Elden Ring Nightreign feels like a PS3 multiplayer game in the best way - Related to nightreign, like, parasite, game, best

Elden Ring Nightreign feels like a PS3 multiplayer game in the best way

Table of Contents Table of Contents Where we droppin’ boys Adapting to change.

In a night full of surprises at the Game Awards 2024, Elden Ring Nightreign may have been the biggest shocker of them all. FromSoftware built its reputation on the fabled Dark Souls series and single-player games. While games like Elden Ring and Bloodborne include co-op, the studio has never taken its award-winning formula into full-on multiplayer territory. That changes on May 30.

Digital Trends spent four hours playing Elden Ring Nightreign ahead of its release date reveal. FromSoftware’s latest borrows elements from various genres like battle royale and roguelikes to create a unique experience that’s more than the sum of its parts. The already established systems have been retooled to fit a multiplayer experience, and the newly introduced ones still complement it. It feels like the kind of multiplayer extra that was attached to so many PS3 and Xbox 360 games in their era, but in the best way possible.

The objective in Elden Ring Nightreign is to survive three days. There’s exploration to be done, loot to be found, and bosses to be slain during that time. At the start of a session, players have the choice between eight classes, but I was only given four in the demo: Wylder, Duchess, Guardian, and Recluse. That batch includes your typical melee character focused on being an all-rounder, a speedy glass cannon, and a tank. Most of these are straightforward as they solely rely on physical hits.

The Recluse, a primary magic user, is definitely the most difficult one to adjust to of that crop. I had to learn how to conserve my MP, and restoration is hard to come by. Plus, I had to be more reliant on enemy weapon drops, just in case I couldn’t cast spells anymore and needed a backup. Playing as the Recluse definitely has its benefits, as it has huge damage potential, but managing MP is a challenge.

Gameplay allows for up to three people to participate at a time, and thankfully, there are no class restrictions or limits. You can pull up with a squad of three Guardians if you’d like. Your party then drops into The Lands Between on some mystical birds, Neightreign’s version of the Fortnite Battle Bus. In fact, there’s a wall of fire that closes gradually during the day, and once it transitions to night, the ring creates an arena for your party to fight the boss in.

In one instance, my party was fighting a mini boss in an underground cavern, but the fire closed in on us mid-battle. We had no choice but to abandon the encounter and escape so that we wouldn’t suffer continuous damage. Players have to be tactical in how much time they spend exploring the different dungeons and castles in search of loot.

Traversal in Nightreign is significantly faster than you’d expect from your average FromSoftware game. characters run like Usain Bolt in comparison to Elden Ring, and there is absolutely no fall damage whatsoever. They can even grab onto ledges and climb hills. Despite those major changes, the combat feels much the same. It’s a reminder that Elden Ring’s gameplay was always more fast-paced than players may have realized; everything has just been sped up to adapt to Nightreign’s new multiplayer systems.

That’s not the only big change to Elden Ring’s formula. Nightreign simplifies much of FromSoftware’s level up and death systems. Instead of picking which stats to increase at a Site of Grace, stats grow depending on character class. For example, Guardians will always have a higher HP stat than other classes, and Recluses will always have lower HP stats. This helps streamline the Nightreign experience by decreasing the mental tax of deciding which stats to increase.

As a side effect of that, players no longer drop Runes upon dying. Instead, there are no consequences whatsoever for dying during the day. There’s an evil catch, of course: die during the night, in the middle of a boss fight, and lose a level. It’s fascinating to see how much a level or two can really mean the difference between life and death in Nightreign. This adds an incredible amount of tension during boss fights and players need to try their hardest to stay alive.

Though that’s a harsh punishment, Nightreign is surprisingly forgiving too. Downed allies can be revived by continuously hitting them. This means that the more powerful a character is, the faster they’ll be able to get allies back on their feet. It’s a clever inversion that really fits the unforgiving setting of Elden Ring.

Thankfully, the trademark difficulty that Elden Ring is known for is still intact. The boss I faced off against during my first night was the Centipede Demon from the first Dark Souls game. That foe wasn’t terribly difficult, especially with a group of three, but the boss of the second night was absolutely brutal. The Tree Sentinel from Elden Ring appeared with three other henchmen. Not only did the hulking beast deal ungodly amounts of damage, but his henchmen actually had two health bars — one for their horses and one for themselves. My party was eventually overwhelmed and wiped out.

