T-00 would be to ditch the rocket launcher. I know this is risky, but fear is not a healthy emotion to build fruitful discussions around, and trust is a two way street. The next course of action I'd take would be giving him a real name. Mr. X is cool if you're a villain in a '90s Saturday morning cartoon, but it's a bit too formal. I think he looks like a Jeff and suspect he'd appreciate being humanised.

When it comes to Albert Wesker I have nothing else to back up my claim that I could change him other than a feeling in my bones that I could do it and the fact I have a winning smile and a can-do attitude.

But I'd like to hear from you guys, too. Do you think you could change any or all of the Resident Evil villains for good? And if you'd even want to talk to Salvatore Moreau (aka fish boy from Resident Evil Village)—it's a no from me.

It's impossible to gauge a wider community's feelings towards something, thanks to the simple problem of 'the angriest usually shout the loudest', and even if they're the minority, it usually doesn't sound like it. I've had this problem with a lot of things, but Zach Cregger's upcoming Resident Evil film is the latest victim.

Despite some promising trailers, some fans just can't get behind this film. People have complained about it existing outside of the games—running parallel to the events of Resident Evil 2 instead of a shot for shot imitation. The fact that it will include some liberal interpretations of what the T-virus is capable of has also ruffled some feathers. To which I say, Tolstoy got it right—If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.

I'm going to get crucified for saying this, but here it goes: some fans get too caught up in 'lore accuracy'. Yes I'd be pissed if Zach Cregger started trying to drastically change iconic elements of Resident Evil, like erasing Umbrella from the records or renaming Raccoon City to Badger Town (even though that kind of slaps). But I think we need to have more faith in Cregger, given his clear love of the games and outstanding filmography, which includes bangers like Barbarian and Weapons—bro knows how to make an outstanding horror film.

Lore-abiding citizens

I'm not convinced by the argument that this film will just be a good horror movie, rather than a good Resident Evil adaptation for lore-specific reasons, either. Especially given how liberal Capcom itself has been with the 'established truth' in Resident Evil.

While the main story remains the same across the originals and remakes, some smaller details have been changed for the sake of creating a better story, or just for funsies. One example that comes to mind is Krauser's allegiance in Resident Evil 4. In the original, he's working for Wesker and is sent to grab a sample of the ambfer, but in the remake he's on Saddler's side, working as one of his henchmen. Why change this? Well, it connects to another change the remake made: making Saddler more menacing and mysterious.

Instead of having him wander around the village and speaking to Leon directly, Saddler works in the shadows during the remake and only shows himself more towards the end of the game. But this means he's not out and about for vital moments, and someone had to grab the amber for him. If Krauser had just taken it back to Wesker then the game would have ended there and then, a real anti-climax. So the decision was made to turn Krauser into Saddler's henchman, so he could chill out in his evil lair while also progressing the story.

Likewise, Capcom changed Brad Vickers' death in the Resident Evil 3 remake, having him bitten by some joe-schmo zombie while saving Jill instead of getting turned into a shish kebab by Nemesis.

When did the outbreak kick off in Raccoon City? Well if you're going off the original games, there'd been several outbreak scenarios by September 25th and the city is already feeling it, Resident Evil 3 which was made in conjunction with Resident Evil 2 at the time even added a military blockade which wasn't there when Leon and Claire entered the city. But the Resident Evil 2 and 3 remakes make it clear that September 25th is the main start, with just one example of a 'cannibal' case being cited a few weeks prior.

Capcom's most recent entry into the series, Resident Evil Requiem, actually takes some lore from the Outbreak spin-off series, which contradicts Resident Evil 2 and 3 in parts. It also uses Leon's original story of being late for his first day at the RPD instead of the remake retelling which says he was told to stay away, and decides that Raccoon City wasn't completely destroyed after the thermobaric missile.

Let's also not forget that Requiem does a 180 on Spencer's character. Turning one of the most inhumane villains in the series into a remorseful old man whose last act in this world is to undo his life's work in an attempt to make the world a better place. That was wild.

But one of the funniest decisions Requiem made was Zeno. It was so clear that the devs wanted to drag Wesker up from the bottom of that volcano, but just couldn't justify it, so they just went 'fuck it, there's a clone of Wesker who is genetically predisposed to wearing trenchcoats and sunglasses'—but I thought Zeno was great, so no complaints here.

I don't mean to nitpick any of this—that's not the point. In fact, I really appreciate how Capcom treats Resident Evil as an ever-evolving story. Not having to be unwaveringly loyal to the lore means the team can make the best games possible, which sometimes means changing old choices so it works better now. The latest games in the series and remakes are better for it.

The T-virus has also been shown as an ever evolving threat, with Requiem adding a twist which makes the infected remember and reenact their most prominent memories whether that be cleaning, cooking, or eating loads and getting angry. So I think Cregger is well within his rights to play on how the T-virus will affect the infected in his film.

For me, the key to a good Resident Evil adaptation is all in the vibes—understanding what makes these games so scary and how to best honour its survival horror roots, which it seems Cregger gets. But as with everything, you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. Even if I am super excited to see a Resident Evil movie that understands vibes over a strict adherence to lore, I'll wait until I see the film to judge it fairly.

So give Cregger some grace for pete's sake. I, for one, am just happy the whole film industry hasn't been forever scared off from trying to adapt the games by Paul W. S. Anderson.

Zach Cregger has a brilliant track record of directing horror films that are both horrifying and hilarious (at times). Weapons and Barbarian had moments of levity which made each respective film so much more bearable to sit through. Cregger is trying to do the same with his upcoming survival horror film, Resident Evil, the only problem was he did too good of a job at first.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter Cregger revealed that one change he made after Resident Evil was shown at test screens was to dial down the jokes. "I learned that people really liked the movie, but they thought it was too funny," Cregger explains. "So over the course of my testing, I stripped out as much of the jokes as possible."

Resident Evil isn't averse to a good quip or wise-crack—that's like 40% of Leon Kennedy's personality—but its humour only works so well because it happens infrequently. Leon's almost constant stream of action film-style one liners is one of the many reasons as to why I wouldn't class Resident Evil 4 as a horror game at all. And while there are certainly protagonists in other Resident Evil games who know how to joke around, like Ethan Winters, they are more serious than not.

Too many jokes in a horror film wouldn't work for the same reason they don't when packed into games. The point of a light-hearted moment amidst the horror is to provide some respite for viewers who have had their nervous system stretched and strained almost beyond tolerance—there's a reason it's called comic relief. You want to settle their hearts and blood pressure just enough to ensure they don't break and clock out of the movie entirely, so you can carry on scaring them. "A little bit of humour goes a long way in a horror movie," Cregger adds.

But too many jokes can turn it into a gimmick. A horror film with rabid zombies doing weird stuff is already a bit fantastical—add loads of jokes and then it'd just lose all of its atmosphere. So it comes as no surprise that after some of the jokes were removed Cregger "found that not only did the audience enjoy the movie more, but I also liked the movie a lot more." I'm sure the Resident Evil film will be better off for it.

I came to Onimusha: Way of the Sword for the sick samurai action, but I stayed for the surprisingly engaging, funny, and heartfelt storytelling. Musashi Miyamoto has made it into my top five all-time favourite protagonists, but the great character development doesn't just stop with him: Shizuka Gozen, Dokyo, and Sasaki Ganryu all deserve their flowers, and as it turns out, one of them is getting some.

Mild spoilers for Onimusha: Way of the Sword ahead.

An Onimusha: Way of the Sword prequel webcomic has dropped seemingly out of nowhere, and it follows my second favourite character, Sasaki Ganryu. The story starts with Ganryu battling Musashi and ultimately suffering a humiliating defeat. According to the official Webtoons page "what follows is a bloody quest to reclaim his honor that leads him down a path of madness and obsession," as he stumbles across an oni gauntlet that gives him more power than he could've ever imagined.

The comic begins before the opening of the game, with its first chapter taking place on a deserted island where Ganyru is waiting to fight Musashi. The fight itself doesn't last long, as Musashi makes quick work of him with a paddle, before announcing he's headed over to Kyoto and jumping into the sea and swimming back to the mainland.

Ganryu obviously doesn't heed Musashi's warning not to follow him and after shaking off his bloody defeat catches a boat so he can follow Musashi because he's "the only swordsman who gets my blood boiling"; jeez guys, get a room.

There's no word as to how long this webcomic will last, though, so it's anyone's guess as to what its later chapters will include. It may end with their fight at Kiyomizu Temple as that would link the webcomic to the game pretty seamlessly. Although, I really hope it doesn't stop there.

I'd love for it to bleed into the game and cover Ganryu's descent into madness after his loss at the temple and before their fight at Arashiyama. Ganryu was already showing signs of a breaking at Kiyomizu Temple, but he's like a completely different person when you see him in Kyoto with his corrupted Oni Lady.

I'm already well into my second playthrough on its Carnage level difficulty, before long I'll have to move onto whatever next game climbs to the top of my to-do list. But at the very least I'll have this webcomic as a solid source of Musashi and Ganryu content; that'll help me through the dark days ahead.

After months of complaining about Zach Cregger's Resident Evil film, the internet has finally broken him. In a recent interview with IGN, he admitted how naive he was to think that everyone would be excited, and apologised for not creating the specific vision that those who are unhappy with the film's direction have. Instead, Cregger relied on his own instincts as a renowned director and writer—the nerve.

"I was naive," Cregger says. "I thought that fans of these games, like me, would be thrilled that somebody was coming along and turning Resident Evil into a survival horror movie." It's not naive to think that some fans of the games would be excited for this film, because they are—myself included. But there's nothing on this earth that can unite an internet full of bots, rage baiters, and those whose favourite hobby is being pissed off.

"I didn't really appreciate the sentiment that [players] have been waiting forever for Leon's story, and I appreciate that," Cregger continues. "And I'm sorry that that's not the story that I'm bringing here. I understand the frustration." That's very nice of Cregger to say, but I don't know a single Resident Evil fan that actually thinks Leon's story should be explored via a live-action film. Because that would suck.

Yes, we always want more Leon—that's one of the few certainties of this life. But it would be nigh impossible to cast an actor as Leon and have the community actually accept him. The only solution would be to do an animated series, but again, that's not without its pitfalls. If we do get more Leon, I would want it to be through DLCs or standalone games, because the best part about Leon Kennedy is getting to play as Leon Kennedy.

"I understand [the frustration] so well because I haven't seen the earlier movies, because they don't look like the Resident Evil I love," Cregger adds. "So how could I be frustrated with fans who have that same attitude? My only hope is that they will see the movie, regardless of their scepticism or their disappointment and that they will feel seen when they do watch the movie and they will recognise all of the love for the games that is in this movie. Because it is there, and this is not just me telling a story and slapping Resident Evil on it so I can get a budget. This is me telling a Resident Evil story."

It seems like Cregger is just trying to be nice—which is admirable, but ultimately pointless on the internet. Some people will like the upcoming Resident Evil movie and some people won't, there isn't much else to it. But I doubt many will change once they've made their mind up about it either way—even if Cregger is making it "from a true place of love".

Resident Evil is one of those series which rewards nosey players. There's always notes, recordings, and pictures hidden in the cracks and crevices, all of which give players more info. Whether that be the structural integrity, of Mr. X's trench coat or the fact that Grace Ashcroft has absolutely zero social life.

But it's not just all about notes—there's also a great deal of information given in Resident Evil games via their seemingly throwaway voice lines. So, with that in mind, one leaker has just found the motherlode.

Notable community modder Keff0 has posted two videos to YouTube over the last week. One goes through over 600 cut voice lines from the Resident Evil 4 remake, and the other explores nearly 400 cut voice lines from Resident Evil Requiem.

The Resident Evil 4 remake deep dive into the scrapped voice lines is certainly interesting, as we hear more from Leon, Ashley, Luis, and the Merchant. Hearing more from Leon is always a win, but the prize for 'most notable cut voice' line has to go to the Merchant, as he sneaks in a reference to Resident Evil Village.

