Black tentacles writhe beneath a sundering sky as I look out of the train window in Dreadline Express. It's one of the games I was most eager to play at Gamescom 2026: Described on its Steam page as a "psychological horror Metroidbrainia" where deckbuilding mechanics shape your storyline, it sounded like my kind of weird straight off the bat.

The deckbuilding in question comes in the form of cards I collect by observing the world around me. Interacting with objects in my cabin after awakening with little memory of my character's past, I slowly piece together my own backstory as well as what has happened to make this the last human train in existence. Think Monster Train, but instead of roguelike combat, the cards help me contend with narrative choices.

Story time

Dreadline Express is the creation of Czech solo dev Dave Konecny, who sits by my side as I get to grips with his creepy dystopia.

He explains how the cards work, each representing the gaining of knowledge about a particular element of the world, from the train itself to the people on it. Each new card discovered gets added to my card album, which is separated into topics.

The trick is to add specific cards to my hand to use them to bypass dialogue checks or other barriers to my adventure, such as locked doors or items I can't quite make sense of just yet.

For example, striking up a conversation with someone for the first time might have the yellow-eyed NPC remarking distastefully upon how rude it is not to introduce myself first. But, equipping my personal card and playing it before I start the conversation allows me to progress, and can result in a new finding being added to my card collection.

I can swap cards into my hand at will, testing whether a new combination might work in a particular conversation by keeping an eye on the text above each character's head – "tell them about your family," it might read, or "ask about the cult" for example. This indicates when a combination might open up new lines of inquiry or reveal narrative threads for me to pick at later down the line.

But, before I can even go about chatting with my fellow Dreadline Express travelers, I'm summoned to the Train Conductor's office. He tells me that I have been chosen to help decide upon a suitable sacrifice, without which the train cannot progress to its as-yet-unknown destination. This would result in the deaths of everyone on board, I'm told. Is it not better to sacrifice one for the good of the many?

Card-core

I don't have much say in the matter, not even after equipping my personal card and those of my family in an attempt to plead mercy.

It's time to head into the cabin and converse with the other passengers, keeping it zipped about the fact that I'm actually sussing out which of them deserves to die the most. Choosing to help one might result in another's demise, I'm told by Konecny. My job is to choose which characters' stories interest me the most and figure out which configuration of cards leads me further down the rabbit hole.

This grim premise is matched by an equally grim setting. The train is a gloomy place shot through with bright bolts of color, the contrasting light and darkness making it all the creepier to explore. It's also incredibly claustrophobic in here, all dimly-lit corridors flickering in and out of focus, orange-yellow lanterns swaying rhythmically overhead.

Somehow, Dreadline Express is an unexpectedly cozy experience. Everything is text-on-screen rather than voice-acted, and as I flip through my card album to study each description or click through NPC dialogue, I feel like I'm reading a leather-bound book in the warm candlelight of a library.

I only get to play a short 25 minutes of Dreadline Express, but I can already see its genius. As a narrative Metroidvania involving backtracking, card synergy, and a lot of experimentation, it's clear that no two stories on this mysterious journey will play out the same. The game's October 2026 release date is right around the corner, even if a precise date has yet to be given by the publisher just yet, and I'll be right there on the platform waiting to board and uncover all the secrets I might have missed. Including, hopefully, where this blasted train is speeding off to in the first place.

Dreading picking out your next game to play? Our best mystery games give you more to solve, while our best horror games will haunt you.

After it was memed from the moment the game was announced, Final Fantasy 7 Revelation director Naoki Hamaguchi has confirmed that jumping out of the Highwind Fortnite-style was indeed inspired by Fortnite, though only partly.

The Highwind is set to be the central mechanic of Final Fantasy 7 Revelation. The massive airship that transports the party around was a big part of the original RPG, but in the era of realism and immersion, you can't simply drop to the ground and teleport out of the ship as you did on the PS1 when you arrived.

So when Final Fantasy 7 Revelation got its first showing earlier this year, we were treated to a look at how the Highwind is going to work in the third and final entry in the remake trilogy. You'll be able to fly all around the world and choose which area you're going to pop off into, which is pretty in line with what the PS1 original had. Except this time, your party launches themselves off the side of the ship, and skydives down to the map below.

Naturally, when everyone saw this, we all made the same joke, with a ton of memes of Cloud Strife asking "where we droppin'" emerging in the immediate aftermath. However, when asked about this connection by GamesRadar's Fortnite correspondent James Daly (following the Final Fantasy 7 Revelation hands-on preview), Hamaguchi did admit, "We did get a bit of inspiration from Fortnite, [we] won't lie about that."

It's funny, however, that Fortnite is the inspiration here, when Final Fantasy 7 is one of the only things left on earth that Fortnite hasn't collaborated with, as opposed to, say, Apex Legends, which had a big Final Fantasy 7 crossover and also features the squad dropping out of the sky, or the now-dead Final Fantasy 7: The First Soldier battle royale game.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation boss is "so sorry" for what happens to Aerith in Rebirth, but if you're still upset, "you may change your opinion" by the end of the remake trilogy

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was a tornado while developer Sandfall Interactive was anticipating more of a pleasant breeze, selling a total of over 8 million copies, and helping reset expectations for how hard a AA game is supposed to make you cry. You might think this enormous reception would make publishers more eager to invest in AA and find their very own, relatively inexpensive blockbuster, but fellow mid-tier developer One More Level game director Radek Ratusznik says this isn't the case.

Publishers are squeamish about AA – it's as if all the warm thoughts of berets and fresh baguettes that French JRPG Expedition 33 inspired disappeared as soon as they started reaching for their checkbooks. So Ratusznik, who is leading what I hope will be another AA masterpiece in the zombie Soulslike Valor Mortis, believes the industry needs more unprecedented bestsellers.

It would be nice, wouldn't it? Both for players looking to experience creative risks that usually only small teams are willing to take, and for developers, who could use the encouragement. In any case, Ratusznik tells GamesIndustry.biz at this year's Gamescom, "We had this enormous success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, but still publishers find the AA segment quite risky."

The director continues, "We probably need a few more Expedition 33s to just prove them wrong. Maybe one Expedition is not enough. There are also so many companies who can deliver very good titles in the AA scope and budget, not just spending hundreds of millions."

The problem is, some publishers already know this. What they're looking for is more than a lean team that knows what it's doing – they want a miracle, too. Ratusznik explains, "It's not like we can make the game in one year without any trouble. The game still needs proper time to be published and properly tested. I doubt that we can squeeze it that much, as probably some of the publishers would like to."

Unaware of the tribulations of being AA, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Valor Mortis' demo at this year's Summer Game Fest. It's a strange 19th century French battle for moral greyness – which, you know, now that I'm saying it, almost sounds like another Expedition 33. Valor Mortis might be leading the change Ratusznik wants to see.

Ghostrunner devs abandon parkour for Valor Mortis, a first-person soulslike that might explain why the rest of the genre follows Dark Souls' lead.

I charge around the dingy dungeon sprawled out in front of me, flying enemies swooping at me from above, and grounded foes completely surrounding me, as the dev on my shoulder encourages me to do one thing, and one thing only: attack.

Stupid Never Dies is the most colorful zombie game I've ever played. Sitting down for 30 minutes of the action RPG at Gamescom, its punk rock-inspired look seeping into everything from the character designs to the flashy UI, I'm struck with the realization that this is the first game I've played since Persona 3 Reload that has such a strong and unique visual identity – it could honestly rival the Atlus JRPGs in many ways.

As you'd hope from GPTRACK50 as a studio led by former Capcom veterans with credits on series including Devil May Cry, Dragon's Dogma, Resident Evil, and more, this isn't a case of style over substance. Even from a brief demo, it's clear that Stupid Never Dies ironically has a lot of clever ideas.

Love after death

Protagonist Davy is a zombie – the weakest one, at that. But to save a dead girl he's fallen in love with, he's got to fight his way through a dangerous dungeon to eventually beat the King of Monsters.

Thankfully, he's got a few tricks up his sleeve to do so – being a zombie, he can die as much as he likes, for a start, but his other abilities see him biting enemies to restore his health, as well as a parry move (with a very generous reaction window) to launch counterattacks when there's a big blow headed your way. These defensive measures are a large part of the reason why I'm encouraged to get really stuck into fights, no matter how dangerous they may appear.

My favorite of Davy's powers is his ability to chomp down on the "cores" sometimes dropped by foes, which lets him temporarily unlock various transformations and steal their combat moves (kind of like Monoco in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33), expanding his moveset beyond his standard melee attacks. My go-to in the demo turns him into a wolf-like foe with a devastating, wide-reaching slashing attack that wipes out anything that dares get too close, but it's also great flying around as an airborne creature or slamming into crowds as a giant ogre.

Striking a power chord

There's a universal truth in any action game – defeating big groups of enemies is fun, and that's no different here. The only snag I find is the lack of an option to lock onto enemies.

Davy might pack a punch, but he can also feel clumsy to handle. There are many occasions I find myself launching attacks but narrowly missing my targets – especially the airborne ones. Speaking to director Eiichiro Sasaki following my demo, he explains that the lack of lock-on was to "gain the flexibility of the gameplay," noting that deciding how to deal with the "pressure" from multiple directions "was the important thing for this game."

I do sort of see the vision, but after an admittedly short amount of time playing, I'm yet to figure out if this concept will actually grow on me or simply serve as a point of friction. So far, it feels like a hurdle stopping the combat from feeling fully satisfying, sometimes making punches and the like feel floaty and aimless rather than snappy and powerful – but I'd love to be proven wrong.

Even if I'm not completely in love with the feel of the combat right now, though, I left my demo feeling hungry for more. There's a definite magic in what GPTRACK50 is cooking up here, and I'm eager to see how Stupid Never Dies lands when it launches next month.

Feast your eyes on our list of the best ARPGs if you're hankering for some other combat-heavy roleplaying experiences!

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation might have "even more content" than Rebirth, director Naoki Hamaguchi says, who reckons that's "part of what makes the game so appealing." But if you're already feeling overwhelmed, don't stress – the devs really wanted to give you "the choice" this time over what you want to spend your time on.

Depending on how many games you play a year and how much free time you have in your life to spend on them, you might have a very different opinion on the concept of playing an enormous, content-packed JRPG. It's hard to argue that it's a bad thing for a game to be big, but it sure can be overwhelming, and potentially off-putting for those who don't have a spare hundred hours or so lying about.

Speaking to Hamaguchi at Gamescom 2026, we ask about the scale of Revelation compared to Rebirth – a JRPG he acknowledges "had a lot of content in it as well," and Square Enix hasn't slowed down since. "I'm pretty sure that Revelation has at least the same, and probably actually even more content in it than Rebirth had," he tells us. "But it's all good content. It's all going to be really appealing to play."

Hamaguchi knows, however, that for some players, bigger isn't always better. "I am aware that there is a number of players of [Rebirth] who said that the content was just too much and that they felt they were overwhelmed by it. I do understand there are people out there who felt that," he admits.

However, this hasn't put him off from the idea of making Revelation a behemoth, too: "I feel that having that huge amount of content is part of what makes the game so appealing. I don't think it's that kind of game, so I'm very confident in what it is because of that."

With that said, though, Hamaguchi says that "what's important is not how much content there is, it's how you make that interesting and accessible and enjoyable for players to interact with." He tells us that he's learned from fans' feedback following the release of Rebirth, and going into Revelation, not only is its content "all quite different," but he's taken on board the importance of communicating with players "what kind of rewards you can expect, and what kind of experience you're going to get when you take it on."

Hopefully, then, you can expect clearer signposting of what's worth it to you if you're not someone who wants to take on everything the game offers. He notes that we can now expect rewards to be split up across different types of content accordingly, with character upgrades locked behind the battle-focused content, while minigame rewards will be customization options within that specific minigame, for example.

This comes in direct response to Rebirth, where "all of the side content was tied to the Materia development system. So if you wanted that Materia, you had to do all of the content, regardless whether it was something that you would be interested in otherwise or not," he continues. "So I really wanted to address that and maybe improve it for people who felt that, like, feeling of obligation that they had to do it, but they didn't really want to."

Ultimately, the devs wanted to pay attention to the "idea of allowing the player the choice of which content they want to engage with and which they don't," he concludes.

So then, no pressure if you don't want to experience everything Revelation has to offer. Unless you're a hardcore completionist, of course, in which case it sounds like you're going to have your work cut out for you come its release in April.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation director says "open-world fatigue" is real, and since "the world is even bigger than it was in Rebirth," Square Enix specially focused on guiding players.

The Highwind floats above the world. Yuffie Kisaragi dives out of the airship, party in tow, and falls through the air with a keen speed before I unleash her parachute, softening our hero's descent into the rich wilderness of Mideel. It's immediately apparent that if we thought Rebirth was big, Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is overwhelmingly enormous.

There's something strange about the Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy. The numerous differences from the original 1997 title make it almost entirely new, and yet it's easy to feel at home in its many locations, from Sector 7 to Gongaga. The same sensation floods my senses as I tear through feral beasts, before encountering a chubby baby Chocobo.

Not my home but I know my way around

Aware of the limited time available during my hands-on preview session at Gamescom 2026, I fast travel back to the Highwind, and set sail from the skies above Mideel for Wutai. I'm playing as Yuffie after all, and I'm told this section of Chapter 4 is dependent on my visiting her homeland to progress the story. I must admit I didn't really expect to just fly straight over to the place myself – I anticipated a cutscene – but the open world exploration is seamless as I guide the vessel before sending Yuffie back to the deck for another Fortnite-esque descent into the land below, something director Naoki Hamaguchi confirms is an intentional display of "inspiration".

Again, I'm staggered to feel immediately at home in Wutai, but this feeling tracks with the developer's design ethos. "Everything in the game has to feel both nostalgic and new at the same time" Hamaguchi tells me, explaining the need to deliver what fans know but with enough change to maintain player interest. He also clarifies that any big changes have to be made by the original FF7 creators.

One particular change I inquire about is the manner of Aerith's demise in Rebirth, and by inquire I mean demand an apology from Hamaguchi-san. He laughs and tells me "so sorry" but I press him on the matter, producing more laughter from the veteran gamemaker. He then tells me "You need to experience what happens in the very end. You may change your opinion then."

Similarly, piloting the Highwind to named locations and then descending via parachute is an important part of leveling up the experience of Revelation from Rebirth. "The way you explore the world is all tied to that vertical element," Hamaguchi states, and the effect is a sense of scale so grand I have to fight off choice paralysis with every fiber of my being.

Hamaguchi touches on the size of the game, saying "I'm pretty sure that Revelation has at least the same – and probably actually even more – content in it than Rebirth had, and it's all good content." He also adds that he's aware some players were overwhelmed by the amount in Rebirth, but feels "having that huge amount of content is part of what makes the game so appealing."

Another standout component of my preview session is the lack of Cloud and Tifa, with the roster of available characters instead sporting Cid, Vincent, Cait Sith, Barret, Red XIII, and the aforementioned Yuffie. Having been struck by Aerith being a key focal point of Rebirth, I ask Hamaguchi if we can expect the light to shine more on Yuffie or other characters in Revelation.

"Cloud is still the main character," he asserts, before explaining that the team know some players "want to see more of the other characters too, so we very much wanted to have content that goes into each of those characters," which, as a card-carrying member of the Zack Fair Appreciation Society, is music to my ears. This includes such options as completing side quests with different characters depending on your preferences, as well as the more simple but equally satisfying ability to swap out party members on the fly.

It's been one of the great joys of my time with Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Rebirth that I've been able to revel in the company of Cloud's companions. Don't get me wrong, I really love the moody merc and his big beautiful blues, but the added depth to Tifa, Aerith, and many others has resulted in a richer narrative experience.

Not all new content is perfect though, as proven by the mere existence of Chadley, and I'm alarmed by multiple interruptions from MAI, the AI entity created by the precocious young scientist. This apparently feminine-presenting version of Chadley eagerly bombards me with available side quests the moment I set foot in a new place, and it's agonizing given my preview slot is an hour. I'm hopeful Mai will feel less invasive when I'm able to play the game at leisure, but something tells me 2027's Most Annoying Sidekick Award is already en route to Square Enix HQ.

Those Who Fight Further

Throughout my session I enjoy multiple battles. In addition to Yuffie and her fast-flowing combos, I try out Vincent Valentine, whose ranged-based fighting style feels more safety-conscious yet no less satisfying. Then I give Cid Highwind a go, and he swings a spear-type edge weapon with a blend of elegance and brutality that feels perfect for hacking through Wutai's wildlife.

With the ability to mix up the party frequently, I'm eager to see what each combination of fighters will bring, especially now Tifa has appeared as a Black Mage in promotional materials, and other jobs in the FITS system are available too.

Upon arrival at Wutai a cutscene plays out – which I won't spoil – where it dawns on me how incredible a performer Suzie Yeung really is. The Persona 3 Reload actor delivers an expressiveness that virtually propels Yuffie through the screen, which seems fitting given Wutai introduces the ability to use a grappling hook for traversal.

Zipping between rooftops, I find my way to the Happy Turtle bar and restaurant after photographing a cat and having a quick swim in the sparkling waters that surround the traditional Japanese-inspired architecture of Yuffie's homeland. As I walk through the grand building, I strike up a conversation I never get to hear as the session ends.

Now I'm left wondering what the NPC was going to say, what the other areas in the preview build had to offer, and what the unaccounted for characters were getting up to during this section of the game. Above all I wonder how Naoki Hamaguchi and Square Enix so masterfully manage to weave nostalgia into something so obviously new in so many ways. Maybe I'll never truly understand but, if I am able to, it won't be until Final Fantasy 7 Revelation releases on April 8, 2027.

If this is far from your final adventure, check out our games like Final Fantasy recommendations, or our best RPGs and best JRPGs ranking for more to play next!

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation director Naoki Hamaguchi has apologized for what happens to Aerith in Rebirth, but if you're still upset about it, he insists you stick around to the end of the remake trilogy, because you might just "change your opinion."

Before we get into it, please take this as your final – very obvious – spoiler warning for the events of Final Fantasy 7 and Rebirth's ending. I'd be shocked if you didn't know what we were about to get into by now, but don't say I didn't warn you if you didn't.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth might have gone about things slightly differently to the OG 1997 JRPG, but one unfortunate fact remains – Aerith dies at the hands of Sephiroth. Ouch. It's arguably made even worse by the fact that, for a brief moment, it looks like things are about to pan out very differently, but alas.

Speaking to Hamaguchi in an interview at Gamescom 2026, GamesRadar+'s James Daly tells the lead how upset he still is about what happened to Aerith, prompting a big laugh. "I hope you have some expectations towards what the final outcome is, though, and I hope you can look forward to seeing what actually happened," Hamaguchi first teases, via interpreter.

He then directly offers an apology himself: "So sorry!" Gotta be honest, though, I'm not sure how sorry he is based on how hard he's laughing.

This comes up again towards the end of the interview, at which point Hamaguchi suggests something rather interesting. After another laugh, he hints: "I mean, really, you need to experience what happens in the very end. You may change your opinion."

