Speaking on stage at Final Fantasy 14 Fan Fest, the MMORPG's lead Naoki 'Yoshi-P' Yoshida lays the praise on Naoki Hamaguchi, saying that fans are desperate for the Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth director to work on the next mainline entry in the long-running JRPG series.

The pair were standing on stage together at MMO's annual fan convention for a panel called Naoki's Room. The two series leads, who coincidentally share the same first name, answered a number of prepared questions during the talk. Towards the end of the discussion, Yoshi-P revealed that he's received many comments from fans asking for Hamaguchi to work on FF17.

"But there were comments along the lines of 'I want this guy [Hamaguchi] to make Final Fantasy 17,'" he says.

Yoshi-P continues by explaining how highly he regards the compliment. "So I think that's probably the highest praise you can get," he continues, before adding "you don't have to respond."

The FF7R lead is clearly embarrassed by the comment when he says, "my response?" Yoshi-P then makes a gesture that he doesn't need to answer before quickly wrapping up the discussion.

Some have speculated that this is a hint that Hamaguchi is indeed working on FF17, but it's vague at best. While Hamaguchi is visibly embarrassed, it could be from the compliment, from being caught off guard, or because he's unsure if he can talk about the projects he's working on. Equally, Yoshi-P may have cut Hamaguchi off to save him from his embarrassment.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth was a huge success and we're sure Hamaguchi would do an excellent job developing a completely new mainline entry, rather than his current remakes. However, as the third part of the remake trilogy, Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, isn't scheduled to be released until 2027, we hope he focuses his energy on perfecting that game first.

Final Fantasy 6, 8, or 9 remakes would need even more games than the FF7 trilogy, Yoshi-P warns: "We'd probably end up having to release them in 4 or maybe even 5 installments."

Careful what you wish for, Final Fantasy fans. Potential future remakes of other games in the series would probably require even more individual parts than the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy – at least, if they were remade in that same style – according to Final Fantasy 14's Naoki 'Yoshi-P' Yoshida.

The MMORPG's director said as much during a panel at Fan Fest Berlin – with Final Fantasy 7 Remake lead Naoki Hamaguchi also in attendance – warning folks that the wait for an entire remake of Final Fantasy 6, for example, would be even more painfully long than what we've become accustomed to.

"Of course I understand the feelings of the players, but you gotta think about it," Yoshi-P says, per a translator, of fan requests for future series remakes. "Look at Final Fantasy 6, it's such an incredibly huge game. The scale is just immense."

But the same argument is true for other games in the series, like Final Fantasy 8 and Final Fantasy 9, he adds: "So, of course, now because you are working on the Final Fantasy 7 series, I do get that people would be asking for remakes of other titles. But if we did remake those other titles, we'd probably end up having to release them in four or maybe even five installments."

Final Fantasy games used to be absolutely huge in their scope because the developers couldn't render everything in excruciating detail as they can now – nor did they need to. Final Fantasy 6 was able to fit 14 playable characters, a huge world map that dramatically changes throughout the adventure, and countless epic fights onto a humble SNES cartridge. You can imagine how doing all of that in a game with Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's production value would be tricky.

Ahead of Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, Hamaguchi himself made clear that a hypothetical remake of Final Fantasy 6 would be in better hands with another developer anyway. He seems more keen on doing something new after Revelation ships.

At Fan Fest, Hamaguchi explained that he felt incredibly lucky that so many developers stayed together for all three games in the FF7 Remake trilogy, back to back. "That's why I can't just sit here and go, 'Yeah, yeah, I'll remake [FF6],' because it's not quite that easy."

Perhaps the way forward for Final Fantasy remakes is the upcoming Final Fantasy Resonance, a gorgeous pixel art game with turn-based combat, rather than the giant world of the FF7 Remake games.

Final Fantasy 14 Evercold changes housing for the better, Yoshi-P says, and World of Warcraft's "amazing" take on the MMO staple has "been a good source of research."

Final Fantasy 14's housing system is due to get two "very big" overhauls as part of the post-Evercold run of patches, and it looks like Blizzard's own take on the popular MMO feature in World of Warcraft has given Square Enix plenty to chew over.

As part of Final Fantasy 14 Fan Fest in Berlin, producer and director Naoki 'Yoshi-P' Yoshida spoke to the press to tackle some questions about Evercold. Among the most interesting was a question over whether Square Enix had any plans to modernize Final Fantasy 14's housing system.

Speaking through a translator, Yoshi-P jokes that the question may have been refined prior to being presented to him, before adding: "I get the feeling what you really want to ask is, well, WoW has come up with this amazing housing system. How about [Final Fantasy] 14?"

Yoshi-P starts by saying that the Final Fantasy 14 team has an "immense respect" for the World of Warcraft team. And indeed, Yoshi-P has rarely been shy in giving Blizzard its flowers.

Then, he shares that when the Final Fantasy 14 team saw that the WoW devs were working on their own housing system, and that they "looked to [Final Fantasy] 14 and incorporated things which they wanted to surpass us, I think that in itself is very much a sense of great honor for us to hear."

Seemingly happy to return the favor, Yoshi-P says he went "hands-on" with the WoW housing system, and came away impressed and motivated.

"I really do appreciate it. It's amazing," he says. "And we always like taking on new challenges. So this time around, when I tried WoW's housing, I thought it really is amazing, and it's been a good source of research."

The good news is that you'll see the results of that research soon. Yoshi-P says the Final Fantasy 14 team is "planning two very big overhauls for housing" during the patch 8.0 series. If you're averse to numbers, that means it'll arrive at some point between Final Fantasy 14's Evercold expansion launching and whatever the next expansion ends up being.

So what's on the way? Yoshi-P says one of the overhauls relates to the UI as it's currently "quite technical" and "not very accessible." In an ideal world, Yoshi-P would like a casual player to be able to create elaborate housing.

While Yoshi-P can't reveal much about the second overhaul, he does say it will make players happier than the UI update and that it's currently in the planning phase. As such, there's a chance it'll release before the UI update, but we'll just need to wait and see how the chips fall. Yoshi-P says the Final Fantasy 14 team will announce further details when they have more visibility.

The news is the latest sliver we've got about Final Fantasy 14's Evercold expansion. As part of the Berlin Fan Fest, we've also found out that the first new FF14 Evercold job will be a hulking tank called the Bastion, that Final Fantasy 14 is getting a crossover with the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series, and much more. It feels like Final Fantasy 14 is going for it, and that might be just what the MMO needs.

Final Fantasy 14 Evercold releases January, 2027.

"The desire for a world you can escape to is stronger than ever": How MMORPGs are flourishing in a multiplayer landscape dominated by live-service shooters.

The Final Fantasy 14 fandom quickly became enamoured by a chunky new boss that came alongside a patch 7.5 dungeon: Chort, a big boy who loves to roll around and wear a permanently hungry grin on his face. The critically-acclaimed MMORPG's director, Naoki 'Yoshi-P' Yoshida, doesn't quite get the hype, though.

"Honestly speaking, I just don't know why this is such a thing," Yoshi-P quips during a Final Fantasy 14 Fan Fest panel in Berlin, attended by GamesRadar+. He might not be a huge fan of the rotund icon, but he couldn't exactly ignore the topic in a room full of fans who were asking about Chort.

"I am really glad to hear that Chort is so well received," Yoshi-P adds, per a translator. "But honestly speaking, I just couldn't really understand what is the appeal [or] point of Chort. Of course, we do understand that he's very popular, and there have been many memes. But really, I just couldn't understand, like, just why?"

Yoshi-P's not totally against seeing the good in Chort - he is human, after all, and I'm sure his heart hasn't been totally frozen over. "I mean, this is some huge hunky guy, and then suddenly, well, he's standing there and then he rolls," he continues, inching closer to a eureka moment. "So from that perspective, I can kind of understand." Hook, line, sinker.

Whether he gets the online hype or not, Yoshi-P did tell fans to continue coming together online and talking about the things they enjoy about the game. If nothing else, the devs love to see it: "When these kinds of things happen and the player community picks up on it on social media, and they combine various things, they create their own memes... it's really great for us to see as well because we are involved in creating this entertainment.

"So, if people in the community also find some unexpected sets or point of appeal in any content that we produce moving forward, do make your voices heard because the development team is looking at all of the responses on social media, and we very much do enjoy looking at them, and we do have smirks on our faces when things like this happen."

Long live Chort, then, even if his chances of becoming a minion just became less likely. We'll never forget you, big man.

Elsewhere at Fan Fest, Square Enix revealed that the Bastion is Final Fantasy 14's first new job coming with the Evercold expansion. The game's also getting a very exciting crossover raid series with the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy.

Final Fantasy 14 reportedly tops 1 million active players for the first time in over a year as fans prepare for the Evercold expansion

Capcom has been churning through remakes of its best Resident Evil games over the last few years, with Resident Evil: Code Veronica up next, but dusting off the horror tomes serves more than one purpose for the publisher. Capcom producer Masachika Kawata says remakes help the company release back-to-back games in the series and help invest more money back into all-new games.

Speaking to Game Informer magazine in its latest issue, Kawata explains that one of the reasons why the publisher creates so many remakes is that "producing a new entry in the Resident Evil series every year would be quite an undertaking and a difficult task" otherwise. Resident Evil isn't properly an annual franchise yet, but the only big gaps in its recent history have been in 2024 and 2025.

"Being able to revisit older games and remake them helps Capcom meet that goal of releasing a Resident Evil title each year, but it also allows the team to continually challenge themselves and hone their craft," Kawata adds. "That's not to say the remakes are any less important. In fact, they're just as important as the mainline titles." (Good spot, NintendoEverything!)

The proof is arguably in the pudding with Resident Evil Requeim, a game that managed to marry the tight and sweat-inducing first-person horror of RE7 and RE8 with the bloody, third-person horror-action of Capcom's recently remade games.

"Capcom is lucky enough to have found this cycle that can continue to provide us with the financial resources to create things like new entries in the Resident Evil series and completely new IP like Pragmata," he continues. "So there is that relationship there."

Of course, the well of old Resident Evil games will eventually run dry. Capcom could re-remake the first game and then try to redeem Resident Evils 5 and 6, sure, but at some point, it'll need to start making multiple original Resident Evil games simultaneously should the company want to keep up the cadence it's on now.

