Blizzard Entertainment just revealed a brand new StarCraft game. It isn't a sequel to 2010's StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty, nor is it a real-time strategy game – this is a story-driven shooter set in an open world, taking place some 70 years after the StarCraft 2 campaign.

StarCraft was revealed at BlizzCon 2026 with an exceptionally pretty cinematic trailer. We've pulled everything you need to know about the new game into one place, including the first cinematic and screenshots. So keep on reading to get yourself up-to-speed on this impressive, long-awaited new instalment to the StarCraft universe.

StarCraft release date and platforms remain undefined

Blizzard Entertainment has announced that the next iteration of the StarCraft franchise is going to launch in 2030. The studio stopped short of announcing any further details about the StarCraft release date, nor did it confirm any platforms. At this stage, expect that StarCraft will come to PC and Xbox at the very least, although it's unclear if it will come to PlayStation – the Xbox Reset has introduced a return to console exclusivity, so we'll have to wait for more detail on this one.

StarCraft reveal trailer

The return of StarCraft made its debut at BlizzCon 2026. The cinematic trailer didn't display any gameplay, but it was a good mood piece that was designed to give you a feel for the world and story. Naturally, StarCraft was given a stunning cinematic trailer reveal, which you'll find embedded above.

StarCraft screenshots

Along with the StarCraft reveal trailer, Blizzard Entertainment also released a small handful of screenshots pulled from the cinematic. You'll find those in the gallery above, so feel free to swipe through them all if you want to get a better feel for the gritty StarCraft aesthetic.

StarCraft gameplay

There's a lot we still need to learn about the new StarCraft game. Here's what we can tell you about it so far: StarCraft is a brand-new, AAA game set in the wider StarCraft universe. It's not a real-time strategy title – the genre the series is known for playing in – but is rather an open-world experience. Specifically, it's a story-driven, open-world shooter, with production led by Dan Hay (creative director of Far Cry 5).

StarCraft story and setting

StarCraft is a sci-fi shooter that's set decades after the events of StarCraft 2. Blizzard Entertainment has confirmed that the game will take place in a "living universe" – specifically, it'll be set in the Koprulu Sector, some 70 years after StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void. The Koprulu Sector is probably better known as a sector colonized by the Terran and Protoss factions, situated on the galactic fringe of the Milky Way.

The StarCraft reveal trailer suggests that we'll be joining up to battle a resurgent Swarm, and that the battles will be particularly brutal for the Dominion faction fighting to reclaim a foothold in the Koprulu Sector. Blizzard promises that we'll learn more in the years to come.

StarCraft development

StarCraft is in development at Blizzard Entertainment. This is the first new StarCraft game in over 15 years, with StarCraft 2 landing way back in 2010. The project is being led by Dan Hay, who previously served as creative director of Far Cry 5 and executive producer of the franchise.

This isn't the first time that Blizzard has tried to bring a third-person shooter in the StarCraft universe to life. Back in 2002 we almost received StarCraft: Ghost, which Blizzard had hoped to help it push into the console gaming space, although the game was canceled after multiple failed iterations. It's rumored that another StarCraft shooter, codenamed Ares, was canceled in 2019 so that the publisher could put all of its resources towards Diablo 4 and Overwatch.

The StarCraft development team is packed with Blizzard veterans, including:

• Jeff Chamberlain – Creative Director, Story and Franchise Development
• Steven Chen – VP, Blizzard Animation
• Dan Hay – General Manager and Creative Director
• Paul Lee – Senior Game Producer
• Jens Sjöbergh – Senior Creative Director
• Benjamin Lee – Game Director
• Ben Dai – Senior Cinematic Director
• AnaLee Haertling – Associate Manager, Development Operations
• Jamie Wood – Art Director
• Jeff Guy – Production Director

Discover everything else that was announced at BlizzCon 2026.

I did not mean to kill Xanthe in The Blood of Dawnwalker. At least, not yet. As a fledging Level 11 or 12 vampire trying to explore Svartrau Cathedral at night, stumbling right into the withered palms of the game's highest-difficulty boss fight seemed like suicide. Yet it turned out to be the smartest move I've made so far in the RPG.

Killing Knyaz Brencis' formidable lieutenants, known as boyars (or boyaresses, in Xanthe's case) is a fundamental part of the action loop. Usually you'd need to anger them first by disrupting their duties in their respective parts of the map. Xanthe seems to be the exception to the rule; despite holding dominion over the most challenging portion of the open world, you can and should ambush her early in Coen's 30-day push to dismantle the vrakhiri claim to Vale Sangora and rescue his family. Especially if you, too, want an early unlock for the most overpowered and best Blood of Dawnwalker perk in the whole RPG: Blood Surge.

Penitent one

Blood Surge is no joke – it's a favorite of our Games Editor in his Blood of Dawnwalker review, if you won't take my word alone for it. Ironically, the sheer might of Xanthe's personal perk – which can only be unlocked by defeating her in combat and drinking her blood – is what makes her so formidable when the tables are turned.

Capable of exploding a lower-level enemy in one shot, it's the kind of power Coen can only dream of at Level 11 – and one she can use to pop a Coen like a blood bag when challenged as part of The Court side-quest to take out vampiric ruler Brencis' supernatural allies.

It's also something I know nothing about when, during a quest called A Monk and a Saint, I make her acquaintance by falling off some scaffolding. I'm here to investigate the murals inside Svartrau Cathedral on the hunt for a powerful sword, expecting a slice of Sherlockian vampire detective work rather than a claws-out brawl. Even Coen himself whispers that he'd best stick to high ground, inspect the artwork from a distance, and avoid the boyaress below. That's precisely what I intend to do, assuming an encounter this early on would mean instant death, or that Coen would even take control away from me and refuse to enter her sight.

But, The Blood of Dawnwalker isn't the kind of game to say 'no'. I find that out through sheer clumsiness – I have never been the most dextrous of gamers, so while aiming my vampiric shadowstep ability to teleport across the cathedral scaffolding, I overshoot my target by a hair's breadth and watch in dismay as Coen falls right into Xanthe's path.

A short cutscene plays out – my first time actually hearing the wizened crone speak – in which Xanthe dismisses the puny, insignificant Coen as not being worth her time. She's not wrong; I have barely any notoriety at this point and have been foregoing a lot of side quests in favor of seeking out ways to weaken Brecis (see again: big scary sword quest). The cutscene flows into combat and I immediately regret everything.

But there's one thing on my side. My favorite thing about The Blood of Dawnwalker's combat, specifically the direction block mechanic, is how much it reminds me of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. That game, too, is all about timing, and despite being two very different action-RPGs, they have one thing in common: If you can parry it, you can defeat it.

If there's no such thing as being too under-leveled in Clair Obscur as long as you reflexes permit, the same applies to Dawnwalker. I've seen people defeat Brencis in the prologue, for goodness' sake, all off the back of being able to block each hit and counterattack opportunistically. I remind myself of this when I pause and hover over the "load game" button. If Coen can beat Brencis on day zero, why can't I defeat Xanthe early into my quest?

Parry it!

It is not an easy battle. Fending off her Blood Guard entourage is simple enough, providing me with ample health top-ups as I sup on their blood between claw strikes. Once the room is cleared of lackeys, though, the undead priestess descends like a fearsome nightmare and the fun really starts.

Xanthe is the first lieutenant I have fought at this point, and I don't know what to expect. Short of blocking attacks and getting the odd swipe in here and there, I rely primarily upon my swordsman abilities like Artery Strike after swapping from claws to a blade and throwing muck in her face with Dirty Trick. I can't even feed on her with Voracious Bite, since she's just that powerful and simply shrugs me off. Once her health drops low enough, she spawns blood orbs that heal her up like a medical drone, so I dash between each to destroy them as fast as I can.

Thanks to an odd quirk, Xanthe seems to be a little easier to duel here than later on her specific side-quest (perhaps she simply needs more R&R the extra days would provide). In this version of the fight, I never do get to witness Xanthe using Blood Surge on Coen. I'm left stumped by how seemingly easy the fight was, considering she is the ruler of the map's harshest, most haunted regions encompassing the Tantari Woods. But by fighting her early, I've actually nerfed Xanthe and robbed her of Blood Surge altogether.

I don't even know of the spell's existence until I've bested the woman and been spirited away to vampire Hell, otherwise known as Anachora, to have an actual conversation. Admittedly, what she has to say breaks my heart. I didn't expect The Blood of Dawnwalker to make me feel quite this bad for killing someone supposedly evil, but as she mourns the loss of her child (what child? No one told me she had a child!) and confides in me that all she did was for the good of her daughter, my heart softens.

She begs me to leave her here in Anachora to let her soul get torn apart and finally rest in pieces after such a horrid life. My brand of mercy seems to her quite the opposite when I invite Xanthe inside my own psyche to live on in Coen forever.

She hates this idea. But I kind of love it, because it's granted me witchy granny commentary when I explore some areas on top of her blood bursting power.

I don't know how I'd have bested most of the game's hardest enemies without Blood Surge; it takes huge chunks off larger, hardier baddies while outright obliterating anything with a single-chunk health bar, meaning I have gotten some excellent use out of it in my 22-hour playthrough so far. Sure, she's not full Johnny Silverhand, but I appreciate the odd remark to add some color. I'm also a little regretful that killing her during our first meeting means I missed most of Xanthe's torrid backstory, but doing so has given me the chance to ignore a whole corner of the map and stay focused on my quest.

I truly think Blood Surge is a must-have perk, and it's probably the only thing that will ensure I can kill all the boyars before confronting Brencis. To me, that makes it worth taking a little trip (literally) in Svartrau Cathedral if you happen to be there at midnight. I promise Xanthe's legend is worse than her bite.

Looking for love in Vale Sangora? Here's all the romances in The Blood of Dawnwalker, from Crake to Lacra and even "old" witch Anca.

Games Done Quick, the charitable speedrunning event that's raised $62M for charity, broke new ground this year by hosting a live event at Gamescom 2026.

Players from all over assemble to race through titles at breakneck speed, cheered on by an audience in the Koelnmesse for the first time. I'm lucky enough to be in that audience briefly and speak to GDQ business director, Ashley Farkas, to learn more about the initiative's special brand of person-first magic.

"It is [about] people who are coming together for a cause they care about," Farkas explains, highlighting the "effort, love, attention, you name it" brought to GDQ by its community. From employees and runners to the audience, both physically in attendance and watching online, "they're putting all of that into this event or this cause, and it really does make a tangible difference."

Lighting the spark

The charity element has always struck a chord with me. Watching talented people play video games to tight deadlines using inventive methods is a thrill all of its own, but the way GDQ has combined this with raising funds for causes like Doctors Without Borders and the Prevent Cancer Foundation adds speaks to a wider calling among those involved. "That's the power of the community over more than a decade, being able to make change in the world," Farkas tells me.

Having raised so much money for charity, I ask Farkas where GDQ can go from here. "I don't think I could realistically set an expectation because the community is going to do whatever it can do, right? Like we're going to innovate, we're going to try to figure out what is the next fun thing we can do, and for us, it's not really about one specific statistic over another. It's really just about asking 'how can we continue to bring people that are genuinely wonderful human beings together to support wonderful causes?', and figuring out new ways to do that."

Charity fundraising exists in many forms and serves numerous causes in video games, but Games Done Quick has established itself as a figurehead in a specialist area, more for its methods than beneficiaries. "Fundraising can kind of feel transactional and peer-to-peer," Farkas begins. "And so for us, we want to create more of that experience in whatever it is that we're doing. You've seen GDQ ambassadors in the past, so that's something that we want to maybe work with more creators [on] and have new things that people can be a part of. I think that's one of the realistic things that we can put some energy and effort towards."

Stronger together

There are many GDQ events now, from the more traditional Summer Games Done Quick to this weekend's Frame Fatales, which focuses on feminine-presenting speedrunners. Diversity is a core component of the organization's MO, and is exemplified by its wide-ranging community. As a long-time viewer, it's often been the case that donations read out during events contain supportive messages for marginalized groups, such as the Trans community, something I put to Farkas.

"People feel really hurt in the world when they feel they don't belong," she states. "I feel incredibly fortunate to work for a place that has created somewhere safe, where you can show up to one of our events authentically as who you are and not be afraid or scared or anything [...] and that is something that is genuinely unique to this particular community because it really is accepting of of everybody."