Obviously, he's not going to elaborate on what he's referring to at this point, but could there be a glimmer of hope there for Aerith fans? Perhaps, or perhaps not. All will be revealed when Final Fantasy 7 Revelation launches on April 8 next year.

Square Enix's "graphical goal" for Final Fantasy 7 remakes was 2005 spin-off film Advent Children as it's the "ideal version" of the 29-year-old JRPG.

I hate bugs. Big, small, somewhere in between – anything with more than four legs needs to stay as far away from me as possible. Which is why, sitting down at Gamescom 2026 to learn more about developer Behaviour Interactive's then-nameless new co-op shooter, I very nearly asked to leave.

Heartbreakingly, Exterminauts is not Dead by Daylight with guns. It's a PvE shooter that riffs off the likes of Helldivers 2 with obvious aplomb, down to the hammy, tongue-in-cheek pseudo patriotism. Punching in with your fellow blue collar employees at an extraplanetary pest control company, your mission is simple: wipe out hordes of creepy crawlies across the galaxy and make it home in time for supper.

I'll be honest: nothing about Exterminauts' premise excites me from the off. But forty minutes hands-on is all it took to change my mind about a genre I've long avoided, and guess who got the highest score of the session? Me.

Another day at the office

It goes without saying that, as someone who has never played a millisecond of Helldivers 2, I thought I was in for a rough hour playing Exterminauts. From shrill voice comms barked between teammates to center-screen aiming in the vein of the best hero shooters, I think back to my time with Marvel Rivals and shudder.

I take my seat and opt for the healer character, whose special ability is to spawn first aid drones out on the battlefield. I don't pay much attention to my actual loadout, but every character seems to have a basic weapon and a huge heavy weapon with unique elemental affinities. Charging up my heavy attack and releasing it after a few seconds unleashes a huge icy explosion, freezing any space bug or winged denizen unlucky enough to have crash-landed into the blast zone at the wrong moment.

Happily, the bugs in Exterminauts don't resemble actual bugs as I know them (Grounded should learn a lesson here). They more closely resemble ugly monster beasties than giant space ants or scuttling roaches, which is a huge relief as someone who thought she'd be throwing her headset down and screaming for the nearest exit post haste.

I spend most of my time in Exterminauts blasting bugs out of the sky while my teammates set about doing the actual tasks at hand. We need to head over to various abandoned space bases across this wild planet, itself consisting largely of red dirt plains with vivid patches of alien flora and fauna, to complete a series of mini-missions indicated by a directional ping on the HUD.

Again, I can't speak too much to what those look like — push a few buttons on a rusty control panel here, leap up a giant metal structure to turn a valve over there — but they aren't exciting enough to pull me away from peppering all creatures in sight with bullets, grenades, and frosty ice blasts aplenty.

Power attacks are replenished using bug goo drawn from the baddies I slay, and re-stocking ammo is as easy as finding stockpiles dotted across the map. I learn quickly that being teammates doesn't imply chivalric duty – my sneaky fellow employees frequently leave nothing for me after beating me to the chase – so I make sure to snag all the bullets and grenades I can carry when I reach a stash first.

This doesn't stop me coming out on top as the Employee of the Shift, with the most kills and fewest deaths. Not to brag, but I don't think I died at all.

Project management

Exterminauts' goofy premise and relatively low-pressure, low-stakes fun means I finally get the Helldivers 2 hype.

That said, I have my concerns about Behaviour's latest as it stands – the worlds themselves are gorgeously vibrant and playful, and I adore the art design there, but knowing that character barks were made with generative AI sours me on the creative vision. I'm told Behaviour will replace them with human voices at launch, but what's wrong with putting a dev behind a microphone for the time being?

Despite that singular gripe, though, Exterminauts has colored me impressed as well as in shades of bug gore. This is my first time playing a PvE shooter of its ilk, but after leaning into its comedy and embracing the twitchy gunplay in a fantastical sci-fi world, it might not be the last.

I've finally fallen in love with Helldivers 2, thanks to Super Earth's immaculate Halo 3: ODST vibes

Persona 4 Revival might not be making any major changes to its characters, but the remake has still given Atlus the opportunity to "go more in-depth" with some of them, the game's producer reveals.

I spoke to producer Kazuhisa Wada at Gamescom last month, where I asked him about the previously announced changes to Yosuke – a party member with some homophobic dialogue in the original JRPG and its Golden re-release, which was obviously never going to make it into the remake without some serious alterations. Wada told me that "the characters are all the same people. We haven't changed any parts of their personalities," but that "we've adjusted dialogue to make it more modern and to be more effective telling the story."

Even if Atlus isn't changing anyone's personality, though, Wada now tells Eurogamer in a new interview that we can expect some characters to be further explored in the remake. "In a lot of ways, there has been something more we could explore with every character," he begins.

"Since Persona 4 came out, there have been a number of spin-off games that have been released, where we developed the characters and their personalities. So when we were making Revival, we took aspects of that and helped it to inform our characters and add detail and depth. For the team, it was Yosuke and Kanji that they really wanted to explore and go more in-depth with."

Art director Akane Kabayashi adds to this, noting that returning to the RPG made her realize that "Chie is forced to wear a lot of different hats and do a lot of different things. You can see that Chie and Yukiko are like 'double heroines,' but Chie is given a lot more stuff to do than Yukiko is, and it made me really respect that aspect of her."

I'm particularly interested by Wada highlighting Yosuke and Kanji here, especially the former. Going back to Yosuke's homophobia in the original – aimed at Kanji, as it happens – many had theorized that this could be recontextualized in Revival as internalized homophobia via a newly added romance route between him and the protagonist. After all, datamined voice lines from the OG JRPG suggest this was once meant to be an option.

However, Wada also told me at Gamescom that despite being aware of the fan demand for Yosuke romance, "we were thinking, if we did Yosuke, we kind of would have to do all the other male characters as well. And if we did that, that is a lot of work. So we were thinking about our time and schedule. I don't know if we could actually handle this, so we decided to let Yosuke float on by."

So, that theory has been debunked. Even if there's no actual romance route though, Wada's latest comments do have me wondering how Atlus has expanded on Yosuke's character, and if that aforementioned idea could have been explored without changing his social link. For now, we'll just have to wait until February to find out.

Persona 4 Revival is the best looking Persona to date, and after 1 hour playing, I'm already desperate to return to Inaba.

A gang of thugs surround me on a dirty street in 1940s Osaka Japan early into my time playing Stranger Than Heaven. I throw a jab into one and block their reply. I follow up with a pair of hooks, sending them to the ground before grappling with another.

The biggest one swings a blunt weapon my way, which I block with both arms, and I assess my options. For the first time RGG Studio has me feeling outmatched rather than an overpowered man of danger, and I'm in awe of Stranger Than Heaven's ability to make me feel that way through game design alone.

Eyes wide open

Hiroyuki Sakamoto, producer on Stranger Than Heaven, explains how the game's combat is very different from the Like a Dragon series. "Frankly speaking, with Yakuza titles, you could even play it with closed eyes sometimes if you just continue pressing buttons," he opines. "You could blindly defeat an enemy," he adds, and I tell him with a smile that I have indeed done just that, much to his amusement.

"But this time we wanted to make it more intuitive and more rough," he continues. It takes mere minutes with Stranger Than Heaven in a Gamescom 2026 preview session to understand what he means. The game's combat utilizes a left and right structure, with LB and LT (on an Xbox gamepad) controlling the left arm, while RB and RT handle the opposite side. Pressing B and LB or RB will perform a one-armed block, while pressing all three inputs uses both arms.

The result is a greater sense of rhythm during combat, which Sakamoto describes as "the feeling of being more involved in a fight," before assuring me I'll get used to it. He's right on the money, as I start leading with my left and relying more on my right side, displaying a sense of intuition I usually reserve for Time Crisis 2.

The preview session is split into three sections: 1915 Kokura (easy mode), 1929 Kure (normal) and 1943 Osaka (hard). Each section is a short stroll through a street before clashing with waiting enemies. Kokura serves up a small group who serve as welcome tutorial fodder, while Kure has a bit more of an edge. The gang here are smarter and attempt to form a circle around me but die trying, including a tall mini-boss.

Osaka is not quite so chill, presenting one knife-wielding foe who is eager to slice through my character. Rude as he is, he's also annoyingly strong, able to kill me faster than you can say "hey don't kill me!" – a command I can't help but blurt out during my first attempt. However, while I may not be the fastest, smartest, or strongest person who will play Stranger Than Heaven when it launches on January 15, 2027, I am resilient. I've overcome Lies of P, Hollow Knight: Silksong, and numerous FromSoftware games, and I'll be damned if some punk from an RGG title is going to keep me down.

Attempt two goes better, with well-timed blocks proving a veritable kryptonite to the blade-boasting bastard. That is until he switches up his stance, leaps at me with an almost comical speed and bodies me again. I realize now I've no choice but to sit up straight and lock in.

This time I use the blocks to close the gap between us, doling out hooks when gaps appear, before using both hands to grab my enemy and strike them with a vicious force, laying them down to the ground. They rise up, and fly at me like shit from a shovel, but I block with both arms and grab them again. Another blow sees them go down, and I have the scent of blood in my nostrils, which is fitting given the impressive display of gore Stranger Than Heaven delivers during the fight.

My opponent stands up one more time, bloodied and desperate. I can sense something brewing, some kind of last-gasp attempt to change the momentum, but I nip it in the bud with a left hook to the face. They're done, and so is my preview session, but my excitement to play more has only just begun. Stranger Than Heaven is not what I ever expected from RGG Studio, but the developer has once again impressed me with its innovation. Now I have to wait until January to see what the game has in store.

There's nothing strange about wanting to play more while you wait for Stranger Than Heaven, so take a look at our best Yakuza games or best ARPGs rankings!

If there's one thing to know about me, it's that I can't resist a creature-collecting RPG. Despite that, the Dragon Quest Monsters spin-off series has somehow always managed to pass me by. But, with less than an hour played of Dragon Quest Monsters: The Withered World, I already know that I'm not going to let myself miss out for any longer come its December launch.

Dragon Quest games are never lacking in charm, and The Withered World is immediately full of it. Guided by a cute companion creature known as Fluffy, I'm quickly acquainted with the concept of befriending and battling with monsters and given a personality quiz to determine my first ally. Fluffy decides I'd be a perfect match for a Woebergine – the name speaks for itself. Not sure how I feel about that, to be honest, but it sure is cute, so I'll take it.

Befriend 'em all

After this, I make quick work of recruiting all the nearby monsters I can – I've completed too many Pokedexes in my career to waste time here. You can attempt to 'scout' a monster at any time during battle by using a 'show of force,' but as genre veterans will expect, it's more likely to work if you've weakened them first. I also find out the hard way that failing to scout a monster can leave you unable to try again in the same battle – you can't approach it like Pokemon where you can just toss as many Pokeballs as you like until one works – something I'm glad I discovered in the game's opening section rather than later on when a rarer, more desirable monster was on the line.

I say 'more desirable,' but right from the start, there are plenty of loveable creatures to encounter. I can't overstate how delighted I am to encounter a Fat Rat, who – you're not gonna believe this – is a rather rotund rodent. Very early on, I also run headfirst into a battle with a 'super strong enemy' – a Drakularge (shocker, a big dragon) – which immediately one-shots my entire team. Clearly, some things are meant to be returned to later.

With over 500 monsters to tame, you're not just limited to scouting new allies in battles to expand your collection, either. In a different section of my hands-on, I'm given free rein of The Withered World's synthesis system. A returning feature, synthesis allows you to merge two of your monsters together to form a new one, allowing you to pass on things like abilities in the process – think breeding for perfect IVs and Egg Moves in Pokemon.

Before synthesizing, you're shown what monster you're going to get, including whether or not they'll be a special monster. Some of the pairs and their outcomes make more sense than others – blending a Slime and Platypunk gives me a special Mottle Slime, for example, which half tracks, unlike my Skeleton and Platypup producing a Guaardvark – but I know the countless combinations here are going to have me constantly coming back for more to see what possibilities my monsters hold.

While it'd be difficult to form a real bond with anything in under an hour – especially with the knowledge that I'll be leaving it behind me in a room at Gamescom, never to be seen again – my main takeaway from my time with Dragon Quest: The Withered World is that I'm going to adore whatever my team of monsters ends up being. The punny names, the cute designs, the fact that your ragtag team follows you around as you explore the world – everything is designed to be as endearing as possible, and by god, it's working. I will do whatever it takes to raise my Cruelcumber to be a strong, reliable ally, and fight proudly by their side – whatever The Withered World's story has in store for me, well, that's just a bonus.

On your own quest to play more like this? Check out out best JRPGs ranking, or our games like Pokemon recommendations!

Persona 1 and 2 remakes are "probably eventually" happening, series lead Kazuhisa Wada reiterates, who believes it's a creator's "duty to take the things you've done and make sure they're not lost."

Game preservation has been a particularly hot topic as of late following Sony's announcement that it plans to stop disc production for new PlayStation games from 2028. Though game preservation has been a continual challenge up to this point anyway, especially for older titles that naturally become harder to find and play over time, the idea that physical games are starting to be phased out by one of the main platforms is worrying, to say the least. Thankfully, though, plenty of devs are still committed to the idea of keeping their games accessible well into the future, and it sounds like Atlus is one of them.

Speaking in a new interview with Rock Paper Shotgun, Persona 4 Revival producer Wada talks about his thought process surrounding remakes and remasters, going back to Persona 3's 2023 comeback. "When we originally conceived the idea of Persona 3 Reload, we knew we wanted to do P4R as well; we had to put it on the backburner, but it was something we thought of at the same time," he begins.

"For me, I think a remaster or remake is some kind of cultural preservation. As a creator, it's your duty to take the things you've done and make sure they're not lost, and are still around in the modern day," he continues. "From that same perspective, Persona 1 and 2 are something we'll probably eventually do too."

This isn't the first time that Wada has brought up the possibility of Persona 1 and 2 remakes – in another recent interview, he stated: "I can't say for sure, but personally, I think it's something we should definitely do. I think we have to do it." The necessity in his tone here now makes a lot of sense given his views on preservation, and I'm sure fans won't be complaining. Just look at how folks reacted when Atlus announced new merch for the oldest games in the series earlier this year – admittedly, partly thanks to some very questionable phrasing that suggested a lot more than some new shirts being on the way.

Of course, there's no doubt that these titles feel the most dated and different compared to the modern Persona games, which also raises the question of how they'd be handled in any remakes. That's not to mention the fact that there are two Persona 2s, so in total, this would be a whole extra trilogy for the devs to deal with.

For now, it's likely that Atlus has its plate full with Persona 4 Revival and the upcoming Persona 6, but Wada's words here definitely bode well for the rest of the series.

Persona 4 Revival is the best looking Persona to date, and after 1 hour playing, I'm already desperate to return to Inaba.

I know that the devs behind The Expanse: Osiris Reborn have what it takes to create a great RPG. I know that you don't just get given the license to a hot multimedia franchise without earning it. I've heard that Rogue Trader and the Pathfinder games have got the sauce, and I've heard Owlcat's name in connection with Baldur's Gate enough times to make me sit up and take notice. But after an hour with Osiris Reborn, I'm yet to see that come shining through.

It's an unfortunate consequence of the way an event like Gamescom shakes out that The Expanse: Osiris Reborn was not the first multimedia, cover-shooter, sci-fi RPG I saw last week. It's an even more unfortunate consequence for Owlcat that I happened to see Exodus first. But it's not in the direct comparison that The Expanse falls down – it's in how the time I got to spend with it played out.

TV RPG

As I mentioned in my Exodus preview, you can rarely get a feel for the strength of a game's role-playing in the course of an hour-long demo. But you can be given a sense for how and why your character has ended up in their present surroundings, or who they and their companions are as people and how they fit into this world. You can also get a sense of how the decisions that have already been made about your character might alter how other players' decisions would alter their experiences. What I played of Osiris Reborn didn't seem to highlight that, preferring instead to focus on combat and ties to the TV show.

The mission in my demo is relatively simple. I arrived at an outpost's well-guarded storage facility in search of data contained within a case. Discretion is of the utmost importance, and my companion (my own twin, J) and I are kitted out in plausible, if unlikely, Osirian space suits. Despite our attempts to stay unnoticed, one of our first encounters with base personnel is being found in the wrong place by a pair of guards. I prepare myself for some kind of disagreement, hoping I've got a silver-enough tongue or at least a fast-enough shot to stay out of trouble. But, as it happens, it's one of the guards who talks his more trigger-happy colleague into leaving us alone, and I'm left to explore the base unimpeded.

It's just one example of how I'm never really challenged as I wander around the space. Despite the station's security systems getting increasingly wise to our presence, no-one on the ground ever asks us to explain ourselves. I'm able to peek through public computer terminals and wander into server rooms without ever being confronted, despite J noting how outdated our disguises look. It's not until we meet one particularly ornery quartermaster that anyone prevents us from doing exactly what we please, and in this entire sequence I'm only offered a couple of ability checks.

Eventually, I've secured the information I need and plot a quick getaway. That's undone very quickly, however, as I learn that I'm not what the security system has been reacting to. A squad of soldiers rappels down through a huge hole they've blown in the roof of the station, inadvertently upsetting the biohazard container strapped to the ceiling. That's home to a scary, crystalline figure that should be very familiar to series fans, but it's also an excuse to beat an even speedier retreat.

As chaos unfolds around the hybrid and I'm forced to fight my way out, I start to get more of a sense of what Osiris Reborn is trying to do. My pre-assigned character build is focused on remote allies – a drone and a turret that can be deployed to get angles on foes upon whom you don't have an accurate line of fire – a very specific build that doesn't limit my ability to enjoy some solid gunplay. It's a perfect fit for the solid cover shooting that makes up much of my demo's second half. During one section where I've got limited cover and enemies are coming from above me, and another where a beefy enemy is able to throw firebombs to flush me out of hiding places, I have to actually think about how to use my skills to survive.

It's a faster-paced sequence than my infiltration, a frantic escape attempt that's half fighting past security and half fleeing from the monster on our tail. Eventually realizing that the hybrid will slaughter the base's civilian population, however, we're forced to stand and fight, concocting a plan that will use a solar array against it.

The downside to that is it requires drawing our pursuer to the base's agricultural center, where we come across a bunch of farmers who are at risk. Tasked with deciding whether to send one companion to shepherd the civilians to safety or keep them with me to even the odds, I elect to fight in a pair and let the farmers fend for themselves. Whether that's the wrong choice or not, I don't get to find out – admittedly, a couple of civilians get pulped, but that's only because they ran the wrong way, and I wasn't about to lose a companion just before a boss fight.

Sadly, the demo ends before the fight begins, so I didn't get to see the consequences of my actions, just the ruined body of some unfortunate spacer and a very angry hybrid advancing towards us. I've seen enough to suggest that Osiris Reborn is a decent Expanse game and a solid cover shooter, but I come away without any sense of what kind of RPG it is. I'm confident enough in Owlcat's previous games that I'm sure it'll deliver on that aspect too, but I wish I'd had a little more opportunity to shape my version of this world.

