Grand Theft Auto VI is the biggest game of the year, decade, and quite possibly of all time, and it’s gracing the cover of Game Informer this month. I spoke with several lead designers at Rockstar Games to learn exclusive new details about its highly anticipated sequel, with a particular focus on how Rockstar brought the game’s setting and Florida parody, Leonida, to life.
Our 14-page cover story features exclusive interview quotes and details of all things Vice City and Leonida. As a lifelong native of South Florida, I offer my homegrown perspective as I discuss with Rockstar never-before-shared features such as Grand Theft Auto VI’s advanced weather systems that simulate Florida’s less sunny weather phenomena, the staggering amount of wildlife – native and otherwise – roaming Leonida on land, air, and sea, and Rockstar’s approach to researching Miami and Florida to ensure it created the most culturally and aesthetically accurate and lifelike world to date. If you want to know just how “Florida” GTAVI aims to be, you don’t want to miss this story.
12 new, exclusive screenshots accompany the cover story, showing off more of Grand Theft Auto VI’s sights and citizens. The magazine cover features beautiful original artwork, courtesy of Rockstar Games, featuring protagonists Jason Duval and Lucia Caminos, making it a cool collector’s item for Game Informer and GTA fans alike. Check it out in the gallery below.
As big as our GTAVI cover story is, issue 382 includes lots of other cool features. We have plenty of previews from the staff’s recent trip to Gamescom; Editor-in-chief Matt Miller spoke to Invoke Studios to learn more about its dark fantasy action game Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons, including an interview with one of the game’s voice actors, Maggie Robertson, by video editor Eric Van Allen. Senior associate editor Wesley LeBlanc played Persona 4 Revival and learned behind-the-scenes details about the upcoming remake from developer/publisher Atlus. Wesley also visited China to play Tides of Annihilation, and shares his impressions of the Arthurian-inspired action game across 10 pages. Comedian Mike Drucker returns to pen an amusing feature attempting to define what makes a “good” bad game, and executive editor Kyle Hilliard interviews Stranger Things star and musician Finn Wolfhard about his favorite Pokémon games and video game soundtracks.
The GTAVI issue also includes previews for titles such as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake, Metroid Ravenous, State of Decay 3, Mega Man: Dual Override, Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, Final Fantasy VII Revelation, and many more. Our stacked reviews section includes impressions of huge games including Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave, Marvel’s Wolverine, Star Wars Zero Company, Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter, and Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy.
To get your hands on the Grand Theft Auto VI cover story, subscribe to a Game Informer print subscription now to receive it as your first issue. A subscription includes 10 issues a year delivered in the U.S. and now internationally across over 50 countries. You can read the digital version on September 29, while the print version will reach subscribers’ mailboxes and arrive in bookstores/newstands in the coming weeks. The GTAVI issue will only be available for a limited time, so don’t wait; subscribe to secure your copy today!
Few video game openings make the impression City Escape does in Sonic Adventure 2. After jumping out of a helicopter, Sonic uses a piece of debris to snowboard down the city streets as the generational earworm, “Escape from the City” blasts. It was a defining moment for gamers, whether they were playing it on the original Dreamcast in 2001 or GameCube in 2002. It’s also one of the best-designed levels in 3D Sonic history. Ahead of its appearance in Sega and iam8bit’s 35 Years of Speed: The Sonic Art Exhibit this weekend in Los Angeles, we got ahold of the design document Sonic Team used to lay out just how this iconic level would eventually play out while Sonic Adventure 2 was still in development.
Originally codenamed Project GAIA 2, Sonic Adventure 2 had the unenviable task of following up the acclaimed Dreamcast launch title, Sonic Adventure. Not only was that a daunting task on its own, but Sega found itself in dire financial straits as the PlayStation 2 was decimating the Dreamcast in sales. Sega, on the brink of exiting the hardware business, dramatically downsized the development team behind Sonic Adventure 2 and relocated them to San Francisco, California, which heavily inspired the hilly urban design of the game’s opening level.
“Our team of 120 got pared down to 11, sent to America, and told to go make Sonic Adventure 2,” Sonic Team creative officer and Sonic Adventure 2 director Takashi Iizuka told me in 2016. “Part of what we had to resolve was ‘How are we going to make the same game with 11 people when we have less than a tenth of the staff on-board?’ I was really tasked with trying to make the impossible possible.”
Regardless of the challenges, Sonic Team, under Iizuka’s leadership, was able to clear the hurdles and deliver one of the Dreamcast’s most beloved games in just a year and a half of development time. According to several long-tenured members of Sonic Team, including Iizuka, art director Hiroshi Nishiyama, and sound director Jun Senoue, Sonic Adventure 2 was their favorite game they’ve worked on.
“It was a small development team so we were able to condense all the good elements from the previous game, and deliver a story and game that was satisfying to players everywhere,” Iizuka told me in 2022. Nishiyama followed up with, “I had a lot of new ideas for the game because of all the new stimulus and experiences I got by living in America and was able to make a game with a lot of great moments together with the other members.”
While Sonic Adventure 2 is often remembered primarily as the game that introduced the world to Shadow the Hedgehog and songs like “Live and Learn,” City Escape is up there as one of the most iconic elements of the popular title. The design document showcases various elements of the Hero Side’s opening mission, including the aforementioned snowboard sequence, plus the chase sequence involving the massive GUN truck.