Resident Evil 4 made Capcom another $560 million and became the best-selling remake of the generation, analyst says, more than tripling sales of Oblivion Remastered and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth

As Sony inches ever closer to a future where it permanently halts the production of PlayStation discs and as GTA 6 prepares to ship without a true physical version at all, Rockstar Games and Grand Theft Auto co-founder, Dan Houser, has some thoughts about the physical versus digital games debate.

The former GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 lead developer - who also had a hand in several more Rockstar classics - was recently asked about the topic at San Diego Comic-Con 2026. His thoughts? Houser isn't personally enthusiastic about physical games shipping on discs, but he doesn't see why companies should stop making them altogether.

"I don't know that I care, but if people want that, I think companies should provide it," Houser tells IGN in an interview at SDCC. "But I don't know that I personally care."

He also acknowledges that people sure are critical of digital games, but from a developer's perspective, "the ability to update and fix problems in games has been really useful for the quality of games."

The future of physical games are on a lot of peoples' minds right now after PlayStation announced plans to axe PlayStation disc production starting in 2028. That means new games that come out past that point won't get true physical editions on PlayStation hardware - it also means your ability to lend, borrow, sell, and truly own the games you pay for is seriously constricted. An ironic demonstration of how our all-digital future could go very wrong happened this week, when The PlayStation Network almost went down and stopped waves of people from downloading or even playing their digital library.

Also speaking to IGN, former Rockstar veteran Lazlow Jones chimed in, too: "We all have that sort of feeling when you get that copy, and you put the disc in the console, but I also have to say I really like being at the airport and going, 'Oh, cool. I can download some quick games to my Steam Deck for this 12-hour flight.'"

Jones and Houser are now both working at Absurd Ventures, a company making multiple multimedia projects, including an upcoming AAA open-world game and a new comic book. Jones says that's "a different creative process but also just really fulfilling to have a physical thing you can say, 'Look. We made a thing.'"

"I love physical media," Houser adds.

PlayStation killing discs is bad for everyone, whether you care about physical games or not

New Steam game Dinoblade allows you to become a tweenage Spinosaurus capable of manipulating a colossal greatsword with its carnivorous mouth, so yeah, it's sold 36,000 copies in 24 hours.

"36,000 COPIES SOLD IN 24 HOURS," exclaims developer Team Spino's founder Jean Nguyen on Twitter. "The last 24 hours has been an emotional rollercoaster," continues Nguyen, who's also a senior gameplay animator at Ghost of Yotei studio Sucker Punch.

A AAA smash and certified indie Steam hit all in the same year? Nguyen's game developer bingo card must be fully maxed-out. Earlier this week, the developer shared on LinkedIn that Dinoblade had surpassed 600,000 wishlists on Steam – a huge feat.

One day after launch, Dinoblade had already earned a globally Very Positive rating on Steam, with 89% of its total 562 reviews expressing something like "Dinosaurs (Really Cool) + Blades (Really Cool) = Dinoblade (Hell Yeah)." Nguyen's already crossed two impressive milestones for an unconventional game about a scaly sword fighter.

Dinoblade's Steam description calls it "an intense action RPG set in a prehistoric world forever changed by a cataclysmic event." As the young Spinosaurus, who I'd name something powerful, like… Bill, you "confront rival dinosaurs, some armed with weapons of their own, all in a desperate fight to prevent a looming extinction."

It sounds existential, goofy, and most importantly for fellow dinosaur lovers, full of those big, prehistoric guys. There will be more to come soon – Nguyen says he's already "made a patch to fix controller issues. I'll be keeping my eyes out for more hotfix, tweaks, etc. Thank you all for making Day 1 unforgettable!"

I'm sure the rest of Dinoblade's days will be similar; it's about time someone made a game like it. I've always thought that, if we can't bring back the dinosaurs, we could at least give them swords.

Ghost of Yotei was such a hit that the actual Japanese region of Hokkaido is getting official merch amid a tourism rush highlighting areas from the game.

Remember Craig? The ugly alien brute from Halo Infinite who immediately became subject to droves of online ridicule before eventually becoming a loveable internet meme? Halo: Campaign Evolved has now canonized the horrid internet icon, and perhaps even explained why he looks like that.

There are many hulking brutes stomping around the Halo games, but some fans are now convinced that they've had found Craig himself hidden in the newly-released Halo: Campaign Evolved because A) most brutes aren't completely bald and B) not all brutes are that unmistakably fugly.

In one of the remake's new prequel missions, Master Chief can stumble upon liquid-filled pods containing various brutes who have likely been experimented on by their Covenant overlords. Zoom in closely and you'll see that one of them looks very much like our poor old Craig, sad frown and all.

There you have it, then - Craig isn't ugly because Halo Infinite's first gameplay demo wasn't really ready to be shown off. Craig's ugly because he's the victim of genetic alteration and who knows what else? You bully. How he got out of that pod, survived the entire Covenant-UNSC-Flood war, and eventually became a Banished trooper getting whacked in the face by Chief on a faraway ringworld is still a mystery, however. Perhaps we'll need to wait for another Halo remake, which is looking increasingly likely, to find out the full story.

Halo: Campaign Evolved is still available in early access to owners of the Premium Edition only. The full game launches July 28, so be sure to check out what time Halo: Campaign releases in your region. You can also find information on how to pre-load Halo: Campaign Evolved with our handy guide.

Here's all the Halo Campaign Evolved changes and new features compared to the original Combat Evolved.

It's a very risky time to release a multiplayer video game. The 'live service' scene has become inundated with hundreds of titles trying to replicate the success that a select few established games have found. The likes of Fortnite and Call of Duty still dominate the scene, making it seem impossible for newcomers like Concord or Highguard to break in. That's not to mention the number of legacy games that simply can't sustain themselves with the rising costs of development, including Destiny 2, which received its final update earlier this year.

So much of the video game industry is increasingly dangerous and volatile, but one genre has flourished for decades – MMORPGs. As live service games try to hold onto their share of committed players for longer, the developers of the best MMORPGs have had to find new ways to evolve.

To better understand how, I spoke to the leads of three of the longest-running modern MMOs – Final Fantasy 14, Elder Scrolls Online, and Warframe – to unpack how the genre has changed amidst the landscape of multiplayer games.

Building a world

The MMORPG genre began its rise to prominence in the '90s and many developers have tried to play in the massively multiplayer online space since, but precious few have had any real staying power. It's the games which cleanly carve out a niches, and then double down on serving that fanbases, which have any chance at survival. It's a challenge that Nick Giacomini, game director of The Elder Scrolls Online, is well acquainted with.

"The MMORPG genre isn't going away any time soon. MMORPGs are homes for players in a way that most genres just aren't. It's right there in the name: they're massive. The sheer scale of these games gives you a space to truly inhabit, while the community makes it feel alive," says Giacomini.

"That said, the genre is challenging right now, particularly for new games. Creating an MMORPG is a monumental undertaking, and few new MMOs have been able to break through. And on the one hand, the rise of live-service games has made this more challenging. There are so many incredible games to choose from right now, so why should players choose your game when they have so many amazing options?"

That's a sentiment echoed by Warframe creative director Rebecca Ford, who feels there is a new window of opportunity for MMOs. First launched in 2013, Warframe's slow and steady growth has proven it as one of the juggernauts of the genre, able to carry on where others haven't. It might simply be good timing, but the idea of a game that players can "regularly" come back to, as a sort of daily, weekly, or monthly habit, has become more and more attractive in recent years – especially as the cost of everything goes up.

"There's really no place for confidence in the current ecosystem; nothing is guaranteed. The younger generations of gamers have not been exposed to the dominant MMO era, yet the strongest MMOs still stand. 'Interest' in genres comes and goes, but typically, the interest cycles happen much faster because games and hardware were iterated on more quickly," says Ford.

"This means people stick with their comfort games for longer, and devs can work on the same IPs longer. In another life, Warframe would already be on 'Warframe 4', but the conditions of our evolution mean we did not need to sprout gills, so to speak, to evolve. Other genres have certainly impacted interest, as have development costs."

Legacy MMOs like Final Fantasy 14, Guild Wars, Runescape, World of Warcraft are now ingrained into the fabric of online gaming culture and have established, loyal fan bases. The sheer size and nature of the time commitment MMOs have may, in turn, be the secret to their success. Players have to commit to an MMO to some degree, after all.

"MMOs still have several characteristics that could contribute to longer lifespans. For example, unlike games that run on peer-to-peer connections, MMOs have massive servers containing a tremendous number of assets – not just item and character data, but also game systems like player housing and friend lists," says Final Fantasy 14 producer and director Naoki Yoshida.

"When an MMO becomes a hit success, that boosts the number of long-term players and helps stabilize operations, so I can see how those factors often lead to MMOs having longer lifespans. That said, there are still countless MMOs that rose and fell. In the end, all online services have a common principle: they need to have long-term stability and an entertaining experience in order to endure."

It's no coincidence that Final Fantasy 14, The Elder Scrolls Online, and Warframe are undergoing massive shifts in gameplay or ideas at the moment. In accordance, all three of these developers see some kind of symbiotic relationship with live-service titles. Giacomini notes that live service games are helping the MMO genre by "expanding and normalizing the space," while Yoshida says the "boundaries" between MMOs and other genres are becoming more "ambiguous." The influence live-service games have had may not be obvious or tangible, but it's there nonetheless.

"Today, live service games are mainstream. They've normalized the idea of games as a hobby, a place to hang out with friends, and a world that evolves over time. They've introduced MMO-lite concepts to millions of people who may have never considered themselves MMO players," notes Giacomini.

But the other crucial piece of success to the future of MMOs, stressed by all three of these developers, is a passionate community – but more importantly a community that the dev teams themselves can sort of "work" with. The studios behind Warframe, ESO, and FF14 have all opted for transparency, keeping very little to the chest in favour of constant communication with the playerbase, and an open dialogue on what said players want.

"Our players know exactly what they want. They are our 'boss' at the end of the day, and our game is only ever as good as our last update. From the very beginning, we've been transparent and flexible with them, almost every month for nearly 200 announcement-filled Devstreams," says Ford.

She adds: "If we announce a feature and players hate it, we are prepared to scrap it or work collaboratively with them to find the Goldilocks version that feels right for Warframe. We as creatives will always try to take big swings with new things and cross our fingers that they land well. But if we miss the mark, we are always willing to hear our players out and iterate on the idea into something we all love, as devs and players."

