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After a string of solid games on the DS, a new Castlevania game has finally made its way onto the Nintendo 3DS in the form of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow — Mirror of Fate. Ever since the game was first announced, fans of the franchise have been eagerly anticipating it with bated breath. Now that it’s finally available to the masses, however, it’s apparent that the game, despite attempting to make some changes to the tried and true formula, simply doesn’t hold up in the long haul....

It’s a scenario well known to any horror movie fan: wake up one day, and the city around you has been reduced to mindless undead husks. Escape is the only logical course of action, but few decide to combine a sledgehammer with a concrete saw to help make that happen. And that’s where Dead Rising 3 proves that it’s one of a kind. One of the most anticipated games in the Xbox One’s exclusive roster, the open world zombie slaughterhouse is fast approaching....

Another day, another impressive Crota’s End raid feat. As soon as one player completes a major accomplishment in Destiny, it seems like there’s another gamer working on an even greater one. Within the last few days, we’ve seen players speedrun Crota’s End solo in just over 16 minutes, solo Crota’s End without using guns, and solo Crota’s End on hard. And just when it seems like there’s no further ways to one-up the last guy in Crota’s End, one Destiny player has done just that....

This past weekend at PAX Prime 2011 was a dream come true for RPG fans, with a veritable feast of new properties and highly-anticipated sequels. Now it seems that several new details have been released for Dragon Age 3, even though the game has yet to be officially confirmed. So while Dragon Age 3 may still be in the planning stages and not officially greenlit, the new direction that the development team at BioWare is taking is sure to be good news for fans of the original game....

If society does come crashing down amid a terrifying zombie apocalypse, at least we’ll have had plenty of practice dealing with that sort of thing. Techland’s upcoming first-person zombie survival horror game Dying Light is one of the latest upcoming spins on this familiar genre, promising to shake things up a little by throwing Mirror’s Edge style parkour traversal into the mix. As is so often the case, we found in our E3 2014 preview of Dying Light that the ambitious plans of the previous year’s demo had been stripped down to leave behind a clunky, awkward traversal system....

Universal and Blumhouse Productions dropped a trailer for Freaky, giving an early glimpse of what can be expected when you mix serial killers with high school drama and body-swapping mechanics. The man tasked with envisioning all this is none other than Christopher Landon, who was behind the mega successful comedy horror films Happy Death Day and Happy Death Day 2U. Starring Vince Vaughn (Wedding Crashers) and Kathryn Newton (Big Little Lies), with the latter being the innocent unpopular teenage protagonist who gets body-swapped into Vaughn’s serial killer vessel body only to see her impostor tear it up in her school’s social hierarchy, the trailer shows off the pair’s antics in this crazy setting, while making fun of the usual horror and teenage movie tropes, much in the same way recent comedy horror films like Zombieland continue to do so for what is turning into an ever increasingly present formula in Hollywood....

Grand Theft Auto V broke seven different Guinness World Records this year, becoming the fastest-selling game of all time as well as the best-selling game ever released on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The open-world crime game made a staggering $800 million in its 24 hours of release and crossed the $1 billion mark within three days. If anyone was worried that the most expensive video game ever made wasn’t going to break even, it’s fair to say that those concerns have been settled....

One of the biggest draws to the Halo series is its multiplayer. It’s one of the reasons why so many people bought Halo: The Master Chief Collection – it gave fans a chance to carry Halo’s multiplayer modes over to Xbox One and it provided people with access to the Halo 5: Guardians multiplayer beta. It’s also why so many fans were upset by The Master Chief Collection’s matchmaking issues at launch, which weren’t solved until last month’s patch....

Only a few short weeks after the release of NetherRealm Studios’ latest DC Comics-inspired fighter, Injustice: Gods Among Us, fans unearthed code that outright revealed the four DLC characters that would be available post-launch. Recent rumors suggest that further DLC characters are also in development (and not included as part of the game’s season pass deal), but for the time being, gamers will have to get their superhero (or villain) fix with Lobo, Batgirl, Scorpion, and most recently, the notorious General Zod....

