Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed, the video game follow-up to last year’s TMNT: Mutant Mayhem animated film, has its first trailer and a release date. The game was first announced last September.
A Heartful of Games is developing the game, which retains the stylized Spider-Verse-inspired art direction from the hit film. The story unfolds after the movie’s events and sees Leo, Raph, Donny, and Mikey battling a new wave of mutants invading New York City.
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As previously covered in our exclusive preview earlier this year, Mutant Mayhem is a third-person action/platformer game, and each turtle features a unique playstyle. The game also supports up to two-player local co-op.
TMNT: Mutants Unleashed launches on October 18 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC. The game is also getting a fancy Collector Edition, and you can see the contents of that here. Mutants Unleashed is one of several TMNT games to arrive in recent years (and the third in 2024 alone, following Wrath of the Mutants and the Switch port of Splintered Fate), and you can read all about the franchise’s history in video games in our in-depth retrospective.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 launches in October, but players can get in early via a pair of open betas. Activision is running two of these beta periods during consecutive weekends, and the dates and times for each have been revealed.
Here is when you can jump into each beta:
Weekend 1: Early Access (for preorder customers/Xbox Game Pass subscribers) – August 30 at 10 a.m. PT to September 4 at 10 a.m. PT
Weekend 2: Open Beta (for everyone) – September 6 at 10 a.m. PT to September 9 at 10 a.m. PT
Both betas are multiplayer only and will feature several online modes, weapons, equipment, and perks for players to tinker with.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 launches on October 25 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. Set in 1991 during the Gulf War, the espionage-themed campaign centers on a mysterious organization’s infiltration of the U.S. government. The Black Ops agents must go rogue to stop this threat, which takes players across the globe with new faces and returning favorites like Woods and Adler. You can learn more about the game by checking out our Summer Game Fest preview here.
The Casting of Frank Stone, Supermassive Games’ single-player narrative-driven horror game set in the Dead by Daylight universe, has a release date. This intriguing horror collaboration will arrive on September 3, and a new trailer provides a proper introduction of the main cast.
Developed by Supermassive (Until Dawn, The Quarry) and published by Dead by Daylight developer Behaviour Interactive, The Casting of Frank Stone stars five teenagers – Christine Gordon, Jaime Rivera, Linda Castle, Robert Green, and Bonnie Rivera – who film their own horror movie in an abandoned steel mill. Unfortunately, this mill has ties to a notorious murderer named Frank Stone, and the youth’s innocent art project goes horribly wrong.
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We still don’t know much about the narrative other than that it is set within the world of Dead by Daylight and takes place in the town of Cedar Mills during the summer of 1980. Gameplay-wise, The Casting of Frank Stone follows a similar blueprint to Supermassive’s previous horror titles in that it’s a choice-driven adventure where characters can be permanently killed off based on your decisions. You can check out a recent gameplay trailer here to see it in action.
The Casting of Frank Stone is coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
The Xbox 360 digital store shuts down later this month on July 26. Amid a wave of price reductions and other end-of-life updates, nostalgic fans can relive the console’s earliest days via a new dynamic background modeled after the old “Blades” interface.
For those too young to remember or didn’t get an Xbox 360 until years later, the Blades interface was the console’s first dashboard design. It was the first thing players saw from the console’s launch in 2005 until it was updated to an entirely different interface in 2008. Navigating it felt smooth as butter, and some diehards still believe it’s the best UI of any Xbox console.
Although it’s less detailed, and you can’t flip through the Blades of this dynamic background and hear that satisfying “whoosh” sound, it’s nice to see Microsoft acknowledge the 360’s like this. Here’s how you to make the Blades your Xbox background:
Press the Xbox button on your controller to open the guide.
Navigate to Profile & system > Settings > General > Personalization > My background > Dynamic backgrounds.
Choose Xbox 360 Blades under Featured or Xbox dynamic backgrounds
Select the background art you want using the A button.
You can read more about the impending Xbox 360 store closure and final updates by visiting this Xbox Wire article.
Dead by Daylight’s 8th-anniversary stream revealed a few big updates for the popular asymmetrical horror game. The most immediate is the addition of Lara Croft as the game’s latest crossover survivor along with the impending addition of the much-requested 2v8 mode.