"A balancing act"

There's a fine line to tread between retaining the experience players love, but still being experimental and ambitious enough to try new ideas. With a lack of growth, even a successful MMO can grow stagnant, or fail to attract new players. Change is often a scary word in the realm of tech and games, something that connotes that you're losing something, especially daunting when it's a game you've sunk days, if not weeks and months, of your life into.

But a particular, and noticeable, shift in MMOs has been to accommodate a wider variety of players. But a particularly fascinating part of this is these long-running games having to essentially "age up" with their players. Giacomini assets that, as live-service and multiplayer games continue to appeal to young audiences and new players, longstanding MMOs have had to adjust for players whose lives have quintessentially changed across a decade or two.

"If your design ethos doesn't change over ten years, you're going to get left behind," he explains. "Players who started playing with us a decade ago are at a different stage in their lives now, and we have to evolve to provide them with what they're looking for today. Player expectations have also shifted based on what successful new games are bringing to the table. Trying to make sure that every moment players spend in our world feels worthwhile requires change."

"It's definitely a balancing act. If you push too much unwanted change, the game becomes unrecognizable, and you risk alienating your core players. But if you don't change enough, you become formulaic and risk boring them. MMORPGs feel very different today than when I first started playing over 20 years ago. They're recognizable but fundamentally evolved. And I think that kind of continuous evolution is what innovation is going to look like for successful games in the genre."

Speaking to these key creatives, they've all reached similar philosophies in different ways. Both Ford and Yoshida note that the support and deep involvement of their respective communities is the key piece that keeps these games moving. All three stress the need for 'rewarding' experiences, ensuring the time players invest in their game feels well-spent. The development of each of these games revolves around player feedback, but trying to integrate that with the idea of experimenting and finding things that will surprise even players who have spent 10 years on a game.

Ford points to FF14 as a prime example of a game that's adapting to the needs of players, saying it's great to "see them [the FF14 dev team] focus on what they're good at, like Raids, at large scale." But she also stresses the need for integral change. Ford says there's one crucial way MMOs need to keep experimenting.

"Get weird! Go left instead of right, but always, always be ready to work with your community, not for or against them. Nothing is ever set in stone. Game design trends will always be in flux, whether that be due to advancements in technology or changes to player habits due to things happening in the world or their personal lives," Ford says. "We kind of joke about this. You don't want to see the current Warframe leads – me and Pablo Alonso, our design director – try and make a PVP mode again. Even if players think they want it, we simply aren't good at it, so we can't innovate with hero shooter genre appeal, so we have to try other things!"

FF14 is in the midst of one of those moments, with upcoming expansion Evercold making some of the biggest, most sweeping changes the MMO has seen since its relaunch as A Realm Reborn in 2013. And while Yoshida notes that his approach to developing FF14 has undoubtedly changed over the past decade, in a way, that's secondary to how the studio tweaks the game as a whole. Because the community has become such an ingrained part of FF14's identity, it's more about knowing when to hold off on major changes, and when to push forward.

"For our upcoming expansion, Evercold, I chose to steer FF14 towards 'change' in pursuit of creating even more enjoyment and evolving further. I felt that, in terms of mindset and time, we were prepared to update the gaming experience to be more enjoyable and comfortable for our players and their lifestyles," Yoshida says. "Our lifestyle routines are constantly changing, and the rate of change only keeps accelerating. But making sudden changes to try and keep up with that pace can be harmful to our operations, like how making sharp turns while driving fast tends to lead to accidents. Making these judgment calls is a constant part of overseeing FF14."

However, Yoshida says his approach might be completely different if he was making something from scratch, adding, "Incidentally, if I were to develop a new online live service title from scratch, I'd be challenging myself to tackle completely new game designs and values."

But cutting through all the noise, there seems to be one universal truth to the success of MMOs – something that none of these teams have forgotten even as they try to shift and adjust to changing player expectations. And it's especially attractive in light of so many multiplayer games that lean into short bursts of excitement, battle passes, and an ever-changing experience.

"The industry is more crowded now, but the desire for a world you can live in and escape to is stronger than ever," says Giacomini. "And if MMORPGs can evolve to meet players where they are and ensure the time they invest here feels worthwhile, the genre will thrive for decades."

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The director of Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is looking into adding a challenge system to the pirateventure, like the one Assassin's Creed Mirage eventually got, but he's not promising anything just yet.

Asked about bringing back a series feature that let fans replay missions with new challenges and requirements, in an interview with JorRaptor, game director Richard Knight says he thinks it "would be awesome."

Assassin's Creed Mirage actually got a post-launch update with the same challenge system last year, which offered unique challenges for contracts and black box missions. One challenge might have disabled Eagle Vision for the entire mission or asked you to slide a hidden blade into your main target while going undetected - they were essentially cool modifiers that gave mission replays some extra spice.

"We've looked into this one quite a bit," Knight adds. "I can't promise anything on it just because it exists in Mirage, but it doesn't exist in the modern Anvil [Engine]. So, it's like new tech, right? They do have a solution. We do roughly see how it works, but it's going to take time to understand if it's something we can build or how long it would take."

Part of Knight's desire to add tougher mission constraints and replayable challenges to the stealth game comes from his time on the Hitman titles, a series renowned for those sorts of open, free-flowing, flexible assassination sandboxes. "You know, personally, as someone who used to work on Hitman and has played a lot of Hitman and likes seeing the speedrun timer on screen, I think it's a very interesting way to play a game," he explains. "But, yeah, no promises on that one."

Seeing a similar system implemented into Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced isn't entirely impossible. Ubisoft confirmed that a New Game Plus mode is on the way, and the team apparently have a bunch of other DLC ideas as well.

At 3.5 million sales, Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced beat Ubisoft's full-year expectations in 2 weeks with "historical" PC performance

A new Final Fantasy 14 Evercold raid has been confirmed, and it features none other than a crossover with the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series.

As part of Final Fantasy 14's Fan Fest celebrations in Berlin, Naoki 'Yoshi-P' Yoshida revealed that an Evercold raid will be called Beyond the Lifestream.

If that's not enough of a hint, that does indeed mean the critically acclaimed MMO is getting a Final Fantasy 7 Remake series crossover.

As part of the reveal, Final Fantasy 7 Revelation lead Naoki Hamaguchi joined the stage to reveal more details. You're getting three tiers, with the first starting in update 8.01. Additionally, there will be three difficulty levels. The standard Normal and Savage difficulties, and a new difficulty that's new to Evercold that's designed to bridge the gap between the standard two.

Additionally, OG Final Fantasy 7 writer Kazushige Nojima is acting as story supervisor to make sure everything fits. Naturally, OG Final Fantasy 7 art icon Tetsuya Nomura is also getting involved.

Somewhat related, though amusing for sure, but we've also found out that Final Fantasy 14's version of the Gold Saucer is getting additional games, like a typing game that's Final Fantasy 7-related to start, of course. Brush up on your vocab, folks. There are outfits to be unlocked, starting with Tifa and Barret's duds.

That's about it for now, but you can expect plenty more details as we get closer to Final Fantasy 14's Evercold expansion, which releases in January 2027.

The Bastion is Final Fantasy 14's first new job for Evercold, a hulking tank with a shield and gun on each arm.

The first new Final Fantasy 14 job of Evercold has been revealed, and it's a tank called the Bastion that blends high fantasy and mechanical aesthetics.

As part of the European leg of Final Fantasy 14 Fan Fest, producer and director Naoki 'Yoshi-P' Yoshida has taken to the stage once more to continue the drip feed of what's coming to the MMO in its next expansion. In this case, Final Fantasy 14 Evercold.

Back at the American leg of Fan Fest, we found out that Final Fantasy 14 would be getting two new jobs in Evercold – something for tank fans, something for DPS fans. Yoshi-P also revealed that these new classes would be something new to the Final Fantasy series, so no throwbacks here.

Now, we know what one of them is. As part of a new trailer, Square Enix has revealed that Final Fantasy is getting a new tank job that not only has a shield on each arm, but can also fire 'em both off as guns.

Our first glimpse of the new job in action came from an extended version of the Evercold trailer, which opened the Berlin Fan Fest keynote.

While Yoshi-P did appear in his cosplay to further tease the job, we had to wait just a little while longer for some more details, and it was worth it.

We first see a glimpse of some of its moves, blending up-close-and-personal combat with the ability to fire off its weapons from a bit of a distance. From vibes alone, it looks like it'll hit like a truck.

If you're keen to start Evercold as the Bastion, you'll want to make sure you're level 90 and around Limsa when the expansion releases in January 2027. Additionally, as touched upon at the last Fan Fest, this job will use the MMO's new streamlined moveset.

The job news might not be a total surprise to some clever Final Fantasy 14 fans. As is tradition, Yoshi-P teased what jobs were to come with a t-shirt he made everyone aware of at the last Fan Fest. Now, the t-shirts aren't typically an obvious giveaway. For Dawntrail, Yoshi-P wore a Ninja Turtles t-shirt to tease the upcoming artist job. It wasn't to tease that some sort of Ninja job was on the way – that'd be too obvious, and the MMO already has it – rather, the clue was that each turtle is named after an artist.

For Evercold, we got a picture of A Realm Reborn antagonist Rhitahtyn sas Arvina with a 'guess who's back' caption above it. Fans quickly assumed this was leading us to the tank job, with theories ranging from something obvious like a gunshield user to grander theories – like something hammer-based due to Ritahtyn sas Arvina's name translating to "judge" in the Roegadyn language. And, of course, the expansion being Norse themed.

Amusingly, Yoshi-P himself said that some fans already guessed what the jobs were back in Anaheim. Naturally, he didn't confirm which guesses were correct.

Regardless, that's one job down, and some were, of course, correct. When the Japan leg of Final Fantasy 14 comes around, we'll find out the other. Final Fantasy 14's Evercold expansion releases in January 2027.

Final Fantasy 14's Third Walk raid starts with FF11's most infamous boss being bodied in a cutscene because a raid designer wanted to show off the true strength of your first foe.

If making video games the traditional way is like squeezing blood from a stone, then making Scarlet Deer Inn must've been like doing that using only your elbows. Developer Attu Games' newly released 2D adventure is a gorgeous mix of mediums that I have found no precedent for, and it's quickly enchanted players on Steam, where it sits at 87% positive user reviews days after launch. (Console versions are "set to follow as soon as possible," the devs say.)

