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Control Resonant Review – Fun, Frustration, And Fun Again

Game Informer's review of Control Resonant says the sequel keeps the best traits of Control, with new protagonist Dylan Faden stepping in for his sister Jesse in a distorted Manhattan. It praises the transforming Aberrant weapon and perfect dodge, but notes that enemies level alongside the player and respawn until larger foes fall, turning some fights into wars of attrition. The reviewer says the world and story kept drawing him back even after the credits rolled.

Roman Sands Re:Build review - a fiendish immersive sim drenched in a vaporwave glitchcore palette

Eurogamer's review of Roman Sands Re:Build describes a game split into two tonally opposite acts: the first is a fiendish immersive sim set in a cursed resort where the player serves four residents, and the second is a slow survival purgatory. Nearly fourteen hours in, the reviewer calls it an unclassifiable experience that defies neat analysis.

Is 2 Million Yuan Enough to Retire Early From the Game Industry?

Dex, a game industry veteran, retired early at 44 this Spring Festival after heart problems. R plans to save 2 million yuan and leave before turning 35, with progress at 68%. Both say the game industry's long hours and frequent project cancellations make real retirement rare.

Chuapp Talk: Maybe We Can Turn Investigative Reporting Into Games?

Chuapp Talk discusses the possibility of turning investigative reporting into video games, citing Predatorgate, which draws on the Greek spyware scandal and puts players in a situation where their phone is under surveillance. It also mentions Gone Gitmo, built in Second Life in 2007, Fort McMoney from 2013 about Canada's oil sands town Fort McMurray, and Rebuilding Haiti from 2014. The author notes that reporting, production costs, timeliness and journalistic ethics remain obstacles.

Three-person studio's dressmaking sim Dressmaker launches on Steam with 96% positive reviews and 12,500 peak concurrent players

Dressmaker, a dressmaking simulation developed by Cozy Lives and published by Free Lives, launched on Steam on September 22, covering the full process from fabric selection and pattern-making to cutting and sewing. It ranked eighth on the global bestseller chart on launch day, hit a peak of 12,500 concurrent players on Steam, and holds a 96% positive rating across 1,455 reviews. Players praise its tailoring theme and relaxing tone but point to an incomplete tutorial, a pattern library mostly limited to dresses, and stiff controls.

Aion 2 Steam test peaks at 73,000 concurrent players as monetization and art debates carry into global launch

Aion 2's global Steam PC stress test, which began on September 17, reached 73,000 concurrent players on SteamDB, with the full release set for October 5. The article recounts the backlash from its earlier Korea and Taiwan launch over stat-boosting items in loot boxes and core features locked behind paid memberships, and notes that NCsoft adjusted or removed some disputed items during the test. It also covers overseas discussion of differing male and female character outfits and NCsoft's broader push to move beyond traditional MMOs.

Final Fantasy VII Revelation's FITS Classes Let You Keep the Party's Classic Outfits

Final Fantasy VII Revelation's FITS system lets players spec Cloud and the party into four types, Warrior, Knight, Black Mage, and Summoner, while still wearing their classic outfits. After a Tokyo Game Show hands-on with Chapter 1, director Naoki Hamaguchi told the author that keeping the signature look was important and that the option is available from the start. The game launches April 8 next year on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, and PC.

Final Fantasy VII Revelation Hands-On Preview: Tokyo Game Show Chapter 1 Demo Is More Focused Than the Gamescom Chapter 4 Demo

A Game Informer writer played roughly 25 minutes of Final Fantasy VII Revelation's Chapter 1 demo at Tokyo Game Show, calling it more focused on story than the Chapter 4 demo from Gamescom in August. The demo is set in the Whirlwind Maze section of the Northern Crater and shows the new FITS system with four specializations: Warrior, Knight, Black Mage, and Summoner. The writer also tried Vincent, whose beast form can be maintained freely but raises his Chaos level and lowers his HP, and the demo ended with a Jenova Death boss fight. The game launches April 8.

