Great horror RPGs are more difficult to find than you might think. Despite clever innovations like the sanity stat, role-playing designers still tend to favor swords and sorcery over everything else ( just ask sci-fi fans ). That doesn’t mean there aren’t some perfectly scary RPGs out there, though. Whether they feature raw psychological horror or more traditional werewolves and vampires, there’s plenty of spookiness to be found in the role-playing genre. So on this, the spookiest day of the year, here are five great RPGs to play on Halloween Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines Troika was an RPG studio that was aptly named. Led by Fallout developers Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky, who would later go on to work on The Outer Worlds, Troika produced a trio of classic RPGs – Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, The Temple of Elemental Evil, and Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. Bloodlines was barely more than half a game when it launched, rife as it was with bugs and hidden...

  Baldur's Gate 3  has 17 different "narration styles", according to actor Amelia Tyler. As part of her role as the narrator of  Baldur's Gate , Tyler says that she and the team created all of these different tones and variations on the lines spoken in the narration to reflect all of the playable characters, better suiting the internal monologue that tells their particular story. This reveal comes from the Baldur's Gate 3 panel at EGX London this week, bringing much of the cast together to walk us through their performances in the game. Here, Tyler broke down how she approached narrating such a dialogue-heavy game, revealing that the workload was even larger than we thought, as lines had to be repeated in different tones, or reworded altogether to match the player character. "A lot of people that are on their first playthroughs don't realise there are distinct narration styles, depending on who you're playing as," says Ameilia Tyler. "So we ...

  onsidering Considering  the massive worlds, endless side activities, and propulsive “numbers go up” progression systems of recent Assassin’s Creed games, it can be easy to forget that the series began as a detective game.  Assassin’s Creed Mirage  seems hell-bent on reminding us. Touted as a return to the franchise’s roots in social stealth and investigation,  Mirage  also strikes me as a reset, maybe even an attempt at a course correction, before whatever comes next. I played two and a half hours of Ubisoft Bordeaux’s upcoming release, and while much of it served as a pleasant reminder of Assassin’s Creed’s past, just as much reminded me why the series evolved to begin with. My time with the game was split between three non-consecutive chapters. In the first, I explored the streets of Baghdad as Basim Ibn Ishaq, who many players will remember as their mentor in  Valhalla . Being a prequel to the Nordic adventure,  Mirage  ca...

Nintendo and DeNA have confirmed that they will soon stop creating new content for mobile game Mario Kart Tour, four years after it was launched. In a message sent to players, the companies confirmed that after the game’s new ‘tour’ of content, the Anniversary Tour (starting September 20), all future seasons will consist of content from tours that have appeared before. “No new courses, drivers, karts, or gliders will be added following the Battle Tour starting 04/10/2023,” the messages reads. “We hope you continue to enjoy playing Mario Kart Tour.” The news potentially hints at an imminent release for Nintendo Switch title Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s sixth and final DLC wave, since it has often shared new course releases with the mobile title. The Mario Kart Tour represents another hint at Nintendo’s lessening focus on mobile games. Compared to other big publishers like Activision and Take-Two, which regularly see mobile make up more than half...

  Sony is hiking its PlayStation Plus Premium subscription cost by $40 starting next month, the company announced on Wednesday. The price adjustment will apply across all tiers under the 12-month subscription   and will take effect in all countries where PlayStation Plus is available. The previous Essential subscription is jumping to $80 from $60, while the Extra plan will jump from $100 to $135, and the Premium tier will increase from $120 to $160, the company said in a  blog post . Sony says it’s already looking forward to September’s game lineup of Saints Row, Black Desert – Traveler Edition, and Generation Zero, all of which will be available to download between Sept. 5 and Oct. 2. The company said in a blog post that this price increase will help bring quality games to subscribers, writing: “This price adjustment will enable us to continue bringing high-quality games and value-added benefits to your PlayStation Plus subscription service.” Sony has not discl...

  Baldur’s Gate 3  just changed the game. I don’t mean the fact that it’s become the second most played game on Steam right now, catching up to Steam mainstays  CS:GO  and  DOTA 2 . I don’t mean how it’s enjoying incredible success without elements like a battle pass or microtransactions. And I don’t even mean how it’s a game crafted to appeal to a wide range of players across race, gender, and sexuality. Any one of these qualities alone makes  Baldur’s Gate 3  an incredible game. On Thursday, with yet another hotfix, Larian Studios blew the doors off the hinges for what a developer can do with a game with one simple sentence: “As of today, we’re also reactivating cross-saves as we near our PlayStation 5 launch.” (Cross-saves were deactivated earlier this month after the feature was apparently responsible for some players experiencing bugs with the PC launch.) You mean I’ll be able to take my  BG3  Steam sav...

  Ark: Survival Ascended was revealed in April as an Unreal Engine 5-powered remaster of the 2015 open-world epic, but it served to quickly irritate fans the world over. It was made clear that current players – regardless of the time and effort they’d sunken into the game – would be forced to completely restart with the release of   Ark: Survival Ascended   as Ark: Survival Evolved (the original game) will be taken offline. There is a staggering suite of changes coming hand-in-hand with ‘ASA’, but it’s still not enough to placate angry and disappointed fans. It was originally supposed to be released in August 2023, but owing to difficulties presented during the development of this ambitious remaster, it has been delayed to October – and a discount has been applied, for some reason. What The Hell is Even That Here’s the timeline, in case you’re confused: Ark 2 announced Ark 2 was delayed, but Ark: Survival Ascended (the remaster) announced Fans were made angry by the revel...