Want to expand what you play? Our best sci-fi RPGs ranking and games like Mass Effect recommendations shouldn't steer

Port Desire, the cyber-noir setting of upcoming RPG No Law, offers endless possibilities. During the day, pops of green foliage, bustling crowds and urban wildlife scuttling away makes the city feel truly alive. At night, the crowds thin, leaving shady characters lingering in their place. Neon washes out all other colors, turning greenery to grit.

The longer I spend with No Law in a hands-off preview, the more it opens up. The melting pot of Southeast Asian and Mediterranean influences in Port Desire entices you to give everything a second look. Even the main character, Grey Harker, shows that same level of consideration. With the setting packed to the gills with such detail, a gruff and thorough detective offers the perfect lens to see it all through.

You don’t have to inspect the world with Harker's diligence, though. "You can't play No Law wrong," creative director Arcade Berg tells me.

First port of call

If you want to stop and smell every rose you can, but if you want to breeze past everything, No Law won’t stop you. Your progression, for example, isn't tied to your playstyle. You don’t get more EXP by playing more combat-heavy rather than stealthy. Developer Neon Giant has set out to not lead the player in how to interact with their world, instead making one worth exploring. You can’t drive vehicles, so everything must be within walking distance, but the added verticality of the buildings really stacks it all on. As we descend a stairwell, I’m told each and every door you pass is accessible, so you could really spend a good chunk of time exploring just one building.

After an initial introduction to Port Desire, the demo continues with multiple approaches of the same objective: infiltrating an apartment complex to find a missing informant.

Walking into a convenience store to resupply, each item is fully modeled on the shelves, allowing you to peruse their stock rather than skim menus, before either paying the attendant or shoplifting. As we leave, Berg points to a sensor by the entrance that activates the welcome chime. I can see it’s interactable and you can swipe it if you so choose, and I’m left curious as to why such a seemingly innocuous item was not only included in the game, but also why it was brought to my attention. I’m assured all will become clear later.

For our first run at the apartment block, we’re going sneaky. With creative director Tor Frick at the helm, we climb up to an awning and sneak our way past the guards outside. On our way we glance into a window and see a room with an open door and a guard asleep on the bed – complete with Z's rising from their head.

Once inside, we’re confronted by the complex’s manager, a sleazeball straight out of a '50s gangster movie. Through some smooth talking and a light investigative puzzle he lets us go upstairs, but not into the rooms themselves. Cue sneaking into the open door we spotted earlier, past the sleeping guard, and into the target room via grotty air ducts; cockroaches scuttling away and spider webs breaking as I go by.

The second run is much more confrontational. In the initial resupply and the convenience store, Frick blows the clerk’s head off and lines his pockets with as much loot as he can carry. Before leaving to avoid the authorities, he swipes the entrance’s chime sensor – explaining that it can be combined with a grenade to create a proximity mine. An ingenious approach to crafting that was also shown in the trailer – where a grenade was attached to a Roomba to make a remote control bomb – I'm eager to find which other Item combinations are available.

As we continue onto the apartment complex, Frick climbs up to the vantage point we snuck in through. He unleashes hell upon the guards in the courtyard, using an SMG and explosives to leave gristle in their stead. Frick also dispatches the sleazeball blocking our way, and after navigating around some locked doors, retrieves their masterkey, by-passing the puzzle to gain access to the apartment upstairs.

This time, Frick tasers the sleeping enemies – another layer of player choice should you wish to really unleash hell. But I’m warned that the more you lean into violence, the more the citizens of Port Desire come to fear you, an example of how No Law adapts to how you play it.

Overall I’m really impressed by Neon Giants' endeavor to deliver a truly immersive RPG. You can play how you want, explore as much or as little as you want and craft the version of Harker you want. Although for the latter I’m told the only incorrect way to play is removing Harker’s moustache.

From what I’ve seen, that appears to be one of the very few limitations No Law presents. Neon Giant has striven to create a dense, compact playground for a player to explore and immerse themselves in exactly how they wish, and I’m incredibly excited to explore Port Desire myself.

No Law is set to launch in 2027, but if you can't wait here are some excellent games like Cyberpunk 2077 we can't stop playing

Dune: Awakening's new single-player mode could be a great way to experience the MMO-survival mashup's story by yourself, but don't jump in expecting a The Last of Us replacement.

Developer Funcom has been hard at work translating its beloved online game into a single-player context, with a new mode coming out alongside Dune: Awakening's console release later this month.

We asked chief creative officer Joel Bylos about what fans should expect from the new mode in an interview from Gamescom - and if would-be lone wolves will get what they're looking for in Arrakis.

"I think if people play the game [this month] and what they're looking for is a really great survival game experience that they can play single-player, that'll be no issue," Bylos tells us. "If they expect it to be like The Last of Us, they're probably barking at the wrong tree, right? So, I think, if their expectations are correct for what kind of genre it is and what type of game it is, they'll be perfectly satisfied."

The ability to journey through Funcom's adaptation of Frank Herbert's beloved novels has apparently been a long-requested feature from fans, but it's also a feature that's been quite hard to make. "Transforming a persistent, server-authoritative, open-world survival game with multiple maps into a smooth local experience is no small feat, and today, we want to talk about the technical work our team has done to enable solo survival on Arrakis," the studio wrote earlier this summer.

A blog post from the studio explained a little more about everything that has to change to accommodate for solo journeys. Translating multiplayer-centric features, balancing combat or resource harvest rates, and making your machines handle the "heavy lifting" are just a few of the changes Funcom had to make for solo sand lovers.

Dune: Awakening's new single-player mode fits perfectly in the MMO because of its strong story, lead says: "I think we have the best story in a survival game that exists"

"This is Agnes." I'm gawking at the most beautifully horrifying hand-painted statue I've ever seen in my life as James Macleod, Ritual Tides creative director and CEO of developer studio Vertpaint, beams with pride. Agnes looks like a cross between a humanoid centipede, a fleshy slug with a burst rear end, and the giant baby monster from Resident Evil Village. In short, she's gorgeous. .

But even without Agnes' beady yellow eyes watching expectantly from the table, Ritual Tides has been among my most-wanted upcoming horror games for years. All I know going into this preview is what was given up in its brief 2024 teaser trailer – a title, a genre, and some cryptic ink-on-paper artwork – so I'm desperate to find out what kind of nightmare awaits.

Then Macleod throws a curveball: Gamescom chaos has descended and the demo build is fundamentally broken. Luckily, he has a backup plan in the form of a level design build, so I can at least get a feel for what the ex-Rockstar developer has been cooking up since shipping GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2.

"So," Macleod begins. "Are you a Resident Evil or Silent Hill fan?"

Strange shores

Macleod opens the level build to pan across a gritty grey coastal landscape, my first introduction to the fictional town of Hortus, and I lean closer to the screen instinctively.

I spot flavors of the two survival horror franchises he mentioned in each frame, because yes, I am a huge fan of both. Ritual Tides has the heavy fog-blanketed gloom of Silent Hill, the visceral, first-person immersion of Resident Evil 7 and Village, and a "super dark" narrative that had Macleod drop everything to write it.

"Getting a publisher for this is really tricky – the subject matter is so bad," he tells me. "You play this woman who wakes up on a beach, and you're uncovering her past and this mysterious island history. But the more you learn, it's a horrific history – especially if you're a woman."

From Silent Hill f's powerful abstraction of a woman's coming-of-age to satirical splatter flicks like The Substance, female-centric body horror is having a well-earned moment. I recall my Agnes statue in all her bloated, man-eating, afterbirth-like glory, and sense its presence in Ritual Tides, too.

Having grown up with five sisters, Macleod explains how the game helped him occupy a different perspective when considering what horror, danger, and safety feels like to different people – specifically, to women versus men. "Me and my sister were walking back from the pub, and she was saying 'I can't go down that [dark alley] route'," he recalls. "And I was like, 'What do you mean?' I just walk around like a complete idiot. They were talking to me about this, and I thought, 'I've got such a lovely concept for a game here'."

It's the little things

Ritual Tides sounds like a horror game from a place of kinship, exploring the harsh reality shared by billions of people who don't have the luxury of feeling safe in the shadows. But in true survival horror spirit, when it comes to combat, its amnesiac heroine keeps it old-school.

Macleod hands the controller to me as he steers the character onto a beach, warning me that some extra enemies might accidentally spawn into this rougher demo build. Luckily, I have a trusty melee weapon at hand – though Macleod mentions that there is indeed a durability system in this game, so my weapon won't last forever.

"Running away is the call, really," Macleod says between laughs as I beat a giant hideous bug – imagine if a facehugger and a scorpion hooked up – to death with my bat. "She's not a military expert. If she's picking up a really heavy nine-pound gun, just like I would, she's not doing it with one hand." I get to experiment a little with the game's weighty weapons system in a nearby cave, and can attest to the palpable recoil of each and every shot – though I spend so much time chatting with Macleod that my session ends soon after.

Getting into that cave was most interesting to me, though. Ritual Tides features a super precise climbing mechanic involving holding down the left or right triggers to grab or let go of a handhold, adding to the oppressive, visceral gloom that punctuates each moment and makes it feel like a battle.

The sparse HUD deepens that sense of immersion as Ritual Tides finds innovative ways out of some of survival horror's biggest clichés; a chalky residue left by sea salt, presumably, leaves white tips on stones and boulders as the game's answer to yellow paint. These markings indicate rocky surfaces that can be mantled up or across, but still belong to the world itself. Paired with the stunning photorealistic environmental textures, Ritual Tides might be the most painstakingly detailed horror game I've seen in years.

I might not have experienced as much hands-on time with Ritual Tides as other lucky Gamescom attendees, but vibes are all I needed. Macleod's vision shines, even in a rough build that was never intended for the media's eyes. I'm eagerly awaiting the day Vertpaint see fit to unleash its final form – though as level design builds go, this one was pretty spectacular.

Silent Hill Townfall's atmosphere is spot-on, but slow-burn terrors leave a tepid first impression

Even after an hour spent exploring its bustling streets, I'm still not sure what Ananta is. Billed as an "open-world RPG", that descriptor does little to explain the vast hodge-podge of ideas and systems that have been crammed into this game, which in turn do little to explain how it can possibly be free-to-play given its bizarrely massive scope. A combination of anime excess and mechanics borrowed from games far more innovative than itself, Ananta stepped triumphantly out of Gamescom as the third most-wishlisted game of the show behind Warlock and The Witcher 3. But that still doesn't help explain just how many ideas it stapled together in barely 60 minutes of playtime.

My demo begins with a fight between my impossibly-handsome anime protagonist, who's concealing what looks suspiciously like the Venom symbiote from Marvel's Spider-Man 2 beneath his sharp suit. A fight with a collection of goons lets me fling manhole covers at advancing enemies, stepping up to beat them silly before flipping over them with a well-timed finishing move. I'd never played Ananta before last week, but I had no problems with the controls, because they feel very similar to those from a game I first played in the last few years. Of course, Insomniac isn't the only studio with the rights to make their combat feel that way. But later I'm given the opportunity to explore the city… by swinging through it by shooting out my arms to slingshot off buildings. Once again, it's pretty easy to get to grips with.

Ananta's web connects us all

The good news is that this isn't a reskin of a Peter Parker adventure. That's because between the fight and the exploration, I get into a massive car chase. For some of that time, I'm leaning out of a window, pumping lead into the windows and tires of an unending stream of bad-guy jeeps until each one in turn careens off the motorway or into traffic. For the rest of it, I'm behind the wheel, following an increasingly small and an increasingly unlikely route of side alleys and construction sites. Both the driving and the gunplay are solid, which is a pleasant surprise given how often something has to slip in 'jack-of-all-trades' games like this.

The car chase is only possible with the arrival of a second playable character, who pulls off a devilish maneuver to save my original hero that's only hindered by its even-more devilish use of jiggle physics as she wrestles with the gear stick. Once the chase is over, I'm able to swap to this second character at any point while I explore the city, zooming out before zeroing in on their location in a manner this time lifted from both Spider-Man and GTA 5.

My new character is a cop, and while my first can swing through the city using the tentacles extending from his arms, my second has her own power: the ability to question and detain random passers-by. The unfortunate salaryman I stumble across flees in fear when I try to arrest him after his breathalyzer test comes back clean, and the dev watching my play-session isn't much less alarmed.

The city I'm exploring in this section of Ananta is inspired by China's massive conurbations, and it gives me a sense of what the feeling of exploring the full game might be. As well as more random goon encounters, there are gyms, cinemas, and shops to explore, hinting at a vastly immersive version of just this one map. It's the most intriguing aspect of Ananta, but I get no time to explore it in detail, because the demo then sweeps me onto an entirely different part of the game.

This new section introduces new characters in a new map, with an entirely new gameplay approach. Instead of battles or exploration, it's a stealth section focused on two young sisters, and instead of taking place in a major city, I'm sneaking out of a rural temple. Not even the goons are the same – in the city I was fighting off rust-punk bad guys in leathers and Mad Max-style vehicles.

Here, I'm trying to evade organized kidnappers in sharp suits and animal masks. And once I'm free, I'm dropped into an entirely new part of Ananta's open-world, this one inspired by a quiet town in the Japanese countryside, where the gyms and cinemas are replaced by fairground games and market stalls. It's very pretty, but a complete non-sequitur to the rest of the game, with no connective tissue between the two halves of the demo.

But, I feel like that's indicative of what Ananta is. An 'everything game', where so many different ideas are thrown together so quickly and eclectically that the average player simply doesn't have time to get bored of one before they move onto another. So what if the exploration and traversal systems are lifted wholesale from games you've already seen? So what if the only thing disguising that is anime art that does nothing to reinvent those systems, and simply obscures their origins instead?

There's so much going on, so much of it taken all-but wholesale from other places, that Ananta barely holds together anything resembling its own identity. It's a series of ideas delivered better elsewhere, just good enough that it doesn't fall apart at the seams, but not good enough that those seams are holding together anything of any real worth.

As a free-to-play spin on a world that speaks to some of the ideas contained within GTA 6, I'm sure Ananta will do very well, and its anime stylings will do enough to attract and distract an impressive audience. But, after an initial bust of interest, I'm not sure that audience will find all that much to keep them around.

An-after more like this? Our games like GTA recommendations might help, and our best open world games ranking offers more huge adventures!

Fable has a while to go before its release on February 23, 2027, but we're already salivating at the prospect of buying up every property in Albion and milking the fantasy land for all the gold it's worth.

After chatting with its game director Ralph Fulton, we now know exactly how we're going to do it. He shared key tips on manipulating the game's simulated economy and maximizing profits.

Treasure horde

"While there will be a way to optimize every business, one of the best ways to optimize a business is to identify whether an employee is actually working hard enough to increase the amount the business earns, and if not, fire them and just keep trying new employees to find one whose trait fits the business. [That's an] inside tip for you."

In Fable, not only can you play the role of a gallivanting adventurer, but if you fancy it, a ruthless business magnate. With tailors, bookshops, barbers, pubs, tattoo parlors, and bakeries all available to invest in, there's plenty of capitalistic possibility to sink your teeth into.

"Now," says Fulton, using a bakery as an example, "I can raise their wages, which in turn makes them happier, which would make them like me more and may make them a better employee, which then increases the overall yield of the bakery. But it might not. It might just lose me money. I could put their wages down. That's undoubtedly going to make them dislike me, think I'm greedy, and it may decrease their performance. But it might not. See what I mean? So you're kind of playing with a set of levers."

Specific NPC traits can help or hinder your enterprise. But which traits should you look out for? The most important one is 'hard-working'. Any NPC with this trait will apparently boost profits by 20% right off the bat. For Fulton, however, there's one industry in particular you'll want to invest in if you're after a shortcut to the millionaire's club: farming. That's because farms are among the most lucrative ventures, capable of supporting six workers.

"Now, if you can go and get six hard-working NPCs, put them to work on a farm, that all stacks. So suddenly you can be making a ton of money from that. I didn't know that until someone in our level design team pointed that out to me. But that is actually the smart play if you're going the property route."

So, by stacking buffs triggered by traits (the 'helpful' trait is another effective one), you can get the most out of Fable's layered financial systems. Buy up a farm, introduce your own hired help, and make bank. But it's the kind of help you bring in that determines how much money it makes.

Here's where Playground Games' incredible attention to detail comes in. It refuses to use a randomizer tool for NPCs, instead applying every single one of these thousands of traits one by one.

Doing this in a settlement like Bowerstone is monumental work. This is a location containing 400 NPCs alone, each with their own routines, personalities, likes, and dislikes. Doing this across the whole of Albion is downright Herculean.

"We individually picked everything about every NPC to make it into an NPC that you could read, that made sense top to bottom. We originally had a tool that would randomize it, and just 'roll' an NPC, and that would have been a massive labor-saving device. That would have saved us so much time, but what we found was, they just didn't make as much sense."

Business fantasy

Randomized NPCs resulted in unconvincing mismatches between trait, job, and look – like a hairdresser with a bland bob, a pacifist weaponsmith, or a vegan butcher.

As with everything in Fable, building the best business is a delicate balancing act. Pay your employees too little and you'll make more profit, sure, but they'll come to resent you, spreading word around town of your miserly ways.

This results in drastic changes to your reputation. You may become known as selfish, cruel, or any number of different pejoratives applied to your character in response to your actions. Adjectives are expressed as a word cloud floating next to your character's head, and what's really interesting is when you get contrasting ones.

For example, if your penny pinching avatar also has a way with words, there's nothing stopping them being known as charming and Scrooge-like at the same time.

"You could," says Fulton when asked if it's possible to have a reputation as a friendly murderer, "if you were being kind and generous on one hand but also killing people."

"You can see that's contradictory. But actually it's a more accurate representation of the things you're doing, and what people know about you, rather than moving incrementally up-and-down a single scale."

For some, the endgame for all this gold might be a glitzy mansion. If you're in the market for one, you'll want to hit up a place on the outskirts of Bowerstone called Manor Fields. Here you'll find impressive stately homes, some with their own hedge mazes.

For others, the goal will be more modest: a simple house and a family. In Fable, that family is more detailed than ever. Your wife and child have their own routines, as with every single NPC you encounter. They won't just wait around for you all day to return home after a full day of adventuring, but run errands around town as they live their own lives.

Fulton describes the challenges in implementing this system. He details a playtester whose in-game wife would teleport around at odd hours randomly giving out birthday presents.

These glitches are, thankfully, fixed. Your spouse won't get up in the middle of the night to wish you many happy returns, instead waiting until morning. But it's just one of innumerable game-breaking bugs that could potentially befall a game of Fable's magnitude, one in which your actions reverberate across the land morally, ethically, and economically.

"You can certainly transform the economic future of people," says Fulton. "By using the levers at your disposal as a landlord, as a business owner, you can change the lives of people."