You can check out the City Escape design document from Sonic Adventure 2 below, and if you need a little accompanying music as you flip through the pages, we recommend hitting play on the “Escape from the City” YouTube video above.
If you’re in the Los Angeles area the weekend of September 25, you’ll be able to see this in person, alongside other historical pieces of art from the Sonic franchise through the 35 Years of Speed: The Sonic Art Exhibit showcase at ARK/8. Admission is free, but attendees should register through Eventbrite. For more on the art of Sonic the Hedgehog, including how Sonic Team’s approach to making art has evolved over the last 35 years, check out our conversation with Kazuyuki Hoshino here.
Platform:
PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
Publisher:
Electronic Arts
Developer:
EA Vancouver, EA Romania
Release:
Rating:
Everyone
Sometimes it’s the small changes that make a difference. FC 27 has a headline-grabbing new open-world feature called The Grounds, but it is the tweaks to Ultimate Team that have me returning to the action on and off the pitch. Though the changes are welcome, they create a strong sense of familiarity, for better or worse.
In many ways, FC 27’s gameplay is as fluid and dynamic as it has been, and this year demands an extra element of control when you’re on defense. CPU-assisted defense in Ultimate Team’s Competitive game setting has been nerfed, and manual control of your defenders is better rewarded. No matter where you play, there are also new teammate runs, more player control for corners, and through balls now require better aim, delivering a more authentic and exciting experience.
I haven’t totally mastered these techniques just yet, but I appreciate how they reward player skill. To read your opponent and cut out their pass or slice their defense open with a through ball feels great. I particularly like triggering the new curved runs to keep my forwards onside and put them in better attacking positions.
Nevertheless, the game’s weak points can still pop up. Frantic sequences with lots of player switching can leave you controlling a player you don’t want, and CPU teammates sometimes make dumb moves. At times like this, FC 27 can feel old as much as it feels new.
The Grounds – an instanced, small-sized (for now) open-world mode – also has a “new but old” vibe. Here, your customizable avatar can queue up at locations to play more variations of Rush, other small-side matches, and mini-games, and The Grounds now hosts Clubs play.
Unfortunately, The Grounds is not a destination mode. Its gameplay is not strong or interesting enough, and it’s not as all-encompassing as NBA 2K’s City – it is separate from your Player Career, which limits its ambition. Furthermore, casuals will struggle to find a place for themselves here; it’s where sweats are grinding for FC Season points to get Ultimate Team (UT) rewards.
UT remains the main attraction for the series, and the new Gallery further adds fuel to its fire. Like a Squad Building Challenge (SBC), the Gallery delivers rewards for putting your club’s players into themed sets, and the fun part is getting sets re-graded as you put better cards into them and push for higher set scores and grades. You can even include players you once owned but have since sold. Perhaps in a related development, this year in UT you start with more coins and tradeable items, so that should jumpstart your Gallery. My small gripe with it is it’s presented like a trophy room, but you don’t actually interact with it in that way.
The changes to Manager and Player Career are both more granular and therefore less impactful, although guiding your team or create-a-player to glory is in some ways more intuitive. Training plans are gone, and Manager Career’s Dynamic OVR for players is easy to keep track of as their form, fitness, and morale change during the long seasons. I also like the back-and-forth of negotiations, which are backed by a handy “Tension” meter. My favorite addition is the unexpected events like being offered the chance to sign a player your rival is interested in. Unfortunately, the rivalry system in Player Career is too barebones to create similarly fun moments. It’s just a menu screen showing your stat progress versus another player without any fanfare and is just another way to generate Personality points.
These changes are welcome, but they can be undermined by sometimes shaky CPU determinations running in the background. I’ve seen players ask to be transferred at the first offer that comes in, even though I had no way to block it like in previous years and they weren’t even interested in the team making the offer. All told, EA continues to improve Career bit by bit, and it’s still a mode I enjoy spending time in.
I really liked playing FC 27 at times, even if I wished some things had improved to a greater degree and it was more ambitious. The experience is a familiar one that doesn’t change too much from its predecessor, but one that I’m going to continue to enjoy digging into.
Platform:
PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Switch, PC
Publisher:
Aniplex
Developer:
Meteorise, Type-Moon
Release:
Fate/Extra hit the PSP in 2011 in North America, and while it wasn’t a massive hit, over the decade-plus since, it has become a cult favorite in the turn-based-plus-cards genre. I dabbled with it back in the day, but definitely didn’t see it through to the end – I was too busy putting spins on my Into The Blue UMD. However, as part of this gig and as a general fan of these types of games, I’m not wholly unaware of the community surrounding the Fate/Extra series, which was followed up with a Pokémon Crystal-esque alternate adventure in Fate/Extra CCC and then Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star in 2016. All of this is to say, I was excited for the opportunity to check out Fate/Extra Record, an expanded remaster of sorts, at Tokyo Game Show this year.
My demo takes place on the TGS show floor, right across from the Sega/Atlus Persona 4 Revival booth, which is arguably the largest of the convention and, without a doubt, the loudest. That I was still captivated by Fate/Extra Record, even while live renditions of “Heartbeat, Heartbreak” played just feet away from me, is a good sign for developer Type-Moon’s second go at this game. Publisher Xseed Games says the narrative of Fate/Extra has been “revised and vastly expanded, adding new layers of characterizations, enhancing one of the franchise’s core entries with even more depth and intrigue,” but I have to take its word on that for now because my two gameplay demos were focused on combat.
If you aren’t familiar, combat in Fate/Extra, and now Fate/Extra Record, is turn-based, but instead of selecting attacks and abilities from a typical RPG menu, you utilize cards that are added to your hand each turn, flowing in from your personal and customizable deck. Each card has a cost associated with it, and in this demo, I only have 3 AP to utilize each turn, so I have to strategize how I use my cards. I always start with a 0 cost card that not only damages an enemy but adds a special damage-boosting rose card to my hand (which also costs 0 to use). I use that rose card to boost my next attack, which costs 1, and then chain it right into the next card, which has a chain icon to indicate chaining is recommended. I utilize these chains to maximize my damage output, eventually finding a rhythm that makes using my entire hand in one turn a breeze. The result is massive damage against bosses and one-turn KOs against mob enemies in the underwater dungeon I’m exploring.
New to Fate/Extra Record is the ability to use both Servant – you select one of three classes for this character and they are your primary method for combat in the game – and Master, which is the playable character that can use pinch-hit moves when the cards don’t line up right.
Combat is easy to pick up, but it’s clear there is a lot of depth waiting in the wings, with new cards to collect, deck builds, and more. As a Magic: the Gathering player, this demo felt like picking up a pre-con deck, knowing that after I open up some boosters, I’m going to make the deck three times stronger. Outside of combat, the rest of the Fate/Extra Record package has received a big glow-up, including revamped character designs, HD visuals, a new musical score, fully voiced Japanese voice-over, and more. It’s clear this is no longer a PSP game.
While I didn’t get to experience much narrative at all, here’s a taste of it from Type-Moon: “The ‘Moon Holy Grail War’ begins again… After humanity discovered a supercomputer hidden on the moon, everything changed. Known as the Moon Cell Automaton, this powerful computer created SE.RA.PH, a digital world where 128 combatants are pitted against each other for the ultimate prize, the Holy Grail. An omnipotent wish-granting device, the Holy Grail is capable of fulfilling any desire. Now in the role of Masters, these combatants form contracts with Servants, digital beings embodying historical figures and heroes, hoping to be the final victor in this life-or-death battle. Having lost all memories, unable to even recall why they’re trapped inside this virtual battlefield, one such combatant is thrust into the role of Master and must step into the grueling Moon Holy Grail War alongside a single Servant, driven solely by the will to survive.”
These two demos took place inside this supercomputer digital world, and that’s very clear from the visual design, which fuses underwater staples like crashed pirate ships and sea creatures with neon-lit computer structures and more. It’s clear the Master I’m playing as is after the Holy Grail, and as part of this tournament, he has seven days to prepare before his next bout with another combatant – defeat them, and you advance. I hope each bout brings with it a new setting or environment to explore, because this underwater dungeon grew stale quickly.
Thirty minutes with Fate/Extra Record isn’t enough time in this revamped remaster to tell whether it’s doing right by the original 2011 PSP game, but it is enough to know I want more. I’m a sucker for card battles; I’m a sucker for world-ending melodrama; and I’m a sucker for a tournament arc. That Fate/Extra Record bundles these three things with updated visuals, full voice-over, and plenty of secrets to discover means it’s an RPG I’ll be keeping an eye on as we close in on its January 28 release date.
Publisher Critical Reflex was founded six years ago and has since curated one of the most unique, strange, and interesting game catalogs. If I had to guess, the game that put Critical Reflex into your game publisher lexicon was probably 2024’s Mouthwashing, which launched the same year the publisher released other indie hits like Buckshot Roulette and Arctic Eggs. During Tokyo Game Show last week, I spent a couple of hours at the Critical Reflex booth, which was themed like an underground neon-punk bunker, and it was there I played four games that I immediately added to my Steam wishlist (even though one of them was so grody that it made me gag).
Below, I’ll be discussing my thoughts on the following four games after going hands-on with each for roughly 30 minutes: Tiny Chills – Not From Ear, Grobnopolis | Last Days, Sated, and Flawless Abbey. Enjoy!
Tiny Chills – Not From Ears
Tiny Chills – Not From Ear
I don’t know if Tiny Chills – Not From Ear is my TGS game of the show, but it is certainly the only game I played there that made me gag… so that’s something. Don’t worry, though – that’s not a turn-off for me. In fact, I can’t wait for more. From developer Docktopus Games, Tiny Chills is a horror/freak game set in a small town where earthquakes don’t stop, and neither do the human disappearances. Nobody knows what’s going on, and it’s freaking everybody out, but that doesn’t stop you from getting in a fight at school and getting suspended. Stuck at home, you help your mom at her ear-cleaning clinic, using a variety of tools to dig through patients’ horrendous, wax-filled canals to clean out gunk, bugs, monsters (???), and more.
The world has an overall Coraline vibe: something is off about my parents and the way they treat me. And Tiny Chills’ grainy, shadow-filled, dreary lo-fi look sets it apart from other games in the ear-cleaning genre. At your mom’s decrepit and lonely clinic, patients bang on the door as if the world is ending (and it might be?) and they’re desperate for one last ear-cleaning before it all goes up in smoke. The knocks on the doors scared me every time – it was seriously so loud. Patients explain that something is itchy or ringing in their ears, and in no time at all, you’re looking through their canals from a first-person perspective, guiding tools to the eardrum.
You can use a suction tool to suck up clumps of wax and a hook-like instrument to latch onto bigger pieces, which you must then carefully drag out of the ear. There are other tools, but ultimately, your job is to clean up the ears and get whatever is clogging them out, and it is always. so. dang. nasty. Between the actual act of cleaning these ears, the squelchy, moist noises that accompany it, and the overall sickening vibe of Tiny Chills’ atmosphere, my tolerance for grodiness reached its threshold, and I couldn’t help but gag. It’s disgusting; it’s awesome.
Besides cleaning ears, you do some strange things in your house, like catching a pet crow that flies around and figuring out where your mom keeps disappearing to. Something/everything is off about this world, and I cannot wait to learn more about just what the heck is going on in Tiny Chills. In the meantime, I’m going to prepare my stomach for whatever else lurks in the ears of this game’s patients.
Grobnopolis | Last Days
Grobnopolis | Last Days
Grobnopolis | Last Days uses a word – Grobnopolis – that you will say out loud once and then say it out loud hundreds of times afterward because of how good it rolls off the tongue. After playing it for roughly 20 minutes, I think Grobnopolis is also a game you should keep on your radar if you’re into atmospheric horror games that have you asking yourself, “Just what the hell is going on here?”
Set in Huta-Grobno in the year 1983, you are an apartment caretaker who’s just trying to do his job while the world outside becomes blurrier and blurrier with suffocating smoke, the result of something gone wrong in a mine somewhere in town. Inside my humble apartment, painted with drab browns and depressing greys, I interact with various objects to learn the lay of this oppressive land. I eventually reach a radio, and by scrolling through live stations, I hear strange opera music, workers mumbling as they piece together what’s gone wrong, and broadcasts warning of impending danger, a Church cult, and more. This radio seems key to Grobnopolis’s narrative, as I’m clearly listening to stations I shouldn’t have access to and learning things I shouldn’t know.
I interact with other people who call this apartment block home, and while none of them are outright sinister, something is definitely up, and they all freak me out. If I were this caretaker, you wouldn’t catch me leaving my apartment, but specific tasks, like finding cords and other objects in the hallways to connect up some equipment in my place, force me to. All the while, a large crack or hole in my kitchen keeps growing, whispering things I don’t yet understand.
“From the black veins of the old mines rises a thick, blood-red ichor the locals whisper of as ‘Soup,'” the game’s Steam description reads. “It climbs through foundations, stains stairwells, and pools in places that should not hold liquid. Some things should never be unearthed. Some things were meant to remain buried.”
As this mysterious “Soup” makes its way to more cracks and crevices in Huta-Grobno, the local Church gets involved, bussing certain civilians out of town and out of danger, while asserting its control to gain power in the decaying city. I genuinely have no idea where any of this is heading, but Grobnopolis has my attention, and I look forward to learning more about what’s going on here.
Sated
Sated
Of the four games I played during my Critical Reflex preview during TGS, I think Sated has the most potential to be the publisher’s next hit. It mixes something the indie space loves – roguelites – with monstrous horror fused with a little food-inspo by way of Cooking Mama. This demo wasted no time, putting me in front of a giant mechanical shark who hopped out of the water to hand me his hand/fin-written order. He requests some strange but not surprising ingredients, and though I don’t know exactly what each is, each has a symbol associated with it.
I take that order to my nearby fridge, which acts like a slot machine with a lever I can pull for another random drop of ingredients, and grab what I need based on those symbols. Sated smartly neglects to detail exactly how much of each ingredient is needed, instead giving you an ambiguous bar that shows how much of this or that ingredient should make up the entire recipe. This keeps you on your toes, because to make the most satisfying meal, you need to guesstimate as close as possible to what the hungry monster requires.
After feeding the monster, you’re given a score indicating how much they liked or disliked the meal you prepared. After that, you head to your underground train’s captain’s seat, select your next destination on a typical roguelite map/chart, and see what monster awaits their next meal there. Unfortunately, at the next stop, I fail to make a decent meal for the monster and, as a result, become the meal. I’m eaten alive, and my run is over. The hooks are there, and I’m ready for my next run; now I just need to know when that next feeding run will happen.
Flawless Abbey
Flawless Abbey
Flawless Abbey is both a surrealist, dreamlike kaleidoscope of colors and adventure, and a moody and oppressive mystery, and I’m interested in both pieces of its puzzle. In Flawless Abbey, you are a dreamseeker who lives inside a purple-and-grey facility where you hook yourself up to strange pods that allow you to explore an obelisk known as a dream-tower. While that sounds fantastical, it’s just another day on the job for you. I go from door to door, trying to find today’s pod of choice, only for it to break down when I finally find the one I’m tasked with sitting in. I walk to the IT person/being of consciousness who clearly loves the company it works for and is able to reboot the pod in question.
I make my way back there, plug in, and find myself aboard a mythical train soaring through the stars and swirling sky. Aboard this train, I solve typical environmental puzzles, like one that tasks me with opening a door using a special mechanism I can only understand after using a train ticket as a symbol key. Throughout Flawless Abbey, I answer questions by selecting dialogue choices that feel less like answers for this game’s world and more like ways for the game to learn more about me, the player. It’s odd and thought-provoking, even if I don’t really know what’s going on. Visually, though, I’m sold, and the painterly, patchwork-style art, coupled with a far-out score, has me intrigued enough to figure out exactly where this train is headed.
The game’s Steam page promises more, like corporate benefits and health insurance, a beast trying to tear down the dream-tower, a personal assistant who will guide me through dreams (even though they are also terrified about what’s going on), and other dreamseekers to meet. “Something isn’t right,” the game’s description reads, and I agree, but I’ll have to wait for the game’s launch to learn what’s wrong.
Ace Attorney fans have been hoping for the announcement of a new entry for many years now, but today, we got a surprise instead. Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies VR is a virtual reality version of the fifth mainline game in Capcom’s lawyer-themed adventure series, and it’s coming to Meta platforms next year. You can watch the reveal trailer below.
This port gives Dual Destinies a more hands-on approach, allowing players to pick up evidence to inspect, examine environments for clues in first person, and use gestures and voice commands during cross-examinations: You can literally yell “Objection!” to object to a witness’ contradiction. You don’t physically inhabit the protagonist 100% of the time, however – dialogue during trials still involves seeing characters in third person, meaning you’ll still get to see Apollo, Phoenix, and Athena’s over-the-top animations.
According to the game’s store page, it will come to Meta Quest 3S, Meta Quest 3, Meta Quest Pro, Meta Quest 2, and Meta Quest, though developer Amata K.K.’s description of the game omits the original Meta Quest from that lineup. It drops sometime in 2027.
Personally, I find this to be an odd move for the series. Capcom has been generous and thorough with its HD collections of the older Ace Attorney titles. After the Ace Attorney Investigations Collection dropped in 2024, the only remaining Phoenix Wright adventure you couldn’t play on modern platforms was his crossover with Professor Layton. As such, it seemed like the only next step was a brand new entry, so a VR adaptation is particularly surprising.
Ace Attorney also isn’t a series that needs to be a VR title. As fun as it might be to yell “Objection” every couple of minutes during a cross-examination, the vast majority of gameplay is non-voiced dialogue. Unlike the highest quality VR games, which work best in short bursts, Ace Attorney games are long, and wearing a headset just to mostly read text for a few hours doesn’t sound appealing.
Finally, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies is my least favorite Ace Attorney game, but I understand why it was their pick here. It’s the series’ fifth entry, but it was the first foray into 3D, so it’s the earliest release that could be reasonably set in VR. You can play it without playing prior titles, but I’d always recommend the original trilogy’s HD collection over this one.
The best game to get the VR adaptation would have been The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, as it’s a better standalone adventure and it’s been longer since that game’s release (2021) compared to the HD re-release of Dual Destinies, which dropped in 2024’s Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy. But even though The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles is a better game, Dual Destinies is shorter and has more of the series’ iconic characters, so it’s a more reasonable first project.
The silver lining is that Capcom is neither developing nor publishing this game (that’s all being done by Amata K.K.), so there’s a decent chance Ace Attorney 7 is still in the works – the development team won’t be preoccupied with finishing this VR title first. Maybe this VR version will drastically change my opinion of Dual Destinies, but it’s unlikely. I’ll find out when the game drops sometime next year.
Control Resonant launches today, and the game’s first update will address one of its biggest pre-release criticisms: its enemies take too long to defeat, and protagonist Dylan Faden feels too weak. While early access players and reviewers, including us, had to endure a much harder game in the weeks before release, the wider player base will likely have a smoother ride thanks to this hotfix.
Developer Remedy Entertainment has announced in a blog post that after reading reviews (which have overall been very positive despite the combat critiques), and early player impressions, “we have decided to deploy a hotfix (1.3.3) at launch to address a few specific things: enemy health pools feeling too high, requiring too many hits to Falter (stun) enemies for executions, and Dylan’s overall combat strength early on in the game not feeling powerful enough (even if the man just woke up from a coma).”
To improve the combat flow and overall experience, the launch update will do the following:
Reduce the base health and required Falter (stun) level of most enemies, as well as the Dancer and Deserter bosses
Increase maximum Aberrant Strength and maximum Ability Strength
These strength increases follow a curve, with progressively larger increases towards the end. The more upgrades you have, the more damage you deal.
The patch will also lower the cost of respeccing the ability tree, and vendors will also carry more stock of the special resource required to respec. A UI text update aims to better explain Build Power and Aberrant (Dylan’s primary weapon) strength. This will take the following forms;
Aberrant Strength: “Multiplier X%” will now be: “Damage and Falter X%”.
Build Power: “Calculated based on equipped Weapon Forms, Talents and Core Upgrades.” will now be: “From unlocked Combat Abilities, Aberrant forms/upgrades, Talents, and Core Upgrades.”
Remedy promises to continue working on other known issues in Control Resonant as players begin diving into the sequel today. Overall, despite some combat headaches, we enjoyed Control Resonant quite a bit, scoring it an 8.5 out of 10. Be sure to read our full review.
The release of Sonic Mania in 2017 signaled to many fans that Sega and the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise were listening to fans. Announced as part of the series’ 25th anniversary in 2016, the title was developed as a collaboration between Sonic Team and a group of independent developers led by designer Christian Whitehead. Following the release and subsequent overwhelming acclaim of Sonic Mania and its upgraded version, Sonic Mania Plus, Sonic Team entered into conversations with Evening Star, the studio founded by Whitehead and several other members of the Sonic Mania dev team in 2018, but despite getting into the prototyping phase, that sequel never happened.
In 2023, a Sonic Mania sequel felt like a distant hope, as Evening Star announced its own platformer, Penny’s Big Breakaway, while Sega released its next 2D Sonic game, Sonic Superstars, which was developed in collaboration with Sonic co-creator Naoto Ohshima’s studio, Arzest. When I broached the Sonic Mania 2 topic with Iizuka a few years ago, he confirmed that those initial conversations occurred with Evening Star. “There was a period after the development of Sonic Mania when we worked with them to consider concepts for the next generation of Classic Sonic,” Iizuka said in 2023. “It’s too bad that it didn’t become a finished game. Still, I’m pleased that the next generation of Classic Sonic that we talked about with them has been achieved with Superstars.”
Sonic Superstars
Iizuka mentions that he wanted to go a different route with Mania’s successor, instead relying on 3D models instead of pixel-art graphics to appeal to a wider audience. Whitehead, for his part, backed up Iizuka’s retelling of the events. “When we started Evening Star, it was always our goal to move beyond 2D pixel art into 3D games, and develop all-new, original IP,” he says. “Evening Star did work with Sega to explore possible directions Classic Sonic could go after the success of Sonic Mania. Sonic Mania 2 was never in development, though, because we actually agreed early on that we should try to make something fresh, like hand-drawn 2D or 2.5D. At the same time, Evening Star was developing our new Star Engine, so we also ended up making a cool Sonic prototype that played with depth in 2.5D, and some other gameplay ideas. As Iizuka-san said, though, [Evening Star] did not continue to full production on the game, at which point Arzest took the helm and made Superstars alongside Sonic Team. We moved forward with our plans to develop an original 3D title, which is, of course, Penny’s Big Breakaway!”
Now, three years following that conversation, Sonic Team is collaborating with TecoPark for Sonic Pico Park, releasing this November. When I ask Iizuka what he looks for when selecting a development partner, he says studios and developers that can fill gaps where Sonic Team isn’t as skilled or experienced are an important factor. “Sonic Team is really proficient at making action games; they make action game after action game,” Iizuka says. “The Pico Park team, they’re really good at making that action-puzzle format. That’s something Sonic Team has never made before, so I wouldn’t want to say, ‘Hey, Sonic Team! Go make an action-puzzle game.’ But the Pico Park team, they’re really good at doing it.”
Sonic Mania
With Sonic Mania perhaps the strongest example of a project Sonic Team worked on collaboratively, it was natural to steer the conversation toward an update on the potential of Sonic Mania 2. While it isn’t planned at the moment, Iizuka doesn’t think the door is completely shut. “We’re still really close with them,” he says. “We’ve gone out eating and drinking with them because relationships are important to us. They also have a lot of projects that they’re working on for what they want to do and what their business needs are. We don’t have anything to talk about now, but there’s definitely a desire to want to work with them again, and we think they could make a great game. It’s not off the books yet, but it’s not something that’s moving forward currently.”
I reached out to Evening Star chief technology officer Hunter Bridges to ask his reaction to the quote. To my surprise, he had already seen the quote from Iizuka when he read it in the latest issue of Game Informer. After reading it, he emailed Iizuka with the subject line “Eating and Drinking” (referring to his quote) to try to set up some time to do just that while Iizuka was in town for Tokyo Game Show 2026. Unfortunately, the timing didn’t work out for Bridges and Iizuka to meet up in Tokyo this month.
“It’s as he says, though, we have a good relationship with Sega and keep in touch,” Bridges tells me. “We are working on something exciting right now, but it’s not Sonic this time. But if the right opportunity lines up on both sides, we’d be happy to make another great Sonic game. Whether that would be Mania 2 is up for debate; we are an ambitious team!”
Sonic Mania released in 2017 to widespread critical acclaim, earning an 86 on reviews aggregator Metacritic, including an 8.5 from Game Informer. Neither Sonic Superstars nor Penny’s Big Breakaway reached the same level of acclaim, earning a 73 and 74, respectively, including a 7.5 for Superstars and a 7 for Penny’s Big Breakaway from Game Informer. Neither Sonic Team nor Evening Star has publicly announced their next project, though Iizuka recently told 4Gamer that he wants to continue evolving both the 2D and 3D sides of Sonic.
Bloober Team has been on a hot streak lately, bringing Silent Hill back into the positive-convo zeitgeist with its Silent Hill 2 remake in 2024, followed by another survival-horror hit last year, Cronos: The New Dawn (which is getting an action-focused DLC called Lazarus this year, too). All of this is on the heels of other Bloober games like The Medium and the team’s original Layers of Fear series. Regardless of how you feel about the Poland-based studio’s horror output, you can’t deny it stays busy, so it came as no surprise to see yet another new Bloober game revealed during a Nintendo Direct earlier this month.
Dubbed Onyx: The Dark Grip, this 2.5D “dark adventure” game is launching exclusively on Nintendo Switch 2 sometime next year. After speaking with Bloober’s senior brand manager Dawid Podgorski, I’m convinced this is one of the most Nintendo-sounding games hitting the console in 2027, and that’s courtesy of a suite of console-specific gestures and mechanics that remind me of the Wii and DS era.
Bloober Team CEO Piotr Babieno started selling Nintendo games at a local game shop 15 to 20 years ago, becoming one of the first to do so in Poland, where Nintendo hardware and software had barely entered the market. Babieno even organized the first Nintendo fan convention in Poland during the GameCube era, “so we’ve always had an idea to make something specifically for Nintendo,” Podgorski tells me, explaining Bloober’s Nintendo history.
Podgorski works for Bloober, but Onyx: The Dark Grip is actually in development at the studio’s subsidiary Broken Mirror Games, which Podgorski says Bloober uses to “make a game we cannot make on our own.” Broken Mirror Games consists of Bloober specialists and external devs – it’s also behind the upcoming 3v1 asymmetrical horror game Saw: Genesis. Onyx: The Dark Grip could only exist as a Switch 2 exclusive, Podgorski explains, and that much is very clear after my quick 20-minute meeting.
“Survive as the Vessel, Intervene as the Player” is the slideshow pitch for Onyx: The Dark Grip, and that’s because you possess Holden, a “regular guy” human whom you, as a god-like creature, need to find something. Onyx: The Dark Grip is set in a small, isolated town gripped by a relentless winter, based on Poland’s real-world Bieruń. However, curiously, Holden doesn’t know he’s possessed – he only feels that he needs to keep going (to where you drive him to) but has no idea why.
The game has been in development for three years and is an homage to classic Nintendo consoles and experiences found on the Wii and DS and other consoles like the PlayStation Vita, all of which uniquely took advantage of what the consoles could do. As the Vessel – Holden – you will explore the town, solve puzzles, and fight using melee and ranged attacks. Podgorski stops short of calling it a full-on horror game, instead calling it a “dark adventure” experience, but the reveal trailer suggests Onyx: The Dark Grip will, at the very least, be spooky. As the god, you will manipulate reality to accomplish what you need using Holden, and that’s where all the Nintendo-sounding things happen.
Players will use god-like powers to move things in Holden’s world, allowing him to progress forward; you will touch the screen with both thumbs to act as an electrical conductor for the generator Holden is interacting with in the game; you will have to whistle and blow into the microphone to make Holden warmer when he gets cold; and when Holden’s mental health is afflicted by terror and fear, moths will cover the screen, and you will need to swipe those away to clear the screen and Holden’s headspace.
You can even read NPC minds as a god and put your own thoughts into their brains. Plus, you can use what is essentially a “Talk With The Dead” spell to learn key information from corpses in the town, and you can also swipe the screen to throw fireballs and start fires with sparks. Podgorski says your “Void” ability also lets you crush enemies emerging from beyond by tilting the Switch 2 back and forth using the built-in gyroscope.
Podgorski emphasizes that you are not playing as the character on the screen, but as yourself too – the god of Holden’s world. And, like you with a Switch 2 in hand, Onyx: The Dark Grip’s god, as it were, will play with Holden’s world like a handheld game device, metaphorically. “Everything happening there is there, and you can intervene, but you are not there,” Podgorski tells me about Holden’s world.
Inspirations for Onyx: The Dark Grip include Eternal Darkness (horror that breaks the fourth wall), Silent Hill (psychological instability and perception horror), Inside (2.5D cinematic clarity and restraint), Resident Evil 2 (pressure and pacing), and True Detective: Night Country (winter isolation and grounded dread). Polish composer and multi-instrumentalist Jan Borysewicz will back the adventure with a score recorded with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra.
That’s a lot to be excited about for Onyx: The Dark Grip, but I didn’t get to see the game in action; I only learned these things from Bloober’s senior brand manager (a point Podgorski acknowledged). That said, the premise is enough to keep it on my radar as we head into 2027. The more games that remind me of the Vita, Wii, and DS era, the better, and Onyx: The Dark Grip seems set on doing just that.
The more things change in Control Resonant, the more of it retains the best traits of its predecessor, Control. An endearing new protagonist, Dylan Faden, joins several of the memorable allies that assisted his older sister, Jesse, in her 2019 adventure. Every new high-flying melee battle is complemented by the same fascinatingly bizarre stories centered around supernatural mundane objects, interdimensional entities, and the FBC’s strange bureaucracy that made the first game such a fun world to unravel. And like the game before it, Control Resonant’s storytelling highs are sometimes dampened by some design headaches. But even when Control Resonant stumbles (and at times frustrates), its world and story drew me back in, further cementing it as one of my favorite universes in gaming.
Seven years after FBC director Jesse Faden sealed the Hiss – along with herself, her allies, and many FBC employees – within the bureau’s headquarters, the Oldest House, a new, more devastating paranatural occurrence has bled beyond its walls. Manhattan has been distorted into a mind-bending version of itself that threatens the very fabric of reality. That the Hiss has escaped into the city and possessed many citizens who weren’t lucky enough to evacuate doesn’t help. Jesse has mysteriously left the FBC, leaving her supernaturally gifted and long-imprisoned brother, Dylan, to pick up the pieces. Thankfully, for a guy who spent years in a coma, he does a great job walking in his sister’s sizable shoes.