"Gulong Qunxia Lu" Open Beta: Can a "Wanderable Jianghu" Be Another Answer for Wuxia IPs?

Gulong Qunxia Lu launched its full-platform open beta on September 23, pitching a "wanderable jianghu" built around open 3D exploration and turn-based strategy combat. The game uses ink-wash visuals to evoke Gu Long's settings and gives original side characters like Qin Shuang their own storylines, with free horseback exploration and random encounters. Special stages such as Jiguan Island and Guiying Cave let combat break out of turn-based mode into real-time resolution.

Steam Machine handles Control Resonant capably, but promised Steam Deck support is a letdown

Control Resonant runs at a playable 40-50fps at 1080p on Medium settings on the Steam Machine, but struggles on the Steam Deck, where even the Handheld preset with FSR Performance rarely reaches 30fps. The game also has a 105GB install size and lacked public SteamOS hardware compatibility ratings a day before release. The author does not recommend playing it on the Steam Deck and advises against enabling ray tracing.

EA Sports FC 27 hands-on: The Grounds football open world and UT Collection

EA Sports FC 27 launches on September 25, with Ultimate Edition owners getting in a week early, and a hands-on look focuses on the new football open-world mode The Grounds and the UT Collection. The Grounds supports up to 100 players in one shared space, where players create an avatar and take part in 1v1, 2v2 and 3v3 street matches, skill challenges and NPC quests while leveling up. In Ultimate Team, the new Collection lets players sort player cards and rate sets to earn Hall of Fame players, while corner and SBC changes remain largely incremental.

Chuapp Talk: Immersed In It

Digital Extremes, the studio behind Warframe, has opened an internal test "Prologue" for its new fantasy adventure game Soulframe, with participants able to join a "Founder" program to help shape its future. The current build's class and progression systems are still rudimentary, but the author found immersion to be its biggest surprise, especially its ballad-like narrative atmosphere.

Resident Evil movie review - the best video game adaptation of playing a video game

Zach Cregger's Resident Evil film drops everyman Bryan into Raccoon City's T-virus outbreak, structured like a video game with real-time encounters, set-pieces and boss fights. Austin Abrams stars in a horror-comedy that leans on slapstick and gross-out gags, and it lacks Leon, Claire and other series regulars.

Furries, magical girls and slick hack 'n' slash combat blend promisingly in the late 2000s inspired Break The Night

Break The Night, a hack 'n' slash inspired by late 2000s aesthetics, received a combat demo as part of this year's SAGExpo. You play as three roommates trapped in a space between realities called the Limit, with one-button combos, a spin attack presented as a card, and roguelike elements. It can be wishlisted on Steam.

Rayman Legends Retold expands its music levels to about a dozen, and after three hours of play the author's worries faded

After about three hours with Rayman Legends Retold, Eurogamer's author says his worry that the shift from 2D to 2.5D would spoil the original's music levels did not hold up. In interviews, Ubisoft Milan animation and realisation director Marco Renso and Ubisoft Montpellier brand producer Loïc Gounon said the new tracks include levels inspired by the Macarena and MC Hammer's U Can't Touch This, bringing the game to about a dozen music levels alongside the six originals. The team said physics and collision still run on the UbiArt Framework while visuals and audio are rendered in another engine, and the game has moved from 1st October to 3rd December.

Today's Xbox studio consolidation might bring a new Halo sooner, but history shows production line development makes for boring games

Xbox is consolidating its studios and moving the Halo series to Activision with 268 team members, aiming to push out its biggest franchises like Fallout and Halo more quickly. The article argues that chasing an annual Call of Duty-style release pace wears down individual studios' quirks and flattens innovation, as Ubisoft's years of annual Assassin's Creed releases showed before the publisher dropped the yearly cadence.

