GamingCult - Our Gaming Culture

I wasn’t expecting to write about a demo today, and I don’t expect to write about demos too often, but I couldn’t ignore the return of Castlevania to modern consoles in any shape or form. Seeing as we won’t be getting the full Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse for another 15 days or so, I thought I would play through the demo and share my thoughts on the return of one of my favourite franchises of all time. Belmont’s Curse takes place in 1499, 23 years after the events of Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse . It also takes place 20 years after  Castlevania: Curse of Darkness , making it the latest chapter in this particular era of the Castlevania timeline. This time around, you play as Rose Belmont, daughter of Trevor and Sypha Belnades. Rose starts off equipped with a longsword and, unfortunately, does not have her father’s Vampire Killer whip, at least not in the demo. She also has magic in the form of the Cursed Flame, which allows her to launch a fireball. On top of that, she is prov...

There may be no better way to build hype for upcoming paid content than by giving something meaningful back to the people who already supported you. Yesterday, CD Projekt Red released the highly anticipated “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered.” Announced a little more than a month ago at Gamescom 2026, the remaster is available for free to previous owners of the game on PS5, Nintendo Switch 2 and Xbox Series X/S, and includes the two previously released DLC campaigns at no additional cost. All of this comes ahead of the upcoming paid DLC, “Songs of the Past,” which releases in 2027. After installing it myself and spending the first few hours playing, I realized that the model CD Projekt Red followed here should be adopted by more publishers going forward. The free upgrade path, which was also used by Xbox Game Studios with the release of “Gears of War: Reloaded,” is a goodwill gesture that rewards the gamers who helped make these titles successful in the first place. “The Witcher 3: W...

I recently wrote about how to make gaming more affordable , and I thought it would be interesting to follow up with a little something explaining how I collect these days and why. As you may have gathered from my “ Gaming Is Expensive: Here’s How to Make It More Affordable ” piece, I rarely buy games during their initial release window and generally wait until they get their first significant price cut. (October will be a little different, as I currently have two highly anticipated games that I can’t wait to tear into.) This gives me more options when it comes time to buy a game. One thing I look for is whether a game has a Sony PlayStation 4 release. For a while now, I’ve been using the PS4 as my modern-day base console. Generally, PS4 games look and play better than titles on the original Nintendo Switch (more on this later) and are, more often than not, completely available on disc and playable without an internet connection. The nice thing about more recent PS4 releases is that man...

Since my last editorial, “ The Sega 32x Could Have Been So Much More , ” I’ve been pondering creating a follow-up opinion piece that uses a similar premise. As I was brainstorming ideas about how a system or service could have been saved, I kept coming back to Microsoft and its Xbox brand. So I decided that it just made sense for me to tackle this. Xbox has had its fair share of highs and lows, with the majority of them being on the bottom end of the success scale. The platform arguably peaked during the Xbox 360 era and then progressively lost steam from the Xbox One onwards. Paired with Xbox Game Pass, the Xbox Series X/S seemed poised to get them back on track, but a few missteps along the way (let’s just say it didn’t begin well with the failure to launch Halo Infinite with the Series X/S in Nov. 2020 ) ensured it wouldn’t be as successful as its closest rival, Sony and its PlayStation brand. So what could they do? At this point, the focus needs to absolutely change to affordabili...

The Sega 32X add-on always fascinated me. It originally came out in November 1994. It had a lot of hype leading up to the release, but that hype quickly fizzled out after Sega was unable to deliver on the initial demand. It also came out a month ahead of the Japanese launch of Sony’s PlayStation and Sega’s own Saturn. At the time, even though I was interested, I didn’t bother getting a 32X as I was still enjoying playing on the Sega Genesis, which still had solid and stellar releases. As cool as the launch lineup was, Star Wars Arcade, Virtua Fighter, Virtua Racing, etc., it wasn’t enough for me to justify using the limited disposable income I had. I ended up getting the add-on later in my adult life and have been a massive fan ever since. Looking back, the unit failed for so many reasons, with Sega clearly to blame for its failure. Sega didn’t have the proper development tools for third-party developers, making the 32X difficult to develop for and ultimately resulting in mediocre rele...

Microsoft announced another round of layoffs and studio restructuring on September 22, 2026. As part of the changes, Activision will expand its responsibilities to include Rare and World's Edge, while a new team under Activision will take over development of the next Halo game. Microsoft also announced another 268 job cuts across Halo Studios, other first-party studios, and the Xbox Games Studios management and central functions layer. To me, this is another clear sign that we may be heading toward further enshittification of Xbox, and especially Game Pass. I recently discussed the rumour that day-one releases could eventually stop being included with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate , along with Microsoft's decision to move away from unlimited cloud streaming under the service and toward monthly time limits . This latest restructuring only adds more questions about what content will actually remain part of Game Pass in the future. Let's start with Halo. The fact that the next Halo...