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Polygon Summer Game Fest 2026 Live game reveals, world premiere trailers, and what’s next from 40+ developers, publishers, and hardware makers. |
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God of War Laufey, the next grand action game from Sony Santa Monica, was one of Summer Game Fest season’s biggest reveals. At this point, that studio (and PlayStation as a whole) has a reputation for making some of the most cinematic third-person action games out there: Ghost of Yōtei, God of War Ragnarök, and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 are smash hits from just the past few years. But PlayStation is about to get some serious competition in the space, as I recently learned from going hands-on with a new game called Blood Message.
Developed by Naraka: Bladepoint studio 24 Entertainment Lin’an and published by NetEase, Blood Message is an action game very much in the lane of PlayStation’s recent God of War games. At Summer Game Fest, I played around 30 minutes of Blood Message. The demo covered a very polished segment of the game, and it gave me a better understanding of just how brutal yet impressive this new action game is.
If you enjoy the current wave of third-person action games spearheaded by Sony’s first-party studios, you’d be remiss to ignore what NetEase is doing with its first AAA single-player game developed in-house.
Blood Message is a single-player, story-driven title about a messenger who traverses 1,000 miles through enemy territory to deliver a message to the capital of the Tang Dynasty. It’s based on real-world history from 9th-century China, and the Summer Game Fest trailer teased that this game will also be a father-son story as the pair travels together to deliver this message.
My hands-on demo let me control the father, Pei Changguan, on that journey. At this point in the game, he’s sneaking through Shazhou City with his brother, Arrtai. One of the main reasons I’m making the direct comparison to God of War is how the gameplay is presented. Like the 2018 reboot, 2022’s Ragnarök, and the upcoming but undated Laufey, all of this Blood Message demo played out in a single shot.
Only a few games — like these God of War games and 2023’s Dead Space remake — have been able to pull this trick off effectively. Blood Message is approaching it quite well, though, as its presentation still feels very cinematic. While I only experienced about 30 minutes of the game, it had the polish of a AAA PlayStation title.
From the start of the demo, Blood Message made it clear that Pei and Arrtai are at a vast disadvantage against the Tubo forces occupying Shazhou City. To reflect this, failure is built into the gameplay as well. I succeeded at a quick-time-event to lift a fallen-over shelf early on, only for it to collapse before I could get through. Narratively, I can tell from this demo that this adventure will intentionally feel arduous to reflect what’s at stake.
That brutality is also reflected in Blood Message’s combat. The game is fairly difficult — I died twice during my demo — because you face quite a bit of resistance from enemies. Rather than just feeling like I was hacking and slashing, enemies would often deflect or block my attacks in extended animations.
Having demoed this game shortly after Onimusha: Way of the Sword, I could see how Blood Message took a similar but grittier take on many of the same combat mechanics. Blood Message won’t let you easily spam the same moves, for example. One of my deaths happened after I tried to dodge too much, only to discover that, realistically, rolling away from enemies becomes less effective over time.
This is not an action game where you’re going to be swinging around your sword and dodging willy-nilly, knowing that you’ll always come out of a fight a winner. It wants you to earn every victory.
I was impressed by the detail put into the different attack, parry, and block animations throughout the demo. If I was pinning an enemy against a wall or table, the combat animations would reflect that. At one point, I even redirected the Tubo soldier I was clashing swords with into a charging enemy, and a special death animation played as a result.
While the number of quick time events that occur in the middle of combat may be a little overbearing, they allow for many memorable moments in fights against even the most basic of enemies. It also allowed the game to seamlessly switch between gameplay and cutscenes when needed.
Eventually, after sneaking past and fighting through many Tubo forces, Pei is spotted by an enemy named Tastong, kicking off a chase sequence through the city. This felt more like standard AAA chase fare, but emphasized how impressive it is that the entire game is a oner. Ultimately, Pei and Arrtai escape the Tubo forces and get home, only to discover that a character named Ning has decided to “follow Governor Zhang.”
Presumably, this all sets the stage for the Blood Message’s broader narrative. I’m certainly interested in seeing where it goes, and this demo set high expectations for how it’ll be presented to players. Few games have been able to match the impressive narrative presentation of the modern God of War titles, but this one seems to be doing just that while also offering some pretty grisly and intense combat gameplay.
If God of War Laufey is one of your most anticipated games following the PlayStation’s June 2 State of Play, then I highly recommend putting Blood Message on your radar. It’s the first true competitor to that series that we’ve seen.
Blood Message does not have a release window but is in development for PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X.
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