Nintendo and Intelligent Systems have launched an expansion pass for Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave. The package brings a series of downloadable additions to the tactical RPG, beginning today and continuing with further content stretching into 2027. Fire Emblem has always been a series about consequences. Units die permanently in the classic mode, maps punish careless positioning, and every deployment decision carries weight. That structure makes additional content particularly appealing, because more maps and more characters mean more of the thing fans come for. Expansion passes have become a common way to support a game after launch, and they suit a strategy title well. A campaign can be extended without asking players to start over, and new scenarios can explore corners of the world that the main story rushed past. The staggered schedule is worth noting. Spreading releases across a long period keeps a game in the conversation, gives players a reason to return, and...
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Grand Theft Auto 6 will be eligible for The Game Awards 2026 by a single day. That narrow margin is the kind of detail only awards season produces, and it turns a release date into a small piece of strategy, with the game landing just inside the window rather than just outside it. Eligibility usually depends on when a game becomes available to the public, not when it was announced or previewed. A title that misses the cut-off by a day is treated as a 2027 release, no matter how close it came, which is why publishers pay attention to these calendars. The distinction matters more for a game of this size than for most. Grand Theft Auto 6 is the sort of release that shapes the conversation around it, and being part of a given ceremony changes the shape of that year’s field. It also means the game will be discussed alongside everything...
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Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse once had a Dark Souls “vibe,” it turns out, but the experiment was judged “just too hard.” It is a revealing detail, because it shows how quickly a design idea can move from promising to punishing once it meets real players. The comparison is easy to understand. Dark Souls established a template built on deliberate combat, costly mistakes and checkpoints that force a long walk back. Plenty of action games borrowed pieces of that formula, and for a while it seemed every new release with a sword was being measured against it. What often gets lost in the borrowing is the support structure. Souls-like difficulty works because the world is built around it: shortcuts open up, summons exist, and the level design teaches you what is coming. Strip those supports away and the same combat becomes exhausting rather than exhilarating. There is also the question of pacing. A slow, intense encounter...
Read MoreAn ex-Valve developer has weighed in on Epic’s updated Steam rival, and the verdict is not flattering. The criticism lands alongside Tim Sweeney’s latest public dig at Gabe Newell, continuing a rivalry that has played out in interviews, social posts and storefront policy for years. The suggestion is that Epic Games might do better to talk about what actually makes its store appealing, rather than framing every argument around its larger competitor. It is a fair point in principle: a platform ultimately has to stand on its own offer, not on the failings of the market leader. Steam’s advantage is not a single feature but an accumulation of them. A vast library, community features, workshop support, reviews, forums and years of accumulated user habit all reinforce one another. Competing with that means offering something meaningfully different, not merely equivalent. Epic has tried. Exclusive releases, a regular schedule of free games and a more generous...
Read MoreA major community decompilation tool is shutting down, and the reason is a wave of low-effort AI-generated submissions that its maintainers can no longer absorb. The closure is a stark example of how a shared resource can be worn down by people who never intended to contribute to it. Decompilation is painstaking work. It involves reconstructing readable source code from a compiled game so that the result can be studied, modified, ported or preserved. Done well, it can keep old software alive long after the hardware it ran on has disappeared, and it underpins a great deal of modding and research. The work has always depended on trust. Contributors follow conventions, document their changes and accept review, because the value of the project comes from many people building on a shared foundation. Anything that floods that process with noise makes the whole thing harder to maintain. AI tools have made it trivial to produce...
Read MoreThe new Street Fighter film arrives in cinemas this Friday, and its Rotten Tomatoes score has already revived an old conversation about what happens when a beloved game is adapted for the screen. The early reception suggests the movie is closer to the bad old days than anyone hoping for a turnaround would like. Aggregate scores are a blunt instrument, but they are a useful signal of consensus. When critics line up on one side, it usually reflects something structural rather than a matter of taste: a script that cannot decide what it wants to be, or a production that treats the source material as a licence rather than a foundation. Street Fighter has the ingredients for a good film. A global cast of fighters, clear rivalries, a tournament structure and a villain with a personal stake in the hero’s defeat. The arcade games were built on broad archetypes, and broad archetypes travel well...
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