Scarlet Deer Inn is officially described as "an embroidered dark medieval folk tale," and the devs mean that literally. Frame by frame, its sprites were stitched in cloth and then digitally brought into the game.

A lot of games have used this kind of embroidered or hand-woven art style. Yoshi's Wooly World and Kirby's Epic Yarn, both from Nintendo, come to mind. But in the entire history of video games, I don't know that anyone else has ever actually rendered every single frame of their sprites with physical embroidery that was then integrated into a game.

I've seen plenty of real models, sculptures, weapons, and even chickens used in games. We just saw a man turn photos of his wife into a horrible boss fight. Cuphead, with its pencil-and-paper animation, feels like a distant cousin. But I haven't seen anything quite like this.

This unorthodox, laborious approach to game art caused Scarlet Deer Inn to go viral online back in 2023, and now that the game is finally out, countless stitches later, the exact same thing has happened again.

"The last 4 seconds of this video made my mind explode," says an incredulous Twitter user sharing the game's trailer. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN EVERY FRAME IS HAND SEWN/EMBROIDERED ARE YOU JOKING????"

"This is hitherto unheard-of levels of creativity between mediums," adds another. "They have animation made from embroidering. Like, physically sewn thread and fabric. You're running around a character that was sewn into the game."

"What do you fucking mean they embroidered all the sprites," echoes a Bluesky post.

Back in 2023, I actually spoke to Eva Navratilova of Attu Games to ask, in so many words, why and how would you do this?

"Because we thought it was cool," Navratilova said at the time. "We simply wanted to give it a shot because we really enjoy various crafts and handmade stuff. A few people are using embroidery to create some amazing animation, but no one has yet made a real game with it. It's also exciting and fun. Even though there is a ton of 'unnecessary' extra labor involved, it is amazing to work on something new and creative.

"There is no connection between the embroidery and the story itself," she added. "We believe that it would change the feeling we want the game to have. We're trying to achieve the feel of the Studio Ghibli movies, not something like Paper Mario, Yoshi's Crafted World, or Kirby's Epic Yarn games."

Navratilova estimated that achieving this art style takes around "three times as long" as traditional animation. Main character Elise has hundreds of embroidered frames for her movements, and side characters may have dozens.

"The embroidery must first be prepared on a PC," she explained. "It means I take the finished frame-by-frame animation and basically redo it into vectors in embroidery software and decide a lot of different settings for threads, colors, stitch styles, angles, etc. The entire machine embroidery process is quite challenging."

The results speak for themselves. There's an inimitable texture to the thready silhouettes of Scarlet Deer Inn, adding eye-catching depth and detail to a short and simple-looking game.

Palworld studio Pocketpair is publishing a new indie game that mixes Factorio-style automation, town building, and more – and you can try it for free on Steam.

In a sea of conservative, market-researched games, a group of game development and publishing staff pointed to games like French JRPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, co-op adventure Peak, and roguelike card game Balatro as modern demonstrations of the "courage" that games should carry.

"We're moving fast and losing what made us good (creativity, craft & the future)," declared a 2026 DevGAMM Madeira Games Summit workgroup hosted by veteran indie dev and consultant Rami Ismail of Vlambeer fame, as GamesIndustry.biz points out.

Filled with designers, producers, publishers, and other game-orbiting staff, the group, as Ismail put it in a LinkedIn post, examined the "fear" chilling the games industry. In this fearful climate, they looked to four creative pillars: "creating coherence, identifying weaknesses, selling the dream," and "connecting the dots."

"Many of the more fearful reflexes of the industry aim to sand down the rough edges of creative work, creating homogenous and bland works that 'check all the boxes', but are nevertheless (or, consequently) insincere, uninspiring, and uninteresting," Ismail said. "Courage is a consistent factor of most hit titles; in funding, in publishing, in marketing, and in investment."

He added: "The industry’s fear of risk is currently the largest risk it faces."

The thrust, I gather, is to help and encourage more developers and companies to follow the example of games like Clair Obscur, Balatro, and Peak by un-learning the impulse to "make games for everyone" or "chase the algorithm," per GamesIndustry.biz's reporting.

However, there was also notable pushback among the group on the idea of auteur-led development that sees one creative figure dragging teams behind them like cans on string. Rather than a caution-to-the-wind embracement of creativity of all, the group seemed to push brave and sustainable decisions.

"There are too many cowards using all the wrong metrics controlling too many critical levers, and until we figure out how to put people - taste, creativity, and craft - back at the top, we're going to be stuck in the same loop that literally millennia ago people already understood and warned for: that acting from fear begets what you fear," Ismail says on LinkedIn.

This approach to making risk workable comes as many industry figures highlight overdone de-risking in games, particularly in the AAA space, often to the point of outright de-fanging projects in the name of safety or broader appeal.

Just last month, former PlayStation chief Shawn Layden argued that "we've lost a lot of the variety in games" thanks to the "rising cost" to make them. When costs go up, investment risks go up, so large, publicly traded companies often sand off risky elements to improve a project's outlook or try to reach a larger audience. But elements seen as risky are often the secret sauce that makes games fun and memorable, and without it, they may be reduced to a state worse than dead: sauceless.

And let's talk about those costs for a minute. Too often it's implied that these enormous budgets are unavoidable, that games must be this big and expensive (and treading a path strewn with discarded labor, but I digress) and this is just how much it costs to make them. I'm reminded of a quote from Strange Scaffold head Xalavier Nelson Jr, one of the dozens of developers who told GamesRadar+ why they don't want to use generative AI (as it happens, we also spoke to Ismail).

Nelson Jr. rather pertinently said: "For all the people who say it will let us finally make our big games faster and cheaper as the costs go exponentially up, the unspoken decision that has occurred is that rather than ask whether the size of the game is feasible, and whether it provides the thing that is most meaningful for a player, they have decided that the sheer scope is the god of their development process and it must be fulfilled at all costs."

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, as a more mid-sized AA type of game, has been an especially relevant talking point on budgets. Reports from last year indicated its sub-$10 million budget clocked in around 3% of the likes of Marvel's Spider-Man 2 from Sony-owned studio Insomniac Games.

Former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida says $200 million AAA budgets mean publishers greenlight fewer games: "Something that has to be done."

Bethesda has rumbled back to life. Nearly three years after Starfield and with The Elder Scrolls 6 nowhere in sight, the positive reception to the announcement of the Fallout 3 and New Vegas remasters is hardly surprising. With the help of Obsidian, between 2008 and 2011 Bethesda cemented itself as the rightful king of the open-world RPG, Fallout 3 and Skyrim bookending the kind of development run we'll probably never see again.

A long-awaited return to the Capitol and Mojave Wastelands is welcome, but while these remasters aren't quite too little, too late, they serve as a reminder of just how neglected one of the biggest and best RPG series has become.

This November will mark 11 years since Fallout 4, with Fallout 76's eighth anniversary falling just a couple of weeks before. And until last week, there was nothing to suggest another game was anywhere close to the horizon – based on Bethesda's previous release cadence, 2033 was a solid guess for a potential Fallout 5 release year. That's not far short of two full decades since the series' last traditional, single-player RPG launch – an unforgivable drought for a series that has over the past few years, been transformed into a mainstream, global franchise thanks to the critically-acclaimed Amazon Prime series.

In the last week, admittedly, the Fallout slate has filled up significantly. First up will be next year's "prequel story to Fallout 3" heading to Fallout 76. The Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas remasters seem likely to follow relatively soon after, potentially positioned around Fallout season 3 and the Fallout Shelter show. Fallout 5 is officially in pre-production, but could easily follow as many as five years after Elder Scrolls 6, which still feels a long way off. Obsidian's new Fallout project seems likely to plug that inter-franchise gap – perhaps some time in 2029 or the early 2030s.

Kick in the head

It's that last project that's currently most mysterious, but also the clearest indication of what Fallout and Xbox actually need: help from the wider ecosystem. Xbox and Zenimax are full of studios that could have, over the six years since the acquisition, been running wild in the franchise playgrounds that are currently open only to Bethesda. Clearly, the kind of AAA, open-world RPG that Todd Howard wants to make takes many years to complete, but I see no reason why no other studio has been allowed to do more than sniff in the direction of the Fallout and TES brands.

The possibilities are huge; a stealthy, Dark Brotherhood immersive sim made by Arkane Austin instead of shuttering it after Redfall; a Ghoul-led game using the State of Decay tech from Undead Labs, which just got sold off; an Age of Empires conversion from World's Edge, which has been diligently plugging away on DLC and remasters for that franchise. Xbox's affinity for beefy guys with guns across the Gears, Doom, and Halo series could have led to an amazing power armor shooter. There are certainly studios whose work doesn't mesh with Bethesda's oeuvre so neatly, but within the Xbox ecosystem, they're surprisingly few and far between. And all that is to say nothing of Obsidian, a studio that not only made one of the best Fallout games, but eventually took its fate into its own hands and made Avowed and The Outer Worlds as its own answers to The Elder Scrolls and Fallout.

That none of those studios have been given a Bethesda license is a mistake, but it's a mistake compounded by the fact that Bethesda isn't equipped to handle them at the pace that should be required. Its two most important IPs have been left to languish for more than a decade. Starfield is a primary cause for that, but so is Bethesda's size. The studio has remained deliberately small by the standards of a major studio, and at about 450 staff isn't capable of being a two-game studio, especially since switching between three different franchises means it can't pull off the kind of juggling act that the similarly-sized Insomniac - which has launched a whole suite of Marvel games over the time since Fallout 76 – has been able to achieve.

A hit of Jet

It's likely that the Fallout release cadence will pick up now. The remasters are the start of that process, and the Obsidian game and Fallout 76 expansion will help. But while Xbox's recent deluge of lay-offs have hit hard, the fact still stands that the publisher is sitting pretty on some of the industry's highest profile RPG brands and what remains of the studios that created them. With only the likes of CD Projekt Red as major competition, the question is whether new Xbox chief Asha Sharma will be able to do what predecessor Phil Spencer couldn't, even as the company haemorrhages staff. If CDPR is able to push out three major RPGs in quick succession, could the much larger Xbox be in a position to follow suit instead of squandering the opportunity? Or, is such a massive entity prone to slow manoeuvring, like trying to turn a Brotherhood of Steel zeppelin?