"Ah, I see you're no stranger to villages," the Merchant says in a cut line from the RE4 remake. "The Duke? Lad shows promise." This is likely referring to The Duke from Resident Evil Village, who acts as the resident merchant and something of a guide to Ethan Winters.

Funny thing is, The Duke has also mentioned RE4's Merchant before, saying "What're ya buyin?" to Ethan before joking that it was "just something an old friend of mine used to say."

Both characters are also similar in that they seem omnipresent, omniscient, and unkillable, popping up at random across the map unscathed and knowing far more about what's going on than they perhaps should. Although the Merchant may not be as immortal as he once seemed, as Keff0 also uncovered unused animations for their death scene, suggesting that at one point during development players were able to kill him.

The cut voice lines for Requiem may not hold any connections to different Resident Evil games, but they do have masses of information about its characters and, crucially, the infected.

We already knew that the strain of the T-virus in Requiem was slightly different, in that it allowed infected to retain some memories of their past life and repeat some familiar actions like scrubbing the floors, eating, or singing. If you listened closely as well you could also hear the infected crying and asking for forgiveness.

But thanks to the cut voice lines found by Keff0, we now know that it could've been so much worse. Burning zombies would beg for water while screaming about how much the flames hurt. The huge Chunk would plead that he didn't want to die and cry about how stressed he was. Some infected would even thank you once you put them out of their misery.

The lines we did get were certainly enough to hammer home just how tragic it all was. But I can't help but feel a little sad that we missed out on some of these. I think I would've actually felt sorry for Chunk had I heard him whining about how stressed he was—it's certainly relatable.

Then there's Leon's cut lines. Most of them are just his usual grunts and groans along with some spider-themed quips—there's so many spider quips. But the most interesting line comes towards the end of the game, when he's really starting to suffer the effects of his infection and multiple monstrous fights: "I promise I'll make it home."

It may not seem like a lot. But given how sombre Leon's been ever since Resident Evil 2, it's actually quite significant that Leon came back to Raccoon City not as some hail mary mission to save Sherry and redeem his previous shortcomings, but with the intention of moving on and living his life away from its shadow.

Sadly, we were never going to be able to have all of these lines in Requiem or the Resident Evil 4 remake—there simply isn't the space to fit them all in. But at least we got to see what could have been.

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.

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.

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.

What's the weirdest bit of Resident Evil lore you know of? Is it the fact that Claire Redfield's favourite food is a cheeseburger? Maybe it's that Hunk spent a week lost in Raccoon City's sewers eating rats after getting his ass beaten by Birkin? Or perhaps it's that the Tyrant's trench coat is more than just a bold fashion statement—it's actually integral to the build.

There's been a few explanations as to why Tyrants wear trench coats in Resident Evil games. One perk of the coat is that it helps disguise the mutations, which allows Tyrants to infiltrate more sensitive areas, but its biggest bonus is its power-limiting function. Wearing the trench coat holds the Tyrant together by preventing out-of-control mutations, and if it's damaged or the Tyrant removes it you'll get a Super Tyrant.

You'd be forgiven for not knowing this as it's not exactly a widely talked about tidbit, which is exactly why Zach Cregger, director of the upcoming Resident Evil movie, is staying away from Resident Evil's deep lore: to keep the film as grounded as possible.

"Some of the Resident Evil games get a little magical," Cregger says during a recent junket (via DiscussingFilm). "You know we have a woman who can turn into birds [he means Mother Miranda] and fly around. I love it, I love it, I've played [Resident Evil 8] a bunch of times, I think it's an awesome game, but in terms of me making a movie out of it, it's like I gotta try and limit some of the wild aspects of Resident Evil.

"So I chose to stick with the T-virus, keep it as grounded as possible. So that means I'm not going to have a gigantic jacked dude in a trench coat, because I'm like, 'Where'd the coat come from? How did he get the coat?'"

The was, expectedly, met with a flurry of fury as some accused Cregger of not understanding the intricacies of Resident Evil. But they've failed to see that Cregger actually does understand "why [the Tyrant] exists and why he has the coat". It's not that Cregger doesn't know about the structural integrity of the trench coat, it's just that he doesn't believe it's valuable information for a film, and he's right.

There's so much to Resident Evil that it's completely unrealistic to think that anyone could condense it all down into a manageable chunk for a film which will likely be under two hours long. It also has to appeal to more than just fans of the game: Someone who has never heard of Resident Evil should be able to watch this film and have a good time without getting confused or bogged down in excessive lore and fan service. Striking that balance is truly an artform.

Kane Parsons actually managed to pull this off with his Backrooms movie. For those who were knowledgeable about Backrooms the film was full of references and easter eggs, like Clarks furniture store being a reference the photo that inspired the Backrooms as well as other small info dumps about Parsons' Backrooms YouTube series. But you didn't need any prior knowledge to enjoy the film, which is what I think Cregger is gunning for with Resident Evil.

"In the world of this [film] where the outbreak just happened, I want to keep it chaotic, I want to keep it primal, and I want to just keep it just as grounded as I can," Cregger says. "The T-virus has all kinds of cool and fun mutations—that is enough. So I'm limiting it there."

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

I have high expectations for Zach Cregger's upcoming Resident Evil film. As a superb director and seemingly a genuine fan of the games it really feels as if he's got the vibe of Resident Evil down, demonstrated by his inclusion of little easter eggs, choice of location, and now choice to highlight a staple of the Resident Evil games: their resource management.

"I love the resource management aspect of the games and it was really important to me to bring that to the movie," Cregger says in a Reddit AMA. He loves it so much, in fact, that viewers will be able to follow the protagonist Bryan's management.

"You will know how many bullets are in his gun," Cregger adds. "You will care when he misses a shot. That's one of the things that makes the games feel so intense and it translates really well into the film (in my opinion)."

One of the funniest clips I've seen from the Resident Evil film so far has to be Bryan cautiously lining up a shot at a padlock hanging from a door handle, sheepishly covering his ear with his spare hand, and then missing the shot. As someone who knows what the pain of wasting ammo in a RE game feels like, that resonated in my soul.

But it's not all just about ammo, as with any survival horror game, healing supplies are also at a premium. "I also want viewers to be keenly aware of his health as he progresses," Cregger adds. "Won't say much about that but it's another way to utilize the game mechanic that heightens the narrative engine of the movie."

I can think of several ways in which Cregger may be able to implement some health mechanics from the games. If he wants to reference earlier Resident Evil games, there could be a scene wherein Bryan is hooked up to a ECG monitor that's bright red if he's in particularly bad shape. There's obviously the classic limp that Bryan will probably do if he's hurt—although that's less of a reference to Resident Evil 4 and more of a reference to hurting your leg really bad.

Something that could look cool if done correctly could even be using screen effects on a first-person POV, which we've seen in recent games. Something like Bryan's sight having a red hue as his eyes fill with blood—it could go nicely with some loud and rapid heartbeat noises. Cregger has even previously discussed how the film will have a few first-person POV scenes.

But what I want more than anything else isn't to see Bryan blue or bloody—I want to see him try and organise an attache case like it's some twisted game of Tetris, ultimately failing to find a space for just one more bag of scraps. On the flip side, it'd be fun to see Bryan start to encounter more handgun ammo after he picks up a random silver case—I have a feeling he'll need it as well.

Something's wrong with me. No matter how many horror games I play, I just can't get scared like I used to. Perhaps I'm the problem—maybe a decade of playing horror games pretty much non-stop has irrevocably altered my brain chemistry.

Take Resident Evil Requiem, for example—that just doesn't make the cut for a horror game in my book. Apart from the first five minutes in the underground cells, there just wasn't anything that felt particularly scary. In fact, I don't believe that any horror game that gives me a gun can be scary, except for Amnesia: The Bunker—I genuinely thought that game was going to kill me.

Again, I find myself thinking that there's something up with my nervous system, because even Hideki Kamiya, director of Resident Evil 2, would disagree with me. He believes that Capcom has become blind to just how scary its recent games have become.

"I've never been a fan of horror. I mean, even from the time I was young, I could never handle it," Kamiya says in an interview with VGC. "I don’t like horror, and I don’t like scary things. I'm not able to make it through scary movies, and that was even the case back in the day.

"But nowadays, with how photorealistic and high-fidelity video games have gotten, the amount of crazy, horrifying things that people are able to put on the screen is absolutely insane, and I think anybody who's on the Resident Evil teams at Capcom, at this point, they must all be completely numb to how scary the thing they’re making is."

Kamiya has previously pitched a cutesy Resident Evil game, complete with Leon fishing in the countryside, foraging for wild veggies, baking bread, and walking his dog. It's either that or Capcom adding a "not scary mode" for its games, "where the zombies get all cute, the blood splatters turn into cherry blossom petals, the music becomes this upbeat, feel-good kind of tune, and you can just purely enjoy the puzzles and battles in a fun mood."

I do find it quite difficult pitching Resident Evil and others like it to my friends who won't touch horror games with a barge pole. It does seem a shame that these fantastic stories and characters are locked behind the requirement of a broken amygdala.

"Just recently this year we had Resident Evil Requiem and the big return of Leon Kennedy, and he went back to Raccoon City, and he's reliving all of those memories and all of those experiences," Kamiya says. "As somebody who directed that original game, Resident Evil 2, I was curious to know how that panned out for him. I wanted to experience that myself as a player, but the game was way too scary, and I couldn't."

Now that's a shame. Maybe Capcom has gone awry if even the director of one of, if not the, most iconic Resident Evil games is barred from accessing its recent games. "I legitimately wished it would include some kind of non-horror mode for people like me," Kamiya adds. "I talk to folks who are on the Resident Evil teams at Capcom just privately, and I tell them that their games are way too scary, and they're like, 'what, come on, they’re not that scary'. They seriously seem to have no awareness of how scary the things they make actually are, so I really hope they address that at some point."

While I do think adding a softer mode that could make the games accessible to more people may be fun, like The Dark Pictures Anthology's cinematic mode, I don't want Capcom to pull its horror punches. I actually want Capcom to go to the other extreme and experiment with more Resident Evil 7-likes which are suffocatingly terrifying. But maybe there's something wrong with me.

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.

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.

I wouldn't dream of telling you how to live your life, but if you're planning to play Onimusha: Way of the Sword on September 3, that gives you one weekend and approximately 120 waking hours to fill with samurai movies before the game's release. What else are you going to do—not watch so many classic Japanese films that you intuitively know how to walk the path of the blade the moment you pick up a controller as Miyamoto Musashi? Seems like a bad way to live to me.

But okay, benefit of the doubt: Maybe you're not planning to spend every second of the next week with your eyes peeled open going nuts on the Criterion Channel samurai tag because you have some appropriate gaming plans already established. Perfectly reasonable to devote the hours you could spend watching Akira Kurosawa's whole oeuvre to playing the remasters of the first two Onimusha games, Onimusha: Warlords and Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny, which are only about 3½ and 8½ hours long, respectively. You might even be able to rush through the first game more quickly than you could watch Seven Samurai!

Otherwise I can't think of any particularly good excuses. Job? Eh. Cooking? C'mon. Loved ones? The samurai code demands sacrifice for a greater purpose.

Assuming you're not yet ready to devote yourself wholly to such a singularly focused existence, here's a small selection of great samurai films you can watch between now and next Friday, each of which I think makes for a particularly good appetizer for Onimusha: Way of the Sword. Lemme tell you why.

Sword of the Stranger

Stream on: Crunchyroll | Buy on: Blu-ray

You're going to spend a lot of Onimusha parrying viciously fast sword swings, the likes of which have never been animated on film better than they are in Sword of the Stranger. This 2007 anime isn't as famous as it deserves to be: one of the best samurai films of the last 20 years, it throws a classic "wrong place, wrong time" ronin hero into a plot involving the emperor of the Chinese Ming dynasty. It's the rare jidaigeki flick to involve foreign characters—both the protagonist and his rival—while still feeling fully centered on the Japanese perspective. The Last Samurai it ain't.