At the end of our run, we received relics that we could attach to our characters to get bonuses such as increased attack power or burn damage. This roguelike element makes it feel like our time wasn’t wasted even though we failed. Unfortunately, my group never made it to the third night. Not only was the Tree Sentinel horrifyingly difficult, but we ran into connection issues that caused teammates to drop out suddenly. Every time it happened, we were forced to exit the game and start our run all over since it was pointless to carry on with just two people. It was a total buzzkill. That shouldn’t be a problem for launch, though. While this demo didn’t let players rejoin the session, Bandai Namco stated that the final build will allow players to do so.

If Elden Ring Nightreign can iron out its connection issues, there’s real potential here. It brings me back to the era of obligatory multiplayer game modes that you’d find in Mass Effect 3 or The Last of Us during the PS3 era. Not all of them made sense, but it sometimes produced some creative gems that earned them a loyal player base. Nightreign feels like one of those enhanced ideas because it knows exactly what it’s doing. It has smartly taken Elden Ring’s existing ideas and fit them into a multiplayer mold while retaining what made the game so beloved in the first place. That already feels like a winning recipe.

Elden Ring Nightreign launches on May 30 PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.

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These 4 exciting indie games need to be on your radar this year

Table of Contents Table of Contents Blue Prince Post Trauma Knights in Tight Spaces Craftlings.

2025 is already odd to a heck of a start. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is a hit, we’re loving Civilization 7, and Avowed is just around the corner. Those aren’t the games I’m most excited about, though. My favorites games of the past month and change are all independent releases that I didn’t see coming. Rift of the Necrodancer, Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist, and While Waiting are all sitting at the top of my list currently. While big budget games are exciting, you should never sleep on the indies — especially because there are so many great ones coming soon.

Last week, I demoed four upcoming games from Raw Fury, most of which will launch soon. The publisher may not be a household name like Devolver, but it’s quietly given us plenty of fantastic indies over the past decade, from Sable to American Arcadia. This year, Raw Fury has a few games in the works that are worth keeping your eye on. That includes a creepy ode to Silent Hill, a medieval tactics game, and a serious game of the year contender. Don’t take your eyes off these four games.

I first encountered Blue Prince last year at GDC, where I was (evidently) the first person to ever demo it. I instantly knew it would be special, something that was confirmed when it was selected for last year’s Tribeca Fest and nominated for Excellence in Design at this year’s Independent Games Festival awards. Now that I’ve tried it a second time — and realized that there’s much more to it than I initially thought — I’m confident that it’s going to be one of 2025’s most talked about indies.

Blue Prince is hard to explain. It’s sort of a roguelike, sort of a board game, sort of a puzzler. The idea is that players need to find the secret 46th room in an enormous manor, the layout of which changes every time one enters it. When I open a door, I draw three room tiles and have to choose one, shaping what the house looks like as I explore. There are secrets, items, and puzzles strewn throughout the halls that’ll help me track down the secret room. The catch is that I only have a set amount of stamina and spend some every time I walk in a new room. I knew about all that from my last demo, but this time I picked up on more details that widened its scope. From hints that different events can happen on specific days to a massive secret hiding in plain sight, Blue Prince is shaping up to be this year’s Lorelei and the Laser Eyes: a puzzle game for the sickos who pray at Myst’s altar.

Last year was a fantastic one for games inspired by Silent Hill (and Silent Hill itself), and that’ll continue this year with Post Trauma. Developed by Red Soul Games, it’s an atmospheric horror game with its roots firmly in the genre’s past. When my demo begins, I’m walking through eerily silent train cars as fixed camera angles trigger. It’s classic Silent Hill right out the gate, and the comparison only gets more pronounced when I come face to face with fleshy monsters and catch glimpses of mannequins in my flashlight’s glow.

Taking notes from the series that inspired it, Post Trauma goes heavier on puzzles than combat – and those puzzles are already brain busters. The first one I found required me to carefully decode information on scattered train route maps to reverse engineer a padlock code. The second, unlocked after finding some fuses, had me rebooting a train station’s power by translating environmental clues to correct switch flips. In between those moments, I was bashing creepy monstrosities with my crowbar and walking through surreal hallways that wouldn’t look out of place in Silent Hill 2’s Otherside. That’s only a small slice of what’s to come, too. The full game sounds more ambitious, with a three character structure that switches up its gameplay. I’m excited, and a little scared, to see more.

⚔️ Knights in Tight Spaces | From Training to Animation ⚔️.