I Taught an Old Man New Tunes in Rhythm-Action Shopkeeper Sim Mr. Records, and Now You Can Try the Demo Yourself

Mr. Records, a mashup of rhythm-action autorunner and vinyl shop management from Glee-Cheese Studio, now has a demo available on Steam. Players follow George, an old music aficionado who dives into fantasy platforming sequences where jumps, slides, and throws must be made on the beat, then uses what he learned to help customers find records the next morning. The demo's shop opens with just two records and adds only one or two per night, while the soundtrack is entirely original and spans psychedelic pop, classic rock, and R&B-inspired rap.

Nighthawks review – a series of vignettes that sometimes excel but more often falter

Nighthawks is a 2026 vampire RPG in which you play a newly-made vampire who takes over the titular nightclub and explores three neighbourhoods across five acts of vignette-driven story. Two standout quests about women escaping restrictive obligations show what the game can do, but its anti-vampire sentiment thread is unconvincing and the first act is particularly dry. The lack of time pressure and meaningful roleplaying choices further undercuts the experience.

Valor Mortis Preview: Uneven Difficulty Balance Mars an Otherwise Great Soulslike

Game Informer's Wesley LeBlanc spent more than 15 hours with a preview build of Valor Mortis, the first-person Soulslike from Ghostrunner studio One More Level, playing through its first four chapters. He says the game's foundation is strong but its difficulty balance is wildly uneven, with bosses taking roughly 60 percent of his health and over 100 boss deaths in the preview. Valor Mortis launches October 13, and he hopes the balance gets tuned before then.

Tokyo Game Show 2026 celebrated the past, and an uncertain AI future | Opinion

Tokyo Game Show 2026's 30th instalment ran only four of its five days after the final day was canceled due to an oncoming typhoon, with remakes and legacy IP dominating the showfloor. A preliminary CESA report found 86% of developers self-reported using AI tools, up from 51% last year, while Level-5 drew controversy for prominent AI use in its showcase and trailers, prompting CEO Akihiro Hino to apologize.

TYPE-MOON at TGS: Hands-on and Interviews for Fate/EXTRA Record and MELTY BLOOD: TWI-LUMINA

The author played Fate/EXTRA Record and MELTY BLOOD: TWI-LUMINA at Aniplex's TGS booth on September 17, with both demo stations running on PS5. Fate/EXTRA Record is described as a dungeon-crawling RPG that replaces the original rock-paper-scissors combat with deck-building command card battles, offers Saber, Archer and Caster as playable Servants, and launches on January 28, 2027. MELTY BLOOD: TWI-LUMINA offers seven playable characters and simple and traditional control modes, and director Kamone Serizawa said its story runs about 20 hours ahead of its April 22, 2027 release.

Silent Hill: Townfall review - an often inspired, if slightly lumbering trek into the fog

This Silent Hill: Townfall review says developer Screen Burn (formerly No Code) took what it needed from the series to tell its own story, following three interwoven lives on the fictional late-90s Scottish island of St Amelia after a disaster left roads blockaded and the square covered in pictures of the missing. It notes that puzzles often hinge on 3 or 4 digit keycodes solved through period technology such as beige desktop computers and payphones, and that the back half turns to late-90s corporate negligence and reputation management. The author finds the stealth mechanical and the patrolling monotonous, with one unkillable enemy proving a chore, though enemies that play dead and a late-game foe reminiscent of Left 4 Dead's Special Infected revive the pace.

Silent Hill: Townfall Review - Addressing The Trauma

Game Informer's review says Silent Hill: Townfall is the series' third game in as many years and the first to fully embrace a first-person perspective, following Simon Ordell through the Scottish town of St. Amelia in 1996. It praises the visuals and peeking mechanic, and notes combat is heavily discouraged with scarce bullets and fast-breaking melee weapons, making it closer to a stealth game. The reviewer says inconsistent enemy detection forced frequent save reloads and diminished the tension, while the cast's emotional backstories are more transparent than in past entries.

Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave After 130+ Hours – Was It Worth It? | Podcast

This episode of The Game Informer Show spends a large chunk of time on Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave, with Eric sharing thoughts after putting 130+ hours into Intelligent Systems' strategy-RPG. The show then briefly touches on early impressions of Control Resonant, and Alex reports back from Blizzcon 2026, including hands-on time with the World of Warcraft: Forever beta.

Control Resonant review roundup: 84 on Metacritic, melee combat and open Manhattan praised, boss fights criticized

Remedy has released Control Resonant seven years after Control, with players exploring a paranatural Manhattan as Dylan Faden, the brother of Control's Jesse Faden, in a shift from third-person shooting to melee-focused, open-ended structure. The game holds an 84 Metacritic score, with Rock Paper Shotgun and Kotaku praising its character-first storytelling and action, IGN giving it 8 out of 10, and Eurogamer giving it 3 out of 5 while criticizing traversal and pacing. Critics largely agreed that the boss fights are the weakest part, citing spongy health bars and repetitive encounters despite strong visual design and build-altering rewards.

Zach Cregger's Resident Evil Movie Understands How It Feels To Play A Resident Evil Game

Zach Cregger's Resident Evil movie contains very few overt references to the larger franchise, taking place primarily in Raccoon City with the Umbrella Corporation, a typewriter, and Heavy Field shotgun shells. It follows an ordinary man named Bryan through one night stuck in a Resident Evil-style ordeal, reacting as a player rather than a series protagonist across a 90-minute runtime. The author says it expertly captures the emotional experience of playing a Resident Evil game and replaces Werewolves Within as their favorite video game film adaptation.

Roman Sands RE:Build review: A unique and obliterating blend of resort sim, engineering horror and alchemic ritual

Roman Sands RE:Build is two grim games locked together: a time-looping resort hotel job sim and a deteriorating ocean base exploration sim steeped in cybernetic horror. The resort portion absorbs the bulk of the 10-hour playtime, earning XP through guest requests while the game deliberately characterizes you as a spineless toady. Each half is a short masterpiece, and the reviewer urges playing it before reading further.

Pulling focus: Must AAA pander to the distracted? | Opinion

Inflated AAA budgets have pushed studios to lean on focus groups and market research in late development, but these methods are deeply limited in usefulness. The real problem isn't executives who think they know game design better than developers, but those who think a room of random strangers does, and the loop of reworks and focus groups erodes both a game's originality and its developers' morale.

Control Resonant review: A superbly strange action-RPG that makes you feel tiny and godly at once

Rock Paper Shotgun's James Archer reviews Control Resonant, finding that the sequel's switch to Dylan Faden, a kaleidoscopic open-world Manhattan, and melee action-RPG combat pays off. Fights revolve around the shapeshifting Aberrant's forms and combos, with status effects enabling stance-break builds that make combat more aggressive than the original's. Progression is tied to Manhattan sub-areas that reset and toughen after their boss falls, and the reviewer notes Steam Deck performance falls short of its promised support alongside bugs such as music cutouts and enemies stuck on scenery.

Control Resonant Review in Progress: Early Impressions of Combat and Manhattan

Game Informer's Marcus Stewart published a review-in-progress of Control Resonant, saying he is still working through Dylan Faden's adventure and will publish a scored review next week before the game's September 24 launch. He said the combat and world design differ notably from the first Control, but the weird lore and side stories remain highlights, the melee action feels good though not at Devil May Cry or Bayonetta level, and the difficulty is higher than expected with enemies often matching the player's level and swarming in waves. He described the distorted Manhattan as a surreal visual treat resembling the Mirror Dimension from Doctor Strange, with some areas gated by abilities or keys.

Why Does "Memory Management Bureau" Leave Such a Lasting Impact?

The Chinese animated series "Memory Management Bureau" has sparked discussion for its deep integration of video game elements and its tributes to GAINAX. It uses arcade hidden characters and crosshair halos as its backbone while directly exploring whether gaming has meaning, referencing works like "Evangelion," "Gurren Lagann," and "FLCL." The author argues it carries on GAINAX's spiritual legacy with a more accessible approach.