Really, though, we're just here for the fights. Studio Bones, known for Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, My Hero Academia, and Mob Psycho 100, put in the work here. Despite the name on the video above, I promise there's even better in the full film.

Yojimbo

Stream on: Criterion Channel | Buy on: Blu-ray | Rent on: Prime Video, Apple TV

In Toshiro Mifune's definitive samurai performance, he stars as a cunning ronin playing two rival bands of criminals against each other in a small Japanese village. It's a classic plot, originating decades earlier in the American pulp crime novel Red Harvest and later remade as the spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars, and it rocks in every single form.

The reason to watch Yojimbo specifically, though (other than it being one of the most acclaimed films by one of the most acclaimed directors of all time, nbd) is to see Mifune roll his shoulders, scratch his head, smirk, and furrow his brow. He does so much acting even when he's not saying a word, delivering a performance that conjures up a vivid character despite how little we know about him. I have no doubt Capcom pored over every microscopic detail of Yojimbo with Mifune in the frame while recreating his face and mannerisms for Way of the Sword.

The Sword of Doom

Stream on: Criterion Channel | Buy on: Blu-ray | Rent on: Prime Video, Apple TV

Noble, clever, fierce, brave; these are often the qualities of the heroes in samurai films, particularly the ones typically played by Mifune. Sometimes, instead, you get the coward or the trickster. Ryunosuke, in The Sword of Doom, is none of these things. He's evil incarnate, a psychopathic killer who murders his way through quite possibly the starkest, most nihilistic Japanese film of the 1960s.

Ryunosuke is not an anti-hero, but the cracked mirror image of an honorable samurai. To drive the point home, Mifune even shows up in a small role in Sword of Doom playing a wise, controlled master swordsman. The story here isn't about Musashi or his rival Sasaki Ganryu, but Ryunosuke has some spiritual similarities to Onimusha's depiction of Ganryu as a mad, jealous swordsman. Many films in this genre cover the same themes and emotional beats, but none of them look or feel like The Sword of Doom.

Ninja Scroll

Stream on: HiDive | Buy on: Blu-ray | Rent on: Prime Video, Apple TV

The Onimusha series dips into fantasy and sci-fi as it mixes Japanese folklore with stuff that must've started with someone at Capcom saying "this would be sick in a videogame"—like a magical gauntlet that sucks up demon souls to power up a famous samurai warrior. In Onimusha 2, samurai Jubei rides a robot horse and an ancient, magical machine-fish. That blend lends the game series a different flavor than the historical chanbara dramas that, melodramatic bits aside, tend to be fairly grounded.

Iconic early '90s anime Ninja Scroll, on the other hand, is very much not grounded. It's graphic and at times outright nasty, but pretty much delivered the all-timer version of 'a hero with a mysterious past fighting through a roster of increasingly fucked up henchmen on his way to the big bad.'

We've got a guy who turns his body to stone, one who can melt into shadows, and another who can reattach his severed body parts—all classic videogame boss behavior. I'd be surprised if more than a handful of developers on Capcom's Onimusha team haven't seen Ninja Scroll. If you're splitting hairs I guess it's not really a samurai movie, but no samurai I'm aware of can transform into a demon demigod, so I think it's close enough.

This is the only film on the list you should maybe wait to watch: a new 4K restoration is debuting in theaters in October.

Samurai trilogy: Musashi Miyamoto, Duel at Ichijoji Temple, Duel at Ganryu Island

Stream on: HBO Max, Criterion Channel | Buy on: Blu-ray | Rent on: Prime Video, Apple TV

Okay, I couldn't stop at just five movies—I'm cheating a bit, but for this final entry I had to include Toshiro Mifune's Samurai trilogy, starting with Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto. These 1954-1956 films come from early in Japan's post-war cinema revival (Godzilla and Seven Samurai were released in 1954 as well), and star Mifune playing the same character he plays in Onimusha: Way of the Sword, one of the country's most famous historical figures. There have been many, many adaptations of Musashi's life, but this is the one to watch for the broad strokes of his life, depicted in dreamy, vivid color and even more vivid melodrama.

Compared to the work Kurosawa was directing around the same time, they're not great films—the sword fights aren't very convincing and the intertwining romances and tragedies are as unnuanced as they come. Still, they're a perfect introduction to Musashi's story, with Mifune in the first film playing him as a wild, untameable ruffian before a Buddhist priest finally pushes him into learning the honorable ways of the samurai. In the second and third he's a markedly different person, pursuing stronger and stronger opponents before he reaches true enlightenment, choosing mercy over killing and honor over winning at all costs.

The second and third films focus increasingly on Musashi's rivalry with Sasaki Ganryu, which offers a great introduction to how their dynamic has classically been depicted ahead of Onimusha's adaptation. Watch the trilogy, and then imagine somewhere in the middle both samurai got their hands on magical gauntlets that turned them into superpowered demon warriors and you'll be primed for Way of the Sword.

If there's one thing I know about the upcoming Resident Evil film it's that the director Zach Cregger is doing the utmost to stay true to the series' roots. "I happen to worship these Resident Evil games and pull a lot of inspiration from the experience of playing them," Cregger reminds fans in a recent interview with DiscussingFilm.

I've already explained why this means he knows ball. But authenticity is a moving target for a series which just turned 30 years old, and has made some pretty monumental changes over the last three decades. Exactly what Cregger chooses to remain true to isn't as clear cut as some may think.

One example of this can be found in the latest teaser for the film, which shows a first-person camera angle of Bryan creeping through corridors and shooting down some speedy infected. An OG Resident Evil fan could faint at the sight of this, as traditionally, a third-person or fixed perspective were what you would see in a Resident Evil game. But this isn't the late 90s anymore, in fact, Resident Evil hasn't had an new exclusively third person perspective for almost a decade now.

Apart from that little hiccup at the start of 2000, 2017 was the first time Resident Evil scrapped the third person perspective with Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, with Capcom opting for a first-person perspective instead.

It was initially met with a negative knee-jerk reaction as players (myself included) feared that Resident Evil was about to be taken down a gimmicky FPS road, but we were wrong, and Biohazard managed to pull it off so well that first-person has now become a staple for the series with Resident Evil 8: Village and Requiem having both first and third person options. And dare I say, first-person suits Village better.

"This is an opportunity for me to be loyal to the games in spirit and in tone, and build a story that just puts you in that scenario again, and again, and again, with increasing stakes," Cregger adds, again reminding players that this adaptation isn't meant to be a 1:1 shot recreation of any of the games, but instead an amalgamation of ideas, traits, and vibes that the games employ.

In the same way, Cregger has explained that he's tried to recreate the game's progression by keeping "the environment changing every seven or eight minutes" always pushing the protagonist forward as if he's "moving onto another level." This is also helped by the fact that Bryan will move through weapons much like a protagonist in one of the games would: "You start with a pistol, and then you graduate to a shotgun, and then you graduate to a machine gun."

In the grand scheme of things, camera perspectives will play a small part in how successful the film is. But all these little nods to the games combined will serve as a solid foundation if Cregger manages to pull it all off, which I really hope he does.

Great news, if you're a fan of cool horror-action protagonists with quippy one liners or Grace Ashcroft, who doesn't want to be in said horror-action games but is trying her very best: We've got both coming to the Future Games Show this month, as the voice actors for both Leon Kennedy and Grace will be presenting a feast of games for you to sink your teeth into.

Nick Apostolides and Angela Sant'Albano are known, most recently, for their roles in Resident Evil Requiem—and they'll be helping our friends at the FGS show off over 40 games from both AAA and indie studios, including Tides of Annihilation and Onimusha: Way of the Sword.

PC Gamer's own Morgan Park was particularly taken with the latter, calling Onimusha: Way of the Sword "the best thing I saw at Summer Game Fest" last year, and its penchant for style even cracked Wes Fenlon's parry-averse heart when he played it back in August of the same year. It's one to keep an eye on.

"I can't wait to share an incredible lineup of games with fans around the world," Apostolides says, "Whether you’re into pulse-pounding horror, samurai adventures or anything in between, we’ve got first looks, exciting reveals and plenty of surprises in store."

Sant'Albano, unlike the understandably-terrified Ashcroft, is also giddy with excitement: "We’re putting the zombie-dodging to one side to bring you world premieres, exclusive gameplay reveals and brand-new trailers for some of the most exciting upcoming games. Nick and I can't wait to share it all with you—see you there!"

You can tune in August 26 at 1 pm EDT/6 pm BST, though there'll be more after the main show with FGS Live at Gamescom, which'll have even more previews and news from the packed, excited floors of the Koelnmesse. There'll also be the Best of Gamescom on August 30 at 1 pm EDT/6 pm BST, for recaps, developer interviews, and more.

You can watch on Twitch and YouTube alongside other platforms—including a sister stream from our friends over at GamesRadar+.

We're some ways out from the release of Resident Evil's Code: Veronica remake, but that hasn't stopped me or the other 1,999,999 eager players from wishlisting the game as Capcom celebrates an impressive milestone.

"2 million biscuits for the 2 million of you who've wishlisted Resident Evil Veronica, thank you," an official social media post reads alongside an image of that innocent old lady who definitely isn't Mother Miranda in disguise, nothing to see here guys.

The hype around Veronica may seem a bit strange at first. Back in the day Code: Veronica sold fewer copies compared to other Resi releases of the time (although that's probably thanks to the Dreamcast). Even with its positive critical reception at the time, some fans have looked back at its tricky design choices more unfavourably as of late. But I love three things in my life, Resident Evil, Chris, and Claire, so I'm pretty sure I'll love the remake.

In all seriousness, Code: Veronica's story, vibes, and locations were all immaculate, and its iffy controls are something I have no doubt the devs will improve, especially considering their track record. Yoshiaki Hirabayashi is producer and Kazunori Kadoi and Yasuhiro Anpo are directing the remake, all three of them previously worked on the Resident Evil 2 remake and the Resident Evil 4 remake; two games I was so sure didn't need remaking.

But somehow they managed to do them justice and make some ingenious changes that really improved my experience. One such example was how the team managed to make Ashley go from the most annoying thing to ever grace my screen to a helpful and likable companion who actually exhibited some personal growth over the course of the Resident Evil 4 remake. For that, I am thankful.

With that kind of expertise on hand it comes as no surprise to me that Resident Evil fans are eager to wishlist Veronica, even with just an announcement trailer to go off.

Dragon's Dogma 2 will be getting its first big proper chunk of DLC soon, and in addition to nixing those weird microtransactions that did more harm to word-of-mouth than the actual game, it's also slated to be getting a hard mode difficulty for players who have everything maxed out.

That's per a Q&A featured on the game's Steam page, where game director Kento Kinoshita stated: "We're working on a Hard Mode that will provide a satisfying challenge for seasoned players whose stats have reached, or are approaching, the level cap."

The actual hard mode itself doesn't have a release window, but it is coming, with producer Naoto Oyama adding: "Please stay tuned for further updates regarding the details of Hard Mode and its release window."

As for whether Dark Arisen itself will provide a meaty challenge for gamers looking to get thrashed about again, Kinoshita writes: "Both the Forsaken Dominion and Lost Rites are expansion contents, so we've designed them to offer battles with an even greater sense of tension and challenge than the main game.

"We're aware that there's a very wide range of player level across the community, so with that in mind, we're adjusting the balance so that everyone can enjoy the experience—whether they're just starting their adventure, still progressing through the game, or have already completed multiple playthroughs."

Kinoshita adds that, even in the normal mode of the DLC, "the difficulty gradually ramps up as players progress through the expansion content, with enemy encounters becoming increasingly challenging along the way. As players reach the middle and later stages of the content, we've balanced it so that even those who have already hit the stat cap can still enjoy a meaningful level of challenge."