As someone who loves watching Games Done Quick, I'm inspired by the range of runners at its many shows. In 2020 when we all went inside, streaming and hanging out virtually became vital lifelines for many of us. GDQ adapted to it with impressive application, and community members all around the world were able to perform speedruns from remote setups. The new system further highlighted the significance of the people involved. As Farkas puts it, "we wouldn't have a show if we didn't have runners and community and volunteers. Like, there's so many people. It's not just our staff, right?"

As I leave Koelnmesse hall, I'm left thinking about that word 'community' and its relevance to Gamescom as a whole. People from all around the world attend this convention to share in the love of video games and the sub-cultures around them, so Games Done Quick feels right at home here. Ashley Farkas told me she wants to thank everyone for the part they play in GDQ, and I feel compelled to do the same, as the feeling of belonging is so very special, and despite me being hundreds of miles from where I live, I feel at home here, and I'm willing to bet I'm not the only one.

GDQ's first ever Games Done Queer event already raises over $11,000 thanks to Donkey Kong and hot dog-making speedruns.

There's something deeply satisfying about switching off your brain and stomping across the battlefield with a Sons of Behemat army. OK, yes, there are still strategies to draw up unless you want to get swiftly overwhelmed by those smaller, punier factions. But this is an army all about stomping everything into submission, Godzilla style – it isn't subtle.

That's changing with the latest models and Battletome, though. This update for Warhammer Age of Sigmar's fourth edition introduces a surprise addition to the formula: versatility. Before now, the faction has been focused on getting in close and smacking stuff so hard it disappears into a fine red mist. And that's still the case… but with the update, you can do so from a distance – or magic up a spell that lets your gargants hit even harder. Suddenly, the Sons of Behemat have gone from feeling a bit one-note to a force with nuance.

I was able to get my hands on the new models and Battletome early, so here's what I thought after piecing them all together. Should you add these new units to your army, and what are they like as a hobby project? Let's dig in.

Note: You'll be able to order these models direct from Warhammer, but I'd recommend checking out indie retailers like Miniature Market in the US and Wayland Games in the UK. They traditionally offer a discount of 10-20% on new miniatures, so should hopefully provide money off these new additions.

Ma Maegran

The Sons of Behemat are usually brawn and brute strength, so we're breaking new territory here with "creepy pagan witch." Besides being incredibly unnerving to look at, even unpainted, Ma Maegran fills a role that no other model in the range can – a spell caster. That makes her worth considering straight out of the gate, and these powers are going to come in very handy during games. She's a support character first and foremost, so she'll make your army hit even harder than before.

Gameplay

As the only magic-wielding model in the entire Sons of Behemat army, Ma Maegran already has a lot to commend her – she fills a unique role not met by anyone else. She isn't going to be slinging spells or throwing fireballs at foes, but she can help turn the tide with her 'Creepy Cantrips' ability that adds 1 to rampage rolls (a series of faction-specific boons) and 1 to hit rolls for a nearby gargant of your choice. As an icing on the cake, she can also draw on three generic spells from the Lore of Behemat section of the Battletome. These enhance your gargants' prowess, reduce the strength of foes, or provide Crit (Mortal) to lucky units, so Ma has access to a reliable library of buffs/debuffs.

She's not just a wizard, though; she's also a 'Chooser of the Mighty.' Rumor has it that she can bless 'Little' gargants so they grow to monstrous sizes, and this translates in-game to a power that lets gargants deal mortal damage on 6s or will resurrect a Big gargant that was slain. (The way she does this is quite thematically fitting – you remove a Little model and replace it with the slain Big model, representing the Little one 'growing'.)

Her other abilities revolve around those Ancient Gyrochs that follow her around. These are nasty enough in themselves and are very difficult to kill due to regenerating three wounds each turn, but she can also add 1 to their damage, get them a bonus move (potentially into combat), or draw on their lifeforce to increase her spellcasting ability.

In short, she's a great backline asset that'll keep foes on the backfoot while your other troops do the grunt work. There's nothing else like her in the army list, so I'd certainly recommend adding her to your force.

Build

• Complexity: Moderate
• Build time: 60mins
• Customization: None

For a leader figure, Ma Maegran is pretty straightforward to make. Most bits went together quickly, and while some leg details are too close to connections on the sprue (making it hard not to hit them with clippers), the rest of the process was a breeze.

The Ancient Gyrochs aren't too bad either. One was quite 'bitty' with lots of extras to stick on, but that niggle is the only criticism I've got. For such a seemingly-complex model, Ma Maegran was far easier to build than I expected.

Boss-stompers/Rock-hurlers

While they may seem like standard gargants at first glance, these are as close as we'll get to rank-and-file footsoldiers; they're described in the Battletome as giants that take pride in some organization and better-kept weaponry (though that doesn't say much). This makes them reliable all-rounders with more attacks than similarly-sized Mancrushers, even if the latter have more unique abilities.

Actually, their overall similarity to the Mancrushers makes me wonder if we're looking at the latter's long-term replacement. The Boss-stompers are very similar in design and function but come in a pack of three rather than a single model, so it'd make sense for the Mancrusher to finally retire in the next edition. Which is only right; the poor guy is 20 years old, seeing as he first launched for Warhammer Fantasy Battle back in 2006.

Gameplay

As you might have guessed from their enormous weapons, these guys aren't tremendously complicated; they like to smash stuff, be it up close or from a distance.

To begin with, the Boss-stompers aren't to be messed with; their core club strike offers seven attacks that hit on a 4+ and wound with a 2+, causing 2 damage each. They also pack a health of 12 and can goad Big gargants into using a fight ability immediately after theirs, representing how annoyed everyone else gets at these spunky upstarts.

As for the Rock-hurlers, they have the potential to score even more damage from a distance because the "Hurlin' Rocks" ability provides three attacks that deal d3 for each blow. You can then customize this ability with a selection of modifiers like being able to Shoot in Combat or adding +1 to hit rolls, and these guys have a potent melee option too.

In terms of which one to choose, the Boss-stompers fit better with the overall "smack first, ask questions later" approach, and they're undoubtedly more powerful on paper. However, the Rock-hurlers are some of the only ranged units in the faction and provide valuable cover fire for everyone else. (Plus, a single trio of Rock-hurlers make up the Sons of Behemat Spearhead). With that in mind, I'd actually recommend making Rock-hurlers if you already have melee-first units on your list. They'll fill a much-needed gap.

Build

• Complexity: Moderate
• Build time: 40mins
• Customization: Alt. weapons, heads

It was surprisingly straightforward to build these goliaths; despite being huge compared to other miniatures, they came together much faster than I'd expected. Although there were a couple of moments with an arm or two that made me go "huh?" out loud, I was quickly able to figure it out… largely by rotating the piece in question and waiting until it 'snapped' into position. The instructions could be slightly clearer with those parts as it's not always obvious how everything fits, but these snags are few and far between.

Even if you're relatively new to Warhammer and Age of Sigmar, you shouldn't find these to be much of a struggle.

There's a lot of fun to be had here too. Much like the old Mancrushers, there are loads of references to other Age of Sigmar factions scattered across the build. Stormcast Eternal armor, Soulblight Gravelord coffin lids, and even Helsmiths of Hashut shields are being used as makeshift gear for these guys.

Just be aware that, with so much exposed skin, there are a lot of prominent mold lines to remove.

These early samples were provided by Warhammer.

For more tabletop warfare, be sure not to miss our Duel of Meloch review - it combines two beloved games into one streamlined package.

• See all Age of Sigmar deals at Amazon

• The Blood of Dawnwalker's 30-day time limit is not as punishing as it sounds, making it the perfect weekend play for a more languid RPG experience or something to dip into all week.

Even after learning of its high-stakes time limit, The Blood of Dawnwalker has been one of my most-wanted RPGs of 2026. Developer Rebel Wolves has more than delivered upon its promise to "push the genre forward" by making time itself a currency, and instead of letting myself get side-tracked at every turn, I've found that the extra pressure has kept me focused on main and character quests instead.

I spent all of last weekend playing the new game and managed to beat it on Day 10, so there's no reason you can't do the same! That said, don't be fooled by thinking you need to race through The Blood of Dawnwalker due to the 30-day time limit: I went about things pretty languidly and spent a lot of in-game hours leveling up, yet still finished with a third of the allotted time remaining.

Why play it today?

• The Blood of Dawnwalker has some of the coolest lore and most inventive storytelling devices I've seen since The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

I'm a (blood)sucker for a decent RPG story, and The Blood of Dawnwalker is a masterclass in narrative design. The open-world sandbox means you decide how much of Vale Sangora's lore you want to dig into, from haunted places to pixies and beyond, but I love how key characters quests unfold to teach us more about not only the world he lives in, but Coen's past itself.

From uncovering what happened to his late little brother to father Pieter's past as a roving merc-soldier, Rebel Wolves does a beautiful job of setting Coen up as a saga-spanning hero to rival The Witcher 3's Geralt by slowly peppering these tales through the open world. It's just one reason why I recommend approaching The Blood of Dawnwalker unafraid of the 30-day limit. I promise you'll have plenty of time to dig into Coen's backstory and rescue his parents from Brencis' clutches. This level of storytelling demands it!

Time commitment:

The best thing about The Blood of Dawnwalker is that it really is up to you how you approach its time restriction. You could use it as an opportunity to get laser-focused on the main story and some important NPC missions and finish it in 25-35 hours. This would have you ending the game with around 15 to ten days spare out of the 30-day timer.

You could also squeeze a bit more out of the open world's various side quests at the same time and still finish up in time to save Coen's family a day or two before the timer runs out (perhaps taking you around 28-35 hours).

You could even go full completionist. Bin off the timer altogether and deliberately fail to confront Brencis at all in those initial 30 days, and Coen's goal to becomes to avenge rather than rescue his family, scrapping the 30-day countdown. I don't recommend doing that, really. It might give you free rein to do as much side content as you like, but the timer its pretty forgiving and you really can get a lot more done in it than you might think.

Play The Blood of Dawnwalker if you love...

Skip The Blood of Dawnwalker if you want:

One thing to know:

I have run into a few crashes and performance issues while playing The Blood of Dawnwalker on my Xbox Series S, and the same has been reported by PC players. Thankfully, Rebel Wolves has already released a second update patch since the RPG's September 3 release date, this time targeting game stability and some amusing bugs (chatty corpses, giant torches... You get the gist).

Dawnwalker definitely feels much smoother to play now for many, though PC and Series S owners might need to have a little more patience. Performance seems to vary at the moment (I'm still getting a few crashes on here and there), and the latest patch has made some loading screens a bit slower over the past day for me.

So, could you stand to wait out another patch? Sure. Game crashes suck and it's frustrating if an autosave fails to kick in just beforehand. But if you have a PS5 handy, I'd say it's a perfect time to rip that bandaid off and get stuck into Coen's adventure now.

A moment you'll remember:

Exploring a creepy fog-enshrouded convent with herbalist-witch Anca, who returns to her Sisters to find their plague-ridden reanimated corpses still roaming the grounds. It's a thrilling taste of terror to really knuckle down on the gloomier side of Vale Sangora's often picturesque setting (if you ignore the blood farms, distilleries, and more), and is the first longer dungeon-style mission that requires a more hefty timesink. Very worth it though, especially if your goal is to woo Anca.

The final verdict:

Even with its performance issues, some repetitive enemy types, and a few teething problems (pun intended), The Blood of Dawnwalker is an incredibly worthwhile game to play this weekend. The impressive scope of it is truly astounding, especially when you factor in the lower budget the ex-CD Projekt Red devs at Rebel Wolves are working with compared to a traditional triple-A studio. With gorgeous voice acting, inventive mission design, and a super varied combat system, the result is a pacy thrill ride that's not afraid to let you do things differently. In our The Blood of Dawnwalker review, despite some misgivings, we did praise that "hands-off exploration is mostly respected" in its RPG open world.

So, where can you play it?

The Blood of Dawnwalker is out now on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PS5.

How to get started with The Blood of Dawnwalker:

Getting to grips with The Blood of Dawnwalker's directional parries, three combat systems, and twisty RPG framework can be confusing, so here are some handy guides to get your adventure in Vale Sangora off to a good start:

If you're saying "fangs, but no fangs" to Dawnwalker, check out our best RPGs round-up to find the right fit for your weekend

I'm not done with The Blood of Dawnwalker yet, but so far, I think it's a hell of an RPG that has its own voice while still feeling a little familiar. The limitations of Rebel Wolves' first dark fantasy action RPG are obvious, but easy to accept when The Witcher 3's pedigree permeates the whole thing. It's sorely missing a stealth system, though.