Tomb Raider Chapter
Lara Croft (the 2013 reboot version, specifically) joins DBD today, and though she lacks her pistols and bow, she sports three new perks highlighting her adventuring prowess. Here’s an explanation of each per DBD’s website:
Finesse: Your fast vaults are faster when healthy, with a cooldown after a successful use.
Hardened: When you open a Chest and cleanse or bless a Totem, Hardened activates for the duration of the Trial. From that point, every time you scream, you’ll instead reveal the Killer’s Aura.
Specialist: When you open or rummage through a Chest, gain 1 Token (up to 3). When you do a Great Skill Check, consume a Token to reduce the max required Generator progress.
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2v8 Mode
On July 25, a new 2v8 multiplayer mode descends into the game. This pits two Killers against eight survivors in expanded versions of five classic maps. The number of generators has been doubled, and Survivors must now repair 8 out of 13 to escape. Captive Survivors are now sent directly into cages, and Survivor perks have been reworked into a new role system designed to encourage teamwork.
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Cross-Progression
Cross-progression is being implemented on July 22. This means players can now sync their progress across multiple owned versions of the game. Everything can be shared across any platform except for Switch, which has a few restrictions as you can see in the chart below.
Click to enlarge
Today’s stream also revealed a new trailer and the release date for The Casting of Frank Stone, the single-player DBD game developed by Supermassive Games (Until Dawn, The Quarry). You can read all about that here.
During my visit to BioWare in its Edmonton, Canada, office earlier this year for the current Game Informer cover story on Dragon Age: The Veilguard, I heard a sentiment repeated throughout the day from the game’s leads: in past Dragon Age games, BioWare stumbled onto great companions, but with Veilguard, it’s the first game where the studio feels it purposefully and intentionally created great companions. As such, those companions are key to everything happening in Veilguard.
With such a significant emphasis on these characters, I spoke to some of the game’s leads to learn precisely about BioWare’s philosophy on companions in Veilguard.
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“No, that is the case,” BioWare general manager Gary McKay tells me when I ask if he agrees with the stumbled-onto-greatness sentiment. “I would first start with Dragon Age – each installment in this franchise has been different, so we didn’t set out to make a game that was a sequel or the same game as before. We really wanted to do something different and we did push the envelope in a couple of areas, companions being one of them. Once we got knee deep into it, we really realized we had something special with these companions, again, around the motivations, the story arc, and it really started to become the centerpiece for this game.”
The Philosophy Behind Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s Companions
Game director Corinne Busche agrees, adding that Veilguard’s companions are “the most fully realized complex companions we’ve ever crafted.” She also believes they’re the Dragon Age series’ best. “They’re complicated, they have complicated problems, and that’s what’s interesting,” she continues. “As much as I adore the companions and the journeys I’ve been on with them in past Dragon Age titles – previously, it feels like companions are going on an adventure with me, the main character, whether it’s the Hero of Ferelden or Hawke, you name it. But in [Veilguard], in many ways, the companions are so fleshed out that it feels as though I’m going on a journey with them. I’m exploring how they think and feel; I’m helping them through their problems. We’re working through their unique character arcs. They feel like my dear friends, and I absolutely adore them.”
Busche says these companions participate in the game’s darker and more optimistic parts. “We’ve really moved into a place where you can have the highest of highs, and it can be colorful, it can be optimistic, but also, you can have the lowest of lows where it gets gritty, it gets painful, it gets quite dark. But throughout it all, there is a sense of optimism. And it creates this delightful throughline throughout the game.”
When I ask creative director John Epler about BioWare’s philosophy behind Veilguard’s companions, he reveals a phrase the studio uses: Dragon Age is about characters, not causes.
“What that means for us is […] let’s take the Grey Wardens, for example – the Grey Wardens are an interesting faction but by themselves, they don’t tell a story, but there are characters within that faction that do,” he tells me. “And the same thing with other characters in the story. They represent these factions, they show the face of the other parts of Thedas and of the storytelling we really want to do, which, again, shows Thedas as this large, diverse living world that has things going on when you’re not there.”
Epler says one of BioWare’s principles when creating Veilguard was that the world exists even when you – Rook – are not around. There are things, ancient conflicts, grudges, and more, that happen even when Rook isn’t participating in them, he says.
