Yakuza Kiwami 3’s new expansion basically turns it into a breakneck roguelite dungeon crawl, complete with random drops and goofy sidekicks

Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio is, by this point, the undisputed master of recycling. By reusing characters and environments and minigames across the Like a Dragon series (and then remaking the games to do it all over again), it’s able to pack each new game with a luxurious volume of stuff while simultaneously piling cutscenes to…

Read More

Yakuza Kiwami 3 includes the first official emulation of 2 bizarro Sega arcade games, including one like Crazy Taxi but you’re racing an ambulance to the hospital before a patient bleeds to death

In the glory days of the video arcade, no idea was too weird for a multi-thousand-dollar machine built around a CRT. Take, for example, two of Sega’s more obscure late ’90s arcade cabinets: Magical Truck Adventure (which does not feature a truck) and Emergency Call Ambulance (which does feature an ambulance). Released in 1998 and…

Read More

Resident Evil Requiem was originally a tense, stealth-oriented horror starring only Leon, before the team went back to the drawing board: ‘People wouldn’t want to see a timid Leon’

Capcom published a lengthy Resident Evil Requiem showcase today, showing off some typically savage new footage and gameplay features. Series mainstay Leon S. Kennedy will co-star with newcomer Grace, and their sequences will be roughly even in length, with game director Koshi Nakanishi describing Requiem as essentially two games in one. Grace’s parts will resemble…

Read More

The studio behind the best metroidvania of 2021 has a new game coming out next month—and I’m dropping everything to play it

It looks like a fairly orthodox 8-bit platformer on the surface, but Astalon: Tears of the Earth is among my favourite modern metroidvanias. Its class-based combat and exploration is thoroughly engrossing, the depth of its secrets astonishing, and most importantly, it’s a sumptuous feast for pixel art enthusiasts. If you like metroidvanias I’m begging you…

Read More

Dawn of War 4’s combat director goes even further than the original game’s sync-kill animations: ‘I don’t think any RTS has really done anything like this in the past’

One of the reasons Dawn of War is still the best RTS is its sync-kill system. You’ll be panning across the battlefield watching a disco storm of lasers go off, and in the middle of that inferno see two individual soldiers in a co-ordinated fight to the death right out of a movie. They’ll finish…

Read More

The JRPG veteran responsible for Persona and Megami Tensei is working on a ‘school life RPG’ with the Neptunia series studio

Kouji Okada helped co-found Atlus and is one of the co-creators of its two biggest JRPG series in Shin Megami Tensei and Persona. He left the company in 2003 to form now-shuttered studio Gaia, and hasn’t been active in game development for 16 years. Until now: JRPG studio Compile Hearts, best known for the Neptunia…

Read More

Fatal Fury fans accuse new City of the Wolves trailer of being filled with AI slop: ‘All that Saudi money and can’t pay someone a couple bucks to make real s**t’

SNK dropped a trailer for season 2 of Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, set to kick off on January 22, and an awful lot of fans aren’t happy about it. The problem isn’t the second season of character DLC, but the trailer promoting it, which many of them think is laden with AI generated…

Read More