The best open-world games needn't allow players to sneak around just because, but having actual stealth mechanics might be useful when you're roleplaying as a half-vampire Dawnwalker who gains all sorts of shadowy tricks at night. This makes it feel like a chunk of the game was excised during development: Walking on walls and teleporting is allowed, but it feels odd – and incomplete – to infiltrate enemy bases this way only to be thrown into a fight the moment you trigger an enemy's MMORPG-like aggression radius.

The inability to be a silent killer also creates tension between the game's (otherwise fantastic) writing, impacting the way Coen embarks upon his perilous mission to save his loved ones. While I'm counting on Rebel Wolves to smartly iterate and expand on the formula in the now-confirmed sequel, I think The Blood of Dawnwalker's biggest weakness is playing things overly safe when it comes to dispatching enemies.

Claws need laws

Some suspension of disbelief is required to accept that Coen is picking fights all over Vale Sangora without protecting his identity in order to undermine the Vrakhiri's invasion and control efforts. He makes a point early on that hitting the vampiric villains where it hurts is key to eventually saving his family. But making a ruckus too fast is problematic, as he takes a while to go from confused (albeit combat-ready) peasant to folk anti-hero. This is acknowledged right after the prologue: He's just too weak to draw more attention to himself than necessary.

Regardless, you're soon taking down entire outposts and clearing dungeons as Coen, the guy with disturbingly strange powers and foul-tasting Dawnwalker blood that even big boss Brencis couldn't stomach. There's an entire Far Cry-like zoned system in place that makes the leader's bloodthirsty captains (here called boyars) react to disruptions you create in their respective domains before triggering a confrontation with each. But while stronger warriors are sent to hunt you down and locations get more fortified – or locked off completely – as you grow stronger and grow your notoriety, the evildoers always feel too lenient.

As we've seen in other open-world games with infamy systems, there's no easy answer to the dilemma of properly reacting to players' chaotic actions in ways that both preserves the credibility of the established narrative and dynamically raises the challenge. Coen is a unique kind of menace, though. Whether day or at night, he's charging into conflict, sword out, ready for a proper melee. Even when he's walking around the city of Svartrau, he doesn't seem to mind being recognized until it's too late. I know he's no Agent 47 or Ezio Auditore, but this disconnect makes me wish The Blood of Dawnwalker had even more friction baked in.

Bat among the pigeons

On a purely mechanical and visceral level, not being able to slice some throats in silence or properly drain soldiers without alerting their entire garrison is just disappointing. The game allows Coen to hit first as a Vrakhiri with a teleport-bite attack, but this first game simply wasn't built with sneak attacks in mind. 90% of the time, some grunt will smack you before you've started to properly absorb their mate's blood.

Similarly, the instant-kill drop attack that can be learned later on is a nice combat starter and a tease of what a stealth system that borrows from open-world greats such as Ghost of Yotei could be like in this setting. But it's never expanded on. You instantly go from undetected to swarmed, and any attempt to crouch and slowly navigate a camp will also result in melees that even trap you with invisible walls at times if you try to run away. It feels shockingly archaic and rigid for an action RPG that's delightfully bold and playful in other respects, even if I actually really enjoy what the game's peculiar combat system is going for.

I get that Rebel Wolves shares a ton of DNA with CD Projekt Red still, but about half of The Blood of Dawnwalker is just screaming to behave like something other than The Witcher 3. As much as I love that game, Geralt of Rivia was a skilled monster hunter. Coen is a different breed of killer, especially when his fangs and claws come out and he's dashing and teleporting across the rooftops like Corvo in Dishonored. It may be too late to alter what this new fantasy RPG is and isn't, but looking at the bright future ahead, I'm hoping for a more varied and sneaky vampire simulation come the sequel.

The Blood of Dawnwalker patch notes are among the funniest I've read, axing the "one red pipe asset we weren't supposed to use" and silencing dead NPCs who could still talk.

"What are they doing" is the wrong way to interrogate Sony and PlayStation's decisions in 2026, I think. And they do need to be interrogated – questioned, scrutinized, and, possibly, aggressively shaken by the shoulders in a dimly lit room with bare concrete walls and a lone steel chair. "Why are they doing this" is maybe a more useful question, but it leads us to the same boring answer as ever: money and control (of money). The question on my mind right now is a bit longer: how did Sony manage to abandon a hotly anticipated Hideo Kojima game within 24 hours of the first-party letdown that is Marvel's Wolverine, all in a console generation marred by devastatingly few system-selling games and prices that are headed in the wrong direction?

Don't let anyone tell you the universe doesn't have a sense of humor. Sony has, not uniquely, been trimming its toenails with a shotgun for a while now, but this is some Houdini shit. At a time when PlayStation is desperate for games and the list of PS5 exclusives fits on a napkin, Sony has backed out of publishing Physint, billed as Kojima's return to stealth-action after some tumultuous, naval-gazing years post-Metal Gear Solid. In the process, Sony has hand-delivered Physint to Xbox, the project's new backer. If Microsoft is the better option for a third-party studio, you have messed up colossally.

This news arrived the night of September 9. The morning of September 10, our Marvel's Wolverine review arrived alongside everyone else's to utter a collective, "Eh." Marvel's Wolverine is not awful, my coworkers tell me (and Metacritic agrees), but it is the worst-reviewed Insomniac game in a decade, and it is not the smash-hit that the PS5 needed. It's also a useful lens for evaluating PlayStation's position. Sure, it's a rare less-than-stellar game from Insomniac, but its middling nature is such a blow mostly because of the circumstances around it, and these echo many of Sony's mistakes this generation.

Dead services

Once a first-party powerhouse, PlayStation has spent the PS5 years repeating Microsoft's mistake with Arkane Austin and Redfall on a much larger scale: steering single-player-adept studios toward live service projects in a misguided pursuit of infinite money, and then canning those games or closing the studios altogether when they don't work out. To name a few, games and staff at Bluepoint, Naughty Dog, Bend Studio, Firewalk, Bungie, and reportedly Guerrilla have all contributed to Sony's live service toll, which has left vanishingly few studios available to make some actual games for the PS5.

Saros was good and Ghost of Yotei was great, but in Sony's self-imposed game famine, Marvel's Wolverine was left to carry the weight of Atlas as fans pray that God of War Laufey and Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet eventually stick the landing. I don't think it would've reviewed better, but in brighter times, Insomniac's latest likely would've been more warmly received. But years of waiting and enormous expectations have doomed it to become the punching bag for frustrations out of Insomniac's hands.

Sony oversaw the acquisition of Bungie and the end of Destiny 2, the game once meant to serve as a north star for PlayStation's fleet of live service ventures (and, grimly, perhaps has). We can only speculate that Sony has crunched the numbers on Death Stranding 2 and decided that Physint isn't worth the risk and doesn't hold value outside of potential sales returns. I don't even like Kojima's games and that feels shortsighted to me. And Sony has also reportedly pushed to pull back from PC gaming, end support for physical games, and charge more for less anywhere it can while aggressively monetizing a stagnant user base in a mature market which shockingly has not been helped by fewer options, fewer games, and higher prices.

A backdrop of unpopular decisions and leadership failures has made the one-two punch of Physint and Marvel's Wolverine feel like a lot more than, respectively, a dropped and disappointing game. It's hard not to read them as the latest symptoms of a generational misstep. If PlayStation wasn't weighed down by the corpses of live service games, it may have the investment mobility to take on Physint, especially after the relationship built with Kojima Productions through the Death Stranding games. And if those live services hadn't fruitlessly consumed so much of the platform's development resources in recent years – that is, if we had some games coming out – people would probably shrug off a middling Wolverine game. This is just what happens when you go all-in and lose.

The Xbox reset has stoked more headlines, but PlayStation is staring down a sea change of its own after fumbling an unlosable position. It could not be more obvious that the platform's strategy is not working, is hurting game developers, and needs to change dramatically, and we still haven't reached the end of the consequences already set in motion. I'd love to say Sony's capped off a bad year with all of this, but it's only September and I've learned not to underestimate a corporation's capacity or thirst for failure.

Former PlayStation boss sounds just as surprised as everyone else that Sony let Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear successor go to Xbox.

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!

The Blood of Dawnwalker's protagonist, Coen, is rather salty. He's just been turned into a vampire against his will, his family has been kidnapped, and I'm making him eat a lot of rats. If there's a silver lining, he can't touch it.

Going into my playthrough of The Blood of Dawnwalker on the hardest difficulty, Duelist, I intend to take Coen's vampirism as far as it will go – partly to keep up with the challenge, but mostly because I just think vampires are neat. The gnarlier the better, and if being an unstoppable creature of the night helps me complete September's RPG Club challenge, Coen will have to suck it up with the rat blood.

With just 30 days and nights to rescue Coen's family – and on Duelist to boot – there's a long month ahead. I'll be chronicling my journey with weekly write-ups, starting with my eventful first days in Vale Sangora below.

Quest Log

Exit, pursued by a bear

I like to leave the beaten path as soon as possible in RPGs, so I leave Coen's smoldering village and wander toward the mountains. Time in The Blood of Dawnwalker is a resource itself – think Persona, where choosing to do an activity uses a portion of your time – and while I'm not worried about my 30-day deadline (yet), I do have one pressing concern: I am getting my ass beat.

A sloping path winds into the mountains proper, where I follow the sound of wind chimes to standing stones in a cliffside clearing. That's as much as I take in before one of the standing stones gets up – oh, it's actually a massive bear – and charges forward. I roll out of the way, but a swiping paw catches me off-guard and kills Coen in a single hit.

Duelist mode amps up enemy aggression and makes their attacks much harder, while Coen's stamina is greatly reduced. The only saving grace is that enemies have less health. You don't have the stamina to play sloppily, so combat is surprisingly close to the likes of Sekiro – requiring you lean into the momentum with perfect blocks and last-second dodges. But knowing what to do isn't the same as being able to do it, and after repeatedly dying, I make the executive decision to run away.

Fleeing downhill, it dawns on me that this bear is the least of my worries. It's optional! But the main goal of September's RPG Club, saving Coen's folks and siblings in a month, isn't – and will presumably involve fighting tougher foes than bears. On the bright side, now we have a concrete plan for our first week in Vale Sangora: gitting gud.

Bat-man

With bears now off-limits, puny humans seem like the best targets for combat practice. Vale Sangora is occupied by an army of Brencis' footsoldiers, and as night falls, their torches and campfires make them easy to spot. I spend perks in the vampirism skill branch, upgrading my claws to inflict bleeding and stamina to… not die, then prowl the roads for easier prey.

The Blood of Dawnwalker's stealth isn't great. You can sort of skirt around enemy detection, but it's an imperfect science and rarely worth trying. I shadowstep behind a straggling guard outside a ruined tower and sink my fangs in, but his pals immediately throw themselves at me. They're nimble, but I've trained at the school of Big Bear. Coen's claws feel far more fluid than his sword, and having made the connection to Sekiro, I'm finding more success through last-minute parries. Within a minute, there's nothing left of the guards but bloody corpses. I'm not faring much better – after taking one too many blows, I scurry away to drink rat blood and heal.

Over the next few days and nights, I take every opportunity to fight Brencis' men. It's certainly easier as a vampire, with shadowstep and souped-up claws proving invaluable, but the practice turns me into a pretty mean swordfighter by day. While rescuing the local miller from a fortified outpost, I also make inroads with Vale Sangora's rebel faction, who tell me to seek them out in the capital city of Svartrau once I've proven myself an enemy of the vampires. Getting to grips with Duelist mode has already raised my notoriety by a few notches, while also turning up leads on prisoner transports to ambush and blood stockpiles to destroy.

After four days of hit-and-run war, I feel ready to head south and wade into the main story. First, there's unfinished business in the mountains . Who would win in a fight: a bear or a guerilla?

