The Dark Arisen expansion for Dragon's Dogma 2 has launched across all platforms, and reviews are coming in. IGN and But Why Tho? gave it 8/10, Push Square 9/10, RPGFan 95/100, and RPGamer 3.5/5. The expansion is bundled with the Switch 2 version of the game.
Vanillaware is teaming up with publisher Marvelous to bring the full history of Muramasa: The Demon Blade to modern consoles as Muramasa: Revenant Blades, a 4K remaster combining Muramasa Rebirth and its Genroku Legends DLC. The author played roughly an hour at a Marvelous office in Tokyo's Shinagawa district, clearing the first two acts on Moral difficulty and facing bosses Kurozaru and giant centipedes. The remaster is fully redrawn by Vanillaware's artists and promises over 100 swords to forge, dozens of skills to upgrade, and five more stories with new localization and English voiceover.
Muramasa: Revenant Blades hands-on gameplay preview https://www.gematsu.com/2026/10/muramasa-revenant-blades-hands-on-gameplay-preview
A Gematsu writer spent one hour with Vanillaware's side-scrolling action RPG remaster Muramasa: Revenant Blades at Marvelous' Shinagawa headquarters, where the demo limited players to Kisuke or Momohime while the full game will have six playable characters. Combat felt fluid with dashing, dodging, jumping, and ground and mid-air combos, and each weapon has its own special move; weapons lose durability and deal less damage as they degrade, forcing swaps the author found more distracting than engaging. Later areas open into Metroidvania-style branching paths across villages, caves, and beaches. The game is due out for PS5, Switch 2, Switch, and PC via Steam on February 4, 2027.
Muramasa: Revenant Blades arrives on Switch 1 and Switch 2 on 4th February 2027, combining the 2013 PS Vita version Muramasa Rebirth with the Genroku Legends DLC so all six stories are available at launch. The author spent an hour with a PC build at publisher Marvelous' Tokyo headquarters, playing as the possessed noblewoman Momohime through branching paths, three-weapon durability management, samurai blocks and ninja deflections, and the first Blue Monk boss. The remaster keeps the original visuals in HD, adds new English voice acting, and offers a skill tree with three ground and three airborne slots.
Muramasa: Revenant Blades has 108 swords, and it wants to make sure you use them all https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/muramasa/
Muramasa: Revenant Blades is Vanillaware's first PC release, 17 years after the game launched on Nintendo Wii as Muramasa: The Demon Blade. The PC version adds a skill system for all 108 swords, letting players equip three blades at once with three ground and three air skills each, and skills can be moved to another sword only after it has drawn blood. Enemies no longer scale with the player and instead have fixed levels per area, while higher difficulties add more and tougher foes and blocking wears down your sword until it breaks.
The first critic review for Castlevania: Belmont's Curse, developed by Evil Empire and Motion Twin, has gone live from Japanese publication Famitsu, which gave it 8/8/8/8 for a total of 32/40. The game stars new protagonist Rose Belmont and launches next week, with a demo now available on the Switch eShop.
IGN's review says Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen matches the ambition and world design of the first expansion but is less transformative, since many of Dragon's Dogma 2's biggest issues were addressed through incremental patching after its 2024 release. The roughly 20-hour main quest follows rumors of another Arisen and sends players to the frozen Norgan region. The review notes Norgan is smaller than most regions but dense with verticality, and adds Spoils gear, obelisks for learning new skills, and 12 repeatable Lost Rites dungeons across Vermund and Bathall.
Push Square published a review of Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen on PS5, calling it an epic expansion.
The Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen review roundup shows an 86 average and 90% recommended across 20 reviews on OpenCritic. The expansion launches October 8 on Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC, and October 9 on Nintendo Switch 2, adding the Norgan region, a new loot system, and extra skill slots. Several outlets note improved technical performance, while others say it leaves the base game's core shortcomings in place.
Push Square's review calls Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen a large expansion, with its main story and numerous side quests taking around 50 hours before a full endgame. It takes place in the new northern region of Norgan, where players need thermal armour and items like Heatstones against the cold, and set up increasingly northern base camps as the story progresses. Loot is randomised, with spoils appraised back at a southern hub, while the new Lost Rites dungeons scattered across the base game's map vary in quality and length.