Our best RPGs and best story-driven RPGs lists are no fable, but great places to get more recommendations on what to play next!

Manhattan is eerily quiet in Control Resonant. Gone are the countless pedestrians that make the sidewalks into constant streams, replaced by an ethereal, blue substance. It's the Mold, I'm told by Remedy's senior communications manager Miika Huttunen during a hands-off presentation at Gamescom 2026.

As a fan of the original Control from 2019, I'm aware this growth is bad news, so imagine my surprise when I learn protagonist Dylan Faden is tasked with eating samples of it. Just like that, I'm invested.

Power game

Free from the confines of the Oldest House, the Federal Bureau of Control's other-worldly office and location of the first game, Dylan is sent out into New York City to save the day. Given the copious amounts of Mold and the enemies created from it, how Dylan is supposed to manage that alone is a mystery to me, but I'm sure the shapeshifting weapon he wields will help.

The Aberrant is an Object of Power – one of the Altered Items found throughout the Remedyverse – and has multiple forms for use in combat. During the session, Dylan utilizes the Drill shape, throwing out piercing blows at the furry blue foes who dare get in this way. It's at this point Huttunen explains that the player is unable to use healing items during combat, instead recovering lost health through eliminating enemies.

Dylan is capable of overcoming anything with his trusty Aberrant, comboing while floating in one spot, before producing graphic and satisfying finisher moves. These executions temporarily buff Dylan's damage output, encouraging the player to dive immediately into the next waiting monstrosity that requires a good old drilling.

Huttunen clarifies that while Control Resonant rewards aggressive play, it doesn't mean mindlessly attacking will work. Throughout the session I see Dylan constantly dodging incoming attacks, creating the impression our hero is a bit of a glass cannon, although I've no way of confirming this until I can play as Mr Faden when the game releases September 24.

Eventually Dylan enters a boss arena, which takes us from Moldy Manhattan to a liminal space in another dimension, where we see The Collective. This boss is a number of enormous faces, made out of Mold and assembled together like a dangerous Mt. Rushmore. (Mt. RushMold? Is this anything?)

This hideous being isn't alone here, with smaller enemies routinely summoned and sent after Dylan as he strives to break specific points of the monstrous entity in phases, including deadly tentacles. The whole thing is reminiscent of Dark Souls' Bed of Chaos if it wasn't so terribly designed that the most staunch FromSoftware fan doesn't even attempt to defend it. It was as this comparison crossed my mind that I realised Control Resonant, while clearly an action-RPG, doesn't resemble a Soulslike. I know some fans of the first game are concerned the new combat won't appeal, but it has me excited to take Dylan and the Aberrant for a spin.

Once Dylan triumphs over The Collective, we're taken to another liminal space, where Dylan is presented with a choice of new powers based on the Mold. He can choose to channel the substance through his arm to attack enemies, or pick the option to have a Mold tentacle emerge from the ground and attack enemies independently. Huttunen then explains that while we can only choose one of the two abilities for the whole playthrough, players will take existing powers into new game plus, meaning we can have our cake and eat it too on the second go around.

As the session comes to an end, I'm left excited by the combat, but more intrigued by the world of Control Resonant. The original Control was full of curios that fascinated me, making me look at real world objects as though they were hiding secrets in plain sight. I've no doubt Dylan Faden can pick up the mantle from his sister and previous protagonist Jesse, but I'm aching to find out how fascinating Resonant's Manhattan will be. Will there be murderous refrigerators? A transforming maze? A new episode of Threshold Kids?

Remedy has a knack for creating game worlds that play with the barrier between fiction and reality, and it's by this metric that I'll judge Control Resonant above all else. Well, that and by the quality of the musical number it'll no doubt contain.

Take control of your next adventure by checking out our best ARPGs recommendations for more action, or our best Remedy games ranking!

Persona 4 Revival will take the time to introduce Marie into the story more naturally than she was in Persona 4 Golden, the expanded PS Vita version of the classic game.

One of the Velvet Room denizens, Marie isn't the most popular character within the fandom - she's a little withdrawn, she wasn't included in the base game, progressing her storyline is vital for accessing some late-game sections even though the game doesn't tell you that, and the way she's folded into the story was a bit awkward all those years ago.

But that's a criticism Atlus is looking to address with its upcoming remake, according to series producer Kazuhisa Wada. Speaking to GamesRadar+ in an interview from Gamescom 2026, the Persona lead explains the team needed to really "emphasize her place in the story" when retroactively slotting her in to Persona 4 Golden more than a decade back.

"So the way that we introduced her was made especially to be very, very noticeable, very obvious," Wada tells us, via a translator. "But for [Persona 4 Revival], she's a character who [has] such a central place within the overall story." As such, the developers know "she needs to be here from the beginning."

For Persona 4 Revival, expect Marie to get a "more natural, flowing entrance" - at least compared to her P4 Golden entrance, where the goal was to "make it so that she's very obviously doing what she's doing."

Months ago, fans already spotted what looked like all-new scenes featuring Marie, perhaps hinting she has a more substantial role in the remake than the moody poet who waits around for the protag to take her out.

While Persona 4 Revival serves as a mostly very faithful recreation, Atlus are taking a few creative liberties outside of the changes to Marie. For one, the studio recast the entire original English voice cast after struggling to get everyone back in the recording booth. Some of the dialogue is also being reworked to sound more "modern."

Persona 4 Revival boss knows you want to romance Yosuke, but you can't because then the devs would have to do that for "all the other male characters"

Do you ever get the sinking feeling that a game you've been really excited for might actually be kind of mid? Thanks to post-reveal trailers and footage that left me feeling lukewarm, I entered my 45-minute hands-on session with Tides of Annihilation at Gamescom with trepidation, but left feeling enlightened – this stylish action game has the sauce.

In my hands-on session, I spend some time exploring one of Tides of Annihilation's story missions, getting to grips with protagonist Gwendolyn's effortlessly stylish moveset while briefly traversing the decayed London setting, before moving on to a multi-phase boss battle against antagonist Mordred.

Knight fall

Immediately, attacks feel weighty and satisfying – Gwendolyn can pull off all sorts of elegant moves, but her main form of dishing out damage is by summoning her Phantom Knights. You have multiple equipped at once – between the 'main' and 'sub' Knight slots – and swapping between them is as slick as hitting a button, allowing you to make the most of their different skills.

Fighting against Mordred, I swap between a nimble and agile Knight with a time-slowing skill and a big, burly bloke who's much more cumbersome, but packs a real punch when he manages to land one. There are a number of different combos to learn for each Knight – too many for me to completely absorb in a short hands-on session – but it's thanks to being thrown in at the deep end like this that I realize Tides of Annihilation's glamorous female protagonist isn't the only thing the game has in common with Bayonetta.

It's definitely possible to button mash your way through a lot of these combat encounters, at the very least when it comes to dishing out damage. Don't get me wrong, dodging and counterattacking incoming moves is a requirement rather than a suggestion, but attacking is easy to learn and hard to master. The depth is certainly there for anyone who wants to take the time to learn every string of inputs for each Knight, and I'm already looking forward to being able to spend more time getting acquainted with Gwendolyn's skills come launch.

But, even if you can smash an enemy to bits without too much thought, you have to stay on your toes if you want to survive the more threatening encounters. Tides of Annihilation may not be a Soulslike, but perhaps that knowledge lulled me into a false sense of security when I dove into its combat, because it's hard.

My fight against Mordred is lengthy and hard-won – it spans multiple phases, shifting from the inside of a huge library to an outside arena where my enemy begins riding around and attacking me from a massive dragon-like creature, and it seems each of her attacks hits harder than the last. Even when I'm being pelted with damage, though, the spectacle of the fight is incredible – it's a shame you can't sit back and watch it without being in terrible danger.

After all, by the time I get to the point where I have a dragon swooping down at me from above, accompanied by Mordred's constant taunting, I'm running dangerously low on health, with no way to heal myself. Mercifully, when I fall, the battle restarts from this phase, though I'm not sure if there were any other checkpoints to rely on before this.

Eventually, Mordred goes down, and I breathe a sigh of relief to have finally overcome a fight more challenging than I've faced in some Soulslikes. I then look down at the demo fact booklet handed to me at the start of the session, and see the fight labeled as "medium" difficulty. Ah. I don't know what would have awaited me in the "high" difficulty boss fight, and at this point I'm afraid to ask.

My time with Tides of Annihilation flew by, and I can't overstate how pleasantly surprised I am by how good it feels to play. We'll just have to wait and see if Eclipse Glow Games can stick the landing come launch, but for now, I'm optimistic that this action game has the potential to be a heavy hitter.

Feeling a tidal pull to play more like this while you wait? Check out our best ARPGs ranking for more action-packed recommendations!

Substructure is an attempt to take one of the factory sim genre's most celebrated mods, and transform its core idea into a game of its own. Factorio's Ultracube, which limits production to the vicinity of the eponymous cube and tasks players with expertly navigating the bottlenecks that inevitably brings, is a lauded but daunting twist on the genre leader. By the time Substructure's devs have finished showing me how their game reimagines that idea across a multi-level map, I'm feeling dizzy at the extent of mental juggling I've had to do.

After a 'rogue planet' drifts its way into the solar system, you're dispatched to its surface to investigate. Upon arrival, you quickly begin extracting the resources you find near your landing site; silica serves as a basic building material, from which you can construct what you need to farm the local fauna, burning it as biofuel to power more complex buildings. Automation, of course, is the aim, and conveyors and robotic arms are quickly sorting and transporting fuel, raw materials, and seeds to be replanted around your growing planetary footprint.

Rock and roll

But among the more simple material is something else; a rock that can only be mined at night, and which will eventually dissolve away if not processed effectively. It's the first sense of the logistical challenges that Substructure will impose, but also that there's more to this planet than the plants and minerals on its surface are ready to reveal. Eventually, a drill allows you to burst through the crust, opening a cavernous new internal frontier to explore.

It's from here that the real complexity of Substructure's automation begins to open up. Beneath the outer shell, the planet has another level, this one dark, humid, and home to bioluminescent fungus. Bore down another layer and the climate changes again, glowing crystals combining with a building toxicity to create an altogether harsher climate. Developer Dubious Design has already teased a journey taking you all the way to the planet's core, and the deeper you delve the more clues you'll find to suggest this rogue planet hasn't always been as empty as it currently seems.

But, while progress might be downwards, it's not a straight line. Those drills don't simply allow you to bust holes in the planet for the fun of it – they help you build massive elevator shafts that can be used to carry materials to and fro across the various levels you've explored. Material mined from lower levels might need to be brought up to the surface for expansion, and material processed on the surface will need to go back into the depths.

As your automation becomes more complex, the elevators themselves can become their own mega-factories, yoyo-ing between levels to take advantage of the differing environmental conditions. Certain catalysts will speed up production – sunlight, for example, speeds up the production of the plants in your fields, while darkness will slow it down – so managing exactly where your elevators are and at what thresholds they move (all while balancing where their output goes) is crucial to pushing substructure's efficiency.

By the time just three planetary levels have offered up their secrets, my head is spinning. I'm being guided through Substructure's opening hours at breakneck pace, admittedly, but there are already so many moving parts, all reliant on so many other systems. Despite that, studio co-founders Mike Donoghue and Stu Taylor say they have to fight the urge to add things that are "too complicated."

Instead, the aim is to gradually introduce players to more and more complex ideas. Guiding them directly through the experience isn't an option – the team's internal mantra is "'all game'", the idea that nothing should be interrupting the player on their own journey to understanding. Mastery might be a long time coming, but the belief is that that friction – catalysts, time-sensitive resources, the game's sheer verticality – is all a necessary part of the game.

"You need friction for it to be interesting," says Taylor, as Donoghue doubles down: "I think humans derive inherent satisfaction from solving things and feeling like they've achieved something. We really believe in this idea of 'sense of accomplishment by playing', where indirect guidance is where you get the highest sense of accomplishment. Our games work best to some extent when they are maddening you."

Keep your own play ticking over like in Substructure with our best strategy games ranking, and games like Stardew Valley recommendations!

I think of myself as an early adopter of Exodus, one of the first passengers aboard this particular RPG hype train. The risk of buying that kind of ticket, of course, is that you end up at your destination disappointed, let down by a game that hasn't lived up to your expectations. With Exodus, however, I've got no fear of that. My 60-minute, combat-focused demo showed off the Mass Effect successor I've been hoping this would be, and hints that the BioWare Magic might still be out there – it's just Archetype Magic now.

My demo is made up of a single mission, far enough into the game that protagonist Jun has come to terms with the powers offered by his mysterious Celestial connection. He's found a ship and assembled a crew to fill it. I'm assigned two companions before I start; Suliman favors the quiet approach, and can teleport in close to stab unaware enemies in the back. The second couldn't be more different – Elise pilots a towering mech, and her abilities hinge around a variety of ways to fire off as many rockets as possible. I quickly warm to her explosive charm, and while Suliman's smug, smarmy demeanor seems purposely designed as a frustrating foil to Jun, the fact I enjoy his company regardless is testament to his writers.

No exit

Jun will be the keystone around which every mission roster will be built. His personal armory of weapons offers decent variation even before you factor in gadgets and the powers bestowed by his gauntlet – a piece of ancient, alien technology that grants various abilities that can manipulate the environment and offer new combat options. In battle, I can cloak myself before repositioning to line up a powerful sniper shot, or lock a larger enemy in place before rushing in for a melee attack and following up with a volley of chattering shotgun fire.

Meanwhile, Suliman and Elise contribute their own firepower, letting me know when their abilities have recharged to let them dish out even more punishment. Controlling their timing and targets is simple but satisfying, a huge chunk of HP disappearing from enemy health bars whenever either one steps up.

Anyone familiar with Mass Effect should have no trouble picturing that system. It's Commander Shepherd reimagined, enhanced by virtue of Jun's massive arsenal of tools and gadgets. Most smaller-scale skirmishes are too small to rely on all of those toys, but gunplay has a satisfying spit, and ammo management offers an extra layer of strategy. I lean heavily on the sniper rifle, but its limited magazine means I have to be careful about when I make use of it.

I'm also pleased to see that Elise and Suliman will let me stay quiet at the start of an encounter, only turning their own weapons towards the enemy once the firefight has properly broken out. My only complaint is that in bigger boss fights, my companions feel largely ignored – in one battle, I'm relentlessly chased down by an enemy that often runs through the middle of my allies' hail of gunfire, a series of slightly clunky dodge-rolls my only way to avoid an attacker apparently unconcerned for their own wellbeing.

The caveat to the success of Exodus' combat is that an hour-long slice of a game that's supposed to take place over the span of centuries can't possibly begin to show off the weight of its choices. Its aping of Mass Effect-style combat is definitely successful, but I imagine we won't get a sense of how well it emulates that series' decision-making until launch.

Yet, I still got a good look at what seems to be a robust system of choice and consequence. Suliman and Elise's approval (or otherwise) of my actions flashes up several times, and I rack up a good number of Paladin alignment points by opting not to indulge my darker urges. In one of those moments, I get what I think is a glimpse at the longer-term decisions that will drive one of Exodus' core roleplaying systems – by sparing the life of an enemy grunt offered up as cannon fodder, I have a strong sense that that minor character could return to my story, years or even decades later. I'm only guessing, but it felt like a tantalizing glimpse at a larger system.

Wake me up

What my demo lacks in roleplaying it makes up for in world-building. Archetype has spent years fleshing out this universe through a collection of short stories, a novel, and even a tabletop game. It's easy to explain Exodus away as no more than the sum of its constituent parts: a Mass Effect-style sci-fi RPG drawing heavily from the time dilation at the heart of Interstellar. But, while we're yet to see many of those ideas at full strength yet, the depth that the studio has already woven into its creation is on show, primarily through the Awakened.

The Awakened are hyper-intelligent animals that occupy Exodus' universe alongside humans. The mission in my demo takes place on the planet Khonsu, home to the Kay, a species of Awakened frogs who maintain a shield around the planet to protect it from space debris. The Kay work on a fairly voluntary basis, but a recent invasion has threatened them, and in turn put the entire planet at risk.

Despite that, the Kay NPC we meet during the mission, C42, is a cheerful and energetic character who flits chaotically between subjects as Jun and Suliman try desperately to keep him on topic. He's a very different figure to the next Awakened we meet, a huge mama bear whose weight and fury makes them a terrifying foe. Talking animals aren't a huge narrative novelty, but the Awakened offer Exodus an identity, and the clever ways they seem to be woven into the galaxy alongside genuine extra-terrestrial species offers a means for the game to show itself off even when its core roleplaying components aren't available. I'm keen to see where else it goes, especially with Salt, an Awakened octopus who serves as a companion from within a water-filled chassis.

I'm aware launch is still some way off, but I've been following Exodus closely for nearly three years. In that time, the question of whether Archetype was capable of filling the large shoes it was making for itself was never really clear. Many newly-founded studios of veterans have spent years building something grandiose to capture the magic of what they'd made before, only for the project to never realize its full potential.

It's been a long time since we've had a major spiritual successor that was truly capable of living up to that title, but I'm ready to say that I think Exodus is it: This is Mass Effect 5 in all but name, engaging combat, strong roleplaying roots, and an engaging world and cast all combining to establish what I think is my now firmly my most-anticipated RPG after The Witcher 4. The last major test is whether Archetype can realize its ambition when it comes to its centuries-long depiction of choice and consequence, but the foundation it has built to support those ambitions seems more than strong enough to carry Exodus into the stars.

Before your exodus from this article, consider checking out our best RPGs ranking, or our games like Mass Effect recommendations for more adventures!

With Guild Wars 3, developer ArenaNet is looking to directly tackle probably the biggest challenge in the entire MMO space: these things are hard to get into, and even harder to get your friends into.

As part of our big Guild Wars 3 preview, we spoke to studio head Colin Johanson about ArenaNet's next big adventure. He examines the onboarding and accessibility hurdles endemic to MMOs, or in short, the second job problem.

"We want to have that next generation come play MMOs," he begins, "and I think that, honestly, one of the biggest challenges the MMO industry faces right now as a whole is when we tell people to come play our game, the first thing they say is, 'I don't have time for that. It's like a second job. I can't engage with it.' And I think that makes it hard for anyone, folks with families, to engage and bring their family in. Folks who are younger who have 50 games that they're trying to play that compete for their time, they don't want to have that experience that's like a second job."

Many recent MMOs have talked about getting to the good stuff faster. Johanson suggests this is part of the solution, but only part of it. The key, he reasons, will be getting Guild Wars 3 "approachable to the point that you can very easily play and progress and complete things, while also having the depth that MMO players are looking for, so that if I want to play for that long, I can meaningfully engage."

Here, he looks at play patterns. "I think a huge part of the problem for MMOs is there's this ingrained 'preparing to have fun' window where you load into the game, you figure out your inventory, organize your inventory, go through your quest log, set up your build, get your gear figured out, get your friends' gear figured out, your build's ready to go, and you're ready to play the content. And you look at the clock, you've been online for an hour, and you haven't started playing yet.