So, to clarify, Dark Arisen will have endgame-appropriate fights—the future hard mode will simply add another layer of self-flagellation to the game which, despite some changes to its thorniness, is still known for being kind of hostile in a fun, wrestling-you-in-the-mud kind of way. I'm glad that those who've nonetheless tamed the game's grisly systems will have some real challenges in the future, however.

Capcom is on a roll. It had a successful year, what with the release of Resident Evil Requiem and Pragmata, the latter of which sold 2.5 million copies in just three months. And part of this continued success is thanks to all the remakes Capcom has under its belt.

"One of the reasons for creating remakes is producing a new entry in the Resident Evil series every year would be quite an undertaking and a difficult task," producer Masachika Kawata says in an interview with GameInformer. "So, being able to revisit older games and remake them helps Capcom meet that goal of releasing a Resident Evil title each year, but it also allows the team to continually challenge themselves and hone their craft.

"That’s not to say the remakes are any less important. In fact, they’re just as important as the mainline titles. Capcom is lucky enough to have found this cycle that can continue to provide us with the financial resources to create things like new entries in the Resident Evil series and completely new IP like Pragmata. So there is that relationship there."

There's no kidding that Capcom is in a very fortunate situation, one that I'm sure plenty of other studios are jealous of. It has access to a great deal of much-loved older games, and has also managed to crack the code when it comes to remaking them. I was a little unsure of the Resident Evil 4 remake before it was released—RE4 is my favourite of the bunch, and I was uncertain how Capcom could improve on that kind of greatness. But RE4's remake ended up being a thoughtful and massively worthwhile venture.

This isn't to say, however, that I'd want to see back-to-back Resident Evil remakes. Capcom has already hit the big ones after cycling through RE4, RE2, and even RE3, with a dwindling supply of nostalgia left, and I would much rather see this universe be expanded on, not just reiterated into oblivion. In a perfect world, we'd be getting far more original stories than remakes, but the world is anything but perfect.

"Maybe there are a lot of people out there who would like to see more spinoff titles or such (yup, that's me!), but honestly, the team is giving everything it has right now, working on things like our new entries like Requiem or remakes," Kawata says, "So honestly, at the moment, that’s where our efforts [are] being focused. We are so focused on pouring our energy into that, I don’t think there’s a whole lot left right now for a spinoff."

It seems like DLC's of mainline games take priority, with a Resident Evil Requiem DLC being scheduled for next year and rumours of one for the Code: Veronica remake coming out the year after that. I would certainly like to see more new ideas coming from Capcom, but it's hard to argue against the fact that it's clearly found a rhythm with these remakes and new games.

But just because Capcom has found a comfortable cadence doesn't mean the devs plan on getting complacent. Kawata himself says that new games like Pragmata "are absolutely necessary" when it comes to honing the development team's skills with "new challenges or situations for a game in a triple-A series."

"Creating new things is not just absolutely necessary for the games industry," Kawata adds. "It’s absolutely necessary for the entire entertainment industry. If you’re not doing new things, you’re just going to be repeating old things. And while that’s not necessarily bad in itself, you’re never really going to move forward that way."

Capcom just released its Q1 2026 financial report, and to absolutely no one's surprise, the company is doing well, really well. But to my surprise, so is Pragmata. As part of the report Capcom shared sales figures for its recent releases, and Pragmata sold more than 2.5 million copies since it was released earlier this year.

Now, to be clear this isn't because I think Pragmata is a bad game—I liked its old-timey shooter vibes and QTE hacking when I played its preview way back when. And Justin Wagner really loved its puzzles, main duo, and "poignant" narrative moments in our Pragmata review. But even still it's a completely new story from Capcom with no existing fanbase to go to bat for it.

I also felt that its release fell a little flat as hype seemingly petered out rather quickly—I certainly didn't feel the need to tell the world about my adventures around the collapsing moonbase. Nevertheless, I'm happy that Pragmata was successful and that it translated into healthy sales numbers. Hopefully this gives Capcom renewed confidence when it comes to pursuing new worlds and ideas.

Capcom also touts the Devil May Cry animated series and the latest Resident Evil game as facets that "helped to drive sales", with Resident Evil Requiem selling over 8 million copies since its release—a sizeable jump from its 6 million units sold back in March.

All of this success means that Capcom is "on track to achieve its full-year earnings forecast" as net sales increase 54.7% year-on-year, alongside a 66.9% year-on-year increase in operating profits. It's certainly a massive improvement on last year's report which was hampered by cratering Monster Hunter Wilds sales, falling more than 95% from its launch quarter. It ended up selling fewer copies in Q1 2025 than Devil May Cry 5, Resident Evil 4 remake, and Resident Evil Village—so yeah, it's only up from there.

I'm in such a bubble of positivity for Barbarian and Weapons director Zach Cregger's upcoming Resident Evil movie (out September 18) that I had no idea anyone was upset about it until I looked at the reactions to some of PC Gamer's coverage.

The movie is Resident Evil "in name and nothing else," one person wrote in reply to one of our social media posts.

As it turns out, some Resident Evil fans are unhappy that the film doesn't directly adapt any of the games, that it takes liberties with the setting—there were no iPhones or snow-covered streets in Resident Evil 2—and that it 'doesn't look like Resident Evil.'

It's true that the first trailer (embedded above) doesn't scream 'Resident Evil,' though I assume that's by design. Explicit references to the setting are withheld until after the title reveal, when we hear in the stinger that the protagonist's very bad day takes place in Raccoon City. Theater audiences are meant to go ooh and then connect the dots they missed earlier in the trailer, like the conspicuously-placed typewriter, a reference to Resident Evil's save locations.

But this is obviously not a straight adaptation of Resident Evil 2. Rather than putting existing Resident Evil characters and stories on the screen, Cregger says he's centering the player's experience.

"I want fans of the games to just know that I am a giant fan of the games," the director told ScreenRant recently. "I am making this movie to celebrate the games. I haven't seen the other movies.

"What I'm not doing in this is that I'm not going to cannibalize the characters and the stories that the games already do so well, because I'm not going to be able to improve on Leon. I feel like Leon exists in the games and anyone I cast and any haircut I give him or any line of dialogue I make him say, it's just not going to be Leon because Leon exists.

"What I'd rather do is tell an original story that lives in the world of the games, that obeys the rules of the games largely, but feels more like the experience you get when you're playing the games. That is leaning into the survival horror aspect of it—it's not survival action, it's survival horror."

That sounds like a great approach to me, though I do understand the desire for a more direct adaptation. By chance, I had just finished reading the first of the Foundation books when the Apple TV show based on the Isaac Asimov series came out, and was appalled by how little the show resembled what I'd just read. Some say the story as written was 'unadaptable,' but I'm not sure I ever think that's true.

That said, even if it's possible to make a good, direct adaptation of Resident Evil 2, there's a real chance you'd wind up with something that only a narrow band of filmgoers care about, or worse, that resembles a Tommy Wiseau flick.

(The game's opening cutscene features Leon casually saying "What's up with that guy?" while firing into a crowd of the first zombies he's ever seen in his life.)

The closest Capcom has come to greenlighting a direct, live action Resident Evil adaptation is the most recent film, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, which wasn't especially good. Before that were all the Milla Jovovich movies, and Milla Jovovich is not, in fact, a Resident Evil videogame character.

After seven not-all-that-great Resident Evil movies that also aren't direct adaptations of the games, it's not entirely clear to me why Cregger's approach is taking heat. It might partially be a reaction to the comedic undertones in the trailer. Cregger is funny, as his Whitest Kids U'Know sketch comedy career attests, and I get the sense that his Resident Evil movie will be laced with levity.

I'm looking forward to it. One of the best working horror directors of the moment making a movie based on a game series he personally loves is the kind of thing we could only dream about back in the day, when the closest thing to that you got were Uwe Boll flicks.

If this movie's no good, I'm sure there'll be more shots at adapting Resident Evil in the future, because not being very good hasn't stopped the film series from continuing thus far.

How are you feeling about what you've seen of Cregger's take on Raccoon City? There's a poll above, and comments below.

I am actually really excited for Zach Cregger's upcoming Resident Evil film. I think this may be the best chance there is for getting an actually good adaptation, mostly thanks to the fact that Cregger seems like a super fan who actually understands what makes the games so charming. In other words: he knows ball.

"I want fans of the games to just know that I am a giant fan of the games, I am making this movie to celebrate the games—I haven't seen the other movies," Cregger said during an interview with ScreenRant. "What I'm not doing in this is that I'm not going to cannibalise the characters and the stories that the games already do so well, because I'm not going to be able to improve on Leon. I feel like Leon exists in the games and anyone I cast and any haircut I give him or any line of dialogue I make him say it's just not going to be Leon because Leon exists.

"I feel like what I'd rather do is tell an original story that lives in the world of the games, that obeys the rules of the games largely, but feels like more of the experience you get when you're playing the games. That's leaning into the survival horror aspect of it—it's not survival action, it's survival horror."

As someone who has indeed watched the WS Anderson Resident Evil films this is actually a really good explanation of what the dividing line between a good and a bad resi film is. A film which embodies the survival action side of Resident Evil is incredibly hard, perhaps even impossible, to do well.

It just comes off as corny when watching film characters levitate and flip through a corridor full of red lasers or pull off inhuman stunts, whereas those same actions are cool as all hell when you're the one doing it in the games.

Whereas a Resident Evil film which instead chooses to play on the survival horror aspect of the games has a higher probability of doing well, because it's more grounded. That's not to say that Baron Harkonnen-looking zombie found in the sewer was realistic, it's just that the protagonists' actions and responses to said situation are more believable.

"What the games do well is they build this incredible atmosphere and this dread and this tension as you progress through these set pieces, and things just escalate, and escalate, and escalate," Cregger explains. "You always feel like you have not enough resources and you're wounded and the whole world is completely stacked against you—that's what makes Resident Evil so enjoyable for me to play. That's what this movie is built to do, to give you that slow dread tension and escalation that the games have perfected."

As part of an interview in the latest issue of GameInformer (spotted via GamesRadar), Capcom producer Masachika Kawata outlined the resurgent Japanese publisher's approach to Resident Evil: Quality and quantity, with remakes bolstering the process and helping fund the development of more adventurous projects.

According to Kawata, Capcom would like Resident Evil to be a fully annual franchise, but "producing a new entry in the Resident Evil series every year would be quite an undertaking and a difficult task." That's where the remakes come in.

"Being able to revisit older games and remake them helps Capcom meet that goal of releasing a Resident Evil title each year, but it also allows the team to continually challenge themselves and hone their craft," said Kawata. "That's not to say the remakes are any less important. In fact, they're just as important as the mainline titles.

"Capcom is lucky enough to have found this cycle that can continue to provide us with the financial resources to create things like new entries in the Resident Evil series and completely new IP like Pragmata. So there is that relationship there."

Phrases like "every year" tend to get my dander up when it comes to game development, but Capcom has a track record as perhaps one of the most successful and, crucially, healthy game publishers of the 2020s. After a mixed decade-plus in the late aughts and early '10s, it's been hit after hit since the one-two punch of Street Fighter 5 in 2016 and Resident Evil 7 in 2017.

Even its less beloved recent games⁠—like the RE3 remake or Monster Hunter Wilds⁠—have their defenders (not to mention profitable sales figures). Other publishers and developers at Capcom's scale have sloughed off staff and struggled to release games in a timely fashion, but the long-lived giant just keeps trucking.

As GamesRadar pointed out, though, we're running out of runway on Resident Evil remakes after this year's Code Veronica. The OG RE1 GameCube remake was a perfect game I don't think you could improve on⁠—though that didn't stop Capcom from trying with RE4. After that, you've got some pretty mixed reputation entries up for grabs in Residents Evil 0, 5, and 6. I'm not a fan of the three, but as PCG news writer Joshua Wolens has pointed out, why not remake flawed games into good ones instead of mucking up something that already works? Though, the less said about Resident Evil's real stinkers like Survivor or Dead Aim, the better.

18 months after release, Capcom is slashing the price on Monster Hunter Wilds and discontinuing three of its bundles in favour of… three different bundles. Okay, cool.