But, whether or not that all comes to pass, it doesn't change the fact that as a gaming series Fallout has been left behind by its creators for far too long, and no number of remasters will help speed up the ongoing wait for its next major iteration, especially as the years tick on.

The Elder Scrolls Online is struggling with "team bandwidth" after Xbox layoffs hit Bethesda and ZeniMax, leading devs to limit a store for in-game items.

Once you give players an ability, you really can't control how they use it. People can do whatever they like with a photo mode, as the devs behind Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced have discovered due to the amount of feet pics they've seen.

"There's just nothing like having one million or two million players playing a game at once that you can't replicate. The feet pics were very surprising," Richard Knight, game director on Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, tells JorRaptor. "That's kind of what photo mode is there for – to take really interesting, sometimes unusual, photos."

I'm not surprised – internet loves doing things for the bit, and bizarre, slightly lewd photographs emerging from a new Assassin's Creed game is the exact kind of tomfoolery that goes over very well.

But I'm far too innocent for such things, because my most in-depth experience with photo mode was in Insomniac's Spider-Man games. I loved swinging around and making fake comic book covers. I've made dozens of them across the three installments.

Obviously, that's the wrong line of thinking. Pictures of Spider-Man are out, pictures of feet are in, apparently. "I never would have expected that one," Knight adds.

I have to imagine someone on the team thought it was a possibility, but what are you going to do? Restrict people's creativity? You've got to just let people do what they do, that's the real adventure of life.

At 3.5 million sales, Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced beat Ubisoft's full-year expectations in 2 weeks with "historical" PC performance.

Oblivion Remastered and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth have been found dead in a puddle of T-virus – the Resident Evil 4 remake from 2023 has sold 16.8 million copies across all platforms, and games industry researcher Alinea Analytics infers that makes it the best-selling remake of this console generation.

"It’s also among the most successful single-player horror games in history," says market analysis lead Rhys Elliott in a Substack breakdown of the best-selling game remakes and remasters since 2020, "generating $560M in gross revenue for Capcom so far across the three platforms, split 53.1% PlayStation, 34.1% Steam, and 12.8% Xbox." Resident Evil 4 remake's competition comes nowhere close.

In terms of total copies sold, Resident Evil 4 is followed by 2023 remaster Ark: Survival Ascended, which moved a total of 7 million copies. The Last of Us Part 1 remake sits behind it with 6.3 million sold, while Oblivion Remastered, the Dead Space remake, and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth lag in the race with a total of 4.5, 4.3, and 4.2 million copies sold, respectively.

Bloober's Silent Hill 2 remake from 2024 is the worst best-seller according to Alinea, with a total of 3.2 million copies sold – though, as a huge fan, I'm at least placated by the suggestion that millions of people have now been exposed to buff Pyramid Head.

Elliot suggests, out of all these still very popular titles, Resident Evil 4 might have been especially suited to the new, industry-wide hobby of swanky remakes because "it's revered enough to guarantee demand and old enough that the remake feels new."

But the obvious flaw with this conclusion is that it applies to multiple titles in Alinea's collection of best-selling remakes. Silent Hill 2, for example, is even older than Resident Evil 4 and similarly revered, while Oblivion released around the same time as Resident Evil 4 and seemed to sell at a similar pace; contemporaneous reports estimate Resident Evil 4 sold 3 million copies within a year from launch, while Circana analyst Mat Piscatella said in 2025 that Oblivion Remastered outsold the original game's first 15 months on the market, which likely also existed in the realm of 3 million (2006 reports say Oblivion had already sold 1.7 copies by the end of its first week).

So what's really so special about the Resident Evil 4 remake? Well, Capcom's sales – you can currently purchase the game on Steam for $9.99 instead of $39.99, whereas Silent Hill 2 is currently $27.99 on sale, and Oblivion is an unrepentant $49.99. Elliott says, "Steam's share of total Resident Evil 4 revenue has grown from 28.0% in launch week to 34.1% today. There’s that Capcom catalogue flywheel again – a game earning a bigger slice of its lifetime revenue years after release, at the low end of the price curve (in markets consoles barely reach)."

Then, there's the irresistible charms of a formative game like Resident Evil 4. It has something for every player – revolutionary third-person shooting, a girl named Ashley, and parasites that look like someone sneezed on the floor. I, personally, couldn't imagine wanting anything more.

Only 7 PlayStation games have sold over 100,000 physical copies in the US this year, says analyst, as commenters demand discs without buying them.

Sega president Shuji Utsumi has promised fans of the Persona series that the teaser trailer for Persona 6 is just the start of what he believes will be a "truly memorable year" to celebrate the series' 30th anniversary. While Persona 4 Revival will be another hype moment for fans, Utsumi hints that there are more reveals on the horizon.

In an interview with Famitsu, that's been translated by GamesRadar+, Utsumi expresses how he's "very confident" that fans will be pleased with what Sega has planned for the series' 30th anniversary. A spin-off from Atlus' already popular Shin Megami Tensei series, Revelations: Persona added more of a narrative focus and emphasis on the character's relationships than its beast battling predecessor.

Originally released for the original PlayStation in 1996, the series has evolved well beyond its isometric pixel art roots. If you've only played the series' newer titles you might not be aware that it didn't always feature a spicy UI and ranked high school relationships.

As 2026 is the 30th anniversary of this game, it seemed natural that Sega would announce the next mainline entry in the series, the long-awaited Persona 6. "I think we were able to announce a truly memorable year for Persona's 30th anniversary," Utsumi says. "Hype for the series has been built by Persona 6's reveal.

"And I think Persona 4 Revival will spark fan excitement again," Utsumi continues. "I'm sure everyone will feel the same way, and I'm very confident we'll give the Persona series the lively 30th anniversary celebration it deserves."

Persona 4 Revival seemingly features more scenes with Marie, fuelling hopes she'll be integrated better than in Golden: "If they do that, the remake will have fulfilled its purpose."

The Halo Campaign Evolved Skulls and Terminal found in the first level, The Pillar of Autumn, aren't too difficult to find, for the most part. The main issue is that a couple of Skulls are found so early in the game that you'll no doubt run right past them the first time you play. So, to help you find them quickly, I've explained exactly where to find the Terminal and all Skulls in the first level of Halo Campaign Evolved below.

Halo Campaign Evolved Pillar of Autumn Skull 1

From Rally Point Alpha, the start of the level.

At the very start of the level as soon as soon as you have control over Master Chief, turn around and head over to the two large, round containers towards the left side of the back of the room. Climb on top of these containers, then jump across to the nearby upper walkway. Walk to the other end and you'll find the Speed Limit Skull.

Halo Campaign Evolved Pillar of Autumn Skull 2

From Rally Point Alpha, as soon as the marine says Cortana needs you at the bridge.

The next room the marine will lead you into is an armory, and the Magnified Skull is on top of the central weapon rack near the middle of the room.

Halo Campaign Evolved Pillar of Autumn Skull 3

From Rally Point Bravo, after the cutscene where Master Chief meets Keyes at the bridge.

After this cutscene finishes, turn around and head back into the bridge. Go to the main control area with the glass canopy and the two pilots in their chairs and drop down into the floorspace below them. This is where you'll find the Perspective Skull, and there's a ladder you can use to get out.

Halo Campaign Evolved Pillar of Autumn Terminal

From Rally Point Charlie, when going through the upper cryo room with the cracked windows.

You'll know you're in the right room if Cortana says, "it looks like the Covenant wanted to catch you napping". From here, carry on through the next door, then immediately turn left to find another open door leading into another room with red lights and lots of screens. The Approach Terminal is at the far end.

Finding all these collectibles also takes a while, so expect it to add a few hours to how long it takes to beat Halo Campaign Evolved. If you've played Halo CE in The Master Chief Collection, you will have noticed that all the Skulls are in completely different places to that, which is one of the many Halo Campaign Evolved changes.

This Halo 1 remake is out now in early access but the full Halo Campaign Evolved release time is still to come. In the meantime, make sure you've got your Halo Campaign Evolved pre-load sorted.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Halo: Campaign Evolved might be a remake of one of the best shooters to ever do it, but that doesn't mean it's entirely bullet proof. On Steam, the remake has debuted to an average 'Mixed' rating thanks to player complaints of crashes and server login issues that temporarily stopped people from playing the campaign-only game.

For context, Halo: Campaign Evolved launches in full on July 28, but owners of the $70/£70 Premium Edition get to skip the queue and jump in five days early. Despite paying extra, those fans have maybe been given the short end of the stick if user reviews are anything to go by.

At the time of writing, about 32% of Campaign Evolved's 1,666 Steam user reviews give it the thumbs down, with many reviews citing semi-frequent crashes and problems even connecting to the game's servers in the first place.

"Yes the game just came out, but it shouldn't be a trend for a game to always come out severely broken," one player writes. "Call me a boomer, but I miss when games came out in a playable state without patches needed."

"Login failed," another states. "Cannot play the single-player game as servers are overloaded. Screw your DRM." Halo Studios actually responded to that user review by promising that login issues should now be fixed, and judging by the almost 20 hours the fan has on record, it seems server issues are a non-issue for now.

Still, some other fans took issue with the fact that Halo: Campaign Evolved requires a login and a connection at all. The game is playable start-to-finish in online co-op, but there's no real reason why Spartans who prefer to go in solo should have to connect their Microsoft accounts before even reaching the main menu.

Technical issues and a bumpy launch aside, players who aren't being interrupted by crashes seem otherwise happy with the classic game's second remake.

"Finished the prequel missions. Barely any problems whatsoever, and so far it's been refreshing playing a "new" Halo game again," one fans says of the new three-mission arc.

"Well – it's Halo 1's campaign, but with a new coat of paint on top and some interesting and fun tweaks to mix up the gameplay, with the most comprehensive set of skulls the series has ever seen that offer tons of replay value," a second player explains. "Really, that's all I think needs to be said to justify the recommendation here."

GamesRadar's Halo: Campaign Evolved review had similarly good things to say about the remake, even if the package as a whole also felt like "a wasted opportunity for Halo Studios to put its own spin on a classic."

Want more? A secret Halo: Campaign Evolved ending strongly hints that another Halo 2 remake is in the works – "See you in the sequel."

It seems like things are looking up for Final Fantasy 14. After Dawntrail led to players gradually pulling away from Square Enix's MMORPG, new data suggests many are now returning, in anticipation of upcoming expansion, Evercold.

The information comes from Japanese outlet Lucky Bancho, which regularly posts numbers related to the MMO's overall playerbase. According to these numbers, since March, Final Fantasy 14's number of active players has grown to over one million, to a grand total of around 1,020,000.

That's a good sign, and a decent jump from Lucky Bancho's last survey of the userbase in March, where the numbers for those actively playing were closer to around 770,000. It's mentioned that some 80,000 new accounts have been started as well, double the 40,000 of the previous datapoint, suggesting more people are beginning their journeys through Eorzea.

It's been a long time since the MMO came close to one million, according to the site's numbers. It recorded 990,000 active players in March 2025, over a year ago.

These insights are built through looking over public information on achievements and the like. It's not the most accurate because it doesn't include private accounts and doesn't differentiate among people who have multiple accounts. But it's a good ballpark estimate that can give us some insight into the overall health of the game.

There have been concerns following the negative reception to Dawntrail over the future of Final Fantasy 14. One bad expansion isn't a death knell for a game that's already been going well for over a decade now, but a consistent drop in players is enough to cause some anxiety.

But anticipation is growing for Evercold. It arrives in early 2027, and kicks off the Godless Realms Saga, marking a new era for the MMO. There's even an Evangelion crossover on the way. The future is looking bright, as it tends to under the watchful eye of director Naoki Yoshida.

Final Fantasy 14's Third Walk raid starts with FF11's most infamous boss being bodied in a cutscene because a raid designer wanted to show off the true strength of your first foe.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake series director Naoki Hamaguchi understands open-world fatigue, which is why Revelation is seemingly trying to find a balance between Remake and Rebirth.

Rebirth's open world has been a point of criticism for the 2024 RPG, and despite the, ahem, revelation that Final Fantasy 7 Revelation will have a bigger world than even Rebirth did, Hamaguchi tells Eurogamer that not overdoing it is on his mind.

He explains, "The world is even bigger than it was in Rebirth, so it is more important than ever for us to ensure there's enough guidance here, so people have no issues enjoying what this game has to offer."

"There are a lot of open world games out in the world right now, and [the idea of 'open world fatigue'] is a very important concept to me," Hamaguchi says.

Hamaguchi notes "it depends on personal preference and different perceptions, but for me personally, I know I've had the experience where I've been thrown out into an open world game and not known where to go, not known where to begin, and not known what to do."

As someone who is just playing Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth now after waiting for ages, it's pretty striking how different the layout of the game is compared to the first game in the Remake trilogy. While Final Fantasy 7 Remake did have little hubs to explore and get up to nonsense, it was very much funneling you forward through the adventure.

Rebirth, on the other hand, is very much an open-world game, full of distractions in each of the game's many areas. I've spent countless hours running through the maps to find all of the intel, fast forwarding through every bit of annoying dialogue Chadley is giving, with a few chapters still to go.

"For me personally, as a creator, I think it's very important to offer proper guidance for the players in open world games," Hamaguchi continues.

He says the Rebirth team wanted to "make it easy" for people to see how much content there is, and says "that design philosophy is applied to Revelation: players have all the guidance that they need. This is something that both myself and the development team were very careful about when we designed the game."

Hamaguchi also singles out the Highwind and parachute mechanic included in the next game, and stresses it isn't as simple as picking where to go and letting the cutscene drop you there.

"After you open the parachute, you kind of have to rely on your memory to ensure that you're actually dropping into the place where you want to go," he clarifies. This is billed as "another example of the guidance we're giving players, without directing them too much."

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation DLC includes "Story Expansion Pass," according to Epic Games Store database listings

Jeffrey Gattis, general manager for games at Amazon, hopes to see more people try its cloud gaming service Luna as consoles and PCs become eye-wateringly expensive.

Speaking with The Game Business, Gattis weighs up the increasing costs of gaming today. Component supply chains decimated by AI data centers forced even Valve's wealthy hand (as it refuses to sell hardware at a loss), leading to a flagrantly overpriced Steam Machine that would've been a proper hit with a sticker in the high three-digit range.

Now even Xbox is preemptively talking about how consoles have to adapt to the memory and storage market, in roughly the same way that a dinosaur must adapt to being on fire.

Gattis inherited the difficult task of getting people to know and care about Luna, which was announced in 2020 and swiftly forgotten. By baking it straight into Amazon Prime Video, Gattis says "we've 5x-ed our player base, albeit on a modest base," which is the kind of corporate speak that reveals a very modest starting audience.

But Gattis is optimistic about Luna and cloud gaming's future, especially in a world where the Steam Machine and rumored new-gen consoles cost "well over $1,000."

Cloud gaming has long been "a little bit of a solution in search of a problem," Gattis reflects, but that was in a world where core gaming was relatively affordable.

"Consoles, for the most part, have been relatively inexpensive until now," he says. "So our business is more about reaching more players and expanding the market, not trying to get people to give up their consoles or their gaming PC.

"Having said all that, we've seen the news. We saw the Steam Machine pricing opening at $1,000 US. We hear rumors about consoles, because of the RAM prices, pushing well over $1,000 in gen 10. So I do think you get to a point at which a lot more people will be in the consideration set for a cloud gaming solution just because of the sheer cost of buying dedicated hardware."

Gattis reckons there are "3 billion people in the world who play video games, yet there's only, depending on how you do the math, 300 million to 500 million dedicated hardware devices out in the wild."

In that difference of roughly 2.5 billion gamers, he sees the potential cloud gaming market of tomorrow – folks who don't have the time or money for the latest consoles or PC games, but do want to play something. And as long as they're comfortable with the limitations of cloud gaming licensing.

"Games can be big investments – to go buy a $70 game, to go through the download experience, to pair a controller, and then make an investment of hundreds of hours of time, in some cases, to complete one of these games," Gattis reasons, perhaps exaggerating the arduous toil of pairing a controller.

"There's people like me who love that. That's how I choose to spend my entertainment time. But I think most people fit into more of a bell curve, a more normal distribution. They spend some time watching television, they spend some time watching movies, and they like to play video games. I think that's where we see an opportunity to serve a group of people who I might argue haven't really been well-served because the console and PC companies are mostly focused on those hardcore players."

The big problem, of course, is that Amazon has struggled to get anything right in games. Its once-roaring MMO New World is dead, its Lord of the Rings MMO is reportedly dead, and Amazon Studios' primary exports so far have been layoffs and cancellations. It turns out all the money in the universe can't just magic games into being, so even if Luna was always meant to be a third-party game merchant, it's in untrustworthy hands in the eyes of many players.

Meanwhile: Amazon Games gutted amid 14,000 layoffs: work on first-party games and MMOs in particular scaled back, "casual and AI-focused games" a continued focus.

One of the most exciting things about Beast of Reincarnation – the new action game from mainline Pokemon maker, Game Freak – is the adorably fluffy, but violently capable dog that'll follow you around for the entire adventure. And, yes, thankfully, you can pet the good boy.

Beast of Reincarnation flings us a couple thousand years into the future to experience a post-apocalyptic version of Japan, where we'll do battle with deadly automatons, frenzied beasties who hail from the natural world, and enemies that are a curious mix of both. There's hints of Nier Automata for sure, but the game's main selling point is easily the "one-person, one-dog" gameplay that arguably builds off the monster-befriending, apocalypse-proof loop of Pokemon.

Thanks to new footage courtesy of Denfaminicogamer, we learned that you can pet Koo, the blighted dog, back at your in-game home base and wash whatever blood or robot battery juice spilled onto his otherwise shiny white coat during combat.

Grooming and loving Koo, like he's the goodest boy who's ever boyed, isn't in the game only to appease the dog fanatics among us, however. Feeding or petting Koo will also impact your affection level that'll, in turn, improve your capabilities in other areas of the game (although, exactly how is still up in the air.) Should Koo fall in combat, then your affection level could drop, too.

Beast of Reincarnation also has more in common with Pokemon than simply taming an animal that would realistically chomp you down in most other contexts. Speaking to GamesRadar+ earlier in the year, game director Kota Furushima said his background as Pokemon's battle planner influenced much of Beast of Reincarnation's combat: "It allowed us to create a contrast between real-time actions requiring split-second decisions and command selections that involve a bit of deliberation."

Beast of Reincarnation launches August 4 on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Game Pass.

Check out our new games calendar to see everything on the horizon.

Your carry capacity and inventory in Dune Awakening starts off limited to 35 slots and 175 pounds of weight, which is a respectable amount, but clearly could be more, especially when you're going on long journeys around the Hagga Basin looking to acquire large amounts of resources. Sadly there's no way at time of writing to directly increase your carry capacity specifically in Dune Awakening, but there are options that can effectively serve a similar purpose, as I'll explain below.

Can you increase your Dune Awakening inventory?

While there's no way at time of writing to increase either the number of slots or the maximum carry capacity weight of your inventory, such as the various Dune Awakening Skills, you can at least move more items around at once by building greater Inventory Modules for various vehicles, and then using those vehicles frequently.

Pretty much all of the Dune Awakening vehicles have a built-in inventory that can be expanded even further by adding an Inventory module to it (researched as normal and then built in the Vehicle Fabricator). There are limits to this, but it serves as a way to transport far greater amounts of items.

The major limitation is that any vehicle with items in its inventory cannot be stored on you using the Vehicle Backup Tool. You need to empty its inventory before you can effectively pocket it, but if you feel brave enough to park your Sandbike or Ornithopter outside a bandit camp or crashed ship, you can then bring the loot you find back to it and store it in the trunk.

It's not been made clear if there'll be new ways to hold more items added to the game in the future, as the choice to make inventory so limited is clearly an intentional one that's part of the whole "struggling survivalist making hard choices" vibe.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

It would appear that the name of the next entry in the Kingdom Come series has been revealed. A trademark filing points towards a slightly different naming convention for the upcoming installment in the historical epic, though other details remain scant for now.

As spotted by The Phrasemaker, on the European Union Intellectual Property Office's online database, you can find an entry for a game called Kingdom Come Salvation. While not proof of anything in and of itself, the logo being stylized like the Kingdom Come Deliverance games definitely makes it seem like a potential spin-off, and then we have the information on who made the filing.

