Bayer 04 verpflichtet Guéla Doué aus Straßburg

The review embargo for former vampire ARPG The Blood of Dawnwalker has shriveled up, and in its place has arrived a respectable gush of primarily positive ratings. The game's creative director and former CD Projekt Red lead Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz can finally relax.

He writes on Twitter, "Waiting for the reviews to come in has been nerve wrecking to say the least, but they're finally (mostly) here!" The Blood of Dawnwalker reviews began marching out on August 31, ahead of the game's September 3 launch. "Great relief, can't wait to see you all play the game and to hear your thoughts!"

GamesRadar+ gave the open-world bleak fantasy game a cautious three-star rating in our The Blood of Dawnwalker review, in which our games editor Oscar Taylor-Kent writes, "For an RPG that keeps telling me that it matters I've been cursed to be a vampire, and constantly has a clock hanging over my every move, The Blood of Dawnwalker feels too frictionless and forgiving once you get used to its almost theme park-like static nature."

The Blood of Dawnwalker currently sits at an honorable 83 score on Metacritic, placing it just slightly behind The Witcher (86 score) and about 10 feet away from another one of Tomaszkiewicz's projects, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (92 score). Tomaszkiewicz was a lead quest designer on The Witcher 3, plus he directed Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales and co-directed fan-favorite Gwent: The Witcher Card Game.

So it's understandable why our GamesRadar+ review of The Blood of Dawnwalker also notes that "much of The Blood of Dawnwalker feels like The Witcher 3 to control"; developer Rebel Wolves was founded by The Witcher 3 director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, too. So the two games' histories are as fused together as bat wings, and Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz seems rightfully glad about it.

The creative director continues to say on Twitter, "It's a privilege to work with such a talented Team."

"Every shipped game is a small miracle," Tomaszkiewicz adds in another Twitter post. And as long as that miracle isn't topped with garlic or holy water, The Blood of Dawnwalker should be able to take its solid reviews and make the most of it.

Blood of Dawnwalker is getting a 60fps mode at launch after backlash pushed Rebel Wolves to reshuffle plans: "It was clear how much this mattered to many of you."

It's not for me to judge what you do with your new rig outside of gaming—I just hope you're taking the necessary precautions, and set up your anti-virus of choice at the first opportunity. Microsoft Defender is better than nothing, except for when it says it's been turned off when it actually hasn't.

Apparently, this is a known issue in Windows 11 and Windows 10. Microsoft details the issue, writing, "Notifications might appear stating that 'Microsoft Defender Antivirus is turned off,' even though the antivirus is functioning correctly and all settings show it as active. These notifications can appear when Windows starts and intermittently afterward."

Worse still, these fibbing notifs can "persist even if notification settings are turned off." But worse than that, the issue can be observed in "any version of Windows or Windows Server with Microsoft Defender Antivirus running with the latest Defender updates."

Before you ask, that is a lot of Windows 11 and Windows 10 users potentially affected. Potentially affected platforms include Windows 11, version 26H1, version 25H2, as well as version 24H2, and range all the way back to ye olde Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2016. Microsoft has a full list here of operating systems that can encounter the bug. The company is currently working on a fix, though there's no word yet on when this will be available.

For now, it's annoying at best and kind of anxiety-inducing at worst, though arguably not quite as bad as the Windows 11 update that borked a bunch of multiplayer games last month. That's not a great look considering Microsoft said earlier this year it wanted to make Windows 11 "better."

To be fair, the work hasn't been all back steps; for instance, fresh features like the 'low latency profile' speeding up the OS, and our Jacob reckons recent changes to the Windows 11 Start menu also look promising. Here's hoping Microsoft fixes that Defender notification bug sooner rather than later too.