Marvel Cosmic Invasion is getting a new story expansion centered on Fantastic Four nemesis and Avengers: Doomsday poster boy, Doctor Doom. The Siege of Castle Doom arrives in the retro-inspired cooperative beat ‘em up this fall.
The Siege of Castle Doom is a paid DLC described as a new game mode that places Doctor Doom front and center, but with no trailer or screenshots, there’s no word on what he’s up to. We do know that the DLC will introduce two new playable characters. The last characters to be added to Marvel Cosmic Invasion were Cyclops and The Thing (who, funny enough, both appear in Avengers: Doomsday) in May, so could we see more X-Men/Fantastic Four members? Perhaps characters unaffliated with either team? We’ll have to wait and see.
The Siege of Castle Doom will be available for all versions of Marvel Cosmic Invasion: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, PlayStation 4, Switch, and PC. For more on the game, be sure to read our review.
Fortnite’s newest season, Override, begins on August 20, and yesterday’s trailer confirmed the new map and battle pass will be centered on a wide range of video game crossovers. The most notable inclusion is Sonic the Hedgehog; he’ll be playable as a skin (stretched to fit Fortnite’s standard proportions), and elements of Green Hill Zone will appear on the map. The new footage shows Jonesy running fast enough to go upside-down on one of the series’ staple gravity-defying loops.
However, Sonic is just the tip of the iceberg in Chapter 7, Season 4 of Fortnite. In addition to other characters from his universe, including Tails, Dr. Eggman, and Shadow, the trailer also includes glimpses of Mega Man, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, Joker from Persona 5, and giant Tetris blocks that fall from the sky. Key art released by the official Fortnite account also shows glimpses of Pac-Man and Sora from Kingdom Hearts (who we recently saw a lot of in the new D23 footage). Meanwhile, it looks like other characters who have appeared as skins in past seasons, like Master Chief, Geralt, Ryu, and Lara Croft, are also returning (to the battle shop).
Gameplay-wise, the trailer also shows a backpack-based power-up system, where wearing items associated with characters like Sonic or Tails gives you the powers of speed or flight, respectively. We also see weapons like Mega Man’s arm cannon and the 8-bit shotgun, the latter of which seems to track the player’s score. The trailer concludes with a glimpse of Geno, a major villain in Fortnite’s lore who will presumably be appearing as a boss for players to battle.
You can check out the full trailer below:
Fortnite’s Chapter 7, Season 4 Override begins on August 20, and you can play it on basically every platform you can think of: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC, iOS, and Android.
Hayden Panettiere, the actor known for TV series such as Nashville and Heroes, and the former voice performer for Kairi in the Kingdom Hearts series, has passed away. She was 36.
Panettiere’s extensive credits include roles in films such as Remember the Titans, I Love You, Beth Cooper, Scream 4, and, most recently, Sleepwalker. She portrayed Juliette Barnes in the CMT series Nashville and Claire Bennet in Heroes and Heroes Reborn.
Video game fans will recognize Panettiere as the original English voice of Kairi in multiple Kingdom Hearts games. She played Kairi in Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts II, Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, and Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance. Panettiere did not return in Kingdom Hearts III, as Alyson Stoner took over Kairi’s role. Panettiere also appeared in the 2015 horror game Until Dawn (and its 2024 remake) as Samantha “Sam” Giddings, one of the primary characters for which she lent her likeness and performed motion capture.
Hayden Panettiere in Until Dawn (2024)
Game Informer extends its condolences to the family and loved ones of Hayden Panettiere.
It’s not surprising that a Hogwarts Legacy sequel is happening, considering it was the best-selling game of 2023, beating out the usual top-spot holder, Call of Duty, which received a new sequel that year in the form of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III. The first game unfolds in the 1890s, a century before Harry’s saga, with players controlling a new Hogwarts student who wields a mysterious form of ancient magic, takes classes, learns spells, and unravels a conspiracy threatening the wizarding world.