The change is coming in starting from August 3 or August 4, depending on where you are in the world. For the bundles, it seems like a little bit of shuffling and consolidation is happening. Its Deluxe Edition, Premium Deluxe Edition, and Cosmetic DLC Pass are being retired in favour of the following:

• Gold Edition: Base game plus the below Cosmetic DLC Collection
• Cosmetic DLC Collection: Has everything from the first four DLC packs, Festival Accord DLC, Deluxe Pack, and the below Extra Cosmetics DLC Pack
• Extras Cosmetic DLC Pack: Includes "select paid cosmetic DLC only previously available as standalone products."

It's all a tad confusing—probably thanks to the fact there are almost 200 extra items you can fork out money for, according to the Steam DLC page for the game—but it mostly seems like Capcom is trying to stuff all the microtransactions into a bigger bundle, since the Premium Deluxe Edition currently only offers everything from the first two packs.

The more interesting thing here, though, is what comes at the end of Capcom's announcement. "In addition, the Monster Hunter Wilds base game will receive a permanent MSRP reduction starting August 4, 2026."

There's not even a hint to how much Capcom will skim off the current price, which stands at a whopping $70. Its price point has been a bit of a point of contention since its release—you can scoop up both Monster Hunter: World and Monster Hunter Rise for less than one copy of Wilds, and some will argue that the former two are far more enjoyable games than the latter.

We do have another Capcom game as a loose frame of reference, though. Dragon's Dogma 2 recently underwent a permanent price cut—going from $70 to $40—though the game's been out almost an entire year longer than Wilds, so I'd imagine something a little less severe. Perhaps in the $50 to $60 range, I'd wager.

Either way, this feels like a net positive all around. I'm not a fan of endless, silly microtransactions, but neatening them up into a bigger bundle feels like a safe play. And a permanent price cut seems like a sensible choice for a game that, despite huge launch concurrents, never really found its footing and has ultimately settled into the realm of distinct averageness.

Back when Dragon's Dogma 2 released, getting somewhere was a hassle. I, myself, had one of my journeys utterly dismantled when my ox cart was ambushed, destroyed by my own pawn's ill-advised spell, and summarily attacked by a gryphon that stole me miles away from my original location.

That was somewhat addressed in a June patch that added the Eternal Ferrystone, which lets you teleport to one of your assigned Portcrystals from the map and, as the name suggests, didn't run out. It's counter to the deliberately thorny design of Dragon's Dogma 2 which, in my humble opinion, makes it appealing.

Still—it was enough of a pain point that Capcom saw fit to address it. And per an interview with Eurogamer, director Kenta Kinoshita maintains that its presence doesn't impact that original vision because, well, you don't gotta use it:

"I feel that we're not forcing anyone to fast travel anywhere; we're just giving those who wish to take that option an alternative—even if they don't use it every time. I'm sure every player has times when retracing the path from the main town back to where they're going, yet again, where they will feel the game is getting repetitive. And everyone has real-world time constraints, so they don't want every session to feel that lengthy. Sometimes you just need to get where you're going. That option is there for you now."

Kinoshita continues: "If a player wants to make a decision to remain in the high verisimilitude version of being an adventurer who has to walk everywhere—or they want to go in the middle and take the ox cart and take the risks that approach has—that's absolutely still an option. It's just you now have a third option."

And, look, maybe I'm just being a stubborn stick in the mud, but I'm not really sure I agree with Kinoshita, there. The presence of a more convenient option heavily impacts whether or not a player is going to use the alternative—and those limitations often push players into experiences they otherwise never would've gone for.

Take me, for example. I don't think I would've used my fragile, flimsy ox carts if I had the option to simply bamf to my portcrystals for free, but because I was forced into it by launch-year DD2, I did, and I had a grand old time!

I'd have less of a compunction about the Eternal Ferrystone if it was a late-game item, meant to help smooth things over when you're already deeply acquainted with the game and its many journey-spoiling monsters. But you can get this thing during the Seat of the Sovran quest, a mere handful of quests into the game.

In other words, you unlock the ability to fast travel with this unlimited ferrystone far in advance of actually needing to fast travel anywhere—which, like it or not, disincentivises the long way 'round. Still, Kinoshita maintains: "That's the best way to implement quality-of-life improvements: don't impinge on the original experience, but just give the player more possibilities, if possible."

Capcom has announced a new release date for Onimusha: Way of the Sword: instead of September 25, the PS2-era reboot will now release on September 4. It's the second time Capcom has pulled this move in 2026, because Pragmata also got moved forward at the eleventh hour.

But unlike Pragmata's April release window, September is pretty damn busy. Previously Onimusha was butting heads with Silent Hill: Townfall and Control Resonant, both of which are scheduled for September 24. Now its only meaningful competition is The Blood of Dawnwalker, the debut action RPG from Rebel Wolves, a Polish studio helmed by former CD Projekt devs. It's definitely wiser for Onimusha to go up against a new series rather than two beloved ones, though Rebel Wolves might see things differently.

And look: I thought this Onimusha reboot would be a pretty niche concern, but my PC Gamer colleagues are pretty impressed by what they've seen. Morgan Park thought it was the best thing he saw at the 2025 Summer Game Fest, so much so that he went back for more this year. The recent demo was received well by the public.

That said, a certain kind of RPG enthusiast won't let a Capcom parry-fest get in the way of Blood of Dawnwalker, which lets you kill any NPC you like. If that's not incentive enough to stick with the vampire RPG, I don't know what else to say.

If you happen to have pre-ordered Onimusha already, or plan to, that arrangement has changed slightly: the pre-order bonus is now called an "early adopter bonus", and is available until September 25.

September is busy, October is busy, but November? No one's going up against GTA 6, except Devolver and this delightfully '90s looking base-builder.

Hideki Kamiya cut his teeth on the Resident Evil games, working as a designer on the original and director of Resident Evil 2 before moving on to other things, like Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe, Okami, and Bayonetta. Ironically, he's not a big horror guy—he recently expressed a desire for a "non-scary mode" in Resident Evil games—and so understandably is not very interested in returning to the Resident Evil series.

But if he ever did, he would do things very differently. He would make it cozy.

"If I made it, it'd turn into a game where retired Leon goes fishing in the countryside, forages for wild veggies, bakes bread, walks the dog, tends a home garden, drives 50 km to the general store for supplies, invites old buddies over for a barbecue, fixes the neighborhood grandma's oven at her request, sells homemade lemonade at the local festival," Kamiya wrote on X (machine translated) in response to a request for a new game that continues the story of Leon and Claire. "But that'd be cool, right... ?"

I think it would be cool, actually. It's an aspect of videogame action heroes that's not often explored—what do you do when you're not doing this?—and it's also a fun way to introduce the series to newcomers who might not be into the usual zombie survival horror thing.

Besides, if we can have a dating simulator inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos, why not a cozy Resident Evil spinoff?

Despite a history of Twitter trolling, Kamiya does seem earnest about the suggestion. "Capcom, there are a lot of voices out there saying they want something like a [Resident Evil] that's not scary," he wrote in a follow-up tweet. "So if you have some free time, please consider making it... I want to play it too."

I'm not a Resident Evil guy myself, but I think I'd give this one a look, too. And never say never: As announced at The Game Awards 2024, Kamiya is currently working on a sequel to the 2006 Capcom classic Okami at his new Clovers studio. Even if he doesn't want to make the game himself, maybe the suggestion will give Resident Evil's current stewards at Capcom a nudge.

And a semi-relevant side note: If you think 'horror' and 'cozy' are an ill-suited match, I would urge you to check out Creature Kitchen, one of my favorite little indie games in ages: It's 20% off in the Steam Summer Sale, so just $6.39/£5.35/€6.23, and there's also a demo so you can get a good taste of what it's all about before you commit.

Being as I was assembled in a factory in Sverdlovsk in 1928, I am generally quite bad at identifying or following celebrities. But even I have a profound love for Kyle MacLachlan, the longtime David Lynch collaborator who starred as Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks, Jeffrey Beaumont in Blue Velvet, Paul Atreides in the Dune we don't talk about and, of course, papa Hank in the Fallout TV show.

Well, here's an additional role I didn't know he had (and likely neither did he): Jill Valentine's possibly-maybe boyfriend in the original Resident Evil 2. You see, back when RE2 first released in 1998, players found that Jill Valentine's desk in the Raccoon City Police Department had a picture on it. Inspect it and you get the message "It's a picture of a young man. There's a good chance it's her boyfriend…" Unfortunately, there were only so many pixels to go around back then, and the identity of the man in question—or, well, his model—was impossible to ascertain.

• We're keeping track of all the Amazon Prime Day PC gaming deals here

Until now, anyway. Thanks to Resident Evil fan Morio on X (via Polygon), it's clear that, yup, that sure is Kyle MacLachlan alright. Specifically it seems to be an image of MacLachlan taken from an early-'90s issue of Japan's Roadshow magazine, which often covered western media like Twin Peaks and was, indeed, quite keen on the series.

Precisely who the figure in Valentine's photo was has been a mystery since 1998. Morio said, upon revealing their discovery: "Alright, that's it then. The guy from Jill's desk is Kyle MacLachlan. Years of searching finally over." Incidentally, Morio found that a similar mag picture of Winona Ryder is used for Barry Burton's daughter.

If you're wondering, the answer is no: Capcom didn't use a 4K MacLachlan for the version of this photo in the Resident Evil 2 Remake. In fact, they didn't use a person at all. Valentine was officially un-shipped—the shot of a young man on her desk replaced by a photograph of a dog. Which would be an upgrade were we discussing literally any other man but Kyle MacLachlan.

A week removed from Summer Game Fest, one of the demos I can't stop thinking about is Onimusha: Way of the Sword. The behind-closed-doors demo was different from the one that's available on Steam—it took place slightly later in the game and showed off one of the game's "open areas" within Kyoto.

Several things stand out in Onimusha: The art, the methodical movement, the sword-wielding zombies, but most of all, it was the swordplay. For all of the comparisons to Sekiro that this reboot is likely to receive, let it be known its melee combat is in another league.

Slices and stabs connect with slow, bone-splitting followthrough. Blades clash, drag, deflect, and spark as if they're laced with fireworks. After years of a FromSoftware brand of floaty, spammy sword swinging dominating the action game, Capcom has dumped resources in the opposite direction: extravagant animations, feedback, counters, and cleaving limbs from their bodies.

It was a great demo—enough that I now can't wait to play the whole thing in September—but it was also too easy.

That was after going out of my way to play on "Action" mode instead of "Story," which my demoist advised against at first. Against the might of Musashi Miyamoto and his Oni Gauntlet, rank-and-file Genma troops weren't much of a threat. They went down quickly, didn't attack all that often, and rarely challenged me to counter instead of dodge. I didn't struggle much at all until the boss fight that ended the demo—a many-armed monstrosity that handed me my ass twice before I figured out his gimmick.

This is where I have to add that I'm not particularly skilled at this sort of game. So I wonder: Is Onimusha too easy? Many seem to think the same of the public demo, so I took the question to the source—game director Satoru Nihei—after my hands-on.

"Both the demo and also the version you've tried here today are early on in the game. So there is that kind of sense that a lot of basic enemies are going to be a bit easier just because of where it sits in the game," Nihei told PC Gamer through an interpreter. "But on top of that, especially with the demo that we released, Musashi comes fitted with a lot of skills and abilities that are not going to be accessible at the beginning of the game."

Nihei noted that the demo build I played in Los Angeles also had button reminders over enemy heads that don't exist in the full game. That's good to call out, because the specific advice offered by these in-world prompts made that final boss easier to solve. Capcom decided to juice Musashi's abilities in these demos so that players can get a "feel for the full range of action" in the final game. He's aware this caused issues with balance, but the team isn't concerned about the final product.

"We're quite confident that with the release version, especially with the progression, because abilities will be given gradually to Musashi and enemies will scale up in difficulty. For the [full] game, we feel more confident fans will be satisfied with the difficulty."