After he played the role of the possessed and tortured damsel in distress in Control, I’m impressed by how likable Dylan is in Resonant. His awkward, socially inept earnestness and drive to atone for past sins make him a softer and sympathetic lead – a nice juxtaposition of his power that causes many to vilify him as a monster – and I especially love his dynamic with his charismatic FBC handler Zoe De Veras. The duo’s entertaining choice-driven banter adds weight, levity, and humor to a wild story. I also enjoyed being reacquainted with returning favorites such as obsessed scientist Emily Pope and altered item supervisor Frederick Langston. I always looked forward to receiving a new message from someone or visiting them to learn details about the seven-year lockdown, Jesse’s hypothetical fate, and the evolving state of New York.
Cool moments, including surprising and even heartbreaking revelations, plus a few left-field mechanical and visual twists, prop up an overall strong narrative. Fascinating, often meaty sidequests also make good use of Resonant’s premise: ordinary citizens experiencing the paranatural for the first time. I was delightfully surprised by the variety of stories and gameplay in missions involving singing along with a malevolent karaoke machine, escaping a taxi-filled pocket dimension by solving “spot the difference” visual puzzles, or chasing down an FBC employee’s temperamental supernatural pet.
Exploring Manhattan’s open hubs for longer mission strings, such as uncovering a secret organization’s activities and completing abandoned FBC experiments, made me excited to bust into every identically designed laundromat, apartment building, and cafe. Unfortunately, these quests are accompanied by lesser, repetitive tasks like escorting trapped rangers or fending off enemy waves to protect assets. In a game with such well-crafted missions, these paper-thin tasks feel out of place and like obligatory additions to pad out the world. Thankfully, you can ignore these lesser jobs to little consequence, but you shouldn’t overlook every optional diversion, and not just because they’re largely good.
Control Resonant doesn’t politely suggest you complete its quests; it sternly demands compliance. Doing so strengthens you enough to survive the often overwhelming character-action-style melee combat encounters. Dylan wields a transforming weapon called the Aberrant, a fun upgradable tool that can morph into a one-handed axe, dual sword-like weapons, or a two-handed scythe. Each is entertaining in its own way and is accompanied by less fun, semi-useful sidearms, like a heavy axe or a weirdly sluggish whip. While the side weapons don’t feel as good or as powerful to handle, combo finishers add nice exclamation points to the otherwise basic attack combos. I like rocking foes with a barrage of reinforced punches, slicing them with a hovering spinning blade, or knocking them back using a giant glaive-like weapon. The unexpected star of combat may be Dylan’s swift perfect dodge, which always feels great to execute and chain into an attack.
Combat begins basic and repetitive but becomes more mechanically interesting and strategic as you unlock new supernatural abilities. Igniting foes with explosive fire attacks, poisoning them using rapid-fire mold spores, summoning abstract entities to fight alongside Dylan, or simply force-pushing enemies into hazards and off ledges helps spice up the basic attack strings. Mastering these tools matters because Control Resonant can be an infuriatingly challenging game. Enemies often level alongside you, meaning you rarely overpower them. Unfortunately, this often means chipping away at sturdy health bars in large, wave-based battles that usually last longer than necessary. I’m also lukewarm on Resonant’s system of killing big enemies to win fights, as smaller foes respawn non-stop until their larger counterparts fall. While it adds enjoyable intensity at times, it can also make more challenging battles feel like lengthy wars of attrition. As powerful as Dylan is, I wish Control Resonant’s balancing eased up more often so I could fully experience the power fantasy it tries to present.
Boss battles against disturbingly distorted humans called Resonants offer entertaining, more evenly designed tests. I also appreciate how Remedy shook up encounters by introducing enemy types besides just variations of the Hiss, such as mold monsters and another faction I won’t spoil. While battles still eventually fall into repetitive territory due to how often you fight bands of baddies roaming Manhattan, at least there’s a deeper enemy pool to wade through.
Despite being set in an open Manhattan, its structure resembles the Oldest House in the first game in that you must learn abilities and gain keys to access areas and expedite travel. The path to an objective isn’t always obvious, requiring careful observation to find obscure openings, but fun abilities like warping to rooftops or hovering across large distances make getting around a blast. Mind-bending imagery makes Manhattan feel like a surrealist painting in some spots and a sci-fi novel’s cover art in others, adding nice visual variety beyond standard cityscapes. However, navigating visually trippier areas that you can approach from multiple angles can be a tricky, headache-inducing proposition.
Despite my annoyances, they always faded as I bolted toward the next story mission or mysterious question mark on the map. Depending on how much you engage with Control Resonant’s offerings, it will either be an oppressive action game with great narrative beats and presentation or just a pretty tough action game with all the worldbuilding fixins. Remedy mostly nails its first attempt at stylish action, but the misses are apparent and disappointing. The remaining package has me eager to uncover every remaining secret even after rolling credits. As someone most excited to be awash in Control’s lore again, I’m glad that aspect of this sequel resonates most effectively.