In 2021, developer Ground Shatter released a hidden gem in the form of Fights in Tight Spaces. The clever tactics game turned fight fighting into a deckbuilder, a formula that earned it some praise. The studio will return with a follow-up this year, Knights in Tight Spaces, which builds on that foundation. The basic premise is the same. It’s a roguelike where players build a deck of attacks, movement options, and defensive capabilities. The goal is to knock out a small diorama filled with enemies, carefully playing as many cards as possible on a turn while managing resources like momentum.

The difference this time is right in its title: knights. The sequel has a medieval theme, as players control a full party of heroes rather than one action star. That opens the door for a new strategic layer, as party members can combo with one another depending on their position. If I smack an enemy into my archer’s line of sight, they’ll get hit with an arrow. Smart positioning is more critical than ever as a result, as a perfectly executed turn can result in a lot of damage. With an illustrative new art style in its inventory, Knights in Tight Spaces should be a worthy successor to a cult hit.

Craftlings Announcement Teaser l Demo out Now.

As I kid, I played a lot of Lemmings at school. I was obsessed with it, delighted as I watched my virtual critter army mill around the screen. To this day, I’ve still never played something that captures its spirit. Craftlings may be the game to do it. The resource management strategy game has players overseeing a handful of creatures who aimlessly wander back and forth across a pixelated, 2D landscape. It’s my job to give them tasks. I start by commanding them to build a town hall, giving a few axes that they can use to chop down trees. That first step balloons into a large ecosystem of materials and buildings as my Craftlings autonomously build, fight enemies, and complete missions.

The slice I played is promising, though I’ll need to spend much more time with it to fully master it. There are tons of tools to work with, from lifts that can carry items to stoppers that keep my pals from wandering off cliffs. I’ve only scratched the surface of what looks like a dense, systems heavy game for the underserved Lemmings fans still out there. While Craftlings isn’t confirmed for a 2025 release, I’m sure that this retro strategy game will trigger a lot of memories when it launches.

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Now on IMAX, Parasite is the perfect thriller for our post-Luigi world

Five years after it took the Cannes Film Festival, the Academy Awards, and the global box office by storm, Parasite is back on the big screen. That’s a pretty short amount of time to commemorate with an anniversary rerelease. Then again, it’s been a long five years, hasn’t it? Oh, how the world has changed since the halcyon days of 2019 — “the last f***ing year for cinema,” to quote Quentin Tarantino, whose Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood premiered within hours of Bong Joon-ho’s darkly ingenious class-warfare caper. In retrospect, Parasite winning Best Picture on Oscar night a few months later really did feel like the final joyous surprise of an old era — a last gasp before COVID closed theaters and changed everything.

Watching the film today, via its current IMAX victory lap or from the comfort of your own home, actually emphasizes the ways things haven’t changed so much these past five years. Or maybe it’s just that the tensions and resentments Parasite dramatized back then have fully exploded to the surface of the culture, as surely as they simmer to a boil in the climax of the movie. Like Mr. Kim (Song Kang-ho), people are fed up. Does his shocking act of violence look so shocking these days? You might think suddenly of a real, more premeditated crime that just stirred the media into a frenzy and sent a jolt of understanding through the public — a murder with a motive so clear, the killer etched it on the bullets.

Yes, the time is right for a Parasite encore. It’s very much a movie for the moment, a tale of rage and desperation fit for our post-Luigi Mangione world. At the same time, there’s no mistaking this South Korean award-winner — more acclaimed, perhaps, than any film that’s come in its wake — for a simple eat-the-rich parable. Not with Bong at the reins. The sheer slipperiness of his demented take on upstairs-downstairs drama is what elevates it beyond mere timeliness.

Parasite [Official Trailer] – In Theaters October 11, 2019.

The title alone is provocative in its potential double meaning. Who are the parasites in this story of a destitute family, the Kims, that latches itself to the payroll teat of a wealthy family, the Parks? It’s less a trick question than a Rorschach test. Parasite’s huge success the world over could reflect a certain universal frustration, the kind that the murder of a CEO just illuminated like a black light. Or it could be chalked up to people seeing what they want to see in the master-servant relationship that develops between these economically entwined clans. To win the top prize on Hollywood’s biggest night, the film had to have spoken to people who saw a kind of horror movie about the dangers of opening your house to the help.

Bong leaves us to sort through our biases. He’s too shrewd a dramatist to reduce his characters to emblems of their social station — to divide our sympathies by tax bracket alone. The Parks are not cartoon fat cats. They are clueless and easily manipulated, in the case of Mrs. Park (Cho Yeo-jeong), or snobbishly condescending, in the case of Mr. Park (Lee Sun-kyun), who prefers those he hires respect professional boundaries and not “cross the line.” Their most odious offense is rudely fixating on odor. They are awful in the casual, everyday way that the wealthy can be. They are recognizably human, not blatant guillotine fodder.