Hogwarts Legacy was the top trending game search on Google in 2023. Despite the excitement the game garnered from fans, it also courted controversy due to Harry Potter series author J.K. Rowling’s inflammatory statements and actions towards and about the trans community. In 2019, Rowling began to reveal her anti-trans sentiment, expressing support for a tax specialist who made anti-trans tweets, as noted by GLAAD. In the years since, her support for anti-trans groups and anti-trans lawmaking has continued and been amplified, funded by her Harry Potter earnings. She has even created an organization dedicated to removing trans people’s rights “in the workplace, in public life, and in protected female spaces,” according to Advocate’s reporting. Last year, Rowling tweeted that she loves “when a plan comes together,” in response to a U.K. Supreme Court ruling considered an anti-trans win (and loss for the trans community). Notably, Rowling was a financial backer of the group that sued the Scottish National Parliament, resulting in this U.K. Supreme Court ruling.
Hogwarts Legacy launched on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC in February 2023, with PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch versions later that year. A Nintendo Switch 2 version was released last year.
How do you feel about a Hogwarts Legacy sequel? Let us know in the comments below!
This weekend’s D23, Disney’s annual fan convention where it announces a slate of upcoming film, TV, and video game projects, hosted a substantial update on Kingdom Hearts IV. We now know the game, first announced in 2022, is coming next year. Square Enix also announced Pixar’s Coco as the game’s first world.
A new trailer shows Sora making his way to Coco’s Land of the Dead, where he meets the film’s protagonist, Miguel, and his late great-great-grandfather Héctor. Like previous Disney-inspired worlds in other Kingdom Hearts titles, players will seemingly relive the events of the acclaimed 2017 film with a twist (it’s unclear if any of the actors are reprising their roles), and we even get to see Sora slay Heartless using a Day of the Dead-inspired Keyblade.
Outside of the Coco world, the trailer provides new looks at Kingdom Hearts IV’s primary setting, Quadratum, the modern-day city previously seen in previous trailers, and two new characters. We also see gameplay segments featuring Mickey, Donald, and Goofy as they seek to uncover Sora’s whereabouts. The trailer concludes with the reveal of Kingdom Hearts IV’s launch window: late 2027. Check out a batch of new screenshots in the gallery below.
Alongside this announcement, Square Enix revealed a Kingdom Hearts anime is in the works. Kingdom Hearts (working title) is coming to Disney Channel and Disney+ with series mastermind Tetsuya Nomura and the game’s creative team involved in production. There was no trailer or release window, but Disney did share the graphic posted below.
Kingdom Hearts IV is launching in late 2027 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, and PC.
Exoprimal was built using Capcom’s proprietary RE Engine, which is surprising considering the other Capcom games that have used the engine are quite different. The first game to publicly use it was Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, which caused many to dub the engine the Resident Evil engine, which is not what the ‘RE’ stands for. Instead, the acronym is confusingly shorthand for Reach for the Moon. In Japan, the Resident Evil series is called Biohazard, which is why Exoprimal technical director Kazuki Abe is surprised that anyone ever thought the engine was named after the survivor horror series . “It’s really just a matter of coincidence that Resident Evil games are also developed using this engine.”
Its versatility and flexibility are impressive, thanks to the RE Engine team being in-house at Capcom. It means that if a Capcom game needs the engine to do something specific for the game being made, the team can go directly to the source and have it added. For example, the Onimusha team needed a Dynamic Dismemberment System, so they put in a request to the internal engineers at Capcom. Rather than putting a game in an engine, the RE Engine can pivot and mold around the game based on needs. “If certain components for the game don’t exist in our engine already, the RE Engine team can work to implement those features to allow those things to become possible,” Abe says.
Resident Evil Village
The Exoprimal team was less confident about where the RE Engine logo came from, which features a creepy, slightly misshapen hand reaching for the sky, silhouetted in front of the moon. “The idea of the orientation logo with the hand reaching up is the idea that as an engine, the game that you envision, creating the dream that you have for game development, is just within reach,” Abe says. “And by reaching out with this engine, you can grab it, reach it, and make it happen. This is entirely hearsay. Not entirely sure if this is true, but that is the idea behind the visual for the art engine logo.”
This weekend we are suggesting a lot of new games that are heavily inspired by specific old games. Agent 64 and Wild Blue Skies are GoldeEye/Perfect Dark and Star Fox 64 throwbacks respectively. Even Duskfade has some real original Kingdom Hearts energy to it, though it is more of an action platformer than an action-RPG.