“You kind of come in ‘in media res’ in some of these, so that’s where we wanted to go with the companions,” he says. “They have stories of their own. Where can Rook come into these stories, and what interesting ways can those stories develop not just based on themselves but also based on Rook’s presence within them?”
Dragon Age series art director Matt Rhodes adds that companions are the load-bearing pillars for everything in Veilguard, so “when you’re designing them, it’s not just designing a character; they’re the face for their faction, the face for, in [some cases like Bellara Lutara], an entire area of the world.” From his aesthetic-forward part of developing companions in Veilguard as the game’s art director, he tells me Veilguard’s characters are (hopefully) going to give cosplayers a challenge.
“The previous art director had the mindset we should make things easier for [cosplayers], which I think is a misunderstanding of cosplayers,” Rhodes says. “We’ve seen the kind of challenges they’re willing to take on, and so we’ve gone for, in some cases, a level of complexity and detail that I hope a lot of them are excited to rise to the challenge for.”
A Quick Detour: Neve Gallus
Companions, In And Out Of Combat
Rook’s companions in Veilguard have roles both in and out of combat, but since I only saw a few hours of this game (which is sure to be multiple dozens of hours long), I wanted to ask Busche about these roles and how they play out. Here’s what I learned:
In Combat
Bushce: “So companions as realized characters, we have to take that premise when we talk about how they show up in combat. These are their own people. They have their own behaviors; they have their own autonomy on the battlefield; they’ll pick their own targets. As their plots progress, they’ll learn how to use their abilities more competently, and it really feels like you’re fighting alongside these realized characters in battle. So I love that, I love the believability of it. It feels like we’re all in it together.
“But then when it comes time for the strategy, and the progression I might add, that’s where a sense of teamwork comes into play as the leader of this party as Rook. When I open the ability wheel, I almost feel like we’re huddling up. We’re coming up with a game plan together. I see all the abilities that Harding has, and I see all that Bellara is capable of, and sometimes I’m using vulnerabilities synergistically. Maybe I’m slowing time with Bellara so that I can unleash devastating attacks with Harding, knocking down the enemy, and then me as Rook, rushing in and capitalizing on this setup they’ve created for me. It is a game about creating this organic sense of teamwork.
“Now, there are more explicit synergies as well. We very much have intentional combos where your companions can play off each other, you can queue up abilities between them, and each of those abilities will go off and have their effect. But it results in this massive detonation where you get enhanced effects, debuff the entire battlefield, all because of planning and teamwork. What makes it really cool is you can introduce Rook into that equation as well. One of my favorite things to do is upgrade some of Harding’s abilities so she will automatically use some of these abilities that normally I’d have to instruct her to do. And she’ll actually set my character up to execute that combo that, again, has that detonation effect.”
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Outside Combat
Busche: “It’s one of my favorite topics. I talked about the idea that these are fully realized characters, that they’re very authentic and relatable. So outside of combat, what that means is they’re going to have their own concerns, fears, distractions, and indeed, even their own sanctuaries, their own personal spaces. In our base of operations this time, our player hub, the Lighthouse, each of the companions has their own room. And what I love about it is it becomes a reflection of who they are. The more time you spend with them, as the game develops as you work through their arc, their room and their personalities will evolve and flourish and become more complete as they trust you more and you understand them better.
“What’s interesting, you mentioned romance, the companions also develop romantically and I’m not just talking about with the main character Rook; I’m talking about each other. There are moments in the game where two of our companions fell in love with each other and I had to make some pretty challenging choices as it related to the quest we’re on. And it broke my heart, it absolutely did [Editor’s Note: I get the sense Busche is talking about a specific playthrough of Veilguard here – not a definitive sequence of events for every playthrough].
“So I would say, as you’re adventuring with them, as you’re returning to the Lighthouse and getting to know them – all these decisions and conversations and things you learn about them – it endears them to you in a way that I honestly haven’t experienced before. And sometimes that fills me with joy and sometimes it breaks my heart.”
For more about the game, including exclusive details, interviews, video features, and more, click the Dragon Age: The Veilguard hub button below.