Having honed my skills, I charge into the sunny clearing and meet the bear's charge head-on. Now used to fighting crowds of soldiers at once, one enemy proves much easier to predict. Perfectly blocking every paw-swipe leaves the bear open to heaving greatsword slashes across its chest, and within a minute of furious back-and-forth, Big Bear is dead. Our reward is a glyph on the standing stone, which allows Coen to summon a flock of ravens in battle – but only as a human, so it's not especially helpful as my plan is to go all-in on vampirism. The real reward is knowing that we're ready for The Blood of Dawnwalker in Duelist mode, as well as a valuable lesson that Coen puts best: "Bears are fucking scary."

Having fun isn't hard...

With just three days left in the week, I head south to meet with Anca. She believes an abandoned convent may hold the secrets we need to beating the vlakhir, with forbidden books hidden inside. There is, predictably, just one problem. The convent is shrouded in scarlet fog, and its nuns have all died of plague. The problem, though, is that they're still walking. The courtyard is thick with shambling undead, their faces peeling and eyes clouded. Worse yet, there seems to be no way to kill them – after besting one, I'm halfway through investigating the corpse when it shoots back up, arm outstretched.

A cohort of soldiers have barricaded themselves in the infirmary, and offer to let us through – a safe passage to the library – in return for a relic they've been sent to retrieve. Instead, I make a mental note to come back and drain them dry, spend the night looking for clues, then ring the convent's church bell to draw the horde away. At dawn, searching the library leads us into the catacombs, where a rotting nun hacks long cuts of meat from her arm. She turned to the devil to protect the convent from the Black Plague, and is too far gone to be talked down from yet another ritual.

As the inevitable boss fight begins, I'm– dead. Wow. And again. Days of practice were enough to fight a bear, it seems, but not a supernatural nun. She can use the spell I learned earlier that day, pointing flocks of ravens in my direction, as well as blink across the catacombs and raise more undead. I'm hard-pressed to keep up, constantly dying to surprise blink attacks and her dagger, which seems to swing from every angle at once.

After too many failed attempts to count, I draw on the teachings of Big Bear – constant aggression, no breathers – and triumph, killing the nun and lifting the convent's curse. Our reward is a trove of banned books, which we haul to Anca's hideout to sift through. This turns up two promising leads – a saint's magical sword, and a mysterious Font of Life – but reading eats through the day. Old maps suggest the Font of Life lies in nearby mountains, but Anca (sensibly) won't go hiking at night. I raid nearby blood stockpiles until dawn, but ding-ding-ding. Our first week is up.

So far, The Blood of The Dawnwalker isn't what I expected. It sits close to The Witcher 3 in style and tone, but there haven't many meaningful side quests to sink my fangs into. On the other hand, combat in Duelist mode has been an absolute treat – as challenging and expressive as last year's Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, albeit even less forgiving. But with combat fundamentals locked down, my plan for next week is to search for the Font of Life before visiting Svartrau for the first time. I'm a sucker for big cities in RPGs, and have high hopes for Vale Sangora's Big Apple. See you there?

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!

Nintendo just announced a new Metroid game in Metroid Ravenous! While it may seem a little soon (Metroid Prime 4: Beyond only released last year, after all) there's far more to this story.

Metroid Ravenous is set to be the first new 2D Metroid game in over five years, with the Metroid Dread release date passing us by way back on October 8, 2021. Thankfully, it looks like this new collaboration between MercurySteam and Nintendo EPD will pick up right in the aftermath of planet ZDR.

Metroid Ravenous was revealed during the September 2026 Nintendo Direct, with a reveal trailer showing cinematics, gameplay, and highlighting a few new powers for a returning Samus Aran to play with in the new game. Thankfully, we won't have long to wait to play it for ourselves, with Nintendo setting the Metroid Ravenous release date for early next year among the line up of upcoming Switch 2 games.

You'll learn more about the new 2D Metroid game below as we walk you through everything we know so far.

Metroid Ravenous release date

Nintendo has officially confirmed the Metroid Ravenous release date for January 28, 2027.

This was announced on September 9 as part of a Nintendo Direct presentation. Metroid Ravenous is set to be one of the most prominent upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 games of next year, and a key platform-exclusive alongside Pokemon Winds & Waves. Metroid Ravenous will land over five years since the last 2D Metroid game landed on Switch – as you can recap in my 2021 Metroid Dread review, a fun adventure that was let down by its frustrating boss battles.

Metroid Ravenous platforms

Metroid Ravenous will be a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive. This means it won't be available to play on the original Switch family of systems. This is unlikely to change in the future, with the vast majority of new first-party games published by Nintendo developed to take advantage of the increased power of the improved system. If you're looking to buy a console to play Metroid Ravenous (as well as some of the best Switch 2 games already out in the wild) then we're tracking the best Nintendo Switch 2 deals here.

Metroid Ravenous trailer

The first Metroid Ravenous trailer landed on September 9, 2026. It was positioned as part of the Nintendo Direct September 2026 showcase. While there were rumors that the game was in development, this first look was an official confirmation that the game is coming to Switch 2. You can watch the new Metroid trailer above.

Metroid Ravenous developer

While Nintendo is yet to officially confirm who is developing Metroid Ravenous, it's expected that it'll be MercurySteam once again taking on lead production duties. If you aren't familiar with the name, MercurySteam is an independent studio who has partnered with Nintendo in the past – collaborating to deliver Metroid Dread (2021) for Nintendo Switch and Metroid: Samus Returns (2017), which was a rather delightful remake of the Game Boy's Metroid 2: Return of Samus for 3DS. Basically, to cut a long story short: 2D Metroid is in exceptionally good hands here.

Metroid Ravenous pre-orders aren't live yet

Nintendo is yet to make Metroid Ravenous pre-orders live in the US or UK. However, we do know what to expect when they do eventually launch. The publisher announced that there will be both a regular and a special edition of the game available from January 28, 2027, with the limited release featuring a Steel Book, copy of the game, and a special Amiibo depicting Samus in a green Metroid Suit. And speaking of Amiibos, there will also be new products sold separately in the form of a Samus figure and a Chozo Statue.

Metroid Ravenous screenshots

Nintendo has released a bunch of new Metroid Ravenous screenshots. You'll see some of the more story focused snapshots on this page, but you'll want to click through this gallery to see over 20 direct-feed Metroid Ravenous gameplay screenshots which showcase some of Samus' returning abilities, new powers, and hint towards some of the threats we'll face this time around.

Metroid Ravenous gameplay

Metroid Ravenous is a 2D Metroid game with side-scrolling action, leaving you to forge a path forward through a labyrinthian maze of a world. While Nintendo is yet to officially detail what we're seeing in the reveal footage, it does look clear that this 2027 release is picking up in the immediate aftermath of Metroid Dread .

Which, spoilers, saw Samus able to directly absorb energy through her hands as a result of the Metroid DNA within her. It looks and sounds pretty clear that Ravenous will see Samus grapple with the fact that she's slowly transforming into a Metroid, an effect which will unlock a new suite of powers and abilities – alongside some returning classics. We'll likely learn more in the weeks ahead.

Have your say on Metroid Ravenous

Dive Deeper into Metroid

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

I've got a theory about why people enjoy playing survival games. From Minecraft (or Unreal World if you're cool) all the way through to Valheim's 1.0 launch today after five years in Early Access, they all have something in common. Starting with nothing and building up to a mighty fortress is great, but what these games really offer is a sense of discovery – a journey into an unfamiliar world.

It's something Welsh poet Dylan Thomas explores in his poem Fern Hill. Here, he writes about being "green and carefree, famous among the barns" in "the sun that was young once only". That pretty much sums up my first few hours of Valheim: it's a game that nurtures and encourages a childlike sense of wonder.

Waxing poetical

Valheim's epic wonder is there from the jump. You arrive into the Tenth World in the clutches of a Valkyrie, with only a raven named Hugin for amenable company. Hugin provides you with some helpful tips as a new arrival in the peaceful Meadows – a world away from the moody, stormy lands you saw during your flight.

With almost nothing to your name, like a child angry about a lost kite, you start punching trees only to realize with sore hands that you're actually meant to gather branches from the ground.

From there, Valheim flows into the usual routine you'd expect from a survival game. I spend most of the time foraging rocks, flint, and becoming a kind of Genghis Khan figure to local wildlife. If the survival game loop was all that there was to Valheim, it'd be a fun, if somewhat disposable slice of Viking life. But one aspect that really makes the game stand apart is the sensory experience.

Valheim's late-PS1/early-PS2 aesthetic has some modern flourish hidden beneath its horned helmet. The lighting is one standout aspect, with night skies seeing countless stars spill across a firmament of pure black. Meanwhile the Meadows biome is underscored by a bucolic clarinet melody, caught somewhere between folk and soft jazz, that never fails to soothe. And it all links back to that poetic sense of expanse and wonder as penned by Thomas.

There's some entertainingly bouncy physics, too. My first death on day 1 isn't attributed to one of the goblin-like Greylings or an aggressive boar, but to gravity, a tree, and my own hubris. Chopping down a tree makes it fall. It's a very tricky concept to grasp, I know, and it turns out that chopping up a huge trunk also splits it in two. I'm standing downhill from one of the large logs as it falls to the ground, and thus begins my first corpse run.

Valheim is also a full-on RPG, which is a point I have used to sell it to my survival-skeptic friends. There are skills ranging from magic to cooking to wood-chopping, as well as a shockingly competent combat system, complete with a parry mechanic. All of these hang together to make exploration extremely fun, my character taking shape alongside the world around them as I learn more about myself and this strange new land.

Man of the land

Tracing the shoreline, venturing out on your first raft, building a simple homestead – it's easy to forget that there is more to this game than simply existing within it, green and carefree. And there is so much more, with each major biome culminating in a boss fight against a suitably fantastical enemy. After each boss, you move on to the next biome, building forward bases and exploring – ever exploring, like a true Erik the Red.

Despite my generally wonderful time with Valheim 1.0, my one sticking point is the building mechanics. Level ground prime for building is hard to come by in the Tenth World, even after setting-to it with a newly-crafted hoe.

This means that making your homestead look like a building rather than a load of panels that have been chucked together is a matter of some genuine skill. I was left with huge gaps that, if nothing else, let smoke trail out beautifully from my campfire. It holds some of the game's creative potential hostage, and I can't truly feel like the author of my own pastoral poem as a consequence.

Still, I have to hand it to developer Iron Gate Studios. The sun may be young once only, but if you ever want to wander, Valheim's near-endless scope for epic journeys is hard to beat. What a fantastic synchronicity there is to the fact that 1992's Unreal World, one of the first survival games ever, doubled as an RPG about surviving the Far North. Valheim 1.0's addition of the Deep North biome echoes it beautifully, calling forth the bravest souls who wish to venture further and marrying the RPG and survival genres in a genuinely fantastic way.

These games like Valheim offer stunning worlds to explore and survive, if you dare...

My fellow magical practitioners are hounded by Witch Hunters in 1666 Amsterdam, the target of brutal, puritanical raids. But forget about that, I'm Noa – a witch, hunter. With a calendar year to track down my own demonic targets – the Originals – using magic powers only active during a full moon, it's up to me to cleanse the supernatural forces they introduce to the world like I'm pruning a rose bush. Pruning it by unleashing broomstick combos, that is.

But, before I can go Henry Hoover on the corrupted humans who have signed immortal pacts with these evil spirits, I have to track them down. Given only a name and a rough area in which they inhabit – conveniently the same few blocks of Amsterdam streets and canals that make up the first two main missions available in Early Access – I have no idea where the, say, Inquisitive Crane actually is. With almost every building – home, shop, university, or prison – accessible to explore, though, those few blocks can be deliciously daunting to master. This might come from Assassin's Creed's creator, but 1666 Amsterdam's density is closer to classic Hitman, shrugging off handholding and letting me loose to find clues or be jailed trying.

Witching hour

While I can tap a button to cloak myself in red robes, the witchy look will only arouse suspicion and draw guards, meaning I spend much of my time in a less conspicuous black dress and white bonnet. The most daring I get is holding down a button to have her do a slightly faster walk. Only when chased by guards do I whip out the broom to coast down the canals and lose my pursuers.

If I'm caught where I'm not supposed to be or act unusual in front of crowds, a suspicion meter will quickly rise. In search of leads towards my quarry, a note I've found suggesting they take up residence in a block of houses next to the university, I saunter into a back alley, quickly opening a window to peek inside and backing off as that meter begins to climb.