ChuLe GuaiHua: The "Old Grandpa" on the Board

In Honor of Kings: Chess of Kings, the AI assistant "Lingbao" guides players on when to level up, draw cards, and pick cards, helping the author learn the game from scratch and reach Gold rank. As rank rises, the AI's usefulness declines and opponents start using "unconventional moves" the AI wouldn't use, which the author expects will bring more variety to matches between experienced players.

On the Path of Pursuing Player Experience, Wuthering Waves Has Gone "Off the Deep End"

Wuthering Waves' 3.6 main story "烟云幽远心剑鸣" has Qingxiao choose to reconcile with her inner demon rather than defeat or submit to it. The development team says the key to long-term operation is making players trust the game is still growing, not relying on a single major version or crossover. Version 3.6 also adds sword-flight and sword-intent puzzle mechanics, and the official team says it will optimize performance across all platforms by switching programming languages, raising iOS performance by over 10 frames on average.

Wolverine ran really well when I played it for review. But it glitched once, quite beautifully

Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave Review – Let The Games Begin

Game Informer's Eric Van Allen reviewed Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave for Switch 2, calling it one of his favorite settings and stories in the series even as repetition and overabundance weigh it down. The game uses a three-act structure with four Flame Lords who each get their own route, and players can confront the final boss Balor at any time, with more assembled lords making the last campaign easier. He reached the credits in over 130 hours while still missing some scenes and events, praising the chapter bookend and coliseum battles while finding dungeon exploration and the daily activity loop repetitive enough to auto-battle through.

New Story, New Gameplay and New Pitfalls: On A Plague Tale: Resonance

A Plague Tale: Resonance stars Sophia from A Plague Tale: Requiem, set about 15 years before she meets Amicia, and replaces the series' stealth with direct combat and escape sequences. The game has no stealth system and introduces the Minotaur, which cannot be fought head-on, along with petrified and mutated enemies, while combat relies on parries and skill and weapon builds. It presents the core concept of "resonance" more completely than the two previous games, but its atmosphere is weaker.

Touch Music Odd Talk: An Interesting Overlay

Murdoku combines Sudoku logic with murder mystery: players place suspects or victims in an N×N grid so each person appears only once per row and column, and whoever shares a region with the victim is the killer. The free web version supports Chinese, and it is based on a same-named bestselling book by Canadian puzzle designer Manuel Garand published in 2025, with 2 volumes out and a third due this October.

Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter Review: A Superb Sequel

Game Informer's Hayes Madsen reviewed the Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter remake after roughly 80 hours, calling it a strong follow-up that builds on the first game's remake with enhanced visuals, voice acting, and story additions. Combat keeps the same hybrid action and turn-based system as 1st Chapter, with new arts and crafts per character and a Brave Rush team attack, while the fishing minigame was overhauled and map and quest tracking improved. The main criticism is that some dungeons feel too long, showing occasionally dated RPG design.

Why switching main characters for your game's sequel might be a mistake

IP consultant Christian Fonnesbech, who has worked with teams behind Dead Island, Metro, Conan Exiles and others, argues that switching main characters for a sequel is a common mistake because the protagonist is the easiest part of a new IP to own legally and the main source of emotional connection. He points to Hades 2, Control Resonant, God of War Laufey and The Witcher 4 as examples, questioning the business wisdom of replacing leads like Jesse Faden with her brother Dylan.

Chuapp Talk: "Your Time Is Running Out"

EA Sports FC 26 has reached the end of its lifecycle, with Ultimate Team no longer running new events and its web and app versions shut down. Playing only the web-based pack-opening mode, the author earned 4.16845 million coins over the year, about 350,000 a month, enough to buy each season's 500,000-coin paid pass without extra spending. Ultimate Team data resets every year, pushing players to FC 27, while FC 26 still costs at least $69.99.