Stupid Never Dies is a single-player action game built on one philosophy: attack, attack, and attack some more. After playing the demo, it’s clear that all the game’s mechanics are built around rewarding aggressive play, giving gameplay a sense of momentum and progress.

You play as Davy, the world’s weakest zombie who needs to fight his way through layers of a monster-filled dungeon to take down KOM (the King of Monsters) and save a frozen girl he fell in love with at first sight. Oh, and you enter the dungeon by being flushed down a toilet. That should give you a pretty good idea of the tone, which is quirky, chaotic, and paired with a pop-punk visual style that gives the game its own unique vibe.

“How does the world’s weakest zombie manage to defeat these monsters?” you may be wondering. Well, that’s where Stupid Never Dies’ gameplay systems become the star of the show. Davy begins with a base Zombie Style that has regular and heavy attacks, a parry, and a vomit ability that can hit enemies in a row in front of you.

The parry ability (called a Stupid Parry) is important and should be used regularly, since a successful parry allows you to unleash a strong counter. You take some damage when you parry, but that lost HP is recoverable if you Bite an enemy. Landing any attack fills the Bite gauge at the bottom of the screen, and once the gauge is full, you can Bite any enemy.

Bites are powerful attacks that also replenish all your current recoverable damage and a bit of extra HP. Recoverable damage becomes actual damage over time, so you need to use Bite quickly to keep your HP topped up. This gameplay loop rewards aggressiveness, since you use parries to keep damage recoverable, land counterattacks and basic attacks to fill your gauge, and then use a Bite to get all your health back. There’s no pausing between fights to heal yourself, you need to do it in combat by staying on the offensive.

That’s not all Bites are good for, though. They can also be used to eat enemy cores to steal their abilities or combat styles. Each enemy type has a core, and eating different cores has different effects. A normal enemy will give you an Instant Skill, a one-time use ability. An elite enemy gives you access to their Style, allowing Davy to transform into it and use its unique abilities.

There will be 11 different enemy types whose Style you can steal in the game’s full release, and their gameplay varies significantly. As a Werewolf, your movement and attacks are much faster, parries can unleash a flurry of counterstrikes, and you can wall jump to get to otherwise unreachable parts of the map to find shortcuts or treasure chests. As a Harpy, you can double jump, glide through the air, fire ranged projectiles, and gain a longer-range dodge.

If it wasn’t already clear, these aren’t merely cosmetic changes or stat boosts, each Style legitimately alters how you move and fight. You can swap out your equipped Style whenever you acquire a new one, and you can transform at any time, including in the middle of a fight. So it’s wise to consistently test which Styles work best in which situations and against which enemies, and strategically switch between them to take advantage of their strengths.

Each time you dive into the dungeon, Davy will reset back to Level 1 and just have access to his base Zombie form. But each run also boosts how quickly you level up in a system that developer GPTRACK50 Inc. refers to as “blazing fast growth.” The boost depends on how far you got and how many enemies you defeated in your previous run.

True to its name, the difference in leveling speed is significant and noticeable. After only a handful of runs in the demo, my EXP boost was over 400% and I was gaining levels after every fight. When I first made it to the boss Afreet, I was level 10 (and he kicked my ass). During my last run before writing this article, I devoured him and finished the fight at level 21.

The sped up leveling helps the sense of momentum encouraged by the aggressive gameplay, since you’re always pushing forward, even after a failed run. Each run builds on the ones that came before it, and the boosts are cumulative, so no run is wasted.

Rapid leveling is also important because each run through the dungeon has a countdown timer. If you run out of time, you’ll die, get sent back to your base, and lose the items you gained during that run. There are Landing Areas at certain spots in the dungeon, and if you reach one, you can escape while keeping your items. So you have to weigh the risk vs. reward of pushing farther into the dungeon or getting out while you can.

If you successfully get out of the dungeon with the items you gathered, you can use them to create OT Gear for body hacks, a system where you can replace Davy’s body parts with technology that gives him new abilities. In my time with the demo, I saw abilities that included a deployable barrier, a spinning attack that lunges you forward, and saws that rotate in a circle around you.

You can also use ingredients you gather to create new Zombie Skills, which are stat boosts and other boons that you can activate during a run. When you reach certain levels, you’ll be given the option to activate one of three Zombie Skills that are randomly selected from the ones you’ve unlocked.

Eating bosses for the first time awards you with special materials that you can turn in to unlock unique upgrades. Defeating Afreet allowed me to unlock a Zombie Skill that gave my attacks enhanced knockback and gave them extra damage if I used them to knock enemies into walls.

Between all the different Styles, body hacks, and Zombie Skills, there are a ton of different customization options to try and see what fits your playstyle best. And all of these systems are sure to be expanded in the final release compared to what’s available in the demo version.

If you want to give Stupid Never Dies a try for yourself, an updated free demo is available now on Steam and PlayStation 5. The full game releases on October 21 on those same two platforms.

To evoke the classics is also to hold yourself to the high standard set by them. With Final Fantasy Resonance bringing the venerated series back to its origins with turn-based combat, and wielding Square’s HD-2D art style to modernize nostalgia for the pixel art era, it plucks at something I've longed for as someone who grew up in the SNES generation. While I've expressed my love for the Octopath Traveler series time and again, Final Fantasy has of course crystalized into something meaningful over the past several decades. But as much as Resonance looks like a torchbearer for classic RPGs, it also goes for a style of storytelling that often rings hollow. So, I think of it as a game of moments – when a genre-fusing boss theme graces your ears, when you execute a turn perfectly and watch all your spells fire off with big damage numbers, and when a cutscene brings HD-2D to life in a way you've just never seen before.

Resonance adapts the story and characters from the now-shuttered mobile game Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius by packaging them into the structure of a traditional RPG; no gacha mechanics, no microtransactions. It's quite similar to what Square Enix did with Octopath Traveler 0 and it's a brilliant way to bring existing stories into a format I'm a lot more inclined to play. With that comes an overworld with towns to represent each region, random encounters, an airship for roaming free and discovering pieces of land that feel like secrets, and full voice acting throughout the main story.

It largely sticks to the events of the first season of Brave Exvius, which follows the knights from the Kingdom of Grandshelt, Rain and Laswell, the mysterious magical girl born from a crystal, Fina, along with additional friends on a quest to stop the armor-clad Sworn Six from destroying the world's crystals and plunging it into calamity. Of course, there's more beneath the surface. That said, a lot of dialogue and interstitial events have been added to fill out the journey, which took me about 45 hours to complete (including all of the side quests marked on my map and poking around the overworld for optional minibosses who offer intense challenges). While chunks of Resonance's story aren't very riveting, the production value here had me forgetting that this was built on the bones of a mobile game – not that Brave Exvius was any lesser of an achievement for what it was.

That retooling extends to gameplay, which retains concepts and mechanics that work extremely well as an engaging turn-based combat system – and hearing "turn-based" and Final Fantasy in the same breath after all these years released those good chemicals in my brain, too. This is not an ATB system with an active element, but a straightforward turn order along a timeline. And the way you either plan accordingly depending on which units are up or manipulate the order to your advantage had me employing similar strategies as I do in the Trails series or the Octopath Traveler games.

It's all about elemental affinities and staggering enemies in Resonance, however. Each party member has their own set of elements covered through magic spells or element-imbued physical attacks, but they also equip what are called Visions that function somewhat like a Job system directly inspired by Final Fantasy V. This is what provides flexibility in party composition, giving you the tools to make sure you either cover all the elements or go all-in on a specific type so you can streamroll bosses. While every attack chips at an enemy's stagger meter, hitting their weaknesses is, of course, the strategy demanded of you.

I'm of two minds with this system: while it’s nice to have flexibility as you swap Visions between party members to constantly change their overall movesets, it can sometimes trivialize your combat approach. For example, going into a water-themed boss fight, I knew purely electric builds were going to be the optimal strategy. So, while it was rad as hell to watch chunks of stagger and HP get chopped off as I spammed electric attacks, I often didn't feel the need to think much harder than that. Having the foresight to anticipate the right element before a fight isn't quite as rewarding as being pushed to scheme with what you have.