Likewise, the Kims are not cardboard saints — the noble working-class heroes a more self-righteous parable might position upon a pedestal. They are, at times, bluntly and hilariously underhanded. They lie and steal and screw over other people for a shot at the cash the Parks thoughtlessly splurge on luxury and convenience and creature comforts. Parasite says that desperate times call for desperate measures. Every transgression in the movie is a scramble to survive. “Money is an iron,” as Mrs. Kim (Jang Hye-jin) says. It smooths out the difficulties of life — and with them, the challenges to our moral compasses.

No one widely familiar with Bong’s work could confuse Parasite for a pro-elite cautionary tale, even if its narrative wickedly toys with the Saltburn-like fears of a ruling class paranoid that the Great Unwashed are coming for them. Rarely one for didactic screeds, the writer-director has spent most of his career smuggling his class politics onto screens under cover of rollicking genre scenarios. Take The Host, which savages American imperialism and corporate disregard for public safety in the form of a primo kaiju movie of original Gojira vintage. Or Snowpiercer, which takes late-stage capitalism to its logical endpoint, with all that remains of civilization stuffed aboard a train endlessly looping a ravaged planet. It’s arranged like a social ladder turned on its side, the poor in the back, the rich in the front.

Parasite flips that hierarchical structure vertically again: Here, privilege is a matter of altitude — a theme established right from the subterranean opening shot. The film is one of Bong’s most purely entertaining Trojan horses. That, maybe more than its politics, might account for its enduring popularity and for its ability to smash the language barriers that traditionally keep films not in English off the box-office charts and out of the Academy’s winner circle. For a while, it almost plays like an Ocean’s Eleven-style heist movie where the “score” is gainful employment. And the twists arrive with dizzying force, Bong opening his satirical scenario up into the realm of perverse farce (no doors are slammed, but tables are scurried under) and downright Hitchcockian thrills. Parasite remains about as fun as any movie this ultimately, witheringly downbeat can be.

The Parks aren’t the real villains of the film. They’re but a symptom of an unjust system. Capitalism is a zero sum game in Parasite. It keeps the 99% divided, fighting over the same crumbs, scrambling for the same tiny wedge of the pie. Most of the violence in the movie is between the Kims and the family of the housekeeper (Lee Jung-eun) they muscle out of a job. Only in the climax, when all hell breaks loose at that party, do the Parks experience any kind of reckoning. And it’s hard to call that a victory, regardless of where your sympathies lie. After all, Mr. Kim’s actions don’t even radicalize his son, Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik), who remains seduced by a fantasy of upward mobility, dreaming of keeping up with the Joneses (or Parks).

Since 2019, Parasite’s finger hasn’t left the pulse of an economically lopsided world. The Kims don’t see the big picture of their misadventure — namely, that they’re trying to win a rigged game on an uneven playing field, and that they’re trapped in a system designed to keep them literally and figuratively down. But the audience might see that picture more clearly than ever. After all, Parasite has returned to theaters at a time when newsfeeds are filled with daily reminders of the unjust disparity of life under capitalism. It remains a crazed crowdpleaser for an exploited world, building madcap complications around its social conscience… never mind the inconvenient truth that every ticket bought puts a few extra dollars in the pockets of the Friedkins, a family whose wealth makes the Parks look like the Kims.

All that noted, you have to wonder if the pointedly unsubtle Parasite might actually be a little too subtle for 2025. In a key scene, the Kims sit around, drinking the Park family’s liquor, enjoying the mirage of a life within the household they serve. “She’s rich, but still nice,” Mr. Kim says of his employer, to which his wife replies, with a snort: “She’s rich, therefore she’s nice.” Right now, though, the mask of niceness the obscenely monied often wear has slipped. As these words are written, and maybe as you read them, the world’s richest man is waging war on the middle and lower class in broad daylight — unlawfully destroying public services, hurting American workers to line his own pockets, slashing cancer research for kids. Him and his kind are monsters too broad for the broadest of satires, the kind Bong would be embarrassed to put in a movie. They’re parasites in the truest sense.

Parasite is currently playing on select IMAX screens, streaming on Netflix, and available to rent or purchase from digital services owned by wealthy men who don’t care about you. For more of [website] Dowd’s writing, visit his Authory page.

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