Gaming: Darkest Dungeon sequel unveiled; Resident Evil visits PUBG; farewell, PS Vita

With 2016’s Darkest Dungeon, developer Red Hook Studios proved you might be able to beat back the Heart of Darkness — but you can never truly defeat it. Sure enough, now it’s creeping back with a vengeance, thanks to the announcement that the 2 million-selling indie RPG hit will be getting a spooky sequel.

Red Hook announced Darkest Dungeon 2 this week, pledging to turn what started out as a tale of a cursed family manor into a wider saga. Via PC Gamer, the party-based RPG’s systems will carry forward with new “tuned up” tweaks, and feature a “completely different” metagame structure in order to emphasize the nature of the budding series’ “grueling journey” of a story.

Check out the short teaser below:

There’s not much to go on, but the brief clip leaves the first game’s Lovecraftian estate behind to bring its familiar character types into cruel, snowbound mountains. Where things go from there is a mystery the studio is closely guarding, but Red Hook’s Tyler Sigman and Chris Bourassa told PC Gamer the sequel will give players “a glimpse of the supernatural apocalypse twisting and distorting the world beyond the estate...and that’s all we’re going to say about that for now.”

No release date has yet been announced for Darkest Dungeons 2, and so far, there’s no word on whether it’ll expand (as the first game did) beyond its PC launch to release on current-gen consoles. But when it does arrive, it’ll appear on Steam Early Access first.

Let’s stay creepy and check out what’s heading to PUBG for a cool undead crossover: the resurgent Resident Evil 2, which has shambled onto the mobile version of PUBG with Zombie: Survive Till Dawn, a new event mode that brings the series’ recognizable zombies into the battle royale arena.

Via Variety, Survive Till Dawn arrives as a 30-minute round of gameplay that covers three days’ worth of in-game time lapse, with the goal being to survive both classic RE2 creatures like lickers and William Birkin’s G1 boss, as well as newly-minted zombies from the PUBG team. 

The day-night cycle reportedly will factor into the gameplay, with your best chance at weathering the corpse storm coming in the daytime — although all the creatures grow more aggressive as the campaign wears on. The free-to-play Zombie: Survive Till Dawn is available now for PUBG Mobile on iOS and Android, and includes characters skins for Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield. It’s a timed event, though — so dive in while you can.

It’s been a long time coming, and in many ways a series of missed opportunities for one of handheld gaming’s most powerful and capable devices, but the final batches of PlayStation Vitas are finally heading to stores — and after they’re gone, the PS Vita era will be over for good.

Via Siliconera, Sony announced final shipments are imminent for the Vita’s black and blue models, which will close out the handheld’s eight-year run. The robust device possessed processing powers that approached that of the PS3, but never lured the volume of major games that its makers, looking for an encore of the old-school PlayStation Portable’s success, had hoped.

We’ve long known that Sony would be phasing out the PS Vita, but now it’s crunch time for anyone who’s been on the fence about snagging one. With mobile gaming now largely the domain of smart phones and Nintendo’s roster of hybrids and handhelds, the window may closing for good (or at least for the foreseeable future) on owning a piece of high-end, dedicated handheld gaming gear.