A review of Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen finds the release marks the series' Nintendo debut and bundles the summer's updates with a new expansion. The new region of Norgan is an icy waste with snowy versions of existing foes and 12 Lost Rites dungeons, suggested for level 20, some with special restrictions. The Switch 2 version performs far better than at launch but still has longer loading times, occasional frame rate dips and a visual downgrade compared with PS5 Pro, with FSR 3 Frame Generation, a 30fps lock and a variable frame rate option in the settings.
Kotaku's review calls Norgan, a snowy region north of the original map, the centerpiece of Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen, with one settlement, buried ruins, and environmental hazards like cracking ice and blizzards. The expansion also adds 12 new dungeons to the existing world, which the reviewer found unremarkable on a New Game+ character around level 70 but likely fine for first-time players. Most monsters are variants of base-game foes, such as ice-casting saurians and yeti-like ogres, alongside a few new bosses; the reviewer says the DLC does not dramatically change the game but stays true to it.
Why this: Based on roughly 20 hours with the expansion, the reviewer weighs the Norgan region, 12 new dungeons, and monster variants to help readers judge whether the DLC is worth returning for.
Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen arrives on Nintendo Switch 2 this month. GameSpot looks at how Capcom's fantasy adventure holds up on the handheld and whether it's worth playing there.
The Castlevania: Belmont's Curse demo hides a secret weapon called Cestus that makes protagonist Rose strike poses referencing classic fighting game characters like Ryu, Chun-Li, and Akuma. The free demo launched on October 1, 2026, and the full game releases on October 15.
World of Warcraft: Forever drops the PvP grind so normal people can have fancy titles too
We earned as much gold in WoW: Forever as we could in 2 hours—which caused at least one crashout
Nivalis Nights review: An avalanche of fascinating characters carrying a decent shop sim on their backs. https://www.pcgamer.com/games/life-sim/nivalis-nights-review/
PC Gamer reviewed Nivalis Nights, an Ion Lands-developed, 505 Games-published cyberpunk shop sim released September 29, 2026 for $25 that blends life sim decorating, shop management, open-world exploration and farm production into a story-heavy quest structure. The reviewer found the management, decorating and romance systems each lacking, but praised the characters, with at least 121 portraits in the known characters menu and many fully voiced NPCs whose stories range from corporate satire to people crushed by debt. The reviewer expected shop management and decorating to be the main draw, but instead the city and its cast kept them exploring for the next thread.
The author played roughly 40 minutes of FF7 Revelation's first chapter on a PlayStation 5 Pro, entering the Northern Crater and trying out the newly playable Cid and Vincent. The author remains mostly unconvinced that the remake's newest combat tweaks are necessary, but came away wanting more.
A leaked Famitsu review gives Castlevania: Belmont's Curse all 8s. The reviewers describe it as a traditional exploration-type game with no equipment collecting or money from enemy drops, and note its high athletic difficulty centered on aerial movement with whips and other weapons. The story continues from Castlevania 3: Dracula's Curse and follows the Belmont family protagonists.
Blizzard moved Overwatch's pesky, perpetually banned hacker Sombra from damage to support, and the rework turned out far better than expected. The author, initially ready to scoff at the change as a concession to players unwilling to learn the game, admitted being proven wrong.
IGN reviews TOEM 2 from developer Something We Made, saying it keeps the photo-puzzle framework of 2021's TOEM as players travel three monochrome isometric towns and earn bus tickets by helping townsfolk. The roughly four-to-five-hour game adds camera features like target lock that make shooting easier, but the review finds its puzzles less engaging than the original's and its 3D-modeled world no real step up.
DF's STAR WARS: Galactic Racer Development Doc Is Now Live https://www.digitalfoundry.net/news/2026/10/dfs-star-wars-galactic-racer-development-doc-is-now-live
Browser game Dog Online has surpassed 10,000 users in a sudden resurgence more than six months after its open beta launch, forcing its small team to scramble to upgrade servers. The dog-themed game, described as an MS Paint-drenched version of Neopets, offers fishing, farming, cooking, trading, and a turn-based RPG dungeon, with 73 fish, 238 foods, 57 enemies, and 76 crops. Lead developer Mimi said the team got started a little less than a year ago and launched the public beta this past April Fools' Day.
Star Wars: Galactic Racer's multiplayer mode is being called the best racing multiplayer in years. The reviewer had expected it to be a standard affair that blunted the game's originality in pursuit of a level playing field, but found otherwise after further testing on live servers. The reviewer expects the mode to be quite influential.
Rockstar Games has unveiled five new details about Grand Theft Auto 6 ahead of its release in a few weeks. The previews cover features fans had not heard about, and the gameplay may be more complex than players expected.
The Order of the Sinking Star review roundup shows an OpenCritic average of 82 with 82% recommended across 18 reviews. Thekla Inc.'s game launches October 8 on PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC. Reviewers praise its puzzle mechanics and scale, while some cite its sheer size and framerate and crash issues on Switch 2.
A PC Gamer writer spent 3 hours with the Arc Raiders Frozen Trails update and spent most of it using the new grapple hook. The green tier gadget can climb buildings, swing between rooftops, descend safely, stick to almost anything, and be redeployed midair with no cooldown or use limit, allowing chained swings. The update also adds a launcher that tethers two objects and a grenade that yanks Arc bots to the ground, which the writer did not test thoroughly. The reworked skill tree mixes old and new abilities with mutually exclusive branches, and the writer found most nodes to be incremental stat boosts that do not change play in the short term, while the new Pendola Pass map feels visually distinct for its snow but familiar in the areas they visit most.
I had 3 hours with Arc Raiders Frozen Trails update and spent most of it playing with a grapple hook
Arc Raiders has released Frozen Trail, its first major update since the studio moved to a semi-annual cadence, and the author calls it a hefty, inventive makeover after a few hours of play. It adds a frost-themed map, a raid-style map event mixing puzzles and combat, new weapons and enemies, a skill tree overhaul, customization spaces called Outposts, a new gun-buffing system, weapon cosmetics, and a multi-tiered battle pass. Embark Studios announced in May that it was shifting to semi-annual major updates to give the team more time for meaningful content.
Silver Pines is Wych Elm's debut, a Twin Peaks-inspired neo-noir detective mystery published by Team17 that blends survival horror, 2D Metroidvania exploration and point 'n' click puzzling. Its moody town and missing-musician story work well, but once the town opens up it becomes a backtrack-heavy maze of dead ends and item hunts. The author got stuck on a puzzle requiring a swim across a river and asked the developers for directions; Wych Elm said they were looking at reworking that scene.
On the Switch 2 Tarnished Edition, the writer started a fourth Elden Ring save file and pushed past the Lakes region for the first time, clearing the Academy of Raya Lucaria and still wanting more. He calls the Switch 2 port sublime despite some substantial frame rate drops, and says he is enjoying it even more than his earlier PS4 and PS5 attempts.
Thousand Hells is an interesting game, but don't go into it expecting an experience identical to Six Ages. https://www.siliconera.com/review-thousand-hells-is-more-random-than-six-ages/
An IGN opinion piece argues Star Wars: Galactic Racer replaces the familiar championship checklist with a run-based career mode where too many losses eject you from the whole championship and send you back to the start. Fuse Games co-founder and CEO Matt Webster says gaming is risk-reward and the risk has to have a consequence, with the game borrowing randomized rewards and build choices from other genres. The piece contrasts this with the iRacing-style PvP focus and the failure-proof Forza Horizon model.
Arc Raiders' biggest update yet, Frozen Trail, is coming soon, and the author went hands-on with it for a few hours. It adds the raid-inspired Emperor set into the mountainside, an airborne Frigate, new enemies, weapons, gadgets, and a new snowy map, with the grappling hook standing out most.
Today on DF, a massive new video on STAR WARS: Galactic Racer as @dark1x talks to Fuse Games on the origins of the studio, the collaboration with Lucasfilm and interviews with all major departments on the making of the game: https://youtu.be/EIPgivtETng #sponsored
At a TGS2026 pre-show media trial, Gundam Intergalactic Journey showed its mech customization system, where players combine individual parts, weapons carry two skill slots, AT elements work as cooldown-based special gear tied to ultimate moves, and thruster types change air and ground movement. Producers Yuya Toyama and Kazuyuki Serizawa said the MOD SKIN transmog only changes appearance while actions and performance stay the same, with no presets or player sharing, and that development materials come from missions and map pickups with fixed, non-random stats. Three-player co-op is positioned as post-story endgame content, and the game depicts mechs fighting alien lifeforms called "Revelations" in a fully original world.
Annapurna Interactive is publishing Forever Ago, a narrative adventure game from developer Third Shift. Its protagonist, the aging grouch Alfred, takes a grief-stricken road trip while flashbacks reveal a long life rerouted by rainstorms and engine failures. It is Third Shift's long-delayed debut.