What doesn't arouse suspicion at an open window? A cat enjoying a sunny day. Noa's familiar, Aaron – a cat named Aaron who is inhabited by the spirit of a befuddled historian from 1999 for reasons I won't explain – can be directly controlled with the press of another button, able to observe surroundings, nab a single item at a time and, crucially, leap great heights and slip through small gaps. Stray and Murdered: Soul Suspect have both put me in control of cats before, but here the freedom to go feline mode to be as sneaky and nosy as I desire across a neighborhood is a snooping dream come true.

Aaron can manoeuvre around to unlock latched doors from the inside, allowing Noa deeper access to a building so long as she's not spotted long enough for it to become besieged by guards. Instead of risking it, I prowl around inside until I come across a servant unnerved by Aaron's presence. These targets, afraid of cats rather than willing to pursue my mewling (which can be a solid distraction on its own), can be attacked and scratched by Aaron, the rending of their flesh allowing his spirit to seep inside them as he curls up on their shoulder, fully possessing them to succumb to Noa's will.

In the case of this servant, that means I can wander around as a platform for Aaron to continue to unlock interior doors, before eventually I use their own key to open up the front door, approach Noa, and – arm in arm – escort her inside, protecting her from falling under suspicion from any guards patrolling the house.

Tactically, I body-hop my way into sequestered rooms to rifle through the house's bookshelves and tables for anything I can use. It instantly reminds me of the spirit-jumping in Omikron: The Nomad Soul, but with the freedom to do so at almost any time. It turns out I have the wrong house, but this diversion allows me to stock up on materials used to craft potions and even complete a recipe for one that will allow me to move undisturbed through restricted areas for vital seconds – handy when I can't find a body to possess and escort me through some zones.

Deeper in, I even uncover a hidden coffer planted by my witch coven to assist me with an upgrade, rewarding me with a much appreciated health increase. Using a roguelike-style pick-three system, there's both flexibility and randomness to how Noa's build progresses (and, if you don't lock them in, can be re-rolled on death).

One allows me to hide in bushes, another to suck guards into confined space and trap them. Another, I think, will allow me to take to the sky to enter houses from on high, at least given the tantalizingly human-sized windows on some buildings, but I'm yet to see it. Before I learn more magic words as Clio – the present day scholar interpreting text left by her ancestors Noa and Aaron (yes this narrative is delightfully odd and layered) – the exact skills these coffers offer (say that a few times fast) aren't always clear until you try them out.

Nomad soul

But, I don't need a lot of witchy upgrades to be happy. It's possession that has me hooked, and all the possibilities it brings. From using a cat to break in and pilot bodies out, to finding, say, a scholar on the streets who can then bring me into the university's laboratories, or even a scoundrel character with lockpicks who I can command to break into buildings on my behalf. Even some guards can be ordered to use their big truncheon to knock out their co-workers.

Reading notices on billboards or listening to gossip at inns will only get you so far – the details you need to acquire to reveal your target and the demon within them will always require you to access restricted areas, and Noa is fragile enough where going in spells blazing isn't an option. I love it when a game gives me the tools to be sneaky in unusual ways. Until Agent 47 learns magic so he can go Omikron mode himself, 1666 Amsterdam is the best I'll get.

Having put about ten hours into 1666 Amsterdam, exploring its first map across two main missions which encompass three targets (with some more linear 1999-set missions between), I've only explored a fraction of the streets surrounding Noa's safe haven. A chunk of that revolved around possessing a baker from the shop on the corner just to get Noa unchecked access to their horde of ingredients in their storeroom.

Sure, 1666 Amsterdam is rough around the edges for its early access launch, and light on tutorializing a bunch of the skills Noa can use to infiltrate forbidden areas. And I definitely chafe against the use of AI in the game's production, which has been walked back to a degree (as much as you can walk something like that back).

But, it's all a testament to how delightfully weird and creative 1666 Amsterdam feels as I possess my way through this dense world in the hopes of finding my own leads. It's like one of those random PC games someone would recommend to you on a forum years ago and you'd become engrossed for hours despite never hearing anyone else talk about it or really understanding how it works. That's a special kind of magic.

We might not have 1666 recommendations for what to play next, but we do have a best stealth games ranking as well as games like Assassin's Creed guide that should help out!

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!

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

"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

Back in 2006, Rare found itself at a crossroads. The developer had spent the 1990s working with Nintendo, creating some of the SNES, Game Boy, and N64's most beloved titles. In 2002, though, it was acquired by Microsoft, becoming a first-party developer for its new game console. In the transition, some of Rare's magic seemed to have been lost. None of the four games it developed in the intervening years were hits, critically or commercially, on anything like the scale of its Nintendo golden years.

As such, 2006's Viva Piñata was positioned as a comeback for the studio. The game was aimed at a younger audience and was intended to be the beginning of a fully fledged franchise, complete with its own animated TV show. On these terms, the game was not the success it deserved to be – but it proved that the embers of that old Rare magic still burned bright.

In Viva Piñata, the player is handed the deeds to a rough patch of land and tasked with turning it into a bustling garden by filling it with plants, decorations, and – the game's undisputed stars – animals. Piñatas, to be precise, of which there are 60 varieties, from Arocknid to Zumbug, to attract into your garden with the hope that they'll make it their home.

This is achieved by meeting a tick list of needs for each species: the right kind of tree for them to nest in, enough water for aquatic creatures to splash around in, and the component parts of their diet. It's a gentle start to the game, but the process of winning over a piñata is truly satisfying. Spotting a new species for the first time is a treat. All 60 are charmingly designed, with names that pun on a type of sweet, like Profitamole or Buzzlegum. Visiting piñatas start out monochrome, but convince them to become residents and they'll bloom into full colour, revealing their vibrant blues, yellows and purples – the perfect visual reward for your efforts.

It's not hard to see why Microsoft saw the opportunity for a kid's TV series in Viva Piñata. Cuteness can be an easy thing to dismiss, but Rare pulls it off here with the kind of deft hand usually reserved for Disney cartoons and litters of puppies. Every bit of incidental animation is charming, bringing the piñatas and their world to adorable life.

Don't you dare smash one

Back in the Nintendo days, Rare had created Banjo-Kazooie, a series of kid-friendly games which were among the biggest sellers on the N64. In the Donkey Kong Country games, it filled out DK's supporting cast with the likes of Diddy and Cranky Kong. After the failure of Kameo: Elements of Power, an Xbox 360 launch title with a similar Saturday-morning cartoon aesthetic and a Pokémon-like cast of creatures, Viva Piñata provided much-needed proof that the design talent behind those older games was still alive and well.

Viva Piñata is more than just a pretty face, though. As the game progresses, it drip-feeds the player a steady stream of new challenges. First, the introduction of ‘piñatavores', which won't settle in your garden until they've eaten one of its existing residents. There's a certain old-lady-who-swallowed-a-fly logic to attracting some piñatas at the top of the food chain: you lure in a Mousemallow to feed to a Syrupent, then feed the Syrupent to a Macaracoon and so on. This is further complicated by the ability to breed animals, which involves checking off another set of requirements to help get them in the mood. Smaller piñatas, it seems, serve as the perfect aphrodisiac. This can test your loyalties – say you want to breed the foxy Pretztails, but have grown attached to the two Bunnycombs who have settled in the garden. Naturally you get the latter to do what rabbits do best, and make another Bunnycomb – so you can feed that cute little baby straight to a Pretztail.

As you nudge forward through the game, waiting for the right animal to wander into your garden, tending to plants, and building homes for your favourites, the initially gentle pace begins to snowball. Viva Piñata introduces ‘sour' piñatas, who drop sweets that can poison a resident; weeds that can spring up and choke your existing plants; masked Ruffians who vandalise and start fights. It's around this point that you begin to glimpse the game's hidden dark side.

Rotten candy

Family-friendly games weren't the only thing Rare was known for. Titles such as Killer Instinct, GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark brought a vital edge to Nintendo's catalogue. Conker, one of the cutesy animal characters created for Diddy Kong Racing, was revamped into a sweary, hard-drinking squirrel armed with Uzis and a chainsaw. By 2006, though, games had to work considerably harder to shock. Six months after the launch of Conker's Bad Fur Day, Rockstar changed the gaming landscape with the release of Grand Theft Auto III. Xbox consoles had made their name with the likes of Halo, Splinter Cell and – launched just days before Viva Piñata – Gears of War. An attempt to return to Rare's more bloody roots with Perfect Dark Zero proved disappointing.

While it may not have been obvious on the surface, though, some of this spirit lived on in Viva Piñata. The violence is kept strictly PG – when a piñata is killed, they pop open and spill their sweets on the ground, accompanied by the sound of children cheering – but it's effective because the game has encouraged you to invest in these creatures. The early game incentivises naming your piñatas with mechanical reward, sneakily building attachment. After all, which are you going to care more about, ‘Horstachio 1' or the one named after your childhood pet? As anyone who's watched Bambi or The Lion King will tell you, the death of loved animals isn't exactly out of the realms of children's entertainment, but Rare finds new opportunities to twist the knife. Those spilt sweets will get eaten by passing piñatas, meaning it's not unusual to catch a treasured Fudgehog snaffling up the innards of its former lover. The circle of life, lovingly rendered in all its gory glory.

And then Dastardos floats into your garden. The game's equivalent of the Grim Reaper, Dastardos is genuinely sinister. He glides just off the ground, a rigid expression on his Picasso mask, towards any piñatas who have fallen sick. "Dastardos has invented a cheerful song to help him through the day and make piñatas calm while he ‘fixes' them," reads the in-game description. By fixing, of course, it means bashing them open with a big stick. Suffice to say, Dastardos is not a welcome presence in your garden. But as the pace picks up, he's an increasingly common sight.

Viva Piñata increases the tension through something that's either a trick smartly borrowed from survival-horror games or a brilliant accident: the tools it gives you are just a little imprecise. The game plays out in real time, and its controls often make it feel like you're trying to complete a very delicate task with a very long pole.

This is an offshoot of the god-game genre, but one which casts you as a hapless god. Your shovel can be brought down like a lightning bolt from Zeus, but you lack that all-important omniscience – meaning you can only react to things once they've already started happening.

Turn your back for one second too long, and a wild piñata can sneak into your garden on the hunt. The game pings you with a notification when this happens, but if you don't act quickly, it'll all be over before you can intervene. When things start to go wrong, you can suddenly find yourself drowning in notifications, trying to pick through all the ones about plants drying out to get to the real trouble.

Two of your favourite piñatas are fighting, so you reach for the shovel and… Too late. One of them falls to the ground, sickly green. You notice a gate open in the pen separating predators from prey… Too late. A Cocoadile is gulping down your beloved Donald, the Quackberry you spent time and money dressing up. You spot a sour piñata, and look for the seeds it inevitably left behind… Too late. Red, ugly plants climb up, spitting fire and poisonous gas, choking and trapping whole piñata populations, meaning you miss the poisoned candies the sour also dropped on the other side of the garden.

Self-flagulation

When these disasters start to happen, you notice the game doesn't offer any quick save or load options. It's not exactly Ironman mode, but Viva Piñata is pushing you to stick with the consequences. The only way to sidestep the game's permanence is by shutting it down mid-session, praying for a convenient autosave.

That this option is so tempting is testament to Viva Piñata's success, building just slowly enough that you get invested in this cutesy world, before baring its teeth. The game works because it blends the brightness of Banjo-Kazooie with the harder edge Rare that showed in early games such as Killer Instinct and Battletoads.

Unfortunately, when it came to finding an audience, this meant that Viva Piñata fell between two stools. The game did well enough to launch a handful of sequels and spin-off games, but sold a small fraction of what Rare's biggest hits had managed. After a couple more games, the studio was folded more closely into Microsoft, working on avatars for Xbox Live and a string of Kinect games. It's only now, with Sea of Thieves, that Rare is stepping back into the spotlight – and so in 2018, the developer once again finds itself at a crossroads, with a bold new game positioned as its big comeback.

Until we ever get a new Viva Pinata, why not try these games like Palworld?

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!

Don't miss out on The Mandalorian Lego special. The delightful animated short has arrived on Disney Plus (alongside its live-action big sibling, The Mandalorian and Grogu), and, while it might not be canon, it is a laugh-out-loud, joyful 45 minutes every Star Wars fan needs to tune in for.

