In what appears to be a world first, a Twitch streamer has completed a blindfolded speedrun of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Yep, you read that right.

Earlier this week streamer Mitchriz completed Sekiro's Shura ending with a time of four hours, 35 minutes and 13 seconds, all while blindfolded. Here's a clip of the moment he completed the run - spoilers for the final boss, obviously:

It's worth watching the rest of the run, too, as it's fascinating to see how Mitchriz navigates Sekiro's world using only audio cues. (Rather conveniently, he also has an input overlay so you can see what he's doing with his mouse and keyboard.) On sections near cliff edges, Mitchriz has to carefully count down the seconds to measure how far he's walking in any one direction, often darting forwards to help control his movements. On some occasions Mitchriz slashes with a sword until he hits a wall, with the change in sound indicating his position. Grapple points seem to serve as useful tools for navigation, while enemy sounds and cutscenes also help telegraph his position.

Read more

Sekiro is already an incredible single-player experience, but sometimes even battle-hardened players feel like they could do with some backup.

Enter Sekiro Online, a mod for the PC version of the game which adds both co-op and PVP features to the game (via DSOGaming). Mod author LukeYui explained they tried to make the online mode as similar as possible to the Souls series' online features, although it's obviously not quite as smooth - seeing as it started as a pet project and is still in early public beta.

Running through P2P connections rather than a central server, Sekiro Online can support up to six players, with one player hosting and the other five appearing as phantoms. Along with co-op and PVP the mod also adds the Souls series' invasions feature, which allows the player to enter an unsuspecting player's world "as a spirit of vengeance" to fight to the death. To add some balance to this, invading players and phantoms will be adjusted to the player's local level, otherwise things would get a bit unfair if an advanced player came in to repeatedly whack you. Although I guess that would be fitting for Sekiro.

Read more

Over the festive break we'll be running through our top 20 picks of the year's best games, leading up to the reveal of Eurogamer's game of the year on New Year's Eve. You can find all the pieces published to date here - and thanks for joining us throughout the year!

In a strange turn of events, if it hadn't been for Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, I probably would have missed Sekiro. Unsatisfied by the former's meandering levels, several of my friends pointed me towards Sekiro, but it was a game I'd been reluctant to try - having watched our own Chris Tapsell crumble into dust as he wrote guides for it.

I'm so glad I listened. Sekiro's world is compact, but crafted with minute attention to detail. Enemy placement is deliberate and calculated - asking players to plan their approaches using stealth and surgical combat to thin out a crowd. In the space of one encounter you'll need to prioritise an enemy with a gong, learn lines of sight to avoid being spotted committing said murder, or just bypass it all completely by discovering a tucked-away shortcut in the winding landscapes.

Read more

"And now, as I still continued to step cautiously onward, there came thronging upon my recollection a thousand vague rumors of the horrors of Toledo. Of the dungeons there had been strange things narrated - fables I had always deemed them - but yet strange, and too ghastly to repeat, save in a whisper. Was I left to perish of starvation in this subterranean world of darkness; or what fate, perhaps even more fearful, awaited me?"

Edgar Allan Poe, The Pit and the Pendulum.

If you're playing a lot of games, there's no escaping the dusty depths of dungeons. They are everywhere; their twists and turns and nooks and crannies filled with monsters, traps and loot form the spine of countless games.

Read more

The Gamesplanet Summer Sale began yesterday with over 1900 titles on offer, plus rolling 24-hour flash deals on recent PC releases and old favourites. But that's not all. As a way to celebrate the occasion, Gamesplanet has kindly provided us with ten games to give away to you lovely Eurogamer readers.

As the Summer Sale has entered its second day, a new selection of flash deals are now live. Right now, that includes the likes of Hitman 2 for 15.99, Fallout 4: Game of the Year Edition for 9.75, Fallout New Vegas: Ultimate Edition for 3.70, Dragon Ball FighterZ for 9.99, Metro Redux Bundle for 5.99, XCOM 2 for 8.50, Transport Fever for 5.99, Space Hulk: Tactics for 9.25, For Honor for 9.75 and Motorsport Manager for 5.75.

The majority of these will only be live for a short period of time so make sure you grab anything you're interested in quickly! Continue to check in throughout the rest of the week too as new titles will be reduced every morning at 10am until the end of the sale on 12th August.

Read more

Ever play Bloodborne and think, you know what? I wish I could play as the enemies! Well, now there's a mod for that.

Modder Lance McDonald created a mod that lets you play as the enemies in FromSoftware's PlayStation 4 classic. All you have to do is press L3 to take control of a locked-on enemy. Usefully, pressing L1+R1+R3 returns control to the player.

"Pretty happy with this," McDonald tweeted. "It's actually a debugging feature that was removed, I just patched in some sneaky code to access it."

Read more

From the feral beasts of Bloodborne to Dark Souls' assorted grotesques, FromSoftware has a habit of infusing its work with horror. Its latest game, Sekiro may have swapped out gothic spires and dungeons for silvergrass and sakura, but there's still darkness festering beneath the surface. Game director Hidetaka Miyazaki once explained "it's important to have that sense of fear and terror" in order for players to go onto overcome it.

One of these encounters with terror can happen early on in Sekiro. A little way past the Chained Ogre - one of the first signs that not all is well in the land of Ashina - is a small shrine clinging to a cliffside. Posted to one of its walls is a warning: "turn back if you value your life." If you choose to advance, using your grappling hook to swing round the cliffside and down into a cave below, you'll be rewarded with a confrontation with one of From's most disturbing enemy designs yet - as well as a quick death.

Inside the cave where the wind groans squats a Headless. This is one of several decapitated warriors that hide out in the dark, waiting to slice you into ribbons with their giant glowing katanas. Alongside several other monsters in the game, the Headless cause a build-up of Terror. When it reaches critical mass (the status bar filling up completely), you die instantly.

Read more

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice may be a bit of a departure for From Software, but, like all the studio's recent work, it's resurrected the discussion regarding difficulty in video games.

Most commonly expressed, there is a fear that lowering difficulty levels would somehow detract from the quality of the game. A lot of the discussion around difficulty is simplistic, to say the least. It's often as simplistic as "git gud". Today I'd like to examine difficulty and a game's sense of challenge specifically through the lens of disability. Disabled gamers adapt to challenges every day, so why stop at games?

The way I see it, an easy mode designed with disabled gamers in mind should basically group various accessibility options together to allow disabled gamers to enjoy the same experiences as other players. Game designers want people to play their games. Accessibility enables challenging games to be made playable by removing the unnecessary barriers forced upon us. It's not making the game easier, but rather tailoring the experience to the broadest range of players.

Read more

In many ways, FromSoftware games are inextricably intertwined with speedrunning and challenge runs. Perhaps it's the fact they're designed to be difficult that makes series veterans long for an even greater challenge, or maybe players create almost insurmountable obstacles purely for the sake of their viewers' entertainment. Either way, Dark Souls and Bloodborne have retained their relevance for years post-release thanks to these self-sacrificing runners. It's no wonder, then, the speedrunning scene in Sekiro is already shaping up nicely.

Souls veteran LobosJR has been running FromSoftware games for years, even having completed runs without healing or levelling up. Although he's a talented speedrunner, he's perhaps best known for his challenge runs, during which he outlines a strict list of rules he must abide by. One of the most iconic examples of this was when he completed Dark Souls using only his character's fists.

"What I love about From's games are their core combat mechanics, and Sekiro has taken these to the next level," Lobos explains. "By basing the combat on 'deflecting', the equivalent of parrying in Souls, fighting has evolved to fast-paced back and forth with an enemy... mastering the combat is trickier than ever, and trying to learn enemy AI is more intriguing."

Read more

Another day, another Thomas the Tank Engine mod - this time, for the PC version of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.

While we've already seen Thomas' terrifying visage pop up in a number of unexpected places - including Fallout 4 and the remake of Resident Evil 2 - now he's playing understudy for the Great Serpent in Sekiro.

The mod - called Thomas the Snake Engine, naturally - is available now via Nexus Mods (thanks, PCGN). It even includes the chilling toot-toot of his whistle.

Read more