Mortal Kombat 1’s final Year 1 DLC fighter arrives next week, and it’s Takeda Takahashi. The young Shirai Ryu warrior makes only his second appearance in a Mortal Kombat game and looks every bit as capable as his older clanmates, Scorpion and Smoke.
Although Takeda was Kenshi’s son in his debut appearance, Mortal Kombat X, the remixed timeline of Mortal Kombt 1 has changed him to Kenshi’s cousin. Like Kenshi, Takeda grew up a Yakuza but was more faithful to the clan than his cousin. As such, the Yakuza tasked Takeda with killing Kenshi, and the two battled, with the latter coming emerging victorious. Takeda was mortally wounded in the battle and rushed to the aid of the Shirai Ryu, where Kenshi protected him from being killed by the Yakuza for failing his mission. This causes Takeda to have a change of heart and join the Shirai Ryu to wage war against Earthrrealm’s criminal underground and, eventually, the evil forces of Outworld.
Takeda still utilizes the Shirai Ryu fighting style, including his signature pair of bladed whips. He also sports shurikens, a barrage of teleporting flame attacks, and an aerial grapple best described as mid-air corkscrew piledriver. Check Takeda out below.
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Takeda will be available on July 23, both as a standalone purchase and as a free download for Kombat Pack owners. The same day also sees previously revealed Kameo fighter Ferra become available to buy. Both Takeda and Ferra will be playable for the first time during Evo 2025 this weekend.
Nike and Bandai Namco are teaming up to release a Tekken 8-inspired shoe that will be available for purchase this September. Dubbed “Tekken 8 x Nike Air Foamposite One Fist,” these shoes will be available through Nike, SNKRS, and select retailers in-store and online for $250, as reported by Sole Retriever.
The shoes themselves are inspired specifically by Tekken 8’s primary antagonist, Kazuya Mishima, as the colorway of the shoe is basically a spin on his outfit in-game. Sole Retriever describes the shoes as featuring an iridescent Foamposite material across the design’s upper region in armory navy, with a faux crocodile skin texture across the Foamposite material, and black hues over the leather eyestays, shoe collar, and tongue.
Check out the Tekken 8 x Nike Air Foamposite One Fist shoes for yourself below:
As you can see, the shoes also feature the Tekken logos, a Fist logo with Tekken’s signature lighting, and a nice box to hold the shoes.
Sole Retriever reports that a second colorway in this lineup is on the way and it will reference Jin Kazama, although there’s no images of what it will look like yet.
These Tekken 8 x Nike Air Foamposite One Fist shoes will cost you $250 when they release this September. For more, read Game Informer’s Tekken 8 review.
The Double Dragon series has been around since the arcades in 1987 and has managed to maintain a surprisingly consistent release cadence in those more than 35 years. It was only last year that we played Double Dragon Gaiden, a pixelated throwback brawler (or belt-scroll action game, per its official YouTube description) take on the franchise.
This next entry is decidedly more modern, with fully 3D visuals. It’s not the first time the series has explored this dimension, but it is a rare occurrence. The game is being developed by Yuke’s, the developer that worked on the WWE 2K franchise until 2K19 and most recently developed AEW: Fight Forever. It is being published, or presented by, as the trailer implies, Arc System Works, the developer behind Guilty Gear and Dragon Ball FighterZ.
Double Dragon Revive is coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and One, and PC sometime in 2025.
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For a whole lot more on Double Dragon, but maybe not the version of Double Dragon you’re thinking, head here to read all about the 1994 movie. Back in 2019, I tracked down the film’s director, James Yukich, to talk about the bizarre film’s trajectory, what went wrong, and what he would have done differently had he been giving a chance to try making the film again.
Planet Coaster 2 arrives later this year and its big update, alongside all the rollercoaster and theme park simulation gameplay of the first title, is the inclusion of water park mechanics. You will be able to create water slides, wave pools, lazy rivers, and more. You will also be able to visit your friend’s parks and build together in a shared sandbox mode (though you will apparently have to build one at a time) across platforms. You can check out the announcement trailer below.
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Frontier is promising its first look at gameplay on July 31, and Planet Coaster 2 will arrive later this year for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. To read Game Informer‘s Planet Coaster review, follow the link.
