Next Week in Games: Valor Mortis, Planet Zoo 2 and Castlevania Lead a Stacked Slate

LAS VEGAS — October is doing October things. Next week is one of the busiest release slates of the fall: more than 20 games hit Xbox alone across five days, headlined by a first-person soulslike set in Napoleonic Europe, the sequel to one of the great management sims, a brand-new Castlevania, and the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 campaign unlocking a week early for anyone who pre-ordered.

This comes on the heels of a monster week. Battlefield 6 launched today with an 84 on OpenCritic, Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen is out, and Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival dropped too. October is officially the month where your backlog goes to die. If you missed anything on the way in, our look at the rest of October's releases has the full calendar.

Valor Mortis — the headliner (Oct 13)

You served Napoleon. You died for Napoleon. You have risen for Napoleon. That's the pitch for Valor Mortis, and honestly, it works. You play William, a soldier of the Grande Armée brought back from a battlefield grave into a Europe swept by a mysterious plague — a plague whose corrupting power now runs through your veins and fuels your supernatural abilities.

The combat is built around parries, dashes and visceral finishers, with each death making you stronger — the soulslike loop, translated into first person. It comes from One More Level, the Ghostrunner studio, which means the first-person movement should be the good kind of twitchy. The price is $39.99, and here's the kicker: it's day one on Xbox Game Pass, launching on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. A brand-new first-person soulslike for subscription money is the single best deal on this list.

Planet Zoo 2 (Oct 13)

Tuesday is a genuine two-headliner day, because Planet Zoo 2 launches the same morning. Frontier Developments' zoo management sequel finally brings fully aquatic and flying species into the game — the two things the original's players asked about the most — plus customizable, expansive Wildlife Reserves where you release species into conservation.

It's $49.99 and an Xbox Play Anywhere title, which means one purchase covers Xbox and PC with shared saves. The management-sim crowd has been waiting on this one, and Tuesday is their Super Bowl.

Castlevania: Belmont's Curse (Oct 15)

Thursday belongs to the Belmonts. Castlevania: Belmont's Curse is Konami's new entry in the legendary series, and the setup is pure Castlevania: it's 1499, Paris is engulfed in flames, and monstrous creatures are emerging from the shadows. Trevor Belmont — the hero who defeated Dracula — ventures into the burning streets with his daughter, Rose Belmont. Armed with the legendary holy whip, the Vampire Killer, they hunt down the beasts bleeding from the looming castle, and Rose gets pulled into the dark conspiracy underneath it all.

It's $29.99, also an Xbox Play Anywhere title. A new Castlevania at a budget price is the kind of sentence that would have broken forums five years ago. Times have changed — in a good way.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 campaign early access (Oct 16)

Friday is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 — sort of. Pre-orders get campaign early access starting October 16, a full week before the October 23 global launch. Activision says this entry pushes the series into "darker and more dangerous territory," where consequence and escalation bring long-running storylines to an emotional breaking point.

It's the standard $69.99, and the early-access-for-pre-orders playbook is now just how Call of Duty does business. If you're buying it anyway, you get it Friday. If you're not, the rest of the world catches up on the 23rd.

The rest of the slate

There's genuinely too much here for a quick list, but the standouts: Deep Dish Dungeon (Oct 13) is a co-op dungeon crawler from Raw Fury that lands day one on Game Pass — explore, cook, craft, unravel a mystery, solo or with two friends. Enshrouded 1.0 (Oct 15) finally leaves Early Access. Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 (Oct 14) is the retro-FPS sequel from Devolver and Big Fan Games at $24.99. Tales of Eternia Remastered (Oct 16) brings the Bandai Namco classic to modern platforms. Ratatan (Oct 14), Just Dance: Decades of Hits (Oct 13), the co-op gladiator roguelike Chained Beasts (Oct 15, Game Pass), and Ghost Hunter (Oct 12, PC Early Access) — a co-op horror game rooted in Chinese folklore — round out the week, alongside Bluey's Happy Snaps, The Jackbox Party Pack 12, Beyond These Stars, Tenebris Somnia and more.

Game Pass keeps stacking

October's Game Pass additions keep coming. So far this month: Deep Dish Dungeon and Valor Mortis on Oct 13, Beyond These Stars (Oct 15, PC), Chained Beasts (Oct 15), The Seance of Blake Manor (Oct 27) and Terrible Lizards (Oct 29). Between Game Pass, Free Play Days trials and the 25 new games landing on GeForce NOW this month, there is no shortage of ways to play all of this.