But we also have a new Madden, which I suppose you could make an argument is technically a remake of an old game. It’s just one they’ve been remaking for a really long time. You can read our Madden review here, which has an exciting byline if you’ve been a fan of Game Informer for many years. We’re happy to have new words on the site from Matthew Kato!
Before we get to our weekend suggestions, here are some of the biggest stories we posted this week.
Each year, EA Sports puts out a new Madden around this time, and, like clockwork, here we are with Madden NFL 27. This year’s entry continues building on the longstanding gameplay of the franchise, giving you the rush of driving your team down the field or stopping your opponents from getting in the endzone. New additions include timing-based gameplay mechanics, more in-depth contract negotiations, and more fleshed out customization in Ultimate Team. The NFL season is right around the corner, so if you’re looking for ways to start getting excited about your team’s campaign (or try and chart a better path than your real-world team’s current trajectory), Madden NFL 27 is a fine way to do just that.
Super Mario Sunshine
Charles Harte
It goes without saying that Mario games are some of the most beloved in the entire hobby, so it’s always been surprising to learn just how difficult some of them have been to acquire legitimately. Super Mario Sunshine, which got added to the Nintendo Switch Online library this week, is probably the best example. While it was first released on GameCube in 2002, it wasn’t ported to any other console for nearly two decades, making copies difficult to find. In 2020, Nintendo finally released the Super Mario 3D All-Stars collection for the Switch, including Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy, but for reasons none of us can quite understand, the game was only available to buy for roughly six months, from September 2020 to March 2021. So while Super Mario Sunshine is likely neither the best nor most popular game in the series, it is maybe the most sought after. Whether you’re revisiting it or checking it out for the first time, its addition to the NSO library means it’s easily accessible for the first time in years.
Duskfade
Matt Miller
If you’ve longed for the glory days of 3D action/platformers with cartoony characters, and you also can never shake that feeling that you wish Kingdom Hearts would just have another entry for you to play, then, wow, is this a good week for you. Duskfade wears its inspirations on its sleeve, offering a generally lighthearted romp through a colorful world, and plenty of pretty vistas to catch they eye.
The story is trite and simple, and the action sometimes feels a little floaty by modern standards. But it’s all pretty much in line with expectations you might have if these sort of platformers were the games you enjoyed years ago. Set expectations accordingly, and it could be a wonderfully nostalgic ride to fill your weekend.
Wild Blue Skies
Kyle Hilliard
I admit that Wild Blue Skies did ultimately disappoint me. You can read my review right here where I wrote, “Bowie and pals’ adventure successfully impersonates the Star Fox 64 experience, but it’s an underwhelming impression. Nostalgic moments and satisfying action appear occasionally, but it pays homage to a fault and doesn’t find space to present its own personality. It has the unfortunate timing of releasing and being compared to this year’s Star Fox on Switch 2 – an excellent remake of Star Fox 64. But even if I did not have that game in my immediate memory, I would be hard-pressed to identify anywhere that it has improved on the genre with design lessons learned since 1997, or even risen to meet the ones that already existed even 30 years ago.”
Now with all that said, I never want to turn someone away from a game that might apeal to their sensibilities. There is some real Star Fox 64 energy and flavors here and unlike the Switch 2 Star Fox remake from earlier this year, it is all new levels, characters, and story. It may look a lot like the Star Fox universe, but it is undeniably its own thing.
Agent 64: Spies Never Die
Kyle Hilliard
Released earlier this week, August 11, Agent 64: Spies Never Die is a transparent throwback to the Nintendo 64 Rare first-person shooter. If you love GoldenEye or Perfect Dark, take a look at Agent 64. It has low-poly graphics, the ability to hold all the guns you can carry, secret agent stuff, and enemies that roll into your line of fire, get shot while standing up, and then immediately fall over – all the hits basically. It even zooms into the back of the player’s head at the start of each level. It’s wonderfully nostalgic and doesn’t concern itself too much with modern quality of life upgrades (though you do play with both control sticks).
Tabletop Pick – Dragon Eclipse
Matt Miller
The tabletop world has seen no recent shortage of impressively large and robust board, miniature, and card games that carry a high price tag, but also deliver many hours of premium gameplay and storytelling. It’s somewhat less common to find games of that caliber that are also relatively easy to learn and play, even for slightly less experienced players. One of my recent favorites in this regard is Dragon Eclipse, from the prolific team over at Awaken Realms. It’s a cooperative campaign game specifically built to be played solo or with a partner.
You tame magical elemental creatures and set out to save your town while gradually unfolding a narrative, exploring a fascinating world, and confronting tactical combat scenarios. It’s a gorgeous game laid out on the table, featuring evocative card art, incredibly detailed models/miniatures, and it’s one of those games in which you always feel like you’re making interesting decisions to push things forward. Beyond the campaign, it also includes modes of play for both competitive action and an interesting roguelite mode. Dragon Eclipse can be tricky to track down, but as of this writing, I’ve still found several stores carrying copies. It could easily become a new favorite if you’re ready for diving deep into something new.
This year, the Madden franchise is hunting down the field for a quick strike to jumpstart itself and excite fans. In recent iterations, progress has come in fits and starts, so this year’s game is taking some big swings in its Franchise and Ultimate Team modes. Unfortunately, despite having all the tools on paper, not all of the game’s attempts pay off.
Gameplay remains a strong component of the series, delivering a satisfying feeling on the sticks in the running game and animations that often look realistic. This is bolstered by the addition of the optional catch meter from College Football. It – along with more interplay between receivers and defensive backs – creates some satisfying moments when you get the timing correct and haul in or break up a pass. CPU defenses can be nice and aggressive, but hopefully play-action passes are soon tweaked, because right now your QB gets blasted too often.
The big addition to Franchise mode is the Persona Engine, which tries to add some personality to how CPU players, and thus their teams, act. This is paired with increased options that produce a more involved back-and-forth between teams and players for contracts and free agency.
However, players’ DNA tags change as you progress through the negotiation rounds. One second the total salary amount is “critical” to them, the next it’s not; it feels like you’re getting the runaround. Each round, you have five different pitches you can deliver, but they are deployed in a similar pattern, so it can be frustrating when you want to bump up their bonus, for example, but it’s arbitrarily not an option in this particular round.
The worst thing is that the mode’s underlying logic is still confusing. CPU teams can’t manage their salary cap or draft properly, and simmed stats get wonky. The new Free Agent Frenzy fizzles out quickly as the process feels like a black box where players inexplicably sign with other teams no matter what contract you offer.
Even with more player-centric events to react to and news flashes to keep you up on what’s happening in the wider league, the mode still doesn’t capture the drama of the NFL. That the most exciting thing that happened during my multiple Franchise runthroughs was I talked a player out of retirement is a testament to how uneventful the mode often is. You can see that the mode can be fun and is taking steps in the right direction with this year’s changes, but it’s also clear it isn’t delivering on its potential, which is a shame.
The career-focused Superstar mode does not have as many new features. You can now play as a tight end, safety, and edge rusher, but the experience is still best as a QB or running back. There’s also a battle pass, which is optional, but adds frustrating monetization and multiple in-game currencies to a completely offline mode in a full-priced title.
As your standing with your team balloons, so too does your influence; I enjoyed being able to eventually influence who my team signed in free agency. But what’s really needed is the feeling that you’re living the life of an NFL player. Even the ups and downs of playing your position isn’t fully captured because objectives don’t evolve as your career progresses. This means any sense of storytelling stops as soon as you complete that game’s objectives.
Ultimate Team arguably contains the largest change for this year’s Madden. Similar to EA FC, you can improve players by purchasing Evolutions. You can also choose your own captains to upgrade, and certain players get better when you complete their objectives. The rub is that which attributes are actually upgraded when you spend a skill point is randomized within specific buckets.
You can re-roll upgrades at the cost of the free, in-game UT Coin currency, but this will act as a Coin sink as players inevitably chase upgrades for the most desired attributes like speed. While this year’s additions undoubtedly increase your ability to customize your roster and should make the cards you choose more useful compared to the progression curve for longer, it will also further the grind and meta chase.
Adding features to a game is about more than simply making it different from last year; it should be about tweaking and improving upon previous years’ entries with the aim toward creating an unmissable experience. In Madden NFL 27, that can happen on the field itself via gameplay, but when it comes to being the coach/GM of a team or its superstar, it doesn’t fully deliver.
We may be halfway through August, but the crushing wave of games trying to get out before Grand Theft Auto 6 is cresting just ahead. So today, on The Game Informer Show, we’ve got a few looks ahead at some big name titles!
First up, Eric shares his thoughts after some hands-on preview time with Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave, the massive new installment in Nintendo’s strategy RPG franchise. Then, Marcus returns from Amsterdam with impressions of 1666: Amsterdam. I promise, you won’t see the turns in that segment coming. After the break, we talk about the launch of Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, and Charles shares some early impressions of the 1.0 launch for Fields of Mistria. Grab a cold drink and listen in!
The Game Informer Show is a weekly podcast covering the video game industry. Join us every Friday for chats about video game reviews, news, and exclusive reveals alongside Game Informer staff and special guests from around the industry. Support the show by subscribing to our physical video game magazine!
I traveled to Osaka, Japan, to visit Capcom’s HQ, play never-before-seen parts of the game for hours, and interview the team making it. As a fan of the series, it’s clear to me that the “dark-fantasy” through line in the first four Onimusha games continues in Way of the Sword. That was particularly showcased in one section of the game I played through, which took protagonist Miyamoto Musashi into the underground lab of an evil Genma named Dokyo. There, the game’s dark-fantasy feel crossed over into full-on horror. Despite a couple of hours of gameplay that resembles a horror game, Capcom says Way of the Sword is not a horror game.
This Dokyo, highlighted in the Game Informer video above, is a particularly twisted Genma. She kidnaps people – including children – and experiments on them to create new Genma by fusing them with animals. In one scene, she hoists a man fused with a large pig into the air before disposing of him in bloody fashion. She can’t do this in the broad daylight of Way of the Sword’s early Edo-period Kyoto, so in typical Capcom fashion, the team created an underground lab befitting the demon.
“There was not really an intention to make a horror game […] but with trying to build the character of Dokyo, in particular, we wanted to really showcase her twisted nature and that unsettling side of her and combine it with the strange and eerie occult side of Kyoto myths,” lead writer Hiroshi Yamashita tells me, explaining why Dokyo’s lab feels like a horror level within an otherwise non-horror game. He adds that the scares of this lab – which, mind you, does feature jump scares that got me once or twice – are not indicative of the full game but rather just this specific stage built around Dokyo’s more gruesome nature.
Way of the Sword director Satoru Nihei describes this stage as one of the more horrific in the game’s dark-fantasy action experience, likening it to a “classic Japanese ghost house.” Somewhat familiar with this subgenre of Japanese horror, it’s clear in what ways: shadows on the lab’s shoji highlight horrific body mutations and animal experiments gone wrong, and the halls are dripping with blood that shimmers in the soft glow of nearby torches. Once-beautiful kimonos hang from the rafters above, and it’s evident they used to belong to the subjects screaming in agony throughout this stage. Even Dokyo herself is designed in a horror-infused way, with elongated appendages, a shrill and petulant personality, and the way she speaks as a mastermind of the maze that is her underground lab (which, during Way of the Sword, you are clearly trapped in).
Nihei says this specific stage heightens the anxiety and tension Musashi and Shizuka, the mysterious and ethereal woman trapped in his Oni Guantlet, are feeling, which is why the team “thought this [horror-inspired stage] was a good way to explore those feelings and contrary states in the setting.” There’s also contrast in Dokyo herself, who is quite demonic and inhuman in appearance, but speaks in English/Japanese and dons a beautiful kimono as if she’s a woman.
I came away from my time playing Way of the Sword most enamored with Dokyo – she’s unsettling and twisted, but very compelling and absolutely a scene-stealer in the game. I look forward to seeing more of the horror her stage promises, as well as the other parts of the game where dark fantasy morphs into something closer to Capcom’s Resident Evil series. Fortunately, I don’t have to wait too long because Onimusha: Way of the Sword launches on September 4.
I’ll continue diving deeper into Capcom’s return to Onimusha as part of Game Informer’s month of Way of the Sword coverage. We’ll be publishing exclusive gameplay and behind-the-scenes videos (including a Rapid-Fire Interview) on the Game Informer YouTube channel as well. Keep an eye on the Onimusha: Way of the Sword coverage hub so you don’t miss any of it.
In the meantime, here’s some additional Onimusha: Way of the Sword reading for you:
