Author: Zach Barbieri

There was a GameStop in my hometown that I had been going to since I was a child. Eventually, I started working there and did so for ten years, watching Black Fridays go from nightmare events, wading through a sea of customers in a tight space, to being maybe 50 in an entire day. We knew our store, 30 years on, was maybe on its last legs, the combination of everything as the world progresses around it, but I had moved about a year prior to get the news that it would be shutting the doors for good. I expected…

The upcoming vampire action title The Blood of Dawnwalker has received a new look at gameplay and a long-awaited release date, after it was previously tentatively slated for 2026. The game is the debut title from developer Rebel Wolves, a studio made up of industry veterans, many having previously been employed at CD Projekt Red and having worked on titles such asThe Witcher III and Cyberpunk 2077. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX17mPX3cew The Blood of Dawnwalker is an open-world vampire title where players take the role Coen, a man suffering both with silver poisoning and the vampiric curse in 14th-century Southeast Europe. As the…

Capcom has announced that Resident Evil Requiem has passed another impressive sales milestone and provided its director with two equally impressive cakes to make the occasion. The latest entry in the long-running survival horror series has now sold 7 million units since its launch on February 27, 2026. This is an increase of a million from the last official metric released in mid-April. Resident Evil Requiem has probably outperformed even the team at Capcom’s expectations, even for an already successful franchise from a beloved company. Upon its initial release, the title managed to sell 5 million copies in only five…

The next in-game event for the cozy sim Pokémon spin-off Pokémon Pokopia has been announced and will focus on the Dark/Ghost type Sableye. Beginning on April 29 at 5 AM local time and running until May 14 at the same time, Sableye’s Gem Hunt will see players gathering dark-type precious resources that can then be exchanged with the titular pocket monsters for event-exclusive rewards. The event will function similarly to that of the previous, which was known as More Spores for Hoppip, so if you participated in that, you are ahead of the curve. Sableye can be encountered outside a…

Game of the Year-winning RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has reached its first anniversary and is celebrating the occasion with a free update for players. This update adds new cosmetic options for all party members in the game. This also comes with a new sales milestone for the game, with developer Sandfall Interactive announcing that the game has sold 8 million units worldwide, a metric that would be impressive for bigger games, let alone a modestly made turn-based title. https://twitter.com/expedition33/status/2047661620357210498?s=20 While 8 million is impressive on its own, the title was also released day one on Xbox Game Pass, with…

After what feels like a lifetime of rumors and speculation, Ubisoft has finally given us the first look at Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced. Rebuilt in the latest version of the Anvil engine, and with input by fans, Resycned is a complete overhaul of the 2013 title, though with the narrative appearing to be expanded upon but unchanged. During the event, it was confirmed that players can expect to take sail on the high seas on July 9, 2026, confirming previous rumors from earlier this month. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hkFaTypP1Q The event, hosted by Edward Kenway voice actor Matt Ryan, who is returning…

The Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive spin-off Title of the Splatoon series, Splatoon Raiders, will be released this July, Nintendo has announced. Coming on July 23, the single-player focused squid shooter will be priced at $49.99 on the Nintendo digital eShop and $59.99 for physical, following pricing guidelines that the company has set with Yoshi and the Mysterious Book. Announced last year, Splatoon Raiders is the latest game to get a summer release date from the company, following the announcement earlier this year that Rhythm Heaven Groove will also arrive in July. Given the Hybrid nature of the Switch 2, Nintendo easily…

While Tides of Tomorrow looks like a drastic departure, it shares a lot in the same vein as DigixArts previous game, Road 96. This means a lot to me, given that I, like most people before me, like most fans of the company, would have probably told you the only thing I wanted them to do was a sequel. This isn’t the sequel I wanted, but in many ways, the spiritual success I could not have fathomed would become as meaningful to me. And yet here we are, and by the credit roll and an emotional catharsis later, it was.…

I’ll admit, in my fast-paced life, puzzle games can sometimes struggle to resonate with me. Do I like them? Yes, but if I have to run around, back and forth, trying to figure it out, I can get turned off and gravitate away from them. This isn’t even an indictment of a game or me saying it is bad, just a statement about how hard it is to keep my interest. The House of Hikmah rounds out at about 5 hours, or at least it did for me, and managed to hold my interest; take that as you might. The…

The fourth entry in Ys has, quite possibly, the most interesting history in the entire series. In 1993, two separate games were released by developers Hudson Soft and Tonkin House, respectively. Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys and Ys IV: Mask of the Sun literally have nothing to do with each other. Both were born out of collaborations with Nihon Falcom after key developers, including the creator behind the series, Masaya Hashimoto, and Tomoyoshi Miyazaki, left the team, and they lacked the internal staff to develop it. The one thing these two games had in common, one of the only…