Big news on the fighting game front: Bandai Namco announced the release of Tekken 7: Fated Retribution at its King of the Iron Fist Tournament in Tokyo this weekend. This comes hot on the heels of the Tekken 7 announcement at Paris Games Week in October, and marks the twentieth anniversary of the franchise. Interesting stuff, but the big news is that the announcement also revealed a surprising new addition.
Akuma will be a playable character in the new Tekken game, as featured in the trailer. The once-hidden boss of Super Street Fighter II Turbo has come a long way. From the marketing, there’s also indication that Akuma and Heihachi Mishima are going to go head-to-head. Bandai said this “sequel to Tekken 7″ is set to be the finale of the Mishima clan’s struggle for dominance. That’s a fight worth playing, but if you stop and think about it, the issues with crossovers between the two games become apparent.
Hardcore members of the fighting game community are probably wondering how Akuma is going to fit into Tekken, considering that the series has a markedly different play style than Street Fighter. While Akuma’s — or Gouki’s — Shoryuken and Raging Demon might not be considered totally alien to other moves in the non-Capcom franchise, his fireball stands out since Tekken doesn’t really contain projectiles.
For those players clutching their controllers in anticipation for Street Fighter V in 2016, at least there’s one definite option to play Akuma, even if it means switching over to Tekken for a round or three. That’s taking into consideration that the great demon has been left off of SFV‘s character’s list, so far. And if you’re waiting for Tekken X Street Fighter to satisfy that crossover itch, keep waiting. There’s still no release date for it, even though it’s been in development for five years. Players will also have to be a little patient for Tekken 7: Fated Retribution, as there’s no release date confirmed for it yet either.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.