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Castlevania Belmont’s Curse once had a Dark Souls “vibe,” but it was “just too hard”

by Ralph on October 16, 2026 0

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...

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Ex-Valve dev not impressed by Epic’s updated Steam rival or Tim Sweeney’s latest dig at Gabe Newell

by Ralph on October 16, 2026 0

An 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...

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Low-effort AI slop sends a major community decompilation tool shutting down

by Ralph on October 16, 2026 0

A 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...

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Street Fighter movie’s Rotten Tomatoes score takes us back to the days of bad video game movies

by Ralph on October 16, 2026 0

The 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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Biddy Blas actor is playing Star Wars Galactic Racer and he knows how “annoying” his character is

by Ralph on October 16, 2026 0

The actor behind Biddy Blas is playing Star Wars Galactic Racer, and he is under no illusion about how his character lands. By his own account, the character is “annoying,” a description he delivers with the affection of someone who knows exactly what he signed up for. There is a particular pleasure in watching performers engage with their own work this way. Actors rarely get to choose how an audience responds, and the ones who lean into it, rather than defending every creative decision, tend to come across as more honest about the job. His comment about the game itself is equally refreshing. Enjoying something and being good at it are different questions, and admitting the gap between the two is a small act of humility that most promotional interviews avoid. Plenty of players will recognise the feeling immediately. Star Wars has a long history in games, spanning space combat, role-playing adventures, strategy and,...

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Enshrouded 1.0 – Launch Trailer

by Ralph on October 16, 2026 0

Leaving early access is a milestone that carries more weight than it used to. Enshrouded has spent an extended stretch in that phase, and version 1.0 is being presented as the point where the project stops being a work in progress and becomes something the studio is ready to stand behind. The setup is laid out clearly in the launch trailer. You are Flameborn, the last spark of hope for a species that is fading, and the goal is to reclaim Embervale. Between you and that goal sits a tainting mist, a threat the game asks you to endure rather than brush aside. Survival games built around a hostile environment live or die on how that environment feels. A mist that corrupts and spreads is a useful device because it turns the map itself into a source of pressure, giving exploration a cost and making safe ground feel earned rather than guaranteed. A 1.0...

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Call Of Duty: MW4 Is Not On Xbox Game Pass, But Here’s When You Can Expect It

by Ralph on October 16, 2026 0

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 arrives on October 23, and it will do so without the safety net that Xbox players have come to expect. The game will not be available through Xbox Game Pass at launch, a decision that marks a real change in how the series is being positioned. Activision has restated the point in a new blog post timed for the eve of the campaign’s early access period, which begins on October 16. The company has been clear about this for a while, so the post is less a revelation than a confirmation, but the timing gives it weight. Game Pass has spent years being sold as the reason to choose Xbox, and day-one arrivals have been central to that pitch. A release as large as a new Modern Warfare sitting outside the service cuts against the message, even if the reasoning behind the decision is easy to understand. For...

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Why Rockstar Canceled Its PlayStation-Exclusive Follow-Up To GTA 4

by Ralph on October 16, 2026 0

Some games are remembered for what they were. Others are remembered for what they might have been, and Agent belongs firmly in the second category. Sony announced it at E3 2009 as a PlayStation-exclusive espionage title built in collaboration with Rockstar, with Sam and Dan Houser overseeing production. It never released. The project quietly stopped being discussed, and for years the only information available was the announcement itself and the occasional rumour. Now Dan Houser has offered more detail about why the game fell apart, in conversation with IGN. The context of that announcement matters. Platform exclusivity deals were common in that era, and a partnership with a studio of Rockstar’s stature was a genuine coup. It signalled that Sony was willing to fund original work rather than simply secure timed access to multiplatform releases. Cancellations are rarely the result of a single failure. Projects of that scale involve technology that has to be...

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