The special has an adorable premise: Din Djarin's pals have thrown him a party – and it's not even his birthday! – which he begrudgingly attends with baby Grogu. While the duo are there in their party hats, a gang of their closest friends retell their story so far, all the way up to the events of the new movie.

The result is an irreverent, self-referential blast – exactly what you'd expect from a Lego special – that's also pretty much a perfect way to recap the Disney Plus show. What more could you ask for?

Getting the band back together

Probably the biggest selling point of any Lego special is just how damn hilarious they are, and The Mandalorian's is no different. The 45-minute runtime is packed with jokes that poke gentle fun at The Mandalorian and Star Wars as a whole, including Mando and Grogu's reunion taking place in a different series, IG-11's tendency to go straight for self-destruct mode, and Luke Skywalker having no luck with his Jedi students. I got to watch the special at this year's D23 in a crowd of Star Wars fans that laughed at every gag, and it only enhanced the experience.

The wacky premise doesn't just allow for laughs, too: it also gets the whole Mando gang back together again. There are cameos aplenty in the special, which means original actors return to their roles. Listen out for Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka Tano, Temuera Morrison as Boba Fett, Giancarlo Esposito as Moff Gideon, Amy Sedaris as Peli Motto, Katee Sackhoff as Bo-Katan Kryze, Timothy Olyphant as Cobb Vanth, and even Bill Burr as Migs Mayfeld (he's on hand to recount the events of season 2, which, he points out, he witnessed a whole 20% of).

Of course, any Mandalorian project – Lego or not – needs to include its fair share of heartwarming Clan of Two moments. The special doesn't just recreate the tearjerking scenes you know and love from the show (the special's version of Mando and Grogu's goodbye in the season 2 finale did indeed remind me of how many tears I shed back in December 2020), but it also includes a few new moments of its own. Highlights include Mando urging Grogu to make his signature cooing sound more intimidating if he's going to be a bounty hunter, Grogu using the Force to levitate a party hat onto Mando's beskar helmeted head, and Grogu having his own miniature steering wheel in the Razor Crest. If you've been missing Din Djarin and Din Grogu since their big-screen outing earlier this year, then you can't go wrong with the Lego special.

Assembled with love

The special is also set after The Mandalorian and Grogu on the Star Wars timeline, as revealed by the Razor Crest's distinctive yellow paint – and an appearance from Zeb Orrelios to tell this part of the story, before he's interrupted. Of course, Lego releases aren't Star Wars canon, so nothing that happens in this special is actually part of the saga's ongoing story. But, it does give a nice window into the kind of life you'd like to imagine Mando and Grogu living in between missions for the New Republic. What better way to spend their downtime than a party with friends?

And, while it might not be canon, and the premise is indeed silly fun, every second of the special makes it obvious that it was made with clear, reverent love for The Mandalorian and Star Wars as a whole. The story goes beyond just a party, encompassing Mando's growth across his tale so far as he comes to accept he's no longer a loner. Yes, this Lego special gets pretty deep, in between all the fun.

At the moment, it's unclear when we'll see Din Djarin and Din Grogu again, as nothing has been confirmed about their future (either in The Mandalorian season 4 or another movie). So, while we wait to be reunited with the Clan of Two, there's no better way to pass the time than with Lego Star Wars: The Mandalorian.

Lego Star Wars: The Mandalorian is streaming on Disney Plus now. See what else the galaxy far, far away has in store with our guide to all the upcoming Star Wars movies and TV shows.

• The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered is perfect if you want to jump straight into an absorbing fantasy RPG and let adventure find you along the way.

Oblivion Remastered's "miracle" Switch 2 port makes exploring Cyrodiil a dream on handheld, but Virtuos' makeover is just as absorbing on console and PC.

Oblivion is one of my all-time favorite RPGs, with its lively NPC schedules and unpredictable quests making every session feel like a roll of the dice. Will you join a guild? Get kidnapped and taken out to sea? Chased across the map by an evil unicorn? Let's find out!

Why play it today?

• Oblivion makes a strong case for being Bethesda Game Studios' greatest RPG, striking a sublime balance between old-school RPG friction and modern expectations.

The original title still holds up, but Oblivion Remastered's visual overhaul and quality-of-life additions make it an easier entrypoint for new fans.

Chief among those improvements include the ability to sprint and a simpler system for levelling up, along with more kinetic combat. And with Oblivion Remastered landing on Switch 2 last month, it finally has a solid handheld version beyond its rickety Steam Deck build. Crucially, though, Oblivion's core RPG experience is still timeless – traveling between cities as a Dark Brotherhood assassin is still as fun as it was in 2006, and Skyrim's magic system never quite matched the thrill of making your own spells in Cyrodiil's Mages Guild. Forget this week – this is a game I'd recommend year-round.

Time commitment:

You get as much as you put into Oblivion Remastered. The main quest can be wrapped up within 10 hours if you're feeling speedy, but wandering off the beaten path will extend that significantly - my first playthrough is on 60 hours and counting.

Play The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered if you love...

Skip Oblivion Remastered if you want:

One thing to know:

Oblivion Remastered still has performance issues on PC, so be sure to check your desktop meets its recommended specs if that's where you're keen to play. Otherwise, my only other advice is to do the main quest sooner rather than later – it gets very hard at later levels.

A moment you'll remember:

The Dark Brotherhood quest 'Whodunit?' is flat-out one of the best quests Bethesda has ever made. You're tasked with murdering partygoers inside a locked mansion, with a big bonus if you can do it without ever being suspected. Mingle, explore! Would you kindly come down to the basement with me?

The final verdict:

At launch, I called Oblivion Remastered "the perfect reimagining of my favorite RPG".

That still stands. If you haven't already played Oblivion, one of the most colorful and personable RPG worlds ever made awaits. And if you're returning to Cyrodiil, welcome home – no matter how much you've played Oblivion, there's always another surprise waiting.

So, where can you play it?

The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered is available to play on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2

How to get started with Oblivion Remastered:

Cyrodiil can be overwhelming. If you would like to inject some purpose into your adventure, here are four handy guides to help get you started.

Not your cup of tea? Check out our best RPGs round-up to find the right fit for your weekend

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!

Welcome to the GamesRadar+ RPG Club! If you're a returning member from the Club's playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3, we're thrilled to have you back. And if this is your first time joining us, you've picked the perfect time. We're just about to dive into The Blood of Dawnwalker, the new RPG from The Witcher 3 veterans at Rebel Wolves, and as this month's host (hello!) I chose this game for a few reasons.

For starters, the throughline from The Witcher 3's third-person action and consequential storytelling to The Blood of Dawnwalker is clear – which makes sense, given they share a director and numerous key developers. I've played a whopping 163 hours of The Witcher 3, so that alone is a good reason to jump in. Crucially, I'm sold on The Blood of Dawnwalker by its own merits, including a fascinating approach to the passage of time and vampire protagonist Coen, who can be built into a true creature of the night.

With so many variables in play, I can't wait to see how my experience varies from yours. As each in-game week passes, I'll be sharing what goes right (and wrong) for me in Vale Sangora, culminating in an attempt to rescue Coen's family on the hardest difficulty. Our Quest Log for this month's Club is below, and I'll also be lurking in our comments section with anyone who would like to discuss The Blood of Dawnwalker. So, without further ado: let's kick off the GamesRadar+ RPG Club for September!

Quest Log

RPG Club: The Blood of Dawnwalker (September 2026)

Meet this month's RPG Club host

This week's big question

RPG Masterclass

Get started with The Blood of Dawnwalker

Submit your best clips

Grab any great clips while terrorizing the night in The Blood of Dawnwalker? Don't forget to submit them to GamesRadar+ Replay. Not only will this give you an opportunity to share your gaming highlights with the GR+ Community, but the best clip of the month wins a $250/£250 Amazon voucher too.

Nvidia's controversial DLSS 5 is officially here, launching alongside NBA 2K27. There's a lot to discuss with Nvidia's latest brand of AI graphics card wizardry, because it has a very different feel from the previous iterations of DLSS. Where others have been all about slightly lessening your graphical fidelity in the name of increasing your FPS, DLSS 5 is overtly trying to "improve" your graphics, and the results on your frame rates sure are interesting.

I've now had the chance to go hands-on with DLSS 5 in my own setup while playing NBA 2K27. I've talked plenty in the past six months about DLSS 5, my apprehensions towards it, and why I think it might be a toxic influence on the games industry, but at the same time, I accept that all we've really seen about it to this point are comparative stills that show the AI model rather aggressively changing character models from games like Resident Evil Requiem, Hogwarts Legacy, NBA 2K27, and Starfield. It's one thing to compare DLSS on and off shots, but it's another thing entirely to see it in action when playing games.

So, I decided to put all my fears, doubts, and frustrations with generative AI to one side for a few hours. I went hands-on with DLSS 5 in the only game that has official support for it at launch, NBA 2K27, to see how it impacts the experience of playing games. Here's what I found works and what doesn't work about the latest version of DLSS.

What works: Photorealistic environments, NPCs, and character models (in games like this)

NBA 2K27 is a sports simulation game. In other words, it's not Mario Tennis Aces; it isn't trying to convey an arcade experience of playing a sport. It's trying to recreate, to the best of a video game's ability, a pro-level basketball match on your screen, under your virtual control. For that reason, it's shooting for an element of photorealism that the developers clearly believe suits a technology suite like DLSS 5.

I am ardently against using generative AI to enhance video game art styles for a lot of reasons, but even I have to admit, in NBA 2K27, DLSS 5 actually does pay off. Thankfully, it's not actually as exaggerated as we've seen in Nvidia's marketing stills so far. Yes, there are times when I'll catch a glimpse of a face in the game and alarm bells will immediately start ringing.

"That's AI", my brain will scream, "that looks like slop because it's overly sharp and looks pseudo-illustrated". But again, I have to be fair here; most of the time, I didn't actually notice DLSS 5 running in a game like this because it all looks pretty true to life to begin with.

DLSS 5 is at its best when it's working in the background of what you're looking at. The surface of the court, the environments and objects in the background, the stuff that you probably wouldn't pay a lot of attention to, but does all work together to form a cohesive, photorealistic whole.

For the most part, DLSS 5 isn't yassifying - certainly because when actually playing through a basketball game, you're not close enough to character models to really notice its impact on faces. What DLSS 5 is doing is adding a bit more depth, a bit more lighting bounce, and almost a second layer of 3D structure to everything it touches. In some instances, like with barriers around the arena, it'll add more detail. On the surface of the court, it'll add a bit more tone, and on NPCs' faces in crowds, it'll add a bit more polish that game developers clearly have never been able to get to.

For a game like this, DLSS 5 actually makes things look pretty impressively photoreal.

What doesn't work: Lip-syncing on hyper-real faces

Where it all falls flat on its realistic face is when DLSS 5 is working during dialogue scenes. NBA 2K27 includes these quarterly court-side interviews along with plenty of cutscenes in its career mode. With DLSS 5 working and making facial models look that bit more photoreal, there's a real mismatch where animation and upscaling do not meet.

The result is that you have hyper-real looking faces whose lips and mouths are not working in exact sync, or enunciating realistically with what they're supposed to be saying. There's a layer of game development that doesn't align with DLSS 5's upscaling. It's an uncanny attention to detail that's let down by the lip-syncing animation in 2K's game, and that takes me completely out of it every time.

A quick fix for game developers looking to make their games more photorealistic- this is not, because our human brains can't help but catch this uncanny misalignment as something "off". It immediately looks like an AI-generated video of someone speaking that doesn't pass the Turing test.

In a sports game like this, it's not a hugely common occurrence, but when DLSS 5 inevitably reaches more narrative-based singleplayer games, I think this could be one of its biggest downfalls.

What works: Performance with Dynamic Multi-frame Gen on

I tested DLSS 5's performance on my own gaming PC, which houses a PNY Slim RTX 5080. There's no built-in benchmarking tool within NBA 2K27, but I decided I wanted a feel for how Nvidia's latest bag of tricks would impact general gameplay, so I sampled the frame rate during a "play now" match between the NY Knicks and LA Lakers. I wasn't able to get the exact same chunk of gameplay in these tests, so it's not an exact science, but I think it's much more important to give you a feel for how DLSS 5 impacts general gameplay performance than trying to simulate the same player dribbling down a court or something, because you're not going to replicate that exact test yourself.