Compare this to the boost and break system of an Octopath Traveler, where the tools you're given are more dynamic and free-flowing even with elemental affinities involved, which then lets you get more creative rather than just having you hammer away with one specific element. I cruised through the first half of Resonance since most enemies and bosses were pushovers. But thankfully, things got tougher in the late game where they hit harder and inflicted more status ailments to work around. Key moments where I was challenged to think steps ahead culminated in some real hard-fought battles toward the end.

Overall, it still provides enough of the puzzle-esque tactical thinking that's required of a good turn-based RPG. Party members level up alongside their mastery of equipped Visions, but you have to manually rank up Visions then apply passive perks and support spells, which gets into some interesting buildcrafting that gives a little extra depth that mattered for those big fights. And I enjoyed Resonance's combat system because it still captures the satisfaction of teeing off on a staggered enemy with your nastiest spells, especially because their animations look so good and hit with emphatic impact.

Visions themselves are super fun to toy with because most of them are avatars of star characters from Final Fantasy's past. Their movesets call back to specific spells and signature attacks from their respective games, and it's nice to see parts of the series' history celebrated in a way that's integral to how Resonance plays. Staggering an enemy grants extra turns in a bonus phase, and staggering all of them (or a lone foe) leads to the sweeping stagger phase where everyone gets to pile on, which then concludes in a Resonance attack tied to a Vision of your choosing. I still find it jarring to go from beautiful HD-2D to a CGI cutscene (pulled from Brave Exvius) when summoning a Resonance attack, some of these are pretty cool, like big Shanttoto throwing a massive boulder of dark energy or Clive getting ready to hit L3+R3 to accept the truth. There's some wonderful pixel art around those cuts that look incredible, too, like Lightning, who gets a full animation set here – and it's lovely to see these characters recreated in that style.

Each is obtained by visiting shrines sprinkled throughout the overworld and going through a quiz-like dialogue sequence that walks through the events of their own stories (and beware, there are some major spoilers for Final Fantasies you have not played yet). I found this pretty cheesy at first, but it really grew on me as a reminder of how each entry captured something powerful that has stood the test of time. You never really know which shrine belongs to who, so when their music kicks in, it had me grinning ear-to-ear – and as someone who was deeply touched by FFXIV Shadowbringers, hearing "Tomorrow and Tomorrow" and recounting Y'shtola's ongoing story is a prime example of how sometimes Resonance got me.

More than the hard-fought battles against god-like beings, Final Fantasy has stuck around and won our hearts because of the stories it tells. And this is where I wrestled most with Resonance. The foundations of its story are quite solid and consistent as a classic Final Fantasy about the power of crystals that fuel these magical worlds and defeating evil to save the world against villains who reveal themselves to be more complicated by story's end. But it's always about how those stories get told and the impactful themes they explore along the way. Resonance has glimpses of hitting those same highs, yet I found long stretches of its storytelling to be quite underwhelming.

Taking the story of Brave Exvius and expanding on it was definitely worth exploring, but Resonance fills out a lot of that time with dialogue that feels like it was written for a middling young adult novel then crammed into a fantasy world. Not that fantasy stories need to be Shakespearean or high-concept, but much of Resonance reads like a script that didn't get punched up; overly talkative where it takes five lines for something that could've been said in one, and banking on a contemporary twee tone and some mustache-twirly villains. I love melodrama, long cutscenes, and tropes like the power of friendship, and Resonance has that for sure, but doesn't start dialing it in until late in the game.

"Octopath Traveler 0 asks you to stick with a 100-hour journey, and it rewards you with the kinds of moments only lengthy RPGs can pull off with its overarching story, an intricate turn-based combat system, and a soundtrack that'll leave you absolutely floored." - Michael Higham, December 19, 2025

Read the full review

But there's still something enticing about going on a journey with characters who overcome unbelievable odds. I came around on lead protagonist Rain and his brother-in-arms Lasswell because, while simple characters, they have a bond that riled me up for the conclusion. Fina turns out to be a little bit more than someone with a mysterious, dark past and was a compelling way to weave in more of the magical storytelling devices sensibly. The stern tactician Nichol and pink-haired mage Sakura turn out to be the better written characters who fit the RPG mold so well; and the emotional arc Nichol goes through is genuine and one of the few ways the story shows some depth. However, I struggled to care about the Sworn Six since a lot of their dialogue undersells their importance to the broader lore. And that Dr. Lazarov is an incredibly annoying throwaway who is nothing more than a mad scientist to roll your eyes at.