That said, don't expect a plethora of difficulty options at launch. Capcom confirmed that Way of the Sword will have just the two presets I chose between in the demo: Story and Action. Onimusha is out on September 24, one of a terrifying wave of games coming before GTA 6.

Dragon's Dogma 2 is a great bit of fun—a chaotic, sometimes overtly cruel action RPG with a great sense of physical humour and some really tactile combat. It also got absolutely hazed during its launch period back in 2024 thanks to some utterly baffling microtransactions.

As I personally covered back then, the entire thing was mostly optics. Yes, it was very silly for Capcom to put a bunch of these items up for sale as microtransactions; especially given they were easily available in-game from shops and the like. None of the amenities, such as wakestones, portcrystals, or camping kits, were particularly rare. You'd get 'em just by playing the thing.

And yet, Capcom decided to sell a bunch of them, which gave DD2 the whiff of pay-to-win despite being anything but. One particularly egregious example was the character editor, which gave players the impression that Capcom was arbitrarily locking post-creation customisation behind a paywall.

In fact, you could just buy the same book for 500 rift crystals in game. It was purely all bad optics—well, bad optics and silly decision making from Capcom, given it could've simply chosen not to try and squeeze a couple extra bucks out of its player base for completely attainable items.

Anyway, all that'll be going away, two years later.

The deluxe edition, alongside a whole host of those other silly microtransactions, will no longer be available come June 25, as announced on the game's official X account.

That includes the character editor thing, portcrystals, the wakestones, the harpy snares—again, all available on the relatively cheap once you're actually playing. The only exception is the camping kit, but again. It's a central, core mechanic. You absolutely do not have to buy one. There's lots in-game already.

Anyway, I cannot tell you why Capcom decided to put these ill-advised things in the store in the first place, and I cannot tell you why Capcom waited two whole years before removing them now—but it's as they say, better late than never.

It has been two years since Dragon's Dogma 2—the unlikely sequel to an unlikely RPG—emerged from its Riftstone, and it just got a fairly mondo new patch. Released on June 10, Dragon's Dogma 2's latest title update brings fast travel tweaks, pawn futzing, bug fixes, and plenty else besides. Oh, and it's part one of two: the second part will come at the end of August, just ahead of DD2's October Dark Arisen expansion.

They're both doozies (though, with its additional weapon skill slots, the upcoming August patch may be doozier), but let's get into June's patch, since it's the one that's, you know, here.

First on Capcom's big tweak list is changes to the game's fast travel system. DD2 kind of delights in making fast travel a bit of a hassle (something I generally very much endorse), but I guess Capcom got tired of people moaning about it, because the game now hands you an Eternal Ferrystone "after talking to Brant during the quest Seat of the Sovran," which is pretty early on.

Instead of hauling your bones into a trundling cart that will inevitably be attacked by every cyclops on the map, you can now use your Ferrystone(s) directly from the map by hovering over fast travel spots. Which even I'll admit is how it should already have worked.

There are also more portcrystals (the crystals you, uh, port to) in Melve, Checkpoint Rest Town and the Volcanic Island Camp. And you get a bonus one as a reward for the quest Monster Culling.

Basically, Dragon's Dogma 2 is now a baby game for babies. You hate to see it.

To me, that's the headline item of June's patch, but spare a thought too for changes like a free camera in photo mode, disabling random pawns approaching you outdoors and asking for a job, which is good, because there's genuinely nothing more immersion breaking than encountering a pawn who looks like Kratos from God of War on the road and having him ask to party up.

The patch also disables high fives from your own pawns (monster), adds a new "Guardian" specialisation for your pawns, and changes the game's map to make it a bit more parseable. Here are the full patch notes:

Dragon's Dogma 2 patch notes from June 2026

Fast Travel/Movement Adjustments

• Added the fast travel item Eternal Ferrystone.
  * The Eternal Ferrystone will be automatically acquired after talking to Brant during the quest Seat of the Sovran.
  * If you have already completed this quest, the item will be placed in your inventory.
• Added Portcrystals to Melve, Checkpoint Rest Town and Volcanic Island Camp.
• Added a Portcrystal as a reward for the quest Monster Culling.
  * If you have already completed this quest, it will be placed in your inventory.
• Added Oxcart Stopovers.
• Reduced the time until the Doze Off command becomes available when riding an Oxcart.
• If an Oxcart happens to be close by, an Oxcart icon will be displayed on the mini map.
• Extended Oxcart Station departure hours. Oxcarts will now depart from morning till evening.
• Decreased the amount of stamina used when dashing outside of combat.

• Selecting Load from Autosave after defeat will no longer result in loss gauge accumulation.
• Improved the stats for some equipment found when exploring dungeons.

Options Additions/Adjustments

• Added the Free Camera option to Photo Mode.
• Added the option to toggle the display of patterns left on equipment strengthened in wyrmfire.
• Added the option to toggle the display of head armor.
• Changed the wording of the Set to "Examine" Only option in the Button Mapping settings to make it clearer that it does not include Dash.
• Added the option to enable/disable unhired pawns to approach you and offer their services.
• Added the option to enable/disable high fives from pawns after battle.

Reward Adjustments

• Changed the content of some treasure chests and some enemy item drops.
• Increased the rewards (mainly gold) for some quests.

UI Adjustments

• Added the option to use a Ferrystone from the map by moving the cursor to a Portcrystal.
• Improved the visibility of the player icon on the map.
• A notification will now display if your camping kit was destroyed in an ambush.
• When shopping, you can no longer purchase more than you can hold of a specific item.
• The stat boosts for Pawns inflicted with dragonsplague will now be reflected on the status screen.
• Multiple item types can now be transferred at once between the Arisen and Pawns.
• The Art of Metamorphosis has now been moved to the top of the Pawn Guild Vendor's product list.
• The order of Lantern and Lantern Oil has been changed at each shop so that Lantern Oil appears first.
• An hourglass icon will now appear on timed quest notifications.
• Quest progress will now be displayed for priority quests after loading saved data.

Pawn Adjustments

• Added Guardian specialization.
  * Enables the pawn to prevent oxcart raids from occurring while they accompany the Arisen. Also enables the pawn to singlehandedly repel smaller foes that attack the camp, and to reduce the Health of larger ones before the Arisen joins the battle.
  * The Guardian's Tome can be acquired in the following ways.
  - Bought from the Nameless Apothecary in the Nameless Village.
  - As a reward for the quests Claw Them Into Shape and Readvent of Calamity.
  * If you have already completed these quests, they will be placed in your inventory.
  * Added a tutorial for the Guardian specialization.
• Adjusted behavior when moving, making it harder to fall from cliffs.
• Increased the stamina recovered when Pawns help you after becoming exhausted.

Shop Adjustments

• Reduced inn fees for staying at the inn in Melve, Excavation Site, Nameless Village, Borderwatch Outpost, Vernworth and Harve Village.
• Reduced fees for all barberie services.
• Lantern (Fueled) price changed from 1000 G to 800 G.
• Ferrystone price in Normal Mode changed from 10000 G to 5000 G.
• Ferrystone sale price changed from 99 G to 900 G.

Text/Tutorial Display Adjustments

• Replaced Monotype Fonts
• The loading screen has been changed to show tips instead of quest progress.
• The tutorial for loading from an autosave has been adjusted to reflect the changes to the loss gauge.
• Added a tutorial explaining the "!" symbol that displays on the minimap.

Other Adjustments

• Adjusted the camera angle when approaching a pre-existing Portcrystal.
• Adjusted the quality of the camera angle when returning from a zoomed view.
• Added the Hollow Cape to the product lineup at Celeste's Smithy in Checkpoint Rest Town.

◆ Bug Fixes

Vocations

【Mage】

• Fixed a bug where the Arisen's position would slightly move if no input was entered after drawing their sword.

【Sorcerer】

• Fixed a bug where Prescient Flare would not affix to enemies in certain areas of the Tomb of Ku'Myage.

【Trickster】

• Fixed a bug where the effect of the ability Enlightenment would activate without it being equipped.

Pawns

• Fixed a bug where the Arisen and allied pawns would be afflicted with debilitations when hit by an unhired pawn's elemental weapon.
• Fixed a bug where a pawn's appearance would become unnatural when moving.
• Fixed a bug where a different pawn would speak when a pawn saves the Arisen from falling.
• Fixed a bug where a pawn would guide the Arisen to the Rocky Lair as if it was undiscovered, even though it had been fully explored.
• Fixed a bug where after the pawn Luksa was summoned in the Riftstone, Luksa would not disappear even when searching for pawns under different conditions and it would become impossible to interact with them.
• Fixed a bug where pawn commands would flash rapidly and pawns would not respond.
• Fixed a bug where pawns would sometimes not dash when far from the Arisen.
• Fixed a bug where a pawn would stop guiding the Arisen towards a quest immediately after they started.
• Fixed a bug where the "!" symbol that appears after a pawn discovers a movable boulder would remain on the map, even if the boulder has moved.
• Fixed a bug where the "!" symbol that appears after a pawn discovers a treasure chest would remain on the map, even after the chest was opened.
• Fixed a bug where pawns would not use Barrage Shot towards small enemies.

NPCs

• Fixed a bug where NPCs would enter your private dwelling in Bakbattahl.
• Fixed a bug where some NPCs would not be registered in the NPC Logbook.
• Fixed a bug where NPC voices would not stop when they die.
• Fixed a bug where NPCs that died during a quest would be revived after waiting 999 days in game.
• Fixed a bug where you could buy the Saurian Tail from Emerich even if you did not have the required amount of gold.

Enemies

• Fixed a bug where an enemy's appearance would become unnatural when held in place by Forbeding Bolt.

【Goblin/Hobgoblin/Chopper/Knacker】

• Fixed a bug where the hit effect would display incorrectly when the Arisen was hit by a burning club or torch.

【Harpy/Venin Harpy/Gore Harpy/Succubus】

• Fixed a bug where the Arisen's behavior would become abnormal when airborne near a wall's surface.

【Ooze】

• Fixed a bug where pawns were unable to avoid explosions.

【Undead/Fat Undead】

• Fixed a bug where enemies would not flinch after a Fighter successfully used the ability Deflect or True Deflect.

【Phantom/Phantasm/Specter】

• Fixed a bug where the simulacrum's behavior would become abnormal after it possesses a foe.

【Cyclops】

• Fixed a bug where unintended behavior would occur when startled while laying down.
• Fixed a bug where damage was not taken when recovering from a downed state.

【Minotaur/Goreminotaur】

• Fixed a bug where damage taken was greatly increased if hit with Counter Slash or Tidal Fury while charging.
• Fixed a bug where the enemy would continue to exist in a transparent state when destroyed while petrified.

【Goreminotaur】

• Fixed a bug where the enemy would repeat the same actions after certain conditions were met.

【Skeleton Lord】

• Fixed a bug where the enemy would attack skeletons and other unintended beings.

【Lich/Wight】

• Fixed a bug where enemies could attack for a period of time after death.

【Dullahan】

• Fixed a bug where damage was not taken for a period of time after a grab attack.
• Fixed a bug where the target being grabbed was not blown away at the end of a grab attack.
• Fixed a bug where the Thief's Easy Kill counter did not work and damage was taken when used.
• Fixed a bug where the Arisen's actions became abnormal when countering an attack with Warrior's Tidal Fury.
• Fixed a bug where the background music did not transition as intended when the battle situation changed.

【Drake】

• Fixed a bug where magic attacks were generated embedded in the ground.
• Fixed a bug that caused an unnatural appearance after dying while only the chest is glowing.
• Fixed a bug where death lines sometimes played when drakes aren't around.
• Fixed a bug where destroyed body parts sometimes reverted back to their pre-destroyed state.

【Drake/Lesser Dragon】

• Fixed a bug where destroyed body parts sometimes reverted back to their pre-destroyed state.

【Medusa】

• Fixed a bug where, at low frame rates, if the enemy was caused to flinch during a specific attack, they would be unable to move afterwards.

Quests

• Fixed a bug in the quest Nesting Troubles where Lennart would sometimes be inflicted with the blighted debilitation.
• Fixed a bug in the quest Monster Culling where the wagon would disappear when approaching the location of the soldiers near the Nameless Village.
• Fixed a bug in the quest The Caged Magistrate where the Arisen would unintentionally move to a different location when using a Sealing Phial.
• Fixed a bug in the quest Saint of the Slums where Elena would be outside her cell after being imprisoned.
• Fixed a bug in the quest Hunt for the Jadeite Orb where Offulve wouldn't disappear when progressing along a certain route.
• Fixed a bug in the quest The Guardian Gigantus, where if the player were to approach the bridge just as the Talos destroyed it, the Talos would still throw a spear towards the bridge during the resulting cutscene.
• Fixed a bug in the quest The Guardian Gigantus where if the Talos was petrified right after destroying the bridge, a cutscene would play as if the Talos was still alive.
• Fixed a bug in the quest The Guardian Gigantus where progressing to the location where the scene changes at the same time the Talos throws the spear resulted in multiple instances of abnormal behavior.
• Fixed a bug in the quest A Scholarly Pursuit where, when getting close to the Battahl Purgener, the Arisen's appearance and hitbox were misaligned.

Gimmicks

• Fixed a bug where fragments would spawn at their original location when destroying rolling rocks.
• Fixed a bug where the game would crash when re-spawning rolling boulders after they were destroyed.

Equipment

• Fixed a bug where the character's neck was sticking out when wearing Creedbound Armor.
• Fixed a bug where, when wearing Monarch's Crown, the part that covers the neck would disappear after using a ferrystone.
• Fixed a bug where body hair was poking through when wearing Robe of the Enlightened.
• Fixed a bug where protrusions appear to stick out of the ring part of the Tribal Brace armor.
• Fixed a bug where shields were not sorted properly when sorting by strength.
• Fixed a bug where only the armor spikes remained when equipping cloak-type equipment while wearing Intrepid Scalecoat.

Display

• Fixed a bug where rain entered certain buildings.
• Fixed a bug where wounds were not displayed when attacking an enemy.
• Fixed a bug where lanterns would flicker constantly despite being filled with oil.
• Fixed a bug where the model for Panacea would differ from that on the field.

UI

• Fixed a bug where some riftstone names differed between the one displayed on the map and the one displayed in the rift.

Sound

• Fixed a bug where, when equipped with a bow, the quiver sound effect would continue to play even after changing weapons.

Other

• Fixed a bug where the game would crash during processing.
• Fixed a bug where falling into water in some places would not result in the activation of The Brine, allowing the player to move along the bottom of the water.
• Fixed a bug where approaching the Riverside Cavern would trigger a map transition and dialogue as if the pawns had entered the cavern, despite not actually being inside.
• Fixed a bug where selecting certain head options in the Character Creator would result in the appearance of holes beneath the eyes.
• Fixed a bug where items could not be obtained by performing the Investigate action after defeating enemies, and subsequently prevented further Investigate attempts.
• Fixed a bug where certain facial animations did not play in some cutscenes.
• Fixed a bug where obtaining multiple items simultaneously from a treasure chest while inventory space was insufficient would result in some items being unobtainable.

In February 2026, Monster Hunter series producer Ryozo Tsujimoto confirmed that a "large scale expansion similar to Monster Hunter World: Iceborne and Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak" was in the works for Wilds. In a reveal at tonight's SGF showcase, Capcom pinned a name on its next hunting expedition: It's called Ascendance, and it's coming to Wilds in 2027.

Based on what was shown in the trailer, Ascendance—a "massive" expansion, in Capcom's words—will have hunters leaving the now-familiar regions of the Forbidden Lands and heading skyward into the floating ruins of the Wyverian civilization. That journey will seemingly entail a notable risk of aerial lizard bombardment. You've been warned.

As is typical for Monster Hunter expansions, we can expect new creatures to clash with, new zones for questing, and expanded weapon movesets for facing the elevated challenge of Master Rank hunts. Based on the gameplay footage shown, hunters will be able to bolster their weapon movesets with jet-propelled mechanisms embedded in their forearm-mounted slingers: A great sword hunter was able to launch themselves into a string of strikes that—for the heavy weapon—were surprisingly nimble.

Most exciting for veteran MonHun sickos is the glimpse of a long-absent silhouette at the end of the teaser. Lao-Shan Lung? Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time.

Ascension will be Wilds' best chance at securing a salvaged reputation, as Capcom only managed to substantially alleviate the PC release's dire performance issues in a January 2026 update—almost a year after its February 2025 launch. Ascension has the potential to be a crowning conclusion to the Wilds redemption arc, or a backslide into dysfunction.

Looking at Iceborne and Sunbreak as a track record, however, there's plenty of reason to hope.

Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascension launches in 2027.

Resident Evil and the devs working on the series are currently rolling off the high that was Resident Evil Requiem's launch. As the fastest selling RE game ever, and with some glowing reviews (I gave it a 92 in our Requiem review), it's abundantly clear that the fans want more. And while nothing's been confirmed, the devs have been sharing some ideas.

In a recent interview with Japanese news site Futaman (via Automaton) producer Masato Kumazawa revealed that amid all the brainstorming for future projects, a Resident Evil game set in Japan has crossed the minds of the dev team.

"I think a Japanese setting is something every Japanese Resident Evil fan has thought about," Kumazawa says. "And I’ve also considered it myself. Since the development team is primarily based in Japan, I think every member has given it some thought. While Japan hasn’t appeared as a game setting so far, it might make an appearance at some point in the future."

"If we keep releasing the same kind of game over and over, players will eventually get bored, so we’d like to keep taking on new challenges moving forward."

Kumazawa goes on to explain that the devs aren't massively concerned with following any strict rules for the location of Resident Evil games, or even the timeline for that matter: "We do adjust the timeline based on the assessment that present-day stories help players feel more immersed. The timeline also changes depending on the characters and story we want to portray in each title. Even in Requiem, we have scenes set eight years prior, as well as even earlier periods. So, where the timeline goes from here will depend on the specific title."

Apparently, the team only started portraying characters aging with Resident Evil 4. Requiem is the most obvious case of this with an aged-up Leon initially sending shockwaves through the fanbase.

But just because there's no solid ruleset to follow doesn't mean the devs are going to get too wacky with it. Kumazawa promises fans that they "won't compromise the core elements of the series" such as characters and the events that unfold and will "continue to preserve what the series holds dear". Which I'm guessing means allowing eccentric scientists to keep getting hold of the T-virus, make some disgustingly violent creature with it, and then leave the pen open for it to escape and wreak havoc—you know, classic Resident Evil stuff.

I've grown weary of 2.5D games in the past few years,⁠⁠ with most of my fatigue stemming from the "HD-2D" look Square Enix has embraced with the Octopath series and remakes of its old games. Seeing a pixel art guy ambling around a 3D village with the bloom cranked up just doesn't do it for me anymore.

Which is why seeing the upcoming hack 'n slash Dungeon Lurker in action felt fresh: Instead of dinky little Final Fantasy guys, this 3D world is populated with huge, lovingly-dithered comic book-style sprites with buttery-smooth animation. It's giving "arcade perfect" more than "we love the Super Nintendo," a level of craft I mostly associate with latter-day 2D fighting games like Marvel vs. Capcom 2.

It's the little things that really wowed me, like how much the knight protagonist bounces and shifts even in his idle animation. He'll turn his head from side to side, adjust his grip on his sword, even rustle his loincloth a bit. How many frames of animation does one man need? It's madness, decadence. I love it.

The craft and quality of this art is matched by some inspired direction, pairing the comic book, arcadey cartoonishness with a real Berserk or Dark Souls sort of dark fantasy. I love the monster at the beginning of the gameplay trailer, the "Mammothian Colossus" according to its health bar in Dungeon Lurker's other trailer.

It looks so tortured and wrong, a noble beast harnessed for war with bondage gear. Best of all: I didn't even notice at first that it has a little rider in golden armor hanging off its back. I love everything I've seen of this game's art.

Even though it's a roguelike, Dungeon Lurker's Steam page promises that it will have no procedural generation, but "over 30 unique levels to conquer and explore." I was also intrigued by this tidbit: "Decipher forbidden knowledge in the game's manual⁠—it contains more secrets than you might expect."

Manuals are a small but welcome trend: I'm seeing them in games like Tunic, Lunacid: Tears of the Moon, and Psycho Patrol R, and I'm definitely game for whatever Dungeon Lurker has cooking on that front. But the only thing to do now is wishlist and wait: Dungeon Lurker's release date is "to be announced" on Steam, while its trailer estimates a release of early 2027.

Pragmata is one of my favorite games of the year so far, and a big part of that is down to the relationship between protagonists Hugh and Diana, a deeply normal in-over-his-head guy and a wide-eyed, enthusiastic young android. Banter that could so easily come off as infantilizing, and a story that could easily come across cloying as Hugh instinctively protects Diana, are instead handled with a deft touch.

This hasn't stopped Pragmata from being lumped into the "sad dad" canon alongside The Last of Us and God of War in some reviews; I agree more with Kotaku's Kenneth Shephard, who wrote "Pragmata reads like it was made by people who think that fatherhood rules, actually, and that getting to provide a young mind with insight, fun, and dreams is a meaningful thing that enriches a person’s life."

When I think about Pragmata's dad-ness, I'm also thinking about the people behind the game, given that the sad dad narrative has been shaped by game directors becoming parents. Pragmata may also be shaped by its director Yonghee Cho, but in an interview with PC Gamer he said there's an obvious reason it's not a sad dad game: He's not a sad dad.

"I have a daughter who's about Diana's age, and an older son as well," he said. "I don't think it would fit into the sad dad category, and one of the reasons I think that is because I'm not a sad dad, I'm a very happy dad. When I was creating the story and the actions of the characters, I put myself in the shoes of the characters a lot, and I consider myself pretty happy."

Cho added that while there are obviously elements of a parent-child relationship between Hugh and Diana, it was more meant to highlight companionship—a "buddy type feeling" of cooperating and helping each other out.

"That's a very conscious thing that the development team did. It's not just a parent and child dynamic. If we focused solely on that, players who don't have children might have more difficulty resonating with that, but having that buddy element in there allows a great range [of players who can relate], and a more lighthearted feel."

When I asked Cho if he had kids, he also shared his daughter's reaction to a dramatic moment in the story; she turned to him and said "You can't leave me alone!", apparently identifying with Diana.

"I told her, 'it's okay, Hugh's not your dad—I'm your dad! I'm here," Cho said, while miming patting his daughter on the head reassuringly.

Who knows what we can expect from Cho's future games, though. Once his kids become teenagers, maybe he'll be ready to lean into the angst.

If you've played Pragmata, there's a slight chance you've noticed it resembles an action game from the Xbox 360/PS3 era. By 'slight chance', I mean the connection has been made by anyone who has looked at Capcom's third-person shooter for more than five seconds.

Yet while this may have been considered an insult a decade ago, today it is anything but. Not only does the similarity appear to have been a key factor in Pragmata's commercial success, its developers have been utterly thrilled by players making the comparison.

In an interview with GamesRadar, Pragmata director Yonghee Cho and producer Naoto Oyama were asked how they felt about players comparing their sci-fi adventure to the golden age of third-person shooters, and apparently they began to beam even before the Japanese interpreter had finished translating the question.

"The dev team has heard similar comments from both reviewers as well as players," Cho responded. "Honestly, it's a huge compliment. I really enjoyed games during the PS3, Xbox 360 era, and games before that era as well, so hear that it has a similar feel, that's basically an honour, a huge compliment and I appreciate the sentiment."