It was Warhorse Studios, on July 23, just yesterday in fact. This was handled by a representative, a lawyer named Dana Lukajová. According to the EUIPO's website, this is Warhorse's first trademark, hence getting third party assistance.

As if all that wasn't enough, Kingdom Come Salvation is listed as "computer gaming software" and "entertainment services for matching users with computer games." It all looks and sounds like an upcoming game, but what that means is another question.

Warhorse confirmed in May that another Kingdom Come game is in the works, and that it would be an RPG. Information is limited beyond that, but considering Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 only came out last year, the follow-up is likely still quite early in the process. Since the developer is now working on a Lord of the Rings project as well, there were questions over when we might see another quest set in the Kingdom of Bohemia.

It seems we may not be waiting all that long, but when we get more information is totally up in the air. The Game Awards seems probable for The Lord of the Rings, if that's in a state to be shown off at all, and I suspect we'll hear more about what they're doing in Middle-earth before we learn about this.

But I'd be happy to be proven wrong. Whatever Kingdom Come Salvation turns out to be, I'm ready.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's Hans Capon actor says the RPG's success hasn't led to more work, even though "Warhorse have been absolute gems."

The list of Halo Campaign Evolved changes is quite extensive, ranging from things like completely new missions and weapons that weren't in the original to smart-link aiming, sprinting, and accessibility options. While there are a lot of changes, many of them are quite minor and might not be so obvious if you've not played Halo Combat Evolved that much. So, if you're curious to know exactly what's new and what's different from the original, here are all the changes I've been able to find in Halo Campaign Evolved.

New Halo Campaign Evolved features

Halo Campaign Evolved includes several major gameplay features that aren't available in the original game or the Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary remaster in The Master Chief Collection:

• Operation Meteorite bonus missions: On top of the remade campaign, this remake features three new prequel missions that tell the story of Master Chief and Sergeant Johnson during Operation Meteorite, adding a few more hours to how long it takes to beat Halo Campaign Evolved. Taking place one year before the events of the campaign, this operation sees the duo infiltrate and investigate a Covenant research vessel. Brutes make an exclusive appearance in these missions, wielding Spikers and Brute Plasma Rifles.
• Campaign Remix: Campaign Remix is a new mode that lets you replay missions with randomized elements, including available weapons, enemy factions, and active Skulls. It is unlocked after you collect any three Skulls.
• Four-player online co-op: Halo Campaign Evolved is the only way you can officially play some form of Halo 1 with three other players in online co-op. The game also supports crossplay and cross-progression, so you can play with anyone on any platform and even play on any platform without losing progress. You can also play Campaign Evolved in two-player split-screen on consoles only.
• Difficulty and accessibility settings: The usual Easy, Normal, Heroic, and Legendary difficulty options are still there, but you can also create difficulty presets that adjust things like friendly fire, damage resistance, and shield recharge rate – this is all on top of Skulls too! As for accessibility, there are plenty of changes you can make to the aiming crosshair, HUD, subtitles, input rebinding, and lots more.

New Halo Campaign Evolved weapons, vehicles, and enemies

The Halo Combat Evolved sandbox of weapons and vehicles, as well as the array of enemies you'll face, have been considerably expanded for this remake:

• Expanded weapon sandbox: The Energy Sword, Sentinel Beam, Fuel Rod Gun, SMG, and Needle Rifle have all been added to the main campaign. The Battle Rifle, Brute Plasma Rifle, and Spiker are exclusive to the new bonus missions, and the Needle Rifle is significantly more common in them too.
• You can drive Wraiths now: The Covenant Wraith tank is now pilotable in some levels, such as Assault on the Control Room. Most vehicles can also be hijacked now, but note that this works both ways, so the Covenant can hijack you right back!
• Equipment can be stored and used whenever you like: Unlike in the original where Overshields and Active Camo would activate as soon as you pick them up, Campaign Evolved treats them like Halo 3-style equipment pieces that must be deployed with a button press.
• Jackal snipers have been added (oh god): Jackal snipers are an infamously lethal foe in practically every Halo game except for the first one. Campaign Evolved rectifies this, adding them into plenty of missions.
• Flood Tank Forms join the fight: The large Tank Form Flood, first seen in Halo 3, appear in Campaign Evolved. They're rare and pose quite a serious threat, similar to a Covenant Hunter.

Halo Campaign Evolved gameplay changes

Halo Campaign Evolved also introduces some key gameplay change over the original that mostly serve to modernize the game:

• Sprint: As in Halo Studios' previous games, Master Chief has a dedicated sprint button in Campaign Evolved, letting him get around the ring a bit faster on foot.
• Smart-link aiming: While weapons like the Magnum and Sniper Rifle all had scopes in the original game, now Halo Campaign Evolved weapons benefit from some form of aiming thanks to the smart-link system that Halo 5 Guardians introduced. It essentially amounts to a small amount of zoom (usually 1.4x) that helps you more accurately shoot enemies that are slightly further away than is ideal.
• No health kits: Master Chief's health now regenerates like his shields. The original game's health kits that were necessary for healing Chief are therefore absent in Halo Campaign Evolved.
• Improved waypoints and objective tracking: Objectives and their markers are now almost always visible on screen, helping you stay on mission and navigate levels more easily. You can adjust how these appear if you find them getting in the way.
• Slightly redesigned levels: The Library has received the most significant changes to make it easier to navigate and more varied, with new areas and light bridge mechanics. Otherwise, most levels remain almost entirely the same in terms of layout, with some receiving small tweaks. As an example, the Forerunner cave that you drive the Warthog through in Halo no longer has that weird ramp section and is now just one continuous path.
• Skulls and Terminals: Collectible Skull modifiers and lore-based Terminals weren't in the original game but got added for the Combat Evolved Anniversary remaster. For Campaign Evolved there are even more of them to collect, with 42 Skulls (three per level for a total of 39 plus three Campaign Remix ones) and 13 Terminals (one per level). They're also all in different places compared to the Anniversary remaster, so your memories of those won't help.
• No PvP multiplayer: As the Campaign Evolved subtitle suggests, this game features only the campaign – no arena multiplayer.

Halo Campaign Evolved visual and audio changes

The most obvious change of all over the original is the visual overhaul, but there are plenty of other changes to things like dialogue and cutscenes that might go over your head:

• Updated graphics: Halo Campaign Evolved is a complete remake of the original Combat Evolved in Unreal Engine 5, so it benefits from the advanced graphical technology of that engine for stunningly rendered photorealistic textures and lighting. But, as I note in my Halo Campaign Evolved review, it does lead to some typical UE5 performance issues.
• New and altered dialogue and cutscenes: Narratively, Halo Campaign Evolved is the same as the original, but Halo Studios has added and adjusted plenty of dialogue and cutscenes. The new lines are mostly tutorials and explanation from Cortana and other NPCs. Some lines, such as "I don't keep it loaded, son, you'll have to find ammo as you go" from Keyes, and Cortana telling 343 Guilty Spark to "sod off", have been cut, however.
• The original Chief and Cortana voice actors are back…: Steve Downes and Jen Taylor, who voice Master Chief and Cortana respectively, have re-recorded their lines, including some new ones as mentioned above.
• …But Captain Keyes and Sergeant Johnson have been recast: Keith Silverstein, who you may know as Torbjorn from Overwatch, now plays Keyes, while Keston John, who stars in Call of Duty Black Ops 6 and 7 and Yakuza 0 Director's Cut, voices Sergeant Johnson.
• The Covenant now speak English: Elites have various combat barks in human languages that let you know how fervently they fight for the Prophets and the Covenant. It also sounds like Grunt dialogue from Halo 2 and 3 has been repurposed. Overall, there's a lot less "wort, wort, wort".

This Combat Evolved remake is out now in early access but the full Halo Campaign Evolved release time is still to come. In the meantime, make sure you've got your Halo Campaign Evolved pre-load sorted.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Razer is on a roll with its new cute releases, from its Pokemon Espeon and Umbreon Collection to its Pikachu and Eevee Collection - but now it's got Sanrio Edition keycaps out in the wild.

The new Sanrio Edition Razer Keycap Blind Box set was originally unveiled on Razer's community blog on July 12, 2026, but a new X (Twitter) post now reveals that it's available at Target stores in the US. These keycaps feature five designs of Hello Kitty and friends and can be swapped for your ESC key to inject it with that 'cute and cozy' factor. Only if you're okay with pressing a large replica of Sanrio's top mascot characters over the far easier-to-press original key of your gaming board.

Cute keycaps aren't exactly a new phenomenon. If you're as chronically online and immersed in the 'cute and cozy' world of gaming builds as I am, you've likely seen plenty of videos of them in the past and have been contemplating adding them to one of the best gaming keyboards you've got in your setup. However, these cute keycaps in particular include the likes of Hello Kitty and my personal favorite Sanrio character, Kuromi, holding real-life Razer tech.

While Razer doesn't state exactly what each character has amongst the palm of their paws, I could spot the white model Razer BlackShark V2 Pro that's perched on Cinnamoroll's head from a while away. It also appears that Pompompurin has managed to get his hands on the white model Razer Wolverine V3 controller. It's hard to decipher what laptop Kuromi has her hands on, but I at least hope she's got the Razer Blade 16, which currently sits on our best gaming laptops guide.

These keycaps are designed to fit MX cross-stem switches, which include the likes of the Razer BlackWidow V4 line-up. Their pricing hasn't yet been unveiled so I can't let you know what you can expect to fork out for these cute bling bags. However, if you're heading to a local Target near you to grab a few bags regardless, do make sure to check what board you have first to ensure it's compatible before spending a fortune on these randomized keycaps.

Talking of which, as you'd likely already surmised by now, they're available in blind boxes and cannot be purchased as a set. You have your "chance" to unbox one of the five designs and a secret chrome variant, which appears in one out of every 24 boxes, according to Razer. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of blind boxes, as you don't know what you're buying. There's every chance you could end up with just five Kuromi keycaps, and as much as I adore her, there is such a thing as too much Kuromi.

If you're in the same boat, you could alternatively grab Razer's Sanrio accessories from its Hello Kitty and Friends lineup starting from $27.99 at Amazon, no blind boxes included.

• View all Razer Sanrio PC gaming accessories at Target

Not a Sanrio fan? Our team has also rounded up the best gaming chairs, the best gaming headsets, and the best gaming mice if you're looking to refresh your PC setup.