"So many other genres have modernized to the point now where they're accessible and you're able to very quickly get in and start playing the game, and immediately be able to get a return on your time investment. And you need to be able to jump into an MMO and have 20 minutes, 30 minutes, and be able to do something."

Momentum is directly reflected in Guild Wars 3's combat and movement, which veer closer to a traditional single-player action game – even spectacle fighters or character action games – than you'd expect from an MMO. A sense of weight turns actual momentum into a vector of power and strategy, sending you diving and soaring with rare physicality.

Additionally, Johanson echoes a point that the Final Fantasy 14 team brings up a lot: "You also need to be able to set this game down and say, 'I'm going to take a break for four months, and I'll come back when the next expansion comes out, and I'm not going to be left behind and not be able to keep up with everybody. I can just jump back in and play when I want to play.'"

Here, ArenaNet has one big advantage. "I think our no subscription fee helps there too," Johanson says. "There's nothing holding you hostage, [like] you have to keep playing the game. You just set it down for a while and that's a totally healthy, normal relationship with a video game, and it should be, and our system should respect that."

He and ArenaNet are still keeping the details of their solution close, but Johanson says this is collectively "one of the most important things we're trying to tackle with Guild Wars 3 so that it can speak to a broader audience. so that it can speak to a broader audience. So it can be both what brings a lot of older MMO fans back, and the 29 million Guild Wars fans who played over time, bringing all of them back to be able to engage with this game.

"But also to bring a new generation into MMOs, who I really don't think have had an MMO in their life for the last 10 years. [Something] that they all jump into, and we would love to be like that."

Guild Wars 3 may have cracked the MMO code for tired millennials.

People have been inflicting the cruel colors and harsh lines of Nvidia's DLSS 5 on games that were normal before they were forced to look like AI-enhanced Love Island, and Hello Games' stylized space explorer No Man's Sky is the latest victim. A popular fanmade clip showing No Man's Sky looking more unnaturally crisp than a hangnail reveals plenty of people actually want DLSS 5 – but that developer Hello Games probably won't give it to them.

The original post from Twitch streamer Oskar1up has over 6,000 likes and 1.8 million views on Twitter as comments commend the dramatic peach sunset and glassy ocean waves DLSS 5 gives the otherwise subtly beautiful game from 2016. The post ultimately caught Hello Games engine programmer Martin Griffiths' attention, but not for entirely innocent reasons.

Another Twitter user says of Oskar1up's DLSS 5 experiment, "No Man's Sky is like the perfect game for DLSS 5, no human faces so no weird uncanny valley, and tons of natural and space scenes can use the realism boost." But Griffiths doesn't seem convinced by this claim that DLSS 5 has no downsides when applied to environments.

"It would probably fall to me to implement DLSS 5 in No Man's Sky, since I coded our DLSS support," Griffiths writes on Twitter. "But adopting it isn’t really a technology decision – it's much more an art-direction choice."

On this note, GamesRadar+ learned during our early hands-on time with DLSS 5 at Gamescom 2026 that the tech that applies a 2D generative AI filter to images is "only" made for photorealistic games, as Nvidia insisted. So, it shouldn't apply to No Man's Sky, which was carefully crafted to be its own soft rainbow galaxy.

That said, Nvidia's intentions are irrelevant when it comes to the unruly desires of curious gamers, who've crafted their own DLSS 5 button with files from NBA 2K27. It's this bootleg that is making No Man's Sky look like it's been deflated and then stuffed with clear jelly.

Personally, I think it looks awful – generic and unmotivated. To add DLSS 5, Griffiths says, "The question isn't whether we can do it. It's whether it enhances the image, or starts to subtract from No Man's Sky's own unique look and feel."

So, could Hello Games litter their beloved game's universe with AI? Sure. Should the developer do so? I hope no one actually believes that.

Nvidia says it's only targeting "photorealistic" games with DLSS 5, but am I the only one who thinks "realistic" visuals are worse?

If not for the grass I've spent hours gazing at in Guild Wars 2, I might not have recognized Guild Wars 3. With an emphasis on weighty third-person combat and an all-new momentum system, the upcoming MMO has more in common with ARPGs (think Elden Ring, Crimson Desert) than many of its peers. That's by design: going into Guild Wars 3, developer ArenaNet "audited the genre" and found combat and movement were the biggest areas for innovation.

This all culminates in the early alpha build I'm shown at Gamescom 2026. Following a warrior in the first human kingdom of Orr – set 1000 years before the first Guild Wars – my eye is drawn not to the gilded city of gods on the horizon, but the small warrior running circles in front of me. With freeform movement, he's able to run along walls, mantle over ledges, and slide dramatically down slopes when the need arises.

The same fluidity extends to combat. Thanks to a new momentum system, the weight of your movement is carried from one action to the next. Taking a running leap from a cliff, for example, will give you more gusto when you (hopefully) pull out your glider; while in combat the warrior has an aerial attack that scales with your momentum. Though not quite as dramatic as Baldur's Gate 3's owlcat-turned-hydrogen bomb, I've never seen this sort of physicality from an MMO before. Knocking enemies into walls stuns them – and as Chief Goblin Thrower in Baldur's Gate 3 and Dragon's Dogma 2, I'm thrilled to see that knocking enemies off ledges is a viable tactic for one-shotting baddies.

In a group Q&A with studio head Colin Johanson and lead gameplay designer Anthony Ordon, I ask the pair to start from the beginning: how is this combat possible in an MMO?

"It was very challenging – this is something that Colin and I have been talking about since 2015," says Ordon. "To get it working technically, we really had to start from the ground-up and build everything around a more visceral action experience on a server with allies. That's really gotten us to a great place in terms of gameplay."

"We tried all sorts of different unique ideas until we found what sticks, then we wrapped our arms around those. Those became the center of our game, and [we] built out from there," Johanson agrees. "If we hadn't been making MMOs for 26 years I don't think we could have built this system."

Orr-struck

In terms of multiplayer scope, I'm told Guild Wars 3 sits "right in the middle" of the first and second game.

"It is a giant open-world game and you constantly run into other players as you're running around in the world, but the scale doesn't go up to, like, hundreds of players," says Johanson. It's a departure from Guild Wars 2, which could see hundreds of players teaming up to fend off gigantic world bosses. "It stays at smaller numbers out in the open world to support this fidelity of combat and really let that shine. So for big encounters, probably about 20 players will be the most that you have in combat. If you go to a city or a town, you'll see significantly more than that roaming around."

During the demo, Johanson and Ordon briefly demonstrate PvE combat, with Johanson jumping on as a necromancer to back up Ordon's warrior. Though momentum adds new dimensions to combat, with the warrior's allies able to use his shield as a springboard to attack from above, positioning is crucial. A flamethrower-wielding enemy is resistant to damage until you circle around to hit his weak spot – a very flammable tank – and by juggling aggro, Ordon and Johanson draw enemies towards ledges for instant-kill pushes. Fighting giant spiders, the pair are bogged down in webs which require fire to burn away – demonstrating how Guild Wars 3 will ask players to pay more attention and be more reactive with their builds in the overworld, says Johanson, who sees the first Guild Wars as a touchstone in that regard.

With Guild Wars 3 set to launch on PS5 as well as PC, designing the MMO to be played on controller was a challenge that led to broader improvements.

"Our first goal was 'how do we get the broad combat of an RPG onto the controller without losing the depth', and losing what people love about the options they have to make a build and all that," says Ordon. "We think it actually turned out a lot better, because instead of having 10 number keys across the keyboard, we're doing more interesting things. There are attacks [chained] out of the dash. There's an attack out of the wallrun. So there's a lot more contextual ways to trigger skills, where we end up with as many options – in some cases even more – that end up feeling better."

When I ask if there are plans to bring Guild Wars 3 to more consoles including the Nintendo Switch 2, pointing to Final Fantasy 14's recent port, Johanson says ArenaNet's "focus for launch" is PS5. "It's our first console game, and adding console to the mix is enough of a challenge," he explains. "As it is, we really wanted to just focus on doing one platform to start and getting it right, and then we'll evaluate other consoles in the future as it makes sense to do."

Guild Wars 2 is one of my most-played MMOs, but in recent years I've found it hard to jump back in. The front-loaded information and intricate endgame combos make my favorite characters too overwhelming to pick back up after a break – a problem I have with many MMO endgames. That's a selfish way of getting into another of Guild Wars 3's guiding lights: keeping the door open for players new and old to jump in.

"We want to have that next generation come play MMOs, and honestly one of the biggest challenges the MMO industry faces right now as a whole is when we tell people 'come play our game'. The first answer they give is, 'I don't have time for that. It's like a second job; I can't engage with it!'"

The same can also be said for returning players trying to re-learn the game, according to Johanson. "You come back like, 'what is all of this stuff? I have to answer all of these questions before I start playing', and then you go 'maybe not', turn the game off, and play something else. We have to have a solution for that. We need to have one for the gameplay side, the progression side, [and] the content side. The social side is an interesting place to consider as well – how do we think about the relationships you had when you stopped playing nine months ago?

"I'm not going to tell you today how we answered [these questions], but we're very much thinking about each as part-and-parcel of the same core question. Because we want people to be able to walk away and come back the next time an expansion comes out, and we need to have you feel like you can jump back in and not be completely overwhelmed."

That's not all we saw at Gamescom 2026 - check out our previews for Total War: Warhammer 40,000, Silent Hill Townfall, and Afterworld

Persona 4 Revival has big boots to fill, especially for me. Persona 4 Golden is my favorite game in Atlus's JRPG series, so I've been eager – though somewhat anxious – to see what the devs have done with the bubbly murder-mystery remake. Thankfully, an hour-long hands-on session with it at Gamescom 2026 has me thinking I might have been worried over nothing.

During my preview, I'm able to explore a handful of short sections from the opening hours of the JRPG, including some dungeon crawling, boss bashing, and enjoying daily life in Inaba. It's impossible to ignore the fuzzy warmth of familiarity as I watch beloved party members Yosuke and Chie awaken to their Personas and protagonist Yu Narukami explore the sleepy rural town that fans like myself have adored for the last 18 years. But this remake is more than a glossy new coat of paint. Quality-of-life improvements and tweaks are immediately apparent, and have me feeling confident that this will be the best way to experience Persona 4 come launch.

Inaba homecoming

Exploring dungeons is immediately a hundred times better than it was in Golden. Clunky sword swings completely missing Shadows in the overworld, leading to the enemies gaining the advantage in battle, is a thing of the past thanks to hitboxes that feel far more accurate. And you can now use your sword to defend from incoming Shadows, too – doing so will leave them stunned and let you get the upper hand, instead.

Similar to Persona 3 Reload, there are now new items you can smash with your sword while running around dungeons to restore small amounts of SP, too – a relief to someone who staggered through too many of Golden's dungeons after running out of SP-restoring items while refusing to call it a day. I also spotted a newly-added glowing path in the dungeons that led to the 'correct' way forward. I'm uncertain if this can be turned off, but I'd certainly hope so given that it was constantly on screen, and feels rather redundant given that you have a map of the dungeons anyway.

There are new additions to combat, too. Like in Persona 5, you can now Baton Pass to teammates after knocking an enemy down by hitting its weakness, allowing you to switch characters and hopefully strike even more weaknesses, making battles feel faster and more fluid than before. Although I didn't experience this during my demo, Persona 4 Revival also adds a new mechanic called Prime Time which lets you blast enemies with multiple attacks in a row, without costing any HP or SP to use your skills, and ignoring any resistances your foes might have. Prime Time also lets you whip out a fancy finishing move called Series Finale to deal some serious damage.

Visually, there's no doubt in my mind that this is the best-looking Persona game to date. Character models are more expressive than ever, both in cutscenes and during regular dialogue, and MAPPA's animated cutscenes (the studio behind the Jujutsu Kaisen and Chainsaw Man anime series) look spectacular.

Things sound pretty different, too – Atlus has an entirely new English voice cast on board this time around, and while it's an odd feeling to see these cherished characters return not sounding quite like themselves, from what I've heard, all the new performances are very strong. Paul Castro Jr.'s take on Yosuke, for example, manages to match OG actor Yuri Lowenthal's outgoing vibe perfectly, even if the two don't sound exactly alike.

What might take more getting used to for veteran fans is the new music. I'm already in love with Revival's new advantage battle theme, Prime Time Golden Hour Show, but I'm yet to adjust to the remade versions of old favorites like Time to Make History and Reach out to the Truth. I imagine this will come with time, but I'm sure I won't be the only one who'll go back to the original version's soundtrack for these songs in the future regardless of how new and shiny the remake is.

I may have only experienced a small snippet of the remake, but I left feeling more optimistic than ever about Persona 4 Revival. While it was a shame to learn from producer Kazuhisa Wada himself that Revival won't be adding the highly requested Yosuke romance route, from what I've seen so far, I don't think veteran fans are going to be disappointed with Revival – Wada also clarified that previously mentioned dialog changes won't alter "any parts" of any characters' personalities.

It feels like a long wait until that February 18 release date, but I'm more excited than ever to tune in.

If that's persona-lly too long to wait for your next adventure, our games like Persona 5 recommendations or best JRPGs ranking might come in handy!

As soon as I spot Minsc and Boo in Dungeons & Dragons: Long Rest Tavern's announcement trailer, I'm totally locked in. The new game from French developer Homo Ludens speaks to a lot of what I love about Tavern Keeper, only instead of feeling like a fly on the wall of the Elfsong Tavern, it's set directly in the tabletop RPG's universe.

Should my bright young tavern owner be a tiefling warlock? Maybe a half-orc barbarian? I can take my pick of the core D&D classes and races to add a bit of roleplaying flavor to what is otherwise a dense yet intuitive management sim. Even more excitingly, I'm told I can eventually tame the wild baby mimic chests hopping around the grid – which of course becomes my mission during this demo session.

Gather your party

My first mission as the would-be owner of my very own fantasy pub is to name the place. Staying on the Baldur's Gate 3 theme – my hero resembles Minthara, budget rogue edition in lieu of a paladin class option – and opt for the Blushing Mermaid. So far, so good – oh, and did I forget to mention my ghostly guide?

The former owner of this once-fine establishment still haunts its barren halls, and he's here to get me up to speed. It takes grit and determination to run the place, he says, and I can start with clearing it up so I can craft some actual furniture. Building is very straightforward, working off a grid system to help me place items, furnishings, decorations and more to give me ultimate creative freedom. I keep it simple to start: two tables and a bar counter, complete with little candlesticks to help illuminate the sparse interior (heroes won't take a pew without a light source nearby).

Next, it's time to hire some staff! Much like in the Two Point games, I must choose the right bartender and waiter by referring to a character's skills and weaknesses, represented here with four kinds of job experience: bartending, serving, cooking, and janitorial duties.

Naturally, I want the most skilled pint-pourer behind the bar, though their tricks of the trade are worth noting. Some workers are fast learners, for example, which is a great boon when training up new staff, but others have negative attitudes that kind of harsh the overall vibe of the tavern when it comes to client satisfaction. I'd rather have a grouchy barman than none at all, so I pick the candidate with the highest experience in the field. The same goes for who I hire to be my waiter. Since I'm short on coin for now – fans of D&D will note that copper pieces are the currency-of-choice, to my delight – I'm going to have to clean tables by myself.

Sleeves up

My first night passes smoothly. All I have is cheap ale at the moment, but my unfussy patrons don't seem to mind. My staff go about their jobs automatically, so all I really need to do is hit the fast-forward button like in The Sims 4 and click empty tables to clean them between bouts of guests. It's pretty light work for the time being, and following each successful evening, I have the whole day to restock and redecorate the pub.

Alas, I don't get to see much more for myself in this short 30-minute hands-on session. The various management tools are rolled out progressively, including the opportunity to interact with visiting heroes (Minsc!) and listen to their tales of adventure. At some point, we'll also be able to send adventurers out on missions and get to roll the dice to see how they get on in the big bad world of D&D, though at the moment, all I have are snapshots of what that might look like.

My time with Long Rest Tavern was a brief yet tantalizing taste of what's to come, even if I didn't get to pet a baby mimic.

It turns out that managing your own fantasy pub is just as taxing as doling out Eldritch Blasts in the heat of battle, keeping an eye on ingredients and building resources rather than spell slots or potions. Long Rest Tavern is a refreshingly different way to exist in the world of D&D, and between this and third-person action Warlock, my gaming plate is looking thoroughly nerdy for the foreseeable.

Warlock escapes Baldur's Gate 3's long shadow with a very different take on D&D that I'm happy to roll my dice on

Square Enix has detailed the Final Fantasy 7 Revelation Collector's Edition, and I hope you've got $350 to spare.

Over on the Square Enix store website, the publisher confirmed the contents and price for the Final Fantasy 7 Revelation Collector's Edition. To get the bad news out of the way, it's going to be $350, which already puts it on the high end for collectors editions – barring the really ridiculous ones. This is made even worse for the UK; it's going to be £350 even though that's not how conversion rates work at all (£350 roughly translates to $472).

But what are you getting for all of that? Obviously, the game itself, alongside the Deluxe Edition content which is set to feature two DLC expansions – one featuring Sephiroth and another starring Vincent and the Turks. On top of that, the Deluxe Edition features a CD mini-soundtrack, a hardcover artbook, and an exclusive steelbook with art from all three games in the trilogy. Each physical edition comes with a Magic: The Gathering card titled Final Showdown, too.

As for the Collector's Edition itself? You're getting the physical deluxe edition, and a separate box featuring the only exclusive addition. This is a statue featuring Cloud, Zack, and Sephiroth (who are 6.7 in, 7.1 in, and 7.9 inches tall, respectively), all posing with their weapons next to each other.

This collector's edition is only available for console players, with Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox Series X|S, and PS5 being the only options. So if you want to play the game on Steam, you might have to grab a console copy to get this statue.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation includes more spin-off characters, Naoki Hamaguchi says, and devs "thought really hard" about including more compilation references for the trilogy's finale.

Update: A big caveat has just come to light about Final Fantasy 7 Revelation's physical edition. On PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, the RPG will come on a single disc, and you'll have to endure a mandatory download before you can play the game.

This was confirmed in an official Square Enix announcement, which details that both versions come on "one disc" and in each case "an internet connection is required to download additional game data in order to play the physical version of the game."

It's not unusual for physical games to require additional downloads before you can play these days, but up until now the Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy had been a notable exception to that trend. Both of the previous two games launched in multi-disc packages, which included all the data needed to play without any additional download. I'm glad that Revelation is still coming on disc, but I am disappointed that Square Enix is scaling back its commitment to physical collectors for the final piece of the trilogy.

Original story: It's official: Final Fantasy 7 Revelation will be released physically alongside the digital launch on April 8, 2027. The game's launch is coming well before Sony's planned 2028 cutoff for physical PlayStation discs, but director Naoki Hamaguchi had previously been cagey on the topic of a physical release. Yet I guess there was no reason to worry.

Square Enix confirmed the news in a tweet. "The promise has been made," the post begins. "Final Fantasy VII Revelation launches both physically and digitally on April 8, 2027."