When you use the full suite of Nvidia's frame gen tricks alongside DLSS 5, performance is absolutely fine. I was testing the game out at max settings, in 4K, with ray tracing and dynamic multi-frame generation switched on, and it played great. I didn't notice any ghosting or floaty latency, although I did sometimes notice occasional screen tearing, specifically over character models, not general gameplay.

I was seeing some fluctuations every now and again; the frame rate wasn't exactly super stable, but in a quickplay match between the New York Knicks and LA Lakers, I was seeing pretty frequent periods of the frame rate resting at 222fps and then jumping up to a peak of 238fps. Very playable, and that was when DLSS 5 was toggled on and off while I was using Multi-Frame Gen.

The issues started arriving when I didn't rely on frame generation.

What really doesn't work: Performance without MFG on

Using the same in-game video settings, simulating the same match, and playing for the same amount of time, I saw some pretty striking performance impacts. It seems as though Nvidia has been leaning on its multi-frame gen tools for DLSS 5, because without it on, my frame rate (on an RTX 5080) was down to between 49-55fps. Try as I might, I couldn't get it to peak at a passable 60fps with DLSS 5 switched on. That's a massive performance cut, especially when using the same settings and toggling DLSS 5 off meant I was playing at a super-comfortable 150-165fps.

Again, I feel it must be said that DLSS 5 should have just been called something else entirely. The entire goal of DLSS has always been to improve your frame rates, and yet it's very clear at launch that DLSS 5 is, in fact, very demanding on your gaming PC's performance.

If I'm really honest, even putting my disdain for generative AI to the side, the bump in visual fidelity that DLSS 5 gives you during fast-paced basketball gameplay is not worth the huge loss of frames per second.

I have no doubt Nvidia will only improve performance as time goes on - DLSS is a constant work in progress, and the performance of all of its layers, including frame generation, is improving all the time. I've heard that when we originally saw DLSS 5 running at GTC, it took the power of two RTX 5090s to work, which shows how much progress has been made in just six months if that's true. Still, I shudder to think how an RTX 5060 would handle DLSS 5 without multi-frame generation being a massive crutch.

Again, DLSS is supposed to help your gaming PC's performance, not make it worse, so DLSS 5 just feels like it's a completely separate entity with different goals.

What doesn't work: The game looks great to begin with

At its best, DLSS 5 adds a layer of photorealism to the experience of playing NBA 2K27, which is certainly impressive, but the issue is that it really isn't necessary for you to enjoy the game because the artists who created it already made it look pretty impressive on its own.

I know this could be true of playing in a higher resolution, of using ray tracing, or of upscaling to begin with because all these things really try to do is enhance your experience.

DLSS 5 feels different to all of those things though, because it's adding a layer over what's already impressive to try and alter it for "the better", and it comes at the expense of your frame rate. Ray tracing is probably the closest comparison. It's nice to have, but while it carries a massive performance penalty, I likely won't be using it because I can very easily enjoy games without it.

Like any sports sim, NBA 2K27 can sometimes be guilty of having slightly goofy face models, lifeless-looking crowd NPCs, or only minorly detailed arena environments, but playing the game without DLSS 5 isn't going to make these things deal breakers. If that were the case, these games wouldn't keep selling year on year.

What's more, these are the things we never really look at, which is why developers don't put all that much time into making them look good in the first place.

NBA 2K27, and in many ways, all of the "photoreal" games DLSS 5 will target already look plenty impressive on their own these days. DLSS 5 might be an optional thing for us to use if we want it, but I personally enjoy seeing the developers' hard-fought efforts to make these things look real, rather than an AI model they've tuned to do it for them. Even if the game devs have had a hand in guiding DLSS 5, it's not something the game needs to look good, or even be deemed visually impressive.

For every moment I think, "wow, DLSS 5 has made that look really good," I also have one or two moments where I think, "ugh, that looks like generative AI, and it's distracting me from the basketball game".

What I never once thought while playing was, "It doesn't look like that basketball player is actually holding the ball because the light on his fingers isn't reacting accurately". I never thought, "I'd enjoy this basketball game a lot more if the faces of the players were exactly how they look on TV."

I certainly never thought, "I need to turn DLSS 5 back on to appreciate this game more than I do without it".

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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!

Do you believe in love at first sight? What about when the subject of that affection is a video game? I don't think I would have said I do, until the first trailer for the heavily anime-inspired Orbitals from developer Shapefarm and publisher Kepler Interactive dropped. And, all of the sudden, I did believe in love at first sight – maybe especially for video games. But this also turned out to be Orbitals' fatal flaw.

My immediate infatuation obscured a much more important fact: Orbitals is a co-op only video game. There's literally no way at all to play on your own, though you can do local co-op or more traditional online multiplayer. Whatever the case might be, you're playing with another person. Discovering this particular detail so late was, in a word, deflating.

Pondering the Orb'

While the aesthetics and art design of Orbitals are heavily influenced and inspired by '70s and '80s anime, the actual game underneath the surface is much more modern. The style of co-op game so closely associated with Hazelight – It Takes Two and Split Fiction, for example – requires some decently clever puzzling and well-timed responses from a duo in order to progress. Sounds satisfying, right? In my specific case, this is actually a problem.

Let me begin by saying that I love my partner, the person I most want to play couch co-op games with and the one that I previously attempted to play It Takes Two with some years back. After some particularly excruciating platforming, however, we ultimately stopped, and I didn't even consider bothering trying out Split Fiction with them. (That one would, ultimately, wait until my brother was briefly back in the country, and even though we didn't complete it – I have never once considered asking my partner to tag in.)

The simple fact of the matter is that my partner does not have the institutional gamer knowledge required to effectively play games like Orbitals. Even with it being entirely up both of our alleys, artistically, the actual act of play at work here is a significant barrier. While they grew up playing games, they were turn-based RPGs like Final Fantasy 7 or something like Katamari Damacy or Spyro. Orbitals, and games like it, require an entirely different set of skills.

Something I increasingly think about is how certain games assume a standard level of knowledge. If you've played a platformer before, you likely understand how jumping often works in video games. If you've played a first-person shooter before, you understand aiming and shooting. Many modern video games don't bother to start with first principles and instead opt to leap several steps ahead to combining preobtained knowledge.

This isn't necessarily a problem, or at least an exceedingly common problem, but it's certainly one for my own personal experience. Having not grown up on platformers or shooters or really anything that required twitchy reflexes, my partner struggled to keep up with what many people might assume to be simplistic tasks. Need to jump and shoot at the same time while swapping between targets? Orbitals might as well have been asking them to complete a CIA tryout.

I hesitate to lay any of this at Orbitals' virtual feet, in part because I'm not one to judge a game by what I wish it were rather than what it is. But I would love for there to be something in this style of game that both encourages significant others to play a game together while also dialing down the absolutely necessary requirements to do so. Whether that's some kind of scaling slider or what I don't know – I'm not a game designer – and maybe this kind of wishful thinking is actually in direct opposition to why games like It Takes Two or Split Fiction work for so many people.

I just wish they worked for me and mine.

Orbitals was played on Nintendo Switch 2, with a code provided by the publisher.

Orbiting around wanting to play more like this? Our best co-op games has recommendations for more with a pal, or our best single-player games has advice for those craving going solo.

Silo season 4 is on the way, and there's not long to wait. The Apple TV sci-fi hit is returning for its fourth and final season in just one year, when (we hope) all our questions will finally be answered.

After that mind-bending Silo season 3 ending, you're probably wondering what's next. We've unearthed the evidence and pieced together the clues to bring you everything there is to know about Silo season 4, including the confirmed release date, plot speculation, info on returning cast members, and when we might expect a trailer.

So, like the denizens of Silo 18, it's time to head below for all the need-to-know info about one of the most exciting new TV shows on the calendar. But beware: full Silo season 3 spoilers follow, so don't read until you're caught up.

Silo season 4 release date

Apple has officially confirmed that Silo season 4 will release on July 9, 2027, after previously indicating that the final season would drop Summer 2027.

In modern TV terms, where waits between seasons commonly last 2-3 years, that's a relatively quick turnaround. This is possible because seasons 3 and 4 were shot back-to-back. Filming on the fourth and final season wrapped on March 6, 2026. During the Silo panel at SDCC 2026, Apple put out a short teaser confirming the Silo season 4 release window. Check it out below.

Silo season 4 plot speculation

Note: this speculation doesn't contain book spoilers.

The Silo season 3 finale sets up a clear mission statement for the final season: Silo 18 is taking the fight to Silo 1. Given the two factions are literally siloed off from each other, and Silo 1's massive intelligence and technological advantage, it's hard to know what plan Juliette and co. could cook up to take down Silo 1. But having prevented a safeguard and with Camille now on their side, we wouldn't count Silo 18 out.

From the Silo season 4 trailer, we know we'll be getting further flashbacks as well. While the season 3 finale takes Troy (aka Daniel) up to the present day, we're none the wiser about what happened to several characters after they went into the silos, including Helen and Per Stenson. And we don't see Susan (aka. Charlotte) or Rosalind again following the 35-year time jump. The season 4 trailer confirms we'll be catching up with these characters in the next season.

Above all, we can expect answers. Showrunner Graham Yost has explicitly confirmed as much, telling Collider: "There are mysteries every season, and pretty much all the mysteries are answered by the end of Season 4. We wanted to make sure that we answered enough by the end of Season 3 that the audience didn't feel like they were being strung along."

Season 3 certainly answered some big questions. We now know that Silo 18 wasn't being monitored by an omniscient Algorithm, but the very human people in Silo 1, who have dedicated their lives (willingly or not) to enforcing the Directive in the belief it will ensure humanity's survival. We also know that the Silos were built by trillionaire Per Stenson, in cooperation with Senator Rosalind Thurman, due to their belief that a nanobot apocalypse was inevitable. And we know it was Victor who wrote The Pact.

Much still remains a mystery, however. Who detonated the nuclear device that drove humanity underground, and was it a ruse to accelerate the start of the Silo programme? Is the entire planet a nuclear wasteland, or just the area around the Silos? Is anyone on Earth alive other than those in Silos 18 and 1, and the remnants of Silo 17? And exactly how much time has passed since humanity descended into the Silos? We only know for sure that at least 42 years have passed, as this is the amount of time that Troy spends in cryo between operations during season 3, episode 10, but in all likelihood it's been far longer than that.

In other words, expect major secrets to finally be brought into the open in Silo season 4.

Silo season 4 cast

Some major figures met their end in Silo season 3, most notably: Bernard (Tim Robbins), who was sent out to clean in episode 9, and Victor (Matt Craven), who took his own life in the season finale. We don't yet know the fates of several flashback characters, including Helen (Jessica Henwick) and Per Stenson (Colin Hanks), but we know they'll appear at least in flashback in the final season.

Of course, Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson) and most of the Silo 18 crew will return. Here are the main cast members we expect to be back for Silo season 4:

• Rebecca Ferguson as Juliette Nichols
• Ashley Zukerman as Troy/Daniel Keene
• Jessica Henwick as Helen Drew
• ​​Jessica Brown Findlay as Susan/Charlotte Keene
• Common as Robert Sims
• Alexandria Riley as Camille Sims
• Chinaza Uche as Paul Billings
• Harriet Walter as Martha Walker
• Shane McRae as Knox
• Remmie Milner as Shirley
• Avi Nash as Lukas Kyle
• Rick Gomez as Patrick Kennedy
• Steve Zahn as Solo/Jimmy
• Claire Perkins as Carla
• Billy Postlethwaite as Hank
• Colin Hanks as Per Stenson
• Reed Birney as Henry
• Laura Innes as Rosalind Thurman
• Morven Christie as Anna Thurman

Is there a Silo season 4 trailer?

Yes, there is Silo season 4 trailer. After a short delay, during which the trailer was only available on Apple TV as a post-credits scene for episode 10, Apple finally dropped the full trailer online, and with it a confirmed release date.

There's much revealed in the trailer. Not only will we see what happens after Helen first enters Silo 18, it's clear that the fight between Silo 1 and Silo 18 won't be one fought in secret, as Paul reveals the truth of the Silo Project to the entire population of Silo 18. It also, tantalizingly, confirms a confrontation between Juliette and Daniel/Troy, who appears to be searching for his true identity. July 2027 can't come soon enough.

Is Silo season 4 the final season?

Yes, Silo season 4 will be the show's final season. A fourth and final season was announced in December 2024, at the same time the show was renewed for a third season.

Silo season 3 sets up a war between Silo 18 and Silo 1, so expect that to be a major focus for the final season, as long-running mysteries are finally resolved.

Silo seasons 1 -3 are streaming now on Apple TV. For more, check out our guide to the best Apple TV movies you need to add to your watchlist.

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

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.

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

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!

The Mandalorian and Grogu are coming home. Four months after the Star Wars film brought the saga back to the big screen for the first time in seven years, the Razor Crest is touching down on Disney Plus this September 2.

The film arrived a lengthy three years after its (less well-received) third season and didn't quite set the box office on fire. It scored a reasonably low 60% on Rotten Tomatoes, and many have questioned the wisdom of turning a streaming show into a theatrical movie – or criticized the film for focusing on a standalone adventure story rather than weaving in the wider galaxy.

Still, despite it all, I firmly believe there was no better film to kickstart Star Wars's theatrical comeback than The Mandalorian and Grogu.

Welcome back

That might seem like a nuclear take, but I have my reasons. Personally, I simply loved the movie: an all-grown-up Rotta the Hutt became my surprise MVP; Grogu, continuing to grow into his Mandalorian and Jedi potential, was a delight; and I thought the whole thing was a good old-fashioned, fun adventure tale with cool and creepy critters, spectacular action set-pieces, and all the heartwarming Clan of Two moments you could ask for.

I'm not alone in this, either: the film was well-liked by the audiences who showed up for Din Djarin and Din Grogu, with a healthy 86% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and an A- CinemaScore on opening night. The box office may have been a somewhat underwhelming $345.8 million (though, on a budget of $165 million, that's not a total disaster), but the film succeeded elsewhere. It returned us to the Mando-verse era of the Star Wars timeline just in time for Ahsoka season 2, and it also seemed to give the three seasons of the flagship show a boost: The Mandalorian was Disney Plus's third most-watched original series in the first half of 2026 with 2.4 billion minutes viewed, according to Luminate. That's particularly noteworthy considering the show hasn't released a new episode in three years.

Aside from the film deserving a much warmer reception and boosting the show's streaming fortunes, though, it was also the right choice for getting audiences used to Star Wars as a theatrical experience again. Seven long years have passed since The Rise of Skywalker, and, in that time, the franchise has released a whole host of Disney Plus shows. Like Marvel, this seems to have contributed to a certain dilution of the franchise, with every new Star Wars project no longer feeling like an unmissable event – unthinkable even 10 years ago – regardless of each show's quality. But, despite the more lukewarm reception to season 3, Mando and Grogu have remained instantly recognizable Star Wars icons, even though they originated on streaming themselves. Choosing this duo to launch Star Wars's return to theaters made total sense.

While the film drew criticism for its self-contained story, going in such a standalone direction was also a wise move. There's nothing more off-putting than feeling like you need to do your homework before you head to the theater, after all. And, since the film is so self-contained, it's also primed to be a new generation's introduction to Star Wars.

Maybe most importantly for the saga at large, though, The Mandalorian and Grogu set the stage for Star Wars: Starfighter. Any film tasked with bringing Star Wars back to the big screen was going to face a great deal of scrutiny – and the pressure of high expectations – but, now that Mando has broken that barrier already, Starfighter has something of a clearer runway.

Next moves

Judging by The Mandalorian's streaming boost, it's likely that the movie will do very well on Disney Plus. In the wake of The Mandalorian and Grogu's theatrical performance, it's hard to imagine Disney and Lucasfilm won't pivot when it comes to its theatrical slate. I would bet that Dave Filoni's movie, announced at Star Wars Celebration 2023 and set to tie together the Disney Plus shows, will be reconfigured into a streaming event (most likely an Heir to the Empire-style showdown against Grand Admiral Thrawn, considering the Ahsoka season 2 trailer).

The future of Star Wars on the small screen seems less certain, with nothing live-action confirmed past Ahsoka. It's doubtful that Lucasfilm will abandon TV entirely, but I expect the days of multiple Star Wars shows a year are long behind us.

But for the saga's return to the big screen, I'm glad Lucasfilm chose The Mandalorian and Grogu. If nothing else, the film was a fun few hours at the theater this summer, and it reunited me with two of my favorite Star Wars guys. This is the way.

The Mandalorian and Grogu is streaming on Disney Plus now. See what else the galaxy far, far away has in store with our guide to all the upcoming Star Wars movies and TV shows, or check out our The Mandalorian and Grogu review.

Back in the 2010s, it felt like we were witnessing a race to the most "realistic" graphics possible. As consumer hardware and game dev tools got more powerful, the piss filter faded into obscurity as lens flare, more detailed textures, and a push to make the most of next-gen gaming PCs came to the fore. We saw an influx of video games striving for a hyper-realistic look back in those days, that were inevitably followed by even better-looking remasters of themselves as time went on. For a while there, more realistic meant better, but I was hoping that school of thought had disappeared.

Graphical fidelity hasn't stopped progressing, but I really thought we were past that quite narrow-minded view of "objectively" good or bad video game graphics. Now, Nvidia is preparing to boot DLSS 5 into our games, and it somehow feels like we've taken a backstep.

If you haven't heard, DLSS 5 is making its way to 50 Series GPUs at the end of this week, initially launching alongside NBA 2K27, but almost certainly coming to other titles in due course.

When I was at Gamescom last week, I saw a behind-closed-doors look at the latest form of Nvidia's upscaling tech, and I got to ask questions about how the brand intends it to be used.

One of my initial concerns during the demo was about how this Generative AI layer flattens the nuances of art direction. I don't want to see an AI filter over beloved indie games with highly stylized visual design; I don't want to see games like Dishonored pushed through an AI model to make them look more "realistic" because that would kind of be missing the point.

Thankfully, Nvidia did reassure me both that developers can opt into specific DLSS 5 support, and that it's only really being intended for games that strive for a "photorealistic" look. Thank god! But even then, I still have concerns.

I, for one, really enjoy the subtle differences in graphical stylings when looking at games that you could argue strive for some sort of photorealism. Battlefield 6, Control, GTA 6, The Last of Us Part II, and even Hunt: Showdown all have aspects of realism, but I would argue they all know where the line is.

I wouldn't argue that any of these games are necessarily striving for "photorealistic" graphics, though, even if some of their art styles do have very lifelike environments, lighting, facial models, or weaponry. I really thought we had reached a point where we realised that video games look great because they don't look photoreal. Everything appearing like it's been captured in live action is certainly impressive, but it'd be a horrifically boring video game market both on the software and hardware side if that's what all of them looked like.

Video game art styles are interesting because of their unique detachments from photorealism, and it feels like Nvidia is completely missing that in the name of being the brand to finally crack the puzzle.

Sure, we now know that thanks to DLSS 5's developer controls, artists and game devs will be able to have some say over how the tech changes their work, but I'm not personally sure they'll have enough control to let their unique looks shine.

DLSS 5's developer controls let them choose between three different AI models for each object, character, and sometimes clothing within a scene. They can then use sliders that will increase or decrease the structural and tonal intensity of the object within DLSS 5's parameters.

But here's the thing: it's still a generative AI layer that's trained on striving for photorealism above all else; it might be somewhat more sensitive to visual styles now than it was when we initially saw "yassified" Grace and Leon back in March, but it's still using its AI model to make things look more photoreal.

While Nvidia thinks this makes games look objectively better, I don't agree.

In fairness, this difference of opinion makes sense. Nvidia has been striving to create the best graphics cards for decades now, with an end goal always to provide the power to gamers so that they can say they have the best graphical power on their machine, which can produce the most realistic lighting, faces, and objects in their titles.

And DLSS 5 feels like it's achieving that sort of goal. It's certainly impressive in some contexts - the comparisons from NBA 2K27, a game that's striving for as close to photorealistic visuals as possible to give you a hyper-accurate simulation of pro basketball, are pretty bang-on. I can't lie and say the "DLSS on" comparison shots don't look more photoreal and more like the human athletes they're trying to recreate. But I'm still not sure they're "objectively better" than the hand-crafted characters the developers of the game made themselves. I like the original work's small imperfections, I like the stylised visuals, I like the fact I'm not looking at live-action characters when I play games.

I'm also not sure harnessing generative AI for this is the best way Nvidia could have gone about achieving photorealism.

Our brains are getting better at looking for generative AI imagery by the day. As advanced as AI gets at creating false photography and graphics, I can spot it a mile off because I'm morally opposed to the use of AI for creative ventures. I don't see "more photoreal" graphics when I look at DLSS 5; I see uncanny AI that reminds me of how disruptive and broken it's making so many creative industries. If anything, that presence of AI takes me out of things more than slightly less realistic graphics made by humans would. I'd happily sustain my belief with NBA 2K27's best attempts at making realistic athletes in games, but I can't do that with generative AI faces because I'm thinking more about AI than I am about how impressive it all looks.

And yet, I feel as though that strive for realistic graphics back in the day was so that people would feel more immersed in their games. It might sound counterintuitive, but I think the less photorealistic a game looks, the more of my imagination it's likely to capture.

It also might be worth looking at the best CPU for gaming, the best RAM for gaming, and the best computer speakers if you're interested in improving your gaming setup.

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!

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

Humankind, the 4X strategy game that aimed to let you craft the entirety of human history by blending together dozens of different cultures, had two main spikes in the arrival of new players. The first, says chief creative officer Romain de Waubert de Genlis, came with the launch of the game. The second, and far more unexpected, was the arrival of one million players in the direct wake of Civilization 7.

Now, as developer Amplitude Studios prepares to wrap up the latest entry in its Endless series, Endless Legend 2, and return to work on the newly-announced Humankind 2, it faces two notable challenges; the ever-changing face of an early access scene it helped shape, and the ever-changing desires of an ultra-passionate 4X community.

Early bird

"We were one of the first two or three games" to offer players access to games in their Alpha stages, says de Waubert de Genlis of 2012's Endless Space. "It was something that was in the air already at the time, and we were always looking for new stuff to try." That community outreach was extremely effective for Amplitude, but in the years since, the nature of Early Access has changed massively.

"The first early access we did, players really had in mind that it's not a finished game," de Waubert de Genlis explains. "All the game elements we had were of final quality, but maybe half the game was missing, and that was fine. No negative reviews or bad feedback. People understood it, and they understood that the concept was to participate in building the game with you." But since Early Access became established as a meaningful tool for developers, in around 2015, studios now have more players coming in before 1.0, "with a lot more expectations."

"It should be a finished game that you update very often to take into account players' feedback on balancing or polishing the game," de Waubert de Genlis says of modern early access expectations.

"It's not about finishing the game or redoing entire pieces of the game. Because if you have a piece of the game that players don't like, they'll give you a negative review right away, and maybe not even change it if you fix [the problem] later. So it's really tough to try things, because if you get a negative review, they will never change."

Too many negative reviews, of course, and you spill out of Steam's 'Very Positive' threshold, at which point "you're in real trouble." It's a combination that means "to still be creative in early access, still taking risks, is a very difficult thing to do."

That inflexibility within a community is something that's been found in the 4X community's biggest name. Civilization 7 is still sitting at Mixed reviews, with an almost 50/50 split between positive and negative responses. That's an opportunity for Amplitude, but it's not something the team is relishing in: "We all benefit from great games. The more players who come to the competition, the more players will come to us. We want and need [Firaxis] to succeed for the whole 4X space."

"Personally, I love that they take risks," de Waubert de Genlis says. "They want to do things differently and change the recipe." That, however, is easier said than done, because Civilization's community has wanted so many different things over the decades. "Imagine [working] on Civilization, chatting with players who have been around for 30 years, and them telling you 'I want something new, but don't change anything'. And they're not the same players. Some really want innovation, others want a patch."

Regardless of how inflexible the community can sometimes seem, the Amplitude team knows that there's still room to continue pushing the genre's boundaries. Game director Benoît Humbert says that "no matter if Civ is performing or not, there's still space for improvement or innovation. There are so many things to do in the genre. I'm sad for Civ because I've been a huge fan since the first one, but I'm not worried for them. There's space for improvements but it's also an opportunity for us to see what went wrong. How can we be inspired? Because that's what matters."

Is your hunger for games like this far from endless? Check out our best strategy games ranking for more to stroke your chin to.