A recent hands-on demo of Final Fantasy 7 Revelation has left us with more questions than answers, which is an unusual place for a preview to end up. The third chapter of the remake trilogy is being positioned as a conclusion, and conclusions carry a different kind of pressure from middle chapters. Part of that pressure is structural. The trilogy has spent two games establishing a version of a familiar story that deliberately deviates from the original, and the final entry has to resolve threads it created while also landing the moments people have been waiting years to see. A demo can show tone, pacing and combat, but it cannot show whether those two obligations fit together. Openings are revealing in their own way. The first hour of a game sets the rules: how quickly it hands you control, how much it explains, whether it trusts you to remember what came before, and how...
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The Blood of Dawnwalker is getting a substantial PS5 patch next week. Rebel Wolves has detailed version 1.1, which promises over 1,100 “enhancements and corrections”, and the studio has published an infographic highlighting the most significant of them. A number that large invites scepticism, so it helps to understand what it represents. Patch notes of this kind count everything: crash fixes, typo corrections, animation blends, audio levels, quest flags, collision issues, menu behaviour. A thousand small changes can add up to a noticeably smoother game without any single item being dramatic. The infographic exists precisely because a list of 1,100 entries is impossible to read, and the headline figure is best taken as a sign of effort rather than a score. This is the update the studio signalled last month, when it said a more accessible difficulty setting was on the way alongside adjustments to combat and controls. Those are the changes most players...
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No Rest for the Wicked has a new release window. After being pushed back from its originally scheduled October launch on PS5, the game will now arrive in March 2027, and the studio has shown off version 1.0 gameplay to mark the news. Delays have become so common that it is easy to stop reading at the word. The context matters here, though. This is not a small slip for a finished game. It is the debut of version 1.0, the point at which an early access project is considered complete, and the difference between the current build and that release is being described as substantial. The headline claim is that 1.0 roughly doubles the size of the game. That is a meaningful statement for a title that has been playable in early access on other platforms. Doubling the size can mean more areas, more encounters, more systems, or simply a longer critical path,...
Read MoreThe Shrek 2 video game is getting a remaster, and the news arrived the way so many announcements do these days: through a store listing rather than a press release. A page on the Xbox Store appears to have revealed Shrek 2 Remastered ahead of any official word. For anyone who missed it, Shrek 2 arrived on PS2 during an era when almost every major film came with a tie-in game. Most of those adaptations were rushed, cheap and forgotten within a year. This one was remembered more fondly than most, imperfections and all, largely because it offered cooperative play at a time when that was a reliable way to get friends together. That co-op focus is the heart of its reputation. Sitting on a couch with a second player and working through a campaign together was a defining pleasure of the generation, and licensed games were often the easiest way to do it....
Read MoreThe weekend has arrived, the days are getting shorter, and the weather is turning colder, at least here in the UK. That combination has always been good for gaming. There are countless games to play, and this week the team has plenty on the go. One entry worth noting: Control: Resonant now has a physical edition. That is a welcome development for anyone who had been waiting to pick it up in a box rather than as a download, and it is exactly the sort of thing this feature tends to surface. Physical releases have become something of a niche pleasure, but they still matter to collectors, to people with slow connections, and to anyone who likes the idea of owning something they can put on a shelf. A disc also has a way of making a game feel finished in a way a download does not. The rest of the list is as...
Read MoreAtelier Karia is adding a weight mechanic, and it is doing so because fans voted for it. The PS5 role-playing game, the latest entry in Gust’s long-running apothecary series, is set to include a system inspired by Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, where what a character eats affects how they look and perform. The idea is not as strange as it first sounds. San Andreas treated food as a resource. Eating too much changed CJ’s physique, eating too little had its own consequences, and keeping him in shape took a little management. It was a small system that added texture to a game about building a life, and it gave players one more thing to think about between missions. Atelier Karia already has a reason to care about meals. When the game was unveiled, dining was confirmed to play a significant role, which fits a series built around gathering ingredients, crafting and cooking. Adding...
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