That line about a "promise" is certainly intended as a tagline referring to the end of the trilogy, but it has an extra air of sincerity for collectors who've already added the first two parts to their shelves.

Both previous parts of the remake trilogy launched on disc, and some people – hi, it's me, I'm some people – even own those discs multiple times over thanks to a multi-gen release of the first game. I'm upset about discs going away for a wide variety of reasons, but it's at least nice to know I won't have to keep an empty box on my shelf where Revelation should go.

There's one big caveat for Nintendo collectors, however. As with previous releases of the remake trilogy on Switch 2, this one will come on a game-key card. Can't win them all, I guess.

Plenty of additional info on Final Fantasy 7 Revelation dropped alongside today's State of Play trailer, too. We've got an April release date, confirmation of two story DLC expansions, and a $350 collector's edition featuring more inches of Sephiroth than any of us can reasonably deal with.

Here are all the new games for 2026 and beyond you need to know about.

It's official – Final Fantasy 7 Revelation will be getting story DLC later down the line, with a two-part Story Expansion Pass confirmed for the JRPG remake.

As outlined in a PlayStation Blog post following Revelation's appearance at today's PlayStation State of Play, the "Story Expansion Pass will grant access to two story-centered DLC, with more exciting details on these to come at a later point!"

Over on Steam, there are a few more details to make note of – the first story DLC is titled Sephiroth, and is aiming for a launch sometime between winter 2027 and spring 2028. After that, the second DLC is called Vincent & the Turks, which has been given the same vague release window.

As well as being available separately, the Story Expansion Pass will be included in a newly announced Premium and Premium Plus Editions. Both of these fancy editions will grant 24 hours of early access to the main game, some in-game consumables, and an in-game accessory, while the Premium Plus version comes with some extras including a digital art book and mini soundtrack.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation's Story Expansion Pass was previously leaked via a third-party Epic Games Store database tool, though at the time it wasn't clear if it could have been a placeholder. With that said, Final Fantasy Remake trilogy lead Naoki Hamaguchi previously said, even before Revelation had been officially revealed, that the then-unnamed third part in the series could get DLC if there was "significant demand," so it only felt like a matter of time before its confirmation.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation launches "both physically and digitally" on the same day: "The promise has been made."

As much as I enjoy the high-fidelity visuals and real-time combat available in Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Rebirth, I'll always be a sucker for a pixel-art, turn-based RPG. Clearly, Square Enix also understands this timeless appeal because the publisher is on course to release Final Fantasy Resonance this year and, after playing it at Gamescom, it's now my most anticipated new game this year.

With its HD-2D aesthetic blending 2D sprites with 3D environments, Final Fantasy Resonance brings to mind games like Octopath Traveler, and instantly feels familiar if you're well-versed in classic RPGs. You roam around the world before the screen shatters and a battle begins, inputting commands and watching them play out in a sequence as you whittle down enemy health bars. However, Resonance isn't without a unique twist.

An RPG with Vision

The party I get to play with is made up of four original characters, with a variety of skills and elemental affinities, including Rain who deals melee damage with vigor, and Fina who boasts great healing spells. However, I'm most struck by the fact each hero has a Vision; a spirit character who supports them by sharing powers in combat. I'm told some Visions are new while many others are familiar faces from the Final Fantasy franchise, which makes sense as I'm staring at Cloud Strife from FF7.

These spirit friends, reminiscent of the Stands from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and the equipable characters in Fire Emblem Engage, can be unlocked by beating in-game dungeons known as Sanctums. Once selected, they diversify each party member's repertoire by adding new spells, increasing your options in battle.

Visions are most noteworthy when performing Resonance attacks – special moves that can be used once all enemies are staggered (denoted by a separate gauge to their health). Once their postures are broken, you can hit them with the titular flashy attack for huge damage.

However, if your character's Vision gauge is full, you can perform a Sweeping Resonance for even greater effect. I start off using Cloud's jaw-dropping Sweeping Resonance, the HD-2D graphics giving way to gorgeous, fully-rendered 3D models as Cloud furiously slashes through enemies.

Similarly, when The Warrior of Light from the OG Final Fantasy manifests in full 3D and brings destruction upon my enemies, I feel a giddy thrill that appeals to my inner child more than an ice-cold glass of Dr Pepper.

The combination of visual styles isn't the only way Final Fantasy Resonance so lovingly blends old and new. Being a classic-style RPG, the developer hasn't shied away from grinding as an in-game mechanic. That might put some players off, but you can toggle the speed of encounters to effectively half the time required to level up your party and Visions. It's a simple feature, but the difference it can make should not be underestimated.

In addition, my preview's dungeon comes complete with useful checkpoints for fast travel and resting, which are modern staples that I always appreciate. It also helps that the item names are all instantly recognizable to Final Fantasy veterans, from Hi-Potions to Phoenix Downs, creating a sense of familiarity that maintains momentum.

This isn't to say that nostalgia is vital to enjoying Final Fantasy Resonance. The turn-based combat is layered and exciting, and the pixel art shimmers like a California sunset. But to those of us of a certain vintage (old enough to have played those older pixel RPGs at launch, as well as catch the Jamiroquai reference in the last sentence), this game channels the era when Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6 captured our hearts while still keeping our feet firmly planted in the here and now. It's a masterstroke and only Square Enix could have managed it.

Resonate with this preview? Then check out our best Final Fantasy games ranking or our best JRPGs list for more to play next!

About Fishing is one of those Gamescom demos I absolutely love – low pressure, in-the-moment stakes, and getting to laugh off my terrible depth perception with the kindly PR who is too polite to tell me I'm awful.

I'm a young woman standing on a pixelated beach. Staring out at the calming grey-green waves, fishing rod in hand, a short on-screen tutorial walks me through the basics before leaving me to my own devices. The mechanics are all about physics and mouse precision, meaning I'm already out of my depth. Yet there's something meditative about my persistent failures.

Maybe my mouse is too sensitive? Maybe this game just isn't for me! But the frustration that usually builds when I find myself sucking at a cool new game never surfaces during my half-hour demo. Rather, I find myself calmed by my own lack of skill, determined to focus and learn how to slow down. I'm sure patience will come in handy later on in the story, when its murder mystery narrative starts to unfold. For now, though, I'm getting a handle on my own nerves and experiencing one of the most visually interesting games on my schedule this year.

Hook, line, sinker

Fishing is a core mechanic in About Fishing. Holding the right mouse button to aim my hook before sweeping my hand in a semicircle, releasing the button, and casting the line… It's a precise art, I tell you.

My headcanon is that my character, being on the younger side, is probably not too great a fisherwoman herself. After catching my first scaly pal (it takes me at least 10 minutes), I carry the trophy further down the scuzzy, lo-fi beach to where an older gentleman reclines on a chair. He turns to speak to me, and his wizened face looks distinctly familiar. Is that…. Former U.S. president George Bush?

No, it's not. But About Fishing does faces brilliantly despite its polygonal PS1-esque graphics. All the faces are those of real actors, I'm told by one of the publisher's representatives, each scanned into the game. Including, somehow unsurprisingly, a cameo from none other than Ben Starr of Final Fantasy 16, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and far too many other new games to count (go, boy, go!). It's not quite LA Noire levels of uncanny realism, but I have to admit – it looks pretty darn cool.

The older man explains how fishing works. I need to be patient, he says, and choose my targets wisely. It's here I get an opportunity to fine-tune my talents. Over-shooting a target is a good thing because I can whack the left mouse button to drop the line early, which is useful if I've already spied a fishy friend to pick on. The underwater camera comes in handy for this, giving a beneath-the-waves view of the creatures in a given spot.

Reel small fish

I try my best to hound one specific fish, who seems entirely disinterested in my line. It's not until I rotate my mouse a little to gauge the difference between the fish and my hook that I see how far away I've landed from it.

This is my main problem with About Fishing: the fishies are lethargic, unwilling to move too far towards the hook, so I need to land within a certain hitbox of sorts to catch their eye.

I try my luck with a shoal of fish hiding behind a rock, figuring that numbers would surely be on my side. But even after I get a bite, I lack the dexterity to flick my hook around said massive rock. The line turns red with stress and eventually breaks, leading to the old man butting in with a helpful quip about how to avoid that happening again. Turning my mouse to angle a fish's head toward my character is one thing, but doing so from behind a boulder? Utterly impossible.

And here I sit for the remainder of my session. It's a slow, methodical process, one in which I find equal parts glee, annoyance, and relaxation. Fans of fishing minigames in the best RPGs will find ample amounts of all three in About Fishing's tactile mechanics – I only wish I'd gotten far enough to see more of its mysterious underbelly emerge from the gloomy depths. Still, this tasty morsel is enough to pique my interest. And, just maybe, set me off on a journey toward some sort of inner peace.

Check out some of the other best fishing games out there if you're keen to dip beneath the surface and catch your own dinner.

Square Enix has confirmed that Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is going to release on April 8, 2027

The new PlayStation State of Play trailer for Final Fantasy 7 Revelation focused on the party members, with new looks at Cid and Vincent, who round out the original cast of Final Fantasy 7 characters featured in the original game. Not only that, but we got a new look at some of the areas featured in the final chapter, like Yuffie's home of Wutai.

More importantly, however, Square Enix confirmed exactly when we'll be playing Final Fantasy 7 Revelation: April 8, 2027, which is almost exactly seven years after the release of Final Fantasy 7 Remake on April 10, 2020.

Square Enix followed up this trailer with a deep-dive into the gameplay of Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, showing some of the open-world gameplay and the party channeling their inner Fortnite as they dive off the battle bus-flavored Highwind. We also saw some of the new traversal mechanics once you are off the Highwind, with Yuffie using a grapple gun to get around Wutai.

On top of that, you're also to choose your main character in the open world, with the player no longer locked to playing as Cloud. This extends into the side quests too, as Square showed off that these can play out differently depending on which character you choose to take the quest on as.

All that is to say, Square Enix heard that Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth was too big for some, and seems to have made it even bigger for Revelation.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation includes more spin-off characters, Naoki Hamaguchi says, and devs "thought really hard" about including more compilation references for the trilogy's finale.

Final Fantasy Resonance, the first Final Fantasy game presented in Square Enix's HD-2D style, is getting a demo later today, September 3.

Though announced at today's PlayStation State of Play live show, the Final Fantasy Resonance demo is expected on all platforms, which also includes Xbox, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC (Steam).

The demo is unavailable and unlisted at the time of writing. A PlayStation trailer confirms that the demo covers "the entire first chapter" of the game, with progress carrying over to the full game if you decide to buy in.

The trailer gives us a look at Sephiroth as he appears in the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy – and, more importantly, Resonance's giant, pixel art, boss fight Sephiroth.

Sephiroth is the latest Final Fantasy icon to get the HD-2D treatment courtesy of Resonance. A suite of characters make combat cameos in summon-like Resonance attacks, with the likes of Final Fantasy 10's Tidus and Final Fantasy 7's Cloud already shown.

The HD-2D style was pioneered by Octopath Traveler then refined in the likes of the Dragon Quest remakes and, per our The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales review, some more recent outings. Resonance is both the next Final Fantasy game and the first entry to adopt this art style – and, somewhat confusingly, also technically a remake of Final Fantasy Brave Exvius.

Final Fantasy Resonance itself will be released next month on October 22.

Resonance returns to turn-based combat and random encounters, with producer Keisuka Nakashima arguing that the system allows for "truly memorable" battles.

The game exists largely because Nakashima and other Brave Exvius developers felt that the once-gacha-driven game is "too good to become unplayable" after its global end of service in 2025. As someone who's wanted a turn-based, HD-2D Final Fantasy ever since Octopath Traveler was released, I'm excited to see if

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation boss is "very much aware" you hate Chadley for being a socially inept doofus, but he will soon have "a very integral part" in the story anyway.

Crimson Desert's first DLC expansion has been revealed – it's called Charting the Unknown, and it's out next month.

Shown off during today's PlayStation State of Play, Charting the Unknown's trailer shows that Crimson Desert is still apparently aiming to include as many different game mechanics and features as possible, because base building has now been shown off.

We also see Cliff steering a boat before exploring underwater, even holding onto the back of a massive shark to travel around under the sea. Oh, and we later see a giant enemy robot firing an enormous red laser of mass destruction. There's just a lot going on.

Of course, we can expect more story, too – the trailer's video description notes that "Kliff, Oongka, and Damiane set out to discover their purpose and shape their futures. However, as turmoil unfolds around them, each must fight to forge a path through the trials ahead. Join them on a new adventure and discover what new possibilities await across Pywel."

We already knew that developer Pearl Abyss was shifting its focus to DLC, finally slowing down on its speedy pace of free updates that have been arriving in the massive open world game since its release. In addition, it was previously stated that Pearl Abyss was "targeting a release within this year," so it's comfortably managed that.

Crimson Desert: Charting the Unknown releases on October 15, 2026, so there's not long to wait for it. Pre-orders are already open, with pre-order bonuses for the Charter's and Charter's Light Diving Sets available to those who buy early.

New Crimson Desert Enhanced update meant to "improve the narrative flow" actually makes it feel "like a different game," fans say.

A peculiar trend of Gamescom week was a flurry of licensed tactics games; Star Wars Zero Company's launch was accompanied by the reveal of both Rainbow Six Tactics and Worms Galactic Tactics. While I'm reliably informed that the former is an excellent addition to the Rainbow Six franchise, I'm here to reliably inform you that the latter is such an obvious use of the Worms identity that it feels like it should have existed for years.

In decades of being a turn-based strategy series that's experimented with all kinds of different gameplay formulae and camera angles, Worms has somehow avoided the isometric, grid-based perspective that dominates the tactics genre. Unsurprisingly, a series that already had the vast majority of important constituent parts in place doesn't exactly struggle with the addition of those remaining ideas that fully transform it into this new genre. But, this isn't a cheap twist on the established formula – it's a smartly thought-out adaptation that's made to fit perfectly with what Worms has already been for years.

Worm-like

Galactic Tactics pits your worms squad against increasingly difficult teams of enemy worms. Abducted and forced to fight in a gauntlet of gladiatorial games on an alien planet, your worms must battle it out in randomized arenas, at first using their basic weaponry – a bazooka, a ray gun, and a fire punch melee attack – to dispatch a lowly pair of enemies.

Win that first battle, and you earn cash which can be used on weapon upgrades to help you in subsequent fights. Lose too much health, however, and you'll need to waste resources in the Medbay to ensure you're not immediately dispatched by the opening exchanges of the next round. Lose every worm, and your run at the top prize is over, and you start again from the first round of the competition.

Beyond that first round, my fights are strictly 3v3 affairs, but Galactic Tactics tips the scales towards your opponent over time by granting ever more powerful types of enemy worms. In one round, the 'Boffin' worm begins with a shield that absorbs the first shot they take. In another, the Sargeant's armor means he takes less damage, and then deals more when he dips below half health. It's a clever way of increasing challenge without it feeling like a cheap buffing-up of enemy's health bars or damage numbers.

As the odds turn against me, I have my own tools to level the playing field. Coins earned from killing enemies quickly and picking up supply crates in round mean that I can buff my weaponry – even after having to pay to resurrect my unfortunate melee fighter twice. These upgrades can seem minor in isolation, some of them not even affecting weapon damage, but accrue enough, and build paths begin to emerge. Clearly, the depth of a true roguelike deckbuilder isn't what Galactic Tactics is going for, but I'm keen to see what happens when multiple upgrades begin to stack up as runs go on.

Terrain is also an important tool. Galactic Tactics relies on a tile-based grid, but using elevation effectively can be the difference between worm-life and worm-death. As in the older games, you can hide behind tiles to block enemy shots, but a smartly-aimed projectile can still deal damage. Worms flung into the gradually-rising water around the arena by nearby explosions will die instantly, meaning holding the high ground is crucial.

But, sometimes it's worth stepping off the safety of a high tower to seek out medkits or item crates, which offer powerful single-use weapons or gadgets that persist between rounds. In traditional Worms, those could often turn the tide of a battle, but in Galactic Tactics' tight arenas they're deadly, blowing huge chunks out of the map and leaving gaping holes down to the water.

I do find myself wishing that some of the displacement effects were more powerful – I missed the feeling of smacking an enemy worm miles off-screen with a baseball bat or a well-placed banana bomb – but a Holy Hand Grenade remains satisfying no matter how many worms get dispatched in the explosion.

Worms Galactic Tactics is an obvious addition to an enduring series. It won't be the most complex or punishing strategy game – a generous undo system means you're unlikely to inadvertently stumble into disaster, and dead worms can be resurrected at minimal cost for next round – but it's a clever twist that understands both parts of its core formula well, and one I'm keen to explore the depth of in a full run.

Worm your way to more tactical fun with our best strategy games recommendations!

If I can do justice to the hour I spent playing Afterworld, you'll see why it's the most exciting reveal of Gamescom 2026. Even if you don't like grand strategy games, which this is, Afterworld may be the first one you fall for. It's designed to be the "most approachable" game from developer Paradox Interactive (Crusader Kings, Stellaris), says game director Dan Lind, and although I've struggled to make sense of many of the developer's previous titles, I jumped into this one and intuitively had a blast.

By blast, I mean 'I made my settlers live in an irradiated factory and they started having mutant fish-people babies'. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, let's catch up on what Afterworld is – then we can talk about all the ways I was a terrible warlord.

Crawl out through the fallout

At its most basic, Afterworld is about ensuring your tribe survives in post-nuclear apocalypse America. But its most interesting dynamics are established before then. Beginning my preview, I'm asked to choose my tribe's origin story and how it handled pivotal moments in its history.

I picked a tribe leaving their underground shelter, which meant deciding how they navigated an earlier food crisis – cannibalism? Hoarding? – and whether a period of unrest was settled by ceding control to rioters or quietly killing its instigators. Each option has lasting effects on my tribe going forwards; the descendants of cannibals will still eat people, for example.

These identities keep evolving. Sending rangers out of the vault to find somewhere to settle, I discover an abandoned car manufacturer with water and wood within reach. It's more irradiated than its neighboring areas, but that seems like a long-term problem – what's a few spare noses among friends? Meanwhile, technology and belief trees are fleshed out through exploration. Finding the sea adds a research node for fishing, for example, while standing my ground against would-be bandits nudges my society further towards autocracy. Later, settling in radiation comes back to bite me in the gills as my people start giving birth to fish-human hybrids.

Even in this small window, I get the impression that Afterworld will be very dynamic between playthroughs. For starters, the societal side of the map – covering the whole of the U.S.A., with parts of Canada and Mexico – is randomized, with game director Dan Lind telling me that New York City can be a hole-in-the-ground in one playthrough, or ruled by mutant kings in another. When your society has taken root, you'll come up against Ancients – warlords who have been around since before the apocalypse happened 100 years ago – and decide whether to go up against them or fall in line, the latter letting you earn favor by working for them and following their rules.

"A lot of the dynamic playthrough comes from a lot of random actors, like the AIs and stuff, doing their thing [...] playing their own game," says Lind. "All the AIs have their own plans, right? Some may not have expansion plans, but a lot of them do. And when you have that combinatorics, a lot of agents doing a lot of stuff, and you also throw in things like beliefs and stuff that can affect each other, you get like an almost infinite soup where a lot of stuff can happen."

"And then a lot of it is creating those things, making them visible to the player, and also showing that they can become powerful," he continues. "So it's not just them like picking a different custom. It is because they picked this custom, they now become religious zealots to go on a crusade, and that's why they're coming to your town. A lot of our thinking about games is very much working backwards from cool stories that could happen, which is why I really like reading books and movies and being like, 'Okay, so this story happened in this book. How can we make this, the simulation of the game, output the story like that? What are the building blocks we would need?' And then breaking those down."

While Afterworld is unmistakably a grand strategy game (my jaw hits the floor when I zoom out and see its continental map), its depth is both accessible and in service to the game's overarching fantasy.

I'm reminded of two post-apocalyptic novels, Stephen King's The Stand and Robert R. McCammon's Swan Song, in the sense that seeing how new societies rise is fascinating. Both are influences, and Lind's face lights up when I mention Swan Song in particular – it's one of his "main inspirations" behind the game, and is featured in his introduction deck for new developers.

"It's the natural progression to grand strategy games – you scale up," says Lind on why he was drawn to that bigger-picture approach. "You're always looking for ways to affect the world outside and push your vision of what is true. And it's a great way to project what people think. You see this throughout human history – there are battles of will, battles of faith, right? So it's part of creating friction and argument. It's also a fantastic way to deliver lore."

Crucially, Afterworld is also much easier to get into than any other Paradox game I've played. I could just about manage Stellaris, but found Crusader Kings 2 and the Europa Universalis series were too menu-dense to get to grips with. Here, even just having characters and models to physically follow is a huge help. But it's tutorialized in a way that promotes discovery without being overwhelming. In similar fashion to society sim Dwarf Fortress, you're introduced to a few basic concepts at once (settling, migration, gathering) and the rest gradually unfurls as you prod in different directions – supporting your curiosity instead of smothering it.

Dwarf Fortress comes to mind because I've been playing it all month. But Afterworld also speaks to the part of my brain that snoops on every terminal email in Fallout and spends hours in Warhammer lore rabbit holes. To me, immersion comes from believability. The thought of seeing Afterworld's history being woven excites me as much as the finished tapestry – including the tribe of cannibal fish-people that would have conquered the surface, if only I had more time to teach them violence.

The 25 best strategy games to play right now

Nodusfall does not look like your typical Hoyoverse game. Distinctly lacking in bright colors and bubbly anime-style characters, it's hard to believe that this gloomy, intense PvE action game comes from the same studio behind Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. But after a brief hands-on session with the game, I'm already eager to dive back in for more.

It might not look like a Hoyoverse game, but there's one thing Nodusfall certainly does look like. Namely Elden Ring, and by extension, its co-op sibling Nightreign. This doesn't end with its reveal trailer vibes – we have a summonable Torrent-like steed who can be called with a very familiar-sounding whistle, a character who can transform into a phase two Malenia lookalike with massive, crusty wings, Estus flask-like healing potions, and bonfires to rest at.

Rest and rally

Needless to say, it's hard not to draw comparisons – 'we've got Elden Ring Nightreign at home,' my brain screams. However, while teaming up with other players to take down big bosses might evoke feelings of FromSoftware's co-op title, there's a big difference with Nodusfall: it's not nearly as hard.

This can be considered a blessing or a curse depending on where you stand on Soulslike difficulty. As a fan of the genre, I still found myself having plenty of fun taking down the three bosses in my hands-on session, including an enormous dragon and Qiongqi (a horned and winged tiger-like beast from Chinese mythology), but my victories definitely didn't come with the same level of satisfaction as they might have had they been slightly harder won. I can't recall falling in battle even once, largely thanks to what felt like an unlimited supply of heals.

To be fair, this factor may also have been helped by one of the playable characters being a dedicated healer, who I choose to play in my session. I have strong magic attacks up my sleeve, from small projectiles to ice-powered strikes and an enormous laser beam move, but my main contribution to my team comes in the form of my healing abilities. I can choose to lock onto a specific ally to unleash a steady flow of health restoration, not unlike Mercy's Caduceus staff in Overwatch, or heal multiple teammates around me at once in a smaller burst.

The specific ally lock-on heal can feel a little clunky at times – there were more than a few times where I assisted someone who definitely didn't need it because they were awkwardly stood in front of someone else who desperately needed my help.

Comparing directly to Elden Ring Nightreign, though, it's really cool to have a healer option in the first place. Again, it seems that Nodusfall doesn't come close to being as challenging as FromSoftware's Soulslikes to begin with, but having a medic role like this is no doubt going to provide a welcome option to players who aren't as comfortable with getting up close and personal on the frontlines of a brutal battle. I always tend to gravitate towards support classes in games – there's just something so satisfying about keeping your friends and allies going – so I'm pleased to be allowed that here.

I'd have been curious to try out the other playable characters to get a greater feel for Nodusfall's combat. What I experienced was fun, but my attacks felt like they were lacking weight, leaving me craving just a tad more oomph. You really can't fault the boss battles when it comes to how cinematic they are, though – my team and I tore through multiple phases in each fight, with our final battle against the Maldrake dragon evolving after the knight riding on its back dismounted their steed and began attacking us from the ground, forcing us to split our forces to take on two enemies at once.

Onward

Though my Nodusfall experience was limited to co-op PvE, Hoyoverse has clarified that PvP and PvPvE modes are also planned for the long term, and that you'll also be able to enjoy most of the core content solo. From what I played, though, it'd be a shame to do so since you'd miss out on the flashy Joint Execution moves – who doesn't want to team up to drive a massive greatsword through a beast's head?

I was also pleased to learn that, despite plans to make Nodusfall a free-to-play game, playable characters won't be locked behind a gacha system. With that said, the devs are considering monetizing cosmetics, and I can't say I'm surprised. While kitting out my healer girl with a new outfit, various accessories including a fancy, glowing cape were screaming microtransaction potential. I can't say I love that aspect, but I'd certainly much rather the monetization be incorporated here than the core gameplay.

As someone who loved Elden Ring Nightreign, I suppose it's only natural that I'd enjoy Nodusfall. Its vibe is very similar, but I'm very curious to see where Hoyoverse takes it from here. The concept of an easier, more accessible co-op action game like Nightreign is bound to be appealing to many, and could be a bridge for those who find FromSoftware's games a bit too difficult. Regardless, there's something in here that's got me craving more – but for now, I guess I've literally got Nightreign at home.

Nodusfall isn't a gacha game, Mihoyo confirms, because unlike Genshin Impact you'll unlock characters "through continued play" instead

Last week, Gamescom Opening Night Live 2026 provided us with our first look at both The Witcher 3 Remastered and CD Projekt Red's new expansion for the RPG, Songs of the Past.

The expansion marks the return of Geralt's voice actor, Doug Cockle, who is taking on the role of the game's silver-haired protagonist once more… a role he's now been familiar with for over 20 years, since the original Witcher game.

How does Cockle feel stepping back into Geralt's boots for Songs of the Past, though? Well, he tells GamesRadar+ at Gamescom 2026.

"It's always a thrill to step back into Geralt's shoes," Cockle admits. "He is a character I know very, very well, so it's always a pleasure to revisit him, and it has been for Songs of the Past as well."

It's comforting, too, as per the actor's words – sort of like… taking a hot bath at the end of a tough day, apparently? "I always describe it as like slipping into a warm bath," as Cockle puts it. "It's just very comfortable, very easy."

Acting is "still work," however, as he goes on to say – "but it's work that is very comfortable for me to to move back into, and it's always a pleasure." That makes sense.
After all, "I've been voicing Geralt since 2006, I think it is," Cockle recalls, "so over 20 years now, and as long as CDPR keeps asking me to come back…" he will. Yes, even if he's "like 80 years old," he'd still be willing to voice the beloved witcher.

John Schwab, voice of Dandelion, largely feels the same. He tells GamesRadar+ that he "got more excitement stepping into the booth because I was returning to the character."

So The Witcher RPG series is one its actors are not only comfy with at this point (and then some), but also one that they genuinely enjoy being a part of. As a fan myself, as much is made obvious by their observable talent.

Nobody was more surprised by The Witcher 3 Songs of the Past than Geralt and Dandelion's actors: "They announced the expansion pack before we knew what we were doing."

The Turtle Beach Kevin the Cube controller is a pretty, purple sight to behold. The Switch 2 accessory was unveiled during last week's Gamescom celebrations and is inspired by the aforementioned glowing purple cube that has remained part of Fortnite's wider (and very confusing) lore since Season 5.

Much like its namesake, the $69.99 Rematch controller has a stunning purple exterior which is coated in runes. However, while Kevin's runes sent the terrain of Fortnite's map into flux, the ones across the controller remain stationary until you pick up the pad. Using it reveals a rainbow spread of hieroglyphic-like text, and there are four lighting effects in total to play around with.

I've just got back into Fortnite, and this is the exact kind of controller I'd love to have at my disposal while trying to claim my way to victory on the Switch 2. Turtle Beach must've known, as they've generously chosen to throw in a Capoeira emote with every pad, which can be claimed when it launches on October 8 later this year.

I know not everyone is a fan of the often garish look of RGB lighting, but Turtle Beach has a good track record.

I currently have the Turtle Beach Rematch Mario and Luigi gamepad, which is part of the same line and one of the best Nintendo Switch 2 controllers I've laid my eyes on. At first I was worried the dynamic lighting effect would look tacky, but witnessing the dazzling effect of Mario series power-ups shining through the plastic chassis was super impressive in person.

The Switch 2 controller is one of the rare Ninty accessories to receive a "woah" reaction from my friends, and I feel almost certain that this Fortnite release would elicit the same enthusiastic response. By default, the purple colorway and the matching buttons spread across this pad look fantastic, and glowing rainbow runes would only make that better. Not to mention the RGB Rematch lighting effect on the brand's Rosalina controller literally flows across the pad, and that'd lend itself to this Kevin the Cube design.

I'd be remiss to not mention that the Turtle Beach Rematch line-up is also pretty grand, RGB lighting or not. While you're missing the premium features of the Switch 2 Pro controller, from NFC-reading tech to HD rumble, it feels fantastic in the hands. You've also got stick-defying TMR thumbsticks to take advantage of, mappable back buttons, and an impressive 40-hour battery that's left me rarely having to charge the Mario and Luigi version I have sitting amongst my controller collection.

If you do happen to want something a bit more premium, the brand's Victrix Pro BFG Reloaded Fortnite Drift controller was also being shown off at the Gamescom floor.

• View all Turtle Beach Nintendo Switch 2 controllers at Amazon

Check out our guides to the best PC controllers for gaming, the best PS5 controllers, and the best Xbox Series X controllers while you're here.

St Amelia is where dreams go to die. Not unlike many other British towns, I think. I can tell as much as soon as I wash up on the shores of Silent Hill Townfall's Scottish-coded (though never stated outright) island, where fog sinks into the spaces between each cobblestone. I've lived in the UK full-time for about four years now, so there are many jokes to be made about feeling right at home in its dreary gloom (I'll save those for another time). But even if the setting's subtle iconographic accuracy is lost on those less familiar with Great British environs, it's the perfect canvas for a Silent Hill game.

The first thing that strikes me about Silent Hill Townfall is how deserted it is. That, and how choppy the animations get when you climb or descend stairs. You've got smudgy grey fog. You've got empty streets with lights still flickering in vacant apartments, as if the town's inhabitants vanished on the spot mere moments ago. You've got an amnesiac protagonist wearing a hospital bracelet. Let's go, am I right?

Pacing through the town center from a first-person perspective – a series-first for a mainline game, as seen in PS5 freebie Silent Hill: The Short Message – I expect some sort of glimpse of an enemy. An early warning that I'm not as alone as I feel, just like in Silent Hill 2.

But even after getting curiously turned around while picking through St Amelia's detritus, I don't come across a single bad guy. This wouldn't be a problem if the rest of my hands-on demo session had more to show for itself than 70 minutes of walking and cutscenes, always keeping me at arm's length as I experimentally press against its edges, getting little in return

These dark times

Don't get me wrong. Silent Hill Townfall is a gorgeously rendered nightmare. Developer Screen Burn has clearly put a lot of love for its Scottish roots into this place, which is as immersive and spooky as you'd expect from one of the best horror game franchises that built its name specifically off creating oppressive vibes from the get-go. But I feel more like a ghost haunting the streets than a character inhabiting the world, because there's very little to actually interact with.

I spend most of my session inspecting things. Leaflets on the ground, hand-scrawled notes left in the local doctor's window. Information boards at viewpoints dotted along the boardwalk, looking out upon the murky waters encircling St Amelia.

By the time I reach the telephone box – ringing, of course, with no one on the other end when I go to pick it up – I feel like a local historian. One who fails to clock that I have to type in a specific number, listed on the short telephone directory as "save yourself", in order to save my game and trigger a cutscene. So I instead go back out into St Amelia to see if I missed anything. Spoiler alert: I have not missed a single thing, and lose another 10 minutes retracing my steps.

The above is entirely my fault, but it does mean that after being rescued from my predicament by a fellow demo player, the frustration gets compounded by having to sit through a lengthy cinematic that teleports me to a brand new location: a hotel room.

Here is where the radio mechanics and minigames come into play. For all the distance I feel is being put between myself and the game world, Screen Burn incorporates analog technologies in a beautifully on-theme way, tying back to Townfall's setting in the mid-'90s. I have to tune my device to individual frequencies, picking up either echoes of the past (or present? Who knows) that give me hints to solve puzzles or the staticky outlines of nearby enemies projected on the palm-sized screen.

Except I don't actually see any before my eyes. Delaying the moment we first lay eyes on a monster is a clever way to build up tension in any horror game or film – fear of the unknown, the unseen – and suggest the ephemeral manifestation of the character's guilt and trauma. But by this point in my hands-on demo, I am desperate for something a bit faster paced. I've just spent ages wandering barren streets only to be met with the winding basement of an abandoned hotel. Enemies seem so far away that I couldn't stumble into one if I tried.

Silent Hill Townfall has the makings of a brooding horror game. It just fails to communicate that in a vertical slice demo by virtue of its slow-build horrors being so excruciatingly slow. Here's hoping that I'm able to get a bit more absorbed in it from the comfort of my own home than I was on the bustling show floor of Gamescom 2026.

Konami wants Silent Hill to have "an annual release of new games," and it's already working on "many" unannounced projects

The second Lego Skylines was announced, I could hear it. That click-clack of speed-building Lego sets has become synonymous with cozy joy for kids and grown-ups alike, particularly on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Lego Skylines takes the kind of setup you see in the dad's basement in The Lego Movie and takes it city-wide, putting industrial-scale creation in your hands for a fraction of the cost (and floor space).

However, just because it's a Lego game doesn't mean it's a city builder for kids. I've just spent 3-4 hours with a playable preview build of the game, and this is still as complex and multi-faceted as either of the Cities: Skylines games, but with some delightful Lego tweaks that make this a seriously fascinating game. Created by Iceflake Studios – the same team that's now running Cities: Skylines 2 – it's what you'd hope, of course, but I'm already mentally planning out my cities, and we don't even have a release date yet.

Brick by click

My preview build is split into two parts. The first is a tutorial area of sorts, which I'm told is inspired by the start of the game but made specifically for this preview. It's delightfully small-scale, starting with a single family asking for help turning a pretty much abandoned island into a rural village. My first task is to place a house, and I'm immediately given a choice of what kind of style I want it to have. This isn't a brick-by-brick creator – you're not going to be building everything from scratch here with different blocks – but there are some elements that are more modular, meaning you feel a lot more in control of the wider aesthetics than you do with other city builders.

Once I've placed the house, the dad asks for some yard modifications, and I'm zoomed into an editor that's reminiscent of build/buy mode in The Sims. I can remove picket fences and carrot patches to make way for a patio table and BBQ if I so wish; tweak bush and flower arrangements to my liking. Despite being a 'city' builder, Lego Skylines is already very good at making things feel a lot more personal. The little people – or minifigs – of Lego Skylines feel important and individual, but so does where they live on a very micro level, and that's reflected in the personal missions they'll send you on too. Even just in this preview build I found myself creating a cabin in the woods for one soul looking for solitude, while also making sure there were enough flowers in town for another.

Zooming out slightly from an individual plot, each household has a preference for the kinds of decorations they'd like placed nearby. Different flowers or natural foliage might tick off requests for 'natural' vibes, but the playful theme lets you dabble in different playpark equipment, and cozy coded items bring more rural, farmyard elements to the fore. It allows you to quickly bring in visual variation and personality without hand-placing every petal. But of course there's tonnes of Lego whimsy in there too, so just discovering what's new with every unlock becomes another little moment of glee in this game.

That customization extends to the city buildings too, with modules that you can add onto facilities like farms or universities, all the way to the sewage works. These add-ons give them upgrades and perks, but also a little visual va-va-voom, because even poop deserves a little customization love in a Lego game.

Still a city, just with more bricks

Of course, that zooming out continues all the way to the city's infrastructure. The Skylines part of the game's title is alive and kicking, with plenty of high-level management required to keep things clicking along. From the utilities like water and power, to emergency services and education, constantly striving for the perfect balance is still a quest for your role as Master Builder. But the focus on leisure and beauty is bigger than it's ever been in Cities: Skylines, and there's a particular joy scrolling around the late-game city I'm also given access to and seeing Lego people flipping tricks at the skate park or playing tennis.

It's these varying levels of involvement that make Lego Skylines an interesting hybrid for city builder fans. It's about watching Lego come to life, literally hearing those clicks as the steamroller that unfurls the roads you've just mapped out or the cars clacking from bricks to vehicles as your minifigs go about their days. People matter, their homes matter, and ensuring individuals are satisfied is the core gameplay loop – it's not just about building a city that works well. Taking time to make things look and feel as good as they run is what is going to make Lego Skylines distinct – not to mention the potential for cross-collaborations and ever-growing new items to unlock. Lego Skylines is already exactly what I hoped it would play like, so I just can't wait to see more.

Lego Skylines is coming to PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, and Switch 2 at some point in the future. There's currently no confirmed release date or release window.

While we wait, let's click back into the best Lego games of all time

Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis has an unenviable task before it. Reimagining a 30-year-old game for a modern audience is no mean feat, but in a genre that has moved on so far and with a heroine who has become such an icon, the line that must be threaded between the new and the old is a veritable tightrope. Too far one way and you'll recreate a now-outdated experience in too much veracity to warrant its existence. Too far the other way and you risk excising what made Tomb Raider interesting, lumping it in with modern genre tropes that don't suit a remake like this.

For now, Crystal Dynamics seems to be treading that line. My hands-off demo shows off the Damocles Trial from the game's second level, so named for the giant swords hanging from the ceiling that threaten to skewer Lara should she linger too long on the wrong floor tile. For game director Raul Siquera, the goal is to show "how much we've preserved from the original, and the little things we did to make it special" in a modern overhaul.

Familiar tombs

"It was really important for us, from a level design perspective, to preserve what was in the original game, but find ways to enhance it for a modern audience," Siquera explains. "You should recognize the places that you know," he says, or if you're like me and are too young to remember the original games, you should still be "delighted by the grandeur" of the levels.

Those modern enhancements present themselves almost immediately. Stepping into the trial, Lara is set upon by a horde of bats, reimagined to move around in a more unpredictable, swarm-like manner than in the original game. She takes a few scratches before shooting down enough that the rest of the swarm disbands, but thankfully she's collected enough resources from around the level to create a healing balm. The presence of a crafting system might seem like an overly-modern touch, but Siquera explains it's part of an attempt to dispel the anachronism inherent in the older Tomb Raider games – finding a medbag in a temple supposedly untouched by modern civilization isn't always great for immersion.

Past the bats, Lara's day continues to get worse, a snarling leopard dropping down into the next room. This iconic Tomb Raider threat is far smarter than before; in the ensuing fight, it uses geometry to block Lara's line of sight; crawls away through cracks in the rock when it's taken too much punishment, and then attacks from behind when you let your guard slip. "You're not supposed to stay still," Siquera says. Combat is fast and fluid, but a time-slowing Focus gauge allows for a moment of relative calm in the midst of some frantic fights, even as Lara's acrobatic 'dodge-cartwheels' make her a particularly flamboyant target.

It's beyond the leopard, as Lara enters the arena at the heart of the Damocles Trial, that Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis is forced to diverge further from the 1996 original. The core theme remains intact, but the intervening decades have transformed players' expectations. The puzzles maintain the ideas that shaped classic Croft, but they're grander in scope, Damocles' enormous stone swords crashing to earth with a deafening clash from the distant heights of the temple's ceiling if Lara puts a foot wrong.

But this version of Tomb Raider doesn't only have to capture the scale and artistry of a modern game – it also has to offer something to players who didn't cut their teeth in the days of 1996's game design. Lara's explanative dialogue is one example of Legacy of Atlantis' desire to guide players through its puzzles, as are the markings on the wall that gently outline the intended parkour route.

Neither of these are too invasive, but the addition of a new Scanner tool, which Lara can use to outline the moving parts of the puzzle she's contemplating, is a much more powerful tool. It's a bit much for a modern game, fully anachronistic in one that's supposed to be keeping half its gaze so firmly in the past. But, Siquera explains his team saw this coming – the Scanner is totally optional, and its tutorial will make clear that it can also be used to offer new lore insights. It's a smart compromise, but a strong example of just how difficult Legacy of Atlantis' task of balancing the old and the new is going to be.

As someone who doesn't have the nostalgia for the original game – I came to the series with Tomb Raider Legend on PSP, a full decade later – I think Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis is treading its difficult tightrope relatively well. It's clear the team understands the delicacy of its task, and there's an obvious desire to offer a version of this game that can speak in the same breath to those returning after three decades and those who've adopted the rhythms of a new era of action games.

From the small amount we've seen so far, it seems to be working – purists will likely find themselves disappointed by the modern touches, but those are largely optional, and subtle enough not to derail the original experience. As the start of a new era for Tomb Raider, Legacy of Atlantis' task was never going to be easy, but it seems to be stepping up to the mark.

Want to explore more of Lara Croft's legacy? Our best Tomb Raider games ranking will guide you towards your next adventure!

There's a moment within many survival horror games where the player goes from terrorized to terrorizer. From 2019's Resident Evil 2 to last year's Silent Hill f, the process of prey becoming predator is a satisfying transition that refreshes the gameplay experience and improves replayability. Cronos: Lazarus is a DLC seemingly built upon this premise, and the result is an action-focused experience that I'm desperate to dive back into.

Cronos: The New Dawn – Bloober Team's time-bending sci-fi scarefest – puts you in the role of the Traveler, as you explore a desolate Poland, investigating an apocalyptic event, intermittently traveling back to the 1980s to rescue select individuals. As you carve your path, you encounter Orphans, body-horror entities that were once people but now resemble something out of Dead Space.

Stand your ground

Cronos: The New Dawn's base game asks you to think about when to pull the trigger, as ammo is precious and foes are capable of swallowing bullets like a blue whale with a magnet in its ass, meaning the Traveler is a protagonist that's meant to survive the survival horror. Cronos: Lazarus focuses on the second word in the genre name, putting you in the role of the Warden and their delicious arsenal of firearms.

Playing as the Warden at Gamescom 2026, I spend much of my time in a behind-closed-doors build of the Lazarus exploring worn-out halls in the style of the original. Dark corners intimidate while twisted cadavers remind me of the vicious abominations that could catch me off guard at a moment's notice, if I wasn't aware what I'm up against. After all, I'm no stranger to the world of Cronos, so I fancy myself to handle what lies ahead.

So imagine my surprise when Cronos: Lazarus throws gangs of enemies at me all at once. As vile as they are voluminous, I unleash shotgun rounds and handgun pistols with speed and precision, determined to pulverize any and everything that dare charge towards me. It's at this point I forget to incinerate the fallen, with corpses on the ground merging with those that remain in motion to form wretched chimeras. However that doesn't save them from my firepower as I hold my nerve, stand and shoot, albeit the stress of them requiring more ammunition to disintegrate being a lot.

A developer then switches my build over to the demo available to the public at this year's Gamescom, and the momentum only increases from here. Once again playing as the Warden, I pull out my handgun and set about exploring a different but equally depressing area of cataclysm-stricken Poland. Once again I'm outnumbered by grotesque entities, but I'm moving through the crowds and dropping them like they're the opposite of frozen.

It's at this point I'm formally introduced to two of the Warden's abilities: Decoy and Teleport. The former allows me to throw out a holographic replica of the protagonist, distracting enemies while I run by or surprise them with gunshots (I prefer the latter). For larger enemies, this strategy is borderline vital, as they can make up the distance between us quickly no matter how much I keep moving away.

Teleport is less relevant to the combat encounters in this demo, presented as a means to cross gaps when the path is missing or obstructed. It's easy to use at the drop of a hat, so I can imagine there'll be encounters that benefit from its use, but the demo is short and there's only one serious challenge which comes at the very end.

An enormous Orphan, roughly twice the Warden's height, spews acid and runs at me while I spend every bit of ammo in their dome. I begin to wonder if I've misread the situation, as there are no signs of my lead's lethal intent registering. I take a firm strike and go on the run, zig-zagging my way around a relatively tight area.

Nothing presents itself as a better course of action than simply shooting this behemoth more, so that's what I do, sending every shotgun shell I have to get acquainted with its body. Torso, head, anything within range is pelted as the thing finally starts to stagger and wail. With only two shells left, the boss keels over, and the demo ends with a teaser trailer for the DLC, which is yet to have an official release date, but should arrive in 2026.

Cronos: The New Dawn won me over with its ability to induce fear, but Lazaus appeals to the primal, violent-loving side of my horror-soaked brain. Teeming with enemies all begging to be blown away by satisfying weaponry, the Warden is exactly the character I want to play as next in this terrifying world.

Make like Lazarus and rise again for your next scary adventure with our best survival horror games recommendations!

Upcoming action game Tides of Annihilation hit an unfortunate road bump in July, when it was revealed Baldur's Gate 3 and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 actor Jennifer English had to abdicate the lead role due to her health. Resident Evil Requiem star Angela Sant'Albano is now voicing Gwendolyn, but studio Eclipse Glow Games wasn't looking for the same kind of performance from the newer performer.

"We believe both of them have their own unique style, and we respect and we appreciate their different styles," Ary Chen, the game's director and co-CEO of the studio, told GamesRadar+ at Gamescom 2026 via an interpreter. "And we think their communication is more about understanding or their interpretation of [the] protagonist."

Indeed, English has remained involved in Tides of Annihilation as an advisor. She was announced for the project back in early 2025, meaning she spent quite a bit of time molding Gwendolyn before having to step back.

This makes her perfect for guiding and assisting Sant'Albano into the game and what the hero requires. "We think their communication will also help Angela better understand or have her understanding of the protagonist," Chen adds.

Of course, English is a prolific voice actor, rising to prominence via Shadowheart in Baldur's Gate 3 but whose credits include Elden Ring and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. There's no replacing the experience and approach she'd bring. The best thing to do is let Sant'Albano, who most recently leant her voice to Grace in Resident Evil Requiem, do her thing.

We're still without a launch window, and given the casting changeover, it might be a while before we get one. Hopefully this is the last big hiccup, and the team can get on with making the best game possible.

Tides of Annihilation devs are "continuously monitoring new developments" in AI technology, but will be using the techniques they "are the best at" in development instead.

Much has been said about Persona 4 Revival's faithfulness to the beloved original JRPG from 2008, including its themes which some would say are more relevant than ever, but this isn't just a new coat of paint. For instance, the entire English voice cast has been replaced because Atlus struggled to wrangle the original crew, and now we're learning that some of the OG dialogue has been re-written to be clearer and more modern.

"When we looked back at older scripts that we wrote for older games, we realized that there's some places that we could have improved on the original, like 'oh we didn't phrase this so it's clear enough," Persona series producer Kazuhisa Wada, speaking through a translator, tells GamesRadar+ during Gamescom 2026. "There's information that we assumed people would be able to pick up on, but they didn't."

Honestly, just about anything released in 2008, whether it's a game or movie or TV show or hit song, should probably be examined and re-touched before being re-released in 2026. A lot has changed socially and culturally in those 18 years, so I'm not surprised to hear some conversations had to be tweaked for Persona 4 Revival. Still, Wada insists the essence of the conversations and characters involved remain untouched.

"Most of the changes that we made have been adjusting that to fill in those things that we'd always wanted to say, to get the point across in a more efficient and effective manner," he says. "So because of that, we have changed the way some characters have phrased some conversations. But the conversation itself is all the same. The characters are all the same people. We haven't changed any parts of their personalities. We've adjusted dialogue to make it more modern and to be more effective telling the story."

One thing that unfortunately won't be changing in Persona 4 Revival is the lack of gay romance options. Specifically, Wada told us he's aware of the calls for a romanceable Yosuke, but confirmed that has not been added because it would mean all of the other male characters would have to be romanceable too.

"I think we have to do" Persona 1 and 2 Remakes, says Persona 4 Revival producer

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation director Naoki Hamaguchi knows exactly what you were thinking as you played the existing two installments of the remake trilogy: get this robot pee pee pants Chadley off my screen now and forever, I banish thee. But you're going to have to try to adopt a more positive mindset. The unhelpful assistant humanoid Chadley is returning for Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, due in 2027, and Hamaguchi teases that the golden-haired nuisance might be more critical to your story than ever before.

"I am very much aware of the reaction some fans in the community had to Chadley," Hamaguchi says to IGN through an interpreter at Gamescom 2026. So far, the gnat with a baby face hasn't proved himself as "a particularly important character to the story," Hamaguchi continues. "I am very much aware of that opinion." But it sounds like Final Fantasy 7 Revelation will try to change it.

"In the previous game, in Rebirth, [Chadley's] role is such [that he was] kind of a guide, a tutorial, to lead people into all of the side content," Hamaguchi explains, "but his role has actually changed for Revelation." The conclusion to the Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy will apparently contain "some scenes where he plays a very integral part, a strong role, in the main story itself."

Does this mean Chadley will finally learn how to read a room? The character was introduced for the first Final Fantasy 7 Remake part in 2020, simply because, Hamaguchi said at the time, "We wanted to include content in which [combat upgrades and modifier] materia could be obtained through mission rewards in parallel with the main story progression; considering lore, we came up with a role that would make him a researcher working for Shinra." As such, Chadley seemingly never had a reason to be pleasant to be around, and both he and Final Fantasy 7 trilogy players suffered for it.

Most recently, the lonely dweeb created an entire AI female version of himself, Mai, to increase his opportunities to talk to you. But though he created her, Mai hardly showed Chadley respect. That's no way for Chadley to live, and it's an unfortunate domestic scene for you to witness as an objective third party. What a miserable Chadley existence.

Anyway, Final Fantasy 7 Revelation will be the guy's last chance to act natural… or possibly even supernatural.

"I can't tell you right now whether he does become more powerful than Sephiroth or not," Hamaguchi says to IGN's joking question on the topic, "but you're going to have to see in the game. And I hope you look forward to finding out." OK, I won't.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation includes more spin-off characters, Naoki Hamaguchi says, and devs "thought really hard" about including more compilation references for the trilogy's finale.

There was a peculiar vibe throughout Gamescom 2026's Opening Night Live showcase, pronounced by the fact that its biggest reveal, the dramatic climax of the whole event, was an update for an 11-year-old game. The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past, DLC taking place after the events of the original game and the Blood and Wine expansion, was announced back in May but we got our first proper look at it during this year's Gamescom, and if you felt like it was the highlight of the show, some newly revealed Steam data backs that up.

Rhys Elliott, head of market analysis at Alinea Analytics, shared the top winners from Gamescom 2026 by Steam wishlists on Twitter, and The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past took the top spot by a pretty large margin. The DLC gained an estimated 451,000 wishlists between August 23, two days before Opening Night Live, and the end of the event on August 30.

The hype around The Witcher series is amplified by several major developments, including the DLC and the recently announced Witcher 3 remaster, and headlined by the upcoming sequel, The Witcher 4, which is "targeting" a 2028 release.

Warlock was another big hitter during the event and takes second place in Elliott's ranking with an estimated increase in Steam wishlists of 379,000. The next big D&D game to come after Baldur's Gate 3 showed off almost 10 minutes of gameplay, exploring a gritty RPG world and cast led by none other than Maggie Robertson, who you'll remember as Oren the Red in Baldur's Gate 3 and Lady Dimitrescu in Resident Evil Village.

Coming in at third place is the very anime open-world RPG Ananta, which gained an estimated 302,000 Steam wishlists during Gamescom week. The free-to-play game, which can reasonably be likened to an anime take on GTA, got a January 2027 release date during the show, and a new trailer showed off high-speed vehicle chases and vehicular combat as well as what appears to be some sort of flying mechanic. Frankly, it was a lot to take in even in the context of anime-inspired GTA-like games, which is already a wild concept.

The rest of the list, in order of most-to-least Steam wishlists gained during the event, includes Lego: Skylines (273,000), Heroes of Might and Magic 3 (189,000), Wardogs (146,000), Afterworld (121,000), Metro 2039 (110,000), and The Blood of Dawnwalker (108,000), which just launched to pretty great reviews.

The Witcher 3 Remastered won't scrap saves or achievements from the OG RPG as CD Projekt Red confirms it'll all carry over.

My half hour with Alien Isolation 2 wasn't supposed to end like this. I've spent the last few minutes crouch-walking through a wrecked spaceship. It's dark in here – too dark to see more than an arm's length ahead. A storm buffets the vessel, the yawning groan of metal sheets slowly being pulled from the ship's carcass by strong winds – or straining beneath heavy, unnatural footsteps – setting my teeth on edge. Electrical sparks land in pools of stagnant water. Nearby, a control panel flickers weakly, just long enough for me to spy a slippery onyx-black tail slither out of the room just behind it.

My mission is to reroute the ship's power while avoiding a sinister presence stalking my every move. Sensing an opportunity, I make a break for a newly-unlocked door and promptly get a tail between the ribs. The music stops – wait, there was music too? – as my character gurgles a surprised gasp, staring down at the barbed and bloodied thing that's erupted from her chest. She falls to the ground. Blackout. Game over.

It's a shocking moment, pulled off with the kind of cinematic flair I've only seen in the original Alien Isolation. With a dangerous outdoor environment as well as the nerve-shredding sci-fi interiors we all know and fear, developer Creative Assembly is widening the playing field while bringing back some of its favorite toys for Alien Isolation 2. Including, apparently, all the colourful ways you can die at the many pointy ends of a xenomorph.

I hate the great outdoors

I was wondering how Alien Isolation, a series known for heaping near-constant pressure upon the player as you're pursued through the winding metal interiors of a contained spaceship, might fare in open terrain come the sequel. I needn't have worried – the upcoming horror game doesn't have a release date yet, but it's already an expert at making open spaces feel suffocating.

As soon as I land on the alien planet, the sensory onslaught is brutal. Rain roars down in heavy, angry sheets as protagonist Blake and her crewmates emerge from their pod to find a wild world determined to wash them away. It's disorienting, to say the least, but the game makes its point known: you might be able to flee to the great outdoors in Alien Isolation 2, but don't expect a walk in the park.

Every element has been cleverly placed to amp up the feeling of overwhelm, but special props go to Creative Assembly's sound designers and engineers. From foraging for abandoned flare guns left by the unfortunate crash-landers before us to following sparks in the rain-soaked gloom, trudging across rocky terrain only to find more rocks and burning foliage around the wreck site – I've never been more thankful or more terrified to enter a xenomorph's domain if it means escaping the assault on my senses.

It's tight, linear, and incredibly effective, telegraphing the cinematic underpinnings of the Alien IP itself. The only aspect that pulls me out of the immersion is how one of Blake's co-workers is ever so slightly overanimated compared to his colleagues, gesticulating with wild abandon as if larger movements will make me hear him better.

By the time we reach the wrecked spaceship, I'm grateful. Picking through techie detritus on a hunt for electrical parts with which to repair a nearby fusebox is positively meditative in comparison to weathering the storm outside. Powering up the generators to open a sealed inner chamber will definitely lead me straight to the survivors who definitely survived the crash and who haven't been offed by some other entity, after all. Instead, it all goes to hell.

The horror icon makes its entrance in a manner befitting its caliber: with broken glass, gnashing teeth, and fear in its wake. Blake's breathing immediately goes shaky, and paired with the first-person perspective, evokes hints of Resident Evil Requiem's Grace Ashcroft. Tense, I wait for a moment to step out from my hiding place beneath a desk, picking up bottles with which to distract the enemy and an assortment of items I hope might come in useful – if I survive long enough to use them.

I try three times to escape the xenomorph before my time with Alien Isolation 2 runs out, and fail all of them. I really messed up by trying to make a run for it, I'm told in an interview after the fact.

The game's lethal pursuer is every bit as clever as it was in the first game, always listening to your echoing footsteps somewhere in the darkness. Its AI pathing is even more attuned this time around, too, and the xenomorph will pay special attention to patterns in your movements, behavior, and strategies. Counter it one way, and it'll be ready to Uno-reverse it later on, for example. Rain might make it easy to hide, but robs you from hearing it coming at all. Hiding inside the ship might feel safer for a time, but there are only so many places to hide in a shredded tin can. Whether inside or out, it is hellbent on hunting you down.

I love it. I am terrified of it. I cannot wait to play Alien Isolation 2. I only hope the devs were sincere in telling me they don't want to give anyone a heart attack – even if they're more than happy to bring us dangerously close for a while.

12 years later, Alien Isolation 2 leads want better tech and more space to sear the horror sequel into your memory