What's interesting, though, is that neither developer confirms that the era of cover shooters and chainsaw bayonets was a direct inspiration. In fact, Oyama suggests that the comparison is being made because the 360/PS3 era represented a period of innovation:

"Maybe the reason people might feel that way is because, during the PS3 and Xbox 360 era, a lot of different developers and publishers were experimenting with new types of games and just completely new games. Maybe that's what causes people to feel that way," he says. "Because the Pragmata dev team, as well, they put a lot of passion into creating something new."

Frankly, I think it might have more to do with the fact that Oyama and Cho made a linear, single-player action game that doesn't overstay its welcome at a time when such games are vanishingly rare. Well, they were vanishingly rare until this year. 2026 has delivered a couple similar titles, like Resident Evil: Requiem and 007: First Light. Both those games have sold extremely well too, further signalling that players are hungry for the days when triple-A games were bold, brash, and (relatively) brief.

Which isn't to suggest that Pragmata lacks for new ideas. Its distinctive blend of third-person shooting and hacking minigame went down well with Justin Wagner in his Pragmata Review: "It's the ace up Pragmata's sleeve that makes the whole package a winner," he wrote back in April. "You aim at an enemy, navigate a small tile maze with a controller's face buttons or by holding down a side mouse button and using the cursor, then blow them away as normal."

We rather like Resident Evil Requiem here at PC Gamer—our own resident horror expert, Elie Gould, gave it a stonking 92% in their Resident Evil Requiem review, claiming it provides "excellent action set pieces accompanied by great weapon handling, some truly horrendous horror, and satiates my love of classic Resident Evil puzzles. All within 10 hours."

That's some hefty praise, but now you don't just have to take their word for it (though you absolutely should, they know their stuff), because despite the fact it came out three whole months ago, Requiem now has a playable demo.

"The demo version allows you to play part of the game's early stages. Please note that save data from the demo version cannot be transferred to the full version of the game," Capcom states. The demo itself follows Grace Ashcroft waking up in the Care Center, but it also gives you a taste of Leon, if that's what you're into.

It's an interesting move by Capcom, given Requiem wasn't exactly struggling for sales. Back in April, it was revealed that the game had sold seven million copies in just two months—a number that's likely only increased. For comparison, the Resident Evil 4 Remake took a whole year to pull those numbers.

Maybe it's just a means to keep the ball rolling. After all, if the word-of-mouth about your game's pretty good, a demo's a good way to turn prospective players into buyers. Pragmata enjoyed a huge amount of buzz due to its demo, so Capcom might just be looking to repeat that trick here.

It'd pair nicely with Capcom's seeming desire to stack value on top of the game, too—adding a surprise roguelike mode called Leon Must Die Forever earlier this month. First twink death, now this—I almost feel sorry for the guy.

You can try out Grace Ashcroft's very bad time now via Steam or the Epic Games Store. Or, if you happen to be one of those PC Gamers with a console or two kicking around, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and the Switch 2.

There's a chance that, if your games have been stuttering with DLSS frame generation enabled, it's because you have VSync on and didn't know the two don't always play nicely. If you're one of the unlucky few, you might want to try updating your Nvidia drivers.

Game Ready Driver 596.49 has reportedly enhanced smoothness when the two are working together. When the discussion thread opened up on the Nvidia subreddit, this fix immediately met some support. As of the time of writing, the top upvoted comment says, "Huge if true, gargantuos if verifiable."

Another account responds to this comment saying, "I can confirm it". Previously, on their RTX 4090 rig at Ultra settings with 2x frame generation, they reportedly saw noticeable micro-stutter and hitching and had to swap to FSR to fix the issue. Now, they claim 2x frame generation "works perfectly with vsync enabled."

Not everyone is having such a great time, with one user saying it's still an issue for them and another saying Monster Hunter Wilds performs poorly for them. However, a third user points out that Monster Hunter Wilds performed poorly for them even without VSync and swapping to FSR helped.

Capcom seem to get mentioned quite a lot in the thread, with some claiming Pragmata and Resident Evil Requiem stutter less now, and others claiming things are just as bad. However, it's hard to verify with every one of these cases that the problem lies at the feet of Nvidia's shiny new drivers. Still, some success is a good sign and worth updating your drivers over.

You can download the driver by the driver's direct download link or by doing so in the Nvidia App. My download of the drivers by themselves sits at under 1 GB, and there's not too much else to them, other than that one fix. It includes compatibility updates for Forza Horizon 6, Directive 8020, and Subnautica 2, and comes with a fix for a Foundry Mari 7.0v2 flickering issue.

As always, if something is playing up in your rig when you try to play games, updating your drivers is a decent first step.

The Devil May Cry animated series has done halfway decently for itself, renewing for a second season after its release back in April. And despite some mixed reception—particularly from diehard fans—Netflix seems to be chalking it up to a success. So much so that it's making merch for it.

Alas, there's been a blunder—as spotted by DMC superfan @vergildearest on X (thanks, Eurogamer), a now-removed t-shirt sees Dante and Vergil split clean down the middle. Only it's apparently not Vergil, but Virgil. Or Publius Vergilius Maro, an ancient roman poet and guest star in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, whose name is sometimes spelled Virgil.

You're probably wondering why I'm talking about roman poets, and it's because it is genuinely relevant to the typo in question. Devil May Cry is heavily inspired by the Divine Comedy. And by 'heavily', I mean the main character is directly named after the guy who wrote the dang thing.

Vergil's not the only character named in reference. There's also Trish, coined after Beatrice, who guides Dante through heaven in the Divine Comedy. Beatrice is also Dante's ideal woman, and Trish in the game resembles Dante's mother, which is deeply psychosexual and also something I'm not going to interrogate at 11AM on a Thursday.

Basically, what I assume happened here is some put-upon graphic designer tasked with drumming up a t-shirt for Netflix was auto-corrected to Virgil and, being that Virgil is a real name of a historical figure, likely assumed that everything was hunky-dory and pushed it through to manufacturing.

Either way, it's been pulled off the Devil May Cry merch store. You can still buy other stuff, though, like a baseball cap that says "see u in hell" and a thermos where Virgil—crap, sorry, Vergil—glares at you the entire time you're sipping your hot chocolate. Clearly, there's only one thing Netflix can do now. Re-release the shirt with Vergilius' full roman name clipping horribly outside the box of the graphic. I know what the fans want.

It has been another very good year for Capcom. The company just released its financial results for the fiscal year ended March 2026, continuing a streak of record profits by completing its 11th consecutive year of operating profit growth over 10%. Those profits were driven by year-over-year increases in games sales—particularly the breakaway success of Resident Evil Requiem.

Aside from detailing the last year's wins, Capcom's financial report also lays out its growth strategies for the years ahead. Those grand plans, it says, aim not just to strengthen its "leading brands"—like Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, and Street Fighter—but also to elevate its other series so they can deliver similar results. And it offered a glimpse of which franchises it might be focusing on next.

In an inspiring display of investor-speak, Capcom calls its strategy "a flywheel-driven business model for continuous IP value expansion." In human terms, that essentially means it seeks to develop and sell good games, so that those brands can enable secondary offerings like anime, licensed arcade games, and merchandise to further expand the company's fanbase, so it can then develop and sell even more games.

It's not groundbreaking stuff, but based on the company's sales figures, it's clearly been paying off for the last decade: In a slide showing its series' cumulative sales, Capcom says just its three best-selling brands—Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, and Street Fighter—have sold almost 400 million units to date.

Unsurprisingly, Capcom's keen on the idea of strengthening its other brands to deliver similar successes. In another slide titled "ongoing maximization of IP value," the company illustrates which other game series it has in mind in its plans for "nurturing brands to be the next engine of growth." Here are the Capcom series listed in the report as opportunities for "sequels, remakes, ports, etc.":

• Mega Man
• Devil May Cry
• Dead Rising
• Onimusha
• Ace Attorney
• Dragon's Dogma
• Okami

Some of these aren't surprising, as they're tied to projects that Capcom has already announced. Onimusha: Way of the Sword is coming later this year. Mega Man: Dual Override, the first mainline Mega Man entry since 2018, was revealed at the last Game Awards, and an Okami sequel was confirmed to be in the works in 2024.

Seeing the other brands on the list is tantalizing, however, because it's a reiteration that Capcom intends to do something with them, echoing a December 2025 statement from Capcom COO Haruhiro Tsujimoto saying the company wants to "grow these into core IPs."

For the long-suffering Ace Attorney fans in the world, this should be welcome news—or the beginnings of yet another heartbreak. As a card-carrying Dragon's Dogma sicko, however, I'm just glad to see it mentioned. It's nice to know that Capcom's thinking about it. [I wish I could say the same for Maximo and Lost Planet. —Ed.]

Less tantalizing is what follows two slides later, where the company provides an illustration of how generative AI usage will contribute to its growth strategy by decreasing "time used in routine tasks within development process" like research, draft generation, error checks, and clerical tasks while increasing "time invested in true value creation."

Thankfully, the company doesn't seem to believe generative AI can serve as a substitute for its human employees. According to its outlined human resources strategy, Capcom plans to increase its developer workforce "by over 100 people annually."

Resident Evil Requiem has received a new bonus mode in a free update, and by golly it's fabulous. It also has a great name: Leon Must Die Forever. And I'm sorry to say for all the Leon-fanciers out there that, yes, you're going to see Mr. Kennedy dismembered in many different ways.

The mode requires you to have completed the game's story, after which it appears as an option on the main menu. It's a feature-packed roguelike that offers multiple paths through various of the game's environments, on-the-fly 'enhancements' that change up Leon's abilities, new enemy variants, multiple boss fights, and an overarching meta-structure that sees you earn points on each run and unlock abilities, weapons, and costumes for subsequent playthroughs.

The goal is to reach and defeat big bad Victor Gideon, but it's a lot easier said than done. On my first runthrough I got to the second area before being careless with a blister-head which wasted no time before biting Leon's face off. On my second I reached the Super Tyrant before getting absolutely clocked by a flying car and swiftly bisected by his claws. My third… look, it's not called "Leon Must Die Forever" for nothing.

Capcom's notes say that "multiple difficulty levels are available, including an extreme high-difficulty mode for only the most confident players", which presumably unlocks once you've completed a runthrough or two (I haven't yet gotten close). Each time I played the weapons I found were different, the enhancements changed, and I suspect that once you start completing runs other elements will change-up too.

There's also a time limit, which I didn't find especially onerous, but that's also probably because I died on every run without getting close to running out of time. There are weird little gold spiders that scuttle around which reward more time when shot, and you also get time bonuses for killing certain enemies in certain ways.

The enemy variants are colour-coded and reward particular strategies. Red enemies are more resistant to gunfire, for example, but weaker to melee and hatchet attacks. Blue enemies have giant health pools, but are super-vulnerable to being parried and hatchet-ed. And then in amongst these are scattered the game's various mini-bosses and tougher standard foes.

As for the enhancements, some of them are simple buffs while others offer trade-offs, and you earn points towards your next choice by just killing stuff. Some are fairly straightforward: I had one that increased headshot / weak point damage by 50% but decreased damage when you just hit the body. Others lock you into a particular playstyle, like a perk that massively increases grenade damage and gives a chance that a grenade won't be consumed when thrown, but also debuffs all of your firearms. Which led to a fantastically explosive run that ended unceremoniously when I ran out of… erm, grenades.

Finally, you choose your routes by where you exit your current stage, with big red doors dotted around the environments, rather than choosing from a menu: so get ready for some exploring. The first stage is relatively gentle, as this mode goes, and does seem to be more about starting on a particular build and gathering a few weapons, but after that it ramps right up and doesn't stop until Leon's a bloody corpse.

First impressions? Yes please and thank you Capcom. The Leon combat in Requiem is just outstanding, and this builds it out in multiple ways while throwing everything plus the kitchen sink at you. I've been banging my head against Insanity mode since completing Requiem and, while I'm ever-so-slightly disappointed this isn't Mercenaries mode, Leon Must Die Forever is a really well thought-out and meaty addition to what was already one of the year's best games. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to get eviscerated again.