Resonance also struggles with narrative momentum because it's shrouded in a vagueness that blurs its throughline rather than luring you in. So, it relies more on the societal issues of each region – environmental tragedies, revolt against a tyrannical government, or underclasses being exploited. These stories are delivered decently on their own, but the thematic coherence didn't come until much later, and how it all tied together through the mysterious ways of magic was predictable, if not fine.

Now, it usually takes more than spectacle to win me over, but Final Fantasy Resonance is an exception. When it matters most, the strongest moments are uplifted with some of the best cutscene work in HD-2D, wielding camera movement in a 3D plane effectively as character sprites and pixelized special effects coalescence through fluid animation that conveys emotion dialogue wouldn't be able to capture alone. The art style may have been born out of nostalgia, but Resonance proves that we're past that point and it can lead to new, evocative ways of creating worlds and elevating stories beyond the sum of their parts.

Music also plays a large role in why I look back at my time with Resonance fondly. It may be the expectation for a Final Fantasy game to have an amazing soundtrack, but the way certain town themes employ instruments that instill the feeling of a brutal, industrialized empire or a mystical city floating in the sky is magical. From the normal battle theme to the different tiers of bosses, I realized that Brave Exvius' great soundtrack was here all along and played off of many of the musical themes attached to the series. Remixing a dungeon theme into a bouncy electronic tune was like having fire come out of my headphones. And my jaw dropped when I heard a boss theme remix that had piano jazz fused with orchestral metal, a double bass drum pedal, and a latin choir that in a way that came together in unexpected harmony; it's such an impressive song I still can't get out of my head. Sometimes music resonates more powerfully than words, and it's one of the things I'll remember most.

God of War's Kratos almost went by a different name, but developers at Santa Monica Studio made too many Domino's pizza jokes. David Jaffe, the director of the original God of War trilogy, recently put out a video explaining the deep dish issue.

Originally, Kratos was called “Dominus,” which Jaffe liked because it made him sound dominant and strong. Unfortunately, it also made him sound like a chain of pizza restaurants.

“The people on the team started making Domino’s Pizza jokes,” Jaffe said. “Every single time someone said Dominus, someone inevitably would yell out, ‘30 minutes or free,’ or, ‘Get the door, it’s Dominus.’

“After about the 50th time, the writing was on the wall. Dominus was dead and we needed a new name for our hero.”

Someone at the studio printed out a big list of Ancient Greek baby names and Jaffe went through with a yellow highlighter marking the best ones. “The names that I highlighted were not great,” he said, pointing at Julius, Parthenius, and Maksym as examples.

“Nothing felt just right. Eventually, our marketing lead, Susan Panico, was the one who came up with the name Kratos. She pitched it and we loved it, and it stuck.”

Jaffe found the list of highlighted baby names among his old design documents last year. On the sheet, hidden among the names, unhighlighted, there it was: Kratos.

“We had Sony’s biggest franchise hero in our hands the entire time and we didn’t even know it,” he said. “Which I guess goes to show you how much of success in games is just luck, timing, and, in this case, marketing.”

Jaffe has previously talked about Dominus and the creation of Kratos, but he’s never gone into this much detail about the process. He previously just said that marketing didn’t like Dominus, but the pizza stuff is certainly a new development.

God of War's first release was the 2005 PS2 game of the same name. It was a big hit, spawning a franchise that has seen significant success over the past 20 years. The next game in the series, God of War: Laufey, is due out on PS5 in February 2027. Santa Monica Studio head of creative Cory Barlog has confirmed that an untitled new God of War game with Kratos back as the protagonist is also in development.