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is proving to be a divisive game, and I’m not referring to way that protagonist Raiden uses his high-frequency katana blade to “divide” the bodies of his foes into messy, unequal portions. Come to think of it, though, that really does exemplify the issue fans are up in arms about: that Metal Gear Solid’s classic stealth mechanics have been jettisoned here, in favor of an all-out action assault that bears the unmistakable fingerprints of developer Platinium Games....

As a competitive fighting game, the Mortal Kombat franchise has always been viewed as a guilty pleasure that offered fans tight controls and an ample amount of over-the-top maneuvers. Given this mentality behind the series, it’s no surprise that the latest entry, Mortal Kombat X, managed to sell so well across all platforms. Despite NetherRealm Studios’ dedication to releasing a finished product, however, a few glitches have been spotted by players since the game’s release....

Not that long ago we learned that Prey 2, one of the major highlight presentations from E3 2011, was no longer in development at Human Head Studios and had instead been transferred to Arkane Studios. This news came as a major disappointment, and reinforced earlier reports that the relationship between Human Head and parent company ZeniMax was on very rocky ground. Now we are hearing reports that Prey 2 is not in development at Arkane, and might still be in Human Head’s hands....

Microsoft’s E3 2012 Press Conference showered audiences with trailers and gameplay galore of some of the biggest titles hitting the console soon, along with a few of the peripherals and pieces of media center software the company is trying to promote on its gaming machine. For those of us who just wanted to get back to the games, Trey Parker and Matt Stone really cleansed the palette and woke up the audience with their jibes at the conference itself, teleprompter free and off-script....

Fans looking forward to the launch of The Last of Us are most likely anticipating another singleplayer campaign on par with Naughty Dog’s high standards, but that doesn’t mean the studio won’t also be taking a big step forward on the multiplayer front. After online multiplayer was added to the Uncharted series (and proved many fan concerns wrong) The Last of Us looks to be taking immersion to even greater lengths....

In every other game that features it, vehicular combat is merely an add-on, a gaming side-dish used to spice-up existing gameplay and add a little variety. It’s nothing more than a gaming trope designed to distract players from the tedium of their main quest-lines. In many examples these driving sections are poorly implemented; in others, criminally under-used. In either case, though, they are almost always instantly forgettable. Enter the Twisted Metal series — a game series so unapologetic about its car combat that it revels in that fact and showcases car-combat as the gaudy and defiant main event....

Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla is Ubisoft’s latest Assassin’s Creed titles and was one of the previous year’s most anticipated games. Following a franchise that’s already well-established and a brand that’s well-known to gamers far and wide, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla had a lot riding on it, and many gamers and critics will argue that the game delivered, while many found it to be just a tad disappointing. Whether you liked the game or not, the herculean scale and the level of immersion the game was able to put out cannot be discredit....

The masters of horror, Japanese companies like Capcom and Konami have become famous over the years for their ability to time and time again deliver incredible survival horror titles with increasingly engaging characters and stories. Most major franchises that served as inspiration for many other titles, such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill, all come from Japan. There’s something quite special about Japanese horror games, which uses a different kind of strategy to create helplessness and fear in the player, even when they’re armed....

Monster Hunter Rise had some pretty terrifying beasts but in Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin they are not your enemies but your partners to raise. If you enjoy a Pokemon-style way of raising beasts as opposed to the traditional Monster Hunter route of slaying beasts for their valuable parts, this will definitely be the game for you. Between a new look and the monsters (called monsties in this setting) not trying to kill you every 5 seconds, this amps up their cuteness 100 percent....

Finishing a video game is a bittersweet experience. When the credits begin to roll, you feel that you have overcome a challenge, but the moment they reach their end, the void arrives…or maybe not? Surprise! The post-game content turns out to be more interesting than the first time you played it, so you take control one more time to go through new missions and more severe difficulties. For a good gamer, the challenges never end....

Video games have blossomed into an amazing medium for telling stories that enables the player to be part of the story building rather than a passive viewer. They can progress the story, shape the personality and appearance of the main character, and even change the ending of the story based on how they played. But achieving that balance between telling an engaging story while keeping the gameplay fun is tough. Many games get so wrapped up in telling an incredible tale that they forget to deliver on the most important element of a video game, that it needs to be a fun game....