Developer World's Edge has seemingly uncanceled an Age of Empires 3: Definitive Edition DLC that it scrapped last year, but all is forgiven since the upcoming Baltic Powers expansion is bringing two new civilizations, over 25 new maps, and so much more on September 10.

Early last year, World's Edge said it was canceling an unnamed expansion that it revealed the year prior. The developer felt the project's announcement was "premature," and the team hadn't really built anything proper before sharing its plans with the player base.

At the time, we didn't know much about the then-scrapped expansion outside of a tiny hint production director Earnest Yuen gave in 2024 by showing off the flags of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Denmark. (Thanks, PC Gamer!)

Who would've guessed? World's Edge have now revealed The Baltic Powers, an expansion that adds both the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to the game as playable civilizations. While the developer hasn't outright confirmed that The Baltic Powers is, in fact, the same expansion it binned last year, all the signs point in one direction...

"The Baltic Powers brings two new civilizations, new Challenge Scenarios, new game modes, more than 25 maps, and over 50 hero customizations," the dev's announcement post reads. "More importantly, it is built around what Age 3 fans value most: new strategic problems to solve, new matchups to learn, new ways to master the map, and new reasons to return for a game they love."

The best part? You can try out the Danes and the Poles right now since The Baltic Powers' open beta is available over on Steam.

The only other thing to note is that Age of Empire 3: Definitive Edition's free trial is being retired on Steam come August 13. "We're grateful to everyone who discovered Age III through the free trial, invited friends into the community, tried rotating civilizations, and joined the battlefield," the studio notes. Should free trial players want to continue strategizing in-game, then you'll need to buy the full release by next month.

In the meantime, here are the best strategy games you can play right now.

Storage brands usually start with a standard model and wait a few years to launch a more premium version down the line, but not Samsung.

The Samsung 990 Pro has topped our best SSD for gaming guide for as long as I can remember, but now the Samsung 990 SSD has landed long after its premium predecessor. While bizarre, I'm appreciative to see any new drive hit the market. Especially one that provides speeds that aren't too far behind those of its Pro model, which has reached staggering prices in 2026 as a knock-on effect from the RAM Storage Crisis, which is still having its fun with pricing and availability of the best PS5 SSDs and PC drives alike.

I'm honestly thankful to see any new storage that's £212.19 / $269.99 (1TB) and £411.99 / $529.99 (2TB) launch prices have yet to be shaken up a notch. That being said, Samsung's newest 990 SSD shouldn't be your top choice if you're after the speediest drive, and if you can manage to find its Pro counterpart at a similar or cheaper price point, which is still achievable if you know where to look.

Design

There isn't anything that really separates this DRAM-less drive from others available today. Much like the Samsung 990 Pro SSD, this is your standard M.2 SSD with an all-black PCB and some Samsung branding pasted on top so you don't forget what drive you're inserting into your gaming rig.

I will note that this model is not yet available with a heatsink, so you don't get access to that swanky cyberpunk-looking red and black version which you can grab for the Pro model. However, both drives share the same M.2 2280 form factor, so nothing is stopping you from using it with this SSD, should you have one lying around.

Features

The 2TB Samsung 990 SD is a PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe M.2 drive available in 1TB and 2TB capacities that utilizes a DRAM-less design that's powered by Samsung's V-NAND and HMB (Host Memory Buffer) tech. It has a 400 endurance rating and comes with a 3 year warrantly. As a DRAM-less SSD, it's not intended to be as speedy as its Pro counterpart, but the line as to what speeds it's meant to be competing with gets a bit blurry.

The 2TB model I was provided with for this review states the drive provides read speeds up to 7,000 MB/s. That's all well and good, but meanwhile the official Samsung product page and marketing for the drive state it can achieve sequential read and write speeds up to 7,250 and 6,450 MB/s. I'm going to guess the sticker on the box that was provided to me ahead of release might be a little inaccurate, but I wanted to state it here in case the images of the provided box made matters a bit confusing.

Besides its speeds, the 990 is designed to be more efficient and power-savvy than previous models in the 990 lineup. Samsung exclaims that it provides "up to 38% improved performance per Watt" over the 990 Pro and that it can handle large files with ease. The drive and its data can also be managed by Samsung's Magician suite, the brand's proprietary software, which allows you to transfer data and track the health of the latest solid-state drive.

Performance

After spending some time with our CrystalDiskMark benchmarking tool, it was the box sticker that was closer to the mark for the 2TB capacity model, at least where my testing was concerned.

The Gen 4 drive managed to achieve an average 7,094.84 MB/s and 5,851.1 MB/s read and write speeds after being put through a series of four tests. This is not quite the 7,250 and 6,450 MB/s as found on the Samsung website and not enough to take the 990 Pro down a peg, but it's still pretty impressive. Let's not forget, the 990 Pro achieved 7,462MB/s reads and 6,877MB/s writes during our older review, so I'd assume this DRAM-less release would be far, far behind its more premium counterpart instead.

As always, speeds need to be put to practice, so I dug out some of my favorite PC games to see what the 990 was truly capable of. There's only so much that numbers on a screen can tell you. My favorite team-based hero shooter, Marvel Rivals, loaded up in an average of 38.13 seconds (over a period of three tests) from its launch menu to its start screen. I was pretty happy about that, as Season 9 just recently dropped and the sooner I can get into the game and work my way through the new battle pass, the better. In comparison, the game loaded to its start screen in 39.5 seconds from the onboard PNY CS1030 drive of my testing rig, so there was a tiny improvement - though it was not all that noticeable in practice.

Counter-Strike 2 loaded in an average of 26.80 seconds on the 990 SSD, which was a few seconds behind my rig's onboard PNY drive. It was a similar case for Dispatch, which loaded to its start screen at an average of 17.11 seconds compared to the PNY drive's 15.21 seconds. Of course, as I was using a stopwatch to time each game, it wasn't an exact science, so there should be a little margin of error to take into consideration. Either way, I had no issue bouncing into a variety of my go-to PC games practically as fast as I'm used to, and the SSD didn't falter or have any issues throughout the entirety of my testing time.

When it came to actually running Marvel Rivals off the 990 SSD, the drive continued to thrive. These days, there's a lot of on-screen clutter now that we've got characters like Jubilee setting off a barrage of fireworks and bright lights everywhere, so I was more concerned about my graphics card giving up the ghost than this SSD. Yet, after many hours of matches under my belt, Samsung's 990 kept chugging along just fine, and I didn't notice any dramatic difference whether I was rumaging through the various event screens or trying to get to the character select screen to select my main, Invisible Woman, as soon as possible.

During testing, I regrettably did not have a DC meter to check the temperature of the drive. Yet after a few check-ins throughout my time loading up games and spending far too many hours diving back in Marvel Rivals, Windows 11 informed me that the 990 SSD sat around the 48-degree mark.

Should you buy the Samsung 990 SSD?

Recommending SSDs in this day and age is tricky. While there are still plenty of impressive drives to go around, and the 2TB Samsung 990 counts as one of those in my eyes, but it's pricing leaves a little to be desired.

The Samsung 990 SSD launched for £411.99 / $529.99, which is a lot to pay for a little bit of extra storage. Especially when you consider that the 2TB 990 Pro originally launched for $309. That's a little over a $220 difference in just a few years, and without jynxing the situation, I fully expect the 990 SSD to rise from its $529.9 MSRP in the future if current SSD prices are anything to go by. (Thanks RAM Storage Crisis.)

That being said, as of the time of this review, its price thankfully hasn't shifted. This is where I'd usually recommend you grab it now before stock is all gobbled up and gone for good, but you can grab alternatives like the WD_Black SN7100 for just $289.99 at Amazon, and even the 2TB 990 Pro is down to $389.99 at Amazon.

If you're browsing retailers at a time when its Pro counterpart is bouncing between eye-watering prices, and yet the Samsung 990 SSD is still at its original price? Then I'd absolutely recommend you grab it to give your PC a boost. However, if luck is on your side and the same-capacity 990 Pro is the same price or even cheaper, you might as well still go for the more premium (and faster) option, even if the speed difference is only marginally higher than this DRAM-less drive.

How I tested the Samsung 990 SSD

As with all of the SSDs that come past my testing bench, I put the Samsung 990 through its paces by hooking it up to the M.2 drive of my testing PC, and running it through the benchmarking tool CrystalDiskMark. With it, I ran the drive through a series of four tests and calculated an average from those speeds. That average was then compared to its advertised on-the-box speeds. Additionally, I downloaded titles like Marvel Rivals, Counter-Strike 2, and Dispatch t via Steam and timed how long it took to load to their respective start screens and compared this to past SSDs that I've tested so far. To read more about the ways we test SSDs and the rest of our gaming tech, have a look at how we test SSDs and our hardware policy.

Check out our guides to the best SSDs for PS5, the best PS5 external hard drive, and the best Xbox Series X hard drive if your gaming platform of choice could use a little boost.

Hideo Kojima still wants to go to space, but for now he's going to keep making games, and he says that's a good thing.

Metal Gear Solid creator Kojima really hasn't kept it quiet that one day he wants to go to space, so much so that Valve boss Gabe Newell tried to set Kojima up with a tour of SpaceX. Over on Twitter, Kojima recently posted a video of his comments during a panel at Il Cinema in Piazza – a film festival in Rome – where he explains (translated by Genki_JPN) his current thoughts about his space travel aspirations.

"I want to share this with all of you: We all want to make our dreams come true, right?" he begins. And obviously he isn't talking about his dreams with "voluptuous nude women," reanimated "decomposing bodies," and a very impolite coach, as he explains, "I want to go to space and I want to make a movie." However, he adds, "it wouldn't be good if those dreams just came true."

"That's because dreams are goals," Kojima explains, "The idea is to achieve the second, third, and fourth dreams along the way before reaching your ultimate dream." He adds that "for the time being, I think I'll keep on making games without going to space."

I would say perhaps he can go to space once he retires from creating games (although he said he has no plans to retire). However, at that same event, he also said he wants to die in a movie theater, preferably just after the trailers, so unless they build theaters in space, he's probably going to have to come back to Earth at some point.

The original Metal Gear Solid is free to play on Steam this weekend as Konami gears up for Master Collection Volume 2.

Halo: Campaign Evolved strongly hints that another Halo remake could be on the way.

Rