I’ve made no secret of the fact that JRPGs are burning me out lately. I’ve been unable to get excited about a Japanese console roleplayer ever sinceInfinite Undiscovery, a game which more or less ruined the genre for me by magnifying every bad cliché’ that exists, to the point where it’s now all I think about when I think about JRPGs. For someone whose imagination was captured byFinal Fantasygames and who once considered himself an RPG devotee, this is quite sad indeed....

This game led to another rebirth of Square Enix JRPGs The fourthOctopath Traveleranniversary is upon us, seeing as the original release was back on May 29, 2025. Square Enix is celebrating with a tweet, reminding us of the four-year anniversary, and providing a “commemorative illustration” of the crew from a member of producer Tomoya Asano’s team: Tatsuaki Urushihara. They also remind folks thatLive a Liveis coming out later this month. So while we haven’t gotten a direct sequel yet in the west (a mobile prequel calledChampions of the Continentcame out in 2020 in Japan, and is coming soon elsewhere), it’s impacted many other projects since its launch, and has shifted Square Enix’s priorities as a whole....

The theme is genius, as they can blame it all on the Animus Assassin’s Creed: Valhallahas been a glitchy affair, to say the least. While a lot of open world games are known for glitches,Odyssey, the recent darling, managed to be spared from public tomato throwing for the most part.Valhalla‘s fate hasn’t been as kind. Ubisoft reached a whole new level of bugs with a recent patch rollout, which was actually de-rolled out, in parts, to prevent issues....

DayZhas found a tremendous amount of success as a mod forArmA II, but you probably knew that already — this is just one of those memorable games that us humans love to chat about. Of course, there are people who simply aren’t going to play it, ever, despite the mod itself being free. Potentially good news for them:DayZisgoing standalone. “Development and updates of the mod will continue in parallel with the development of the game, so anyone who is playing the mod now will be able to continue to do so,” reads the announcement post....

The music/rhythm genre is full of experiences that a reductive person might call “performance simulators.” In essence, games likeRock Bandlay out a track of notes to hit — whether with your voice or a controller that resembles an instrument — and reward you for how well you do it. But few games actually allow you to partake in the act ofmakingmusic with controllers; even the track tinkering offered byDJ Herohad a fairly limited scope, aside from peppering a rap single with extra air horns and record scratches....

These should be free character rewards Riot Games is bringing Chroma Packs back toLeague of Legends. For those of you unfamiliar with them, you’ll be able to basically recolor your Champions’ skins with them. You can buy them for your champs (Zac, Morgana, Darius, Caitlyn, Master Yi, and Tristana are featured) for 590 RP (Riot Points) each — some require the purchase of (or for you to already own) a premium skin!...

Spoiler: I like it a lot Shovel Knightis almost here — just one more week until you can get your hands on it. But before then, Yacht Club Games has decided to share their thought process on how they’re handling checkpoints, starting with the abandoned “invisible” point system, a laMega Man— you die, you start back at a pre-determined point. They then changed that to a “pay-per-use” checkpoint, which would have been a nice idea, but alienated newer players — so they tossed it....

A MOBA with some twists It took me quite a while to come around toSMITE. Despite the fact that it was getting rave reviews from some of my Twitter followers, I was already knee-deep in a number of MOBAs, keeping up withDota 2andLeague of Legendsmost of all. But once I actually sat down and spent an afternoon with Hi-Rez Studios’ latest, I couldn’t put it down.SMITEnot only bucks a few MOBA trends in a unique way, but it’s also a hell of a lot of fun to play....

Taste the Rainbow Over the weekend, various reports pointed to the possibility of an incoming remaster for Sega’sSonic Colors, following the listing of such a title by a German recording studio. As spotted by Twitter user@Kutairo_, iksample – which provides voice recording facilities for games and animation – listed that it had worked alongside “Sonic Colors Remastered” back in December 2020, though the entry wasunderstandably removedas quickly as it had appeared....

Learn how the world was formed Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIIIis almost here, as the third and [final?] part of theXIIItriology. To celebrate, Square Enix has released a new video that gives us a look at some of the people responsible for developing the game, as well as some generalLightning Returnsfootage. Most of it is in Japanese as it features the core developmental team, but a decent amount is narrated by Lightning herself, Ali Hillis....

‘Capcom owns 100% of the rights to that game’ Killer 7kind of just came out on PC recently out of nowhere. After marinating on the GameCube and PS2 for the last 13 years, Capcom opted to go for a PC edition with the help of NIS America’s publishing efforts. Fandom recently had the chance to speak to the game’s director Goichi Suda (51) to see where the series could go next....

Get to know the people that make great videogames This week on Sup Holmes we welcomeErin Robinsonto the program. Erin’s been hard at work on the beautiful storybook-styled puzzle/platforming titleGravity Ghostfor a while now, but she’s got plenty of othergames under her belt to talk about(Little Girl in UnderlandandNanobotsbeing a couple of my favorites). She’s also a big proponent of encouraging others to get out there and start developing, giving the keynote to this year’sGlobal Game Jamand teaching theIndie Game Sprint development classat Columbia College....

Reunited and it feels so good One of my favorite parts of covering expos is watching developers refine their games over the years, especially when it’s smaller projects that blossom into something much more substantial. That’s definitely the case withSuper Meat Boy Forever. The game has grown from a neat little spin-off to what now feels like a full-blown sequel. It’s still an auto-runner, but don’t let that scare you off —Forevercaptures the spirit ofMeat Boythrough and through....