Valor Mortis Xbox weekly lineup shows new handheld Ally X20

Valor Mortis is a first-person soulslike, the kind of hard, punishing action game where you learn enemy patterns by dying a lot. It comes from One More Level, the studio behind Ghostrunner, and it is published by Lyrical Games.

You play William, a soldier in Napoleon’s army who wakes up after being killed. A plague has turned his old comrades into monsters, and the same sickness has given him strange powers. As you fight, you collect items called Catalysts and Ambers that open up new skills and let you shape William’s stats to suit how you like to play. Movement borrows from parkour, which fits the studio’s history.

The game came out on October 13 for Xbox Series X and Series S, PlayStation 5 and PC. On consoles it targets a dynamic 4K picture at 60 frames per second. A large story expansion is planned for 2027.

The price is $39.99 on every platform, lower than a typical big release. The publisher said it chose that number because the fall schedule was packed and it wanted the game to stand a chance next to full-price titles.

There are two ways to try it without paying full price:

• Game Pass: it joined Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass on launch day, and it is also playable through cloud streaming and on handhelds.
• PlayStation Plus: members get a 90-minute trial, and any progress carries over if you buy the game afterwards.

Ninety minutes is a fair sample, since a full run takes about 20 hours. There were no digital pre-orders, but you could reserve a boxed copy. On Xbox, that disc also unlocks a digital license that works on PC through Play Anywhere.

The episode ran through dozens of games. These were the headliners after Valor Mortis:

• Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse launched October 15 for $29.99 on Xbox Series X and S, PS5, PC and both Switch consoles. Konami published it, with Evil Empire and Motion Twin developing. Critics liked its parry, its grappling whip and its bosses. It scored 85 on Metacritic’s PS5 page, while Steam players gave it only a Mixed rating, citing crashes and black screens at startup on PC.
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 opened its campaign early to pre-order customers on October 16, a full week before multiplayer and the DMZ mode arrived on October 23. The new story is set during a modern war between North and South Korea, with Mads Mikkelsen playing the villain.
• Battlefield 6 joined Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass on October 13. Ultimate includes EA Play, which adds in-game bonus packs and a discount on some EA digital purchases.

Further down the list were smaller day-one Game Pass arrivals such as Deep Dish Dungeon, a crafting and exploration game you can play in online co-op, Chained Beasts, a gladiator roguelike for up to four players who are literally chained together, and Bluey’s Happy Snaps, a photo adventure for younger players. The video also nodded to Mafia III Definitive Edition, Tales of Eternia Remastered, Forza Horizon 6 and that week’s Free Play Days.

The hardware segment covered the ROG Xbox Ally X20, and it was more than a preview. Asus launched the handheld to mark 20 years of its Republic of Gamers brand, and it went on sale at $1,299.

It is a gaming PC you hold in your hands, built around AMD’s Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme chip and a 7.4-inch OLED screen with HDR and variable refresh rate, which smooths out stutter when frame rates dip. Asus also reworked the controls. The thumbsticks use magnetic TMR sensors, the D-pad switches between four-way and eight-way input, and the triggers have haptic feedback. A see-through black shell with gold trim sets it apart from older Ally models, and the cooling got a slightly bigger heatsink.

A $2,499 bundle adds Asus’s ROG XREAL R1 AR glasses, which use a 240Hz micro-OLED panel, along with a dbrand case and a Pelican hard case. In November, Microsoft rolled out Auto Super Resolution, an upscaling feature that boosts image sharpness, to both the X20 and the cheaper Ally X.

If you already pay for Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass, that week was unusually generous: Valor Mortis, Battlefield 6 and several smaller games were all included at no extra cost. If you are on PlayStation, the Valor Mortis trial lets you decide whether a hard game is for you before spending $39.99.

Castlevania is the cheapest of the big names at $29.99, but PC players should check that the launch bugs have been patched before buying. Konami pushed a new update to the game in November.

The Ally X20 is a different kind of purchase. At $1,299 it costs far more than a home console, and the earlier ROG Xbox Ally and Ally X remain on sale. It makes the most sense if you want the best screen and controls in a Windows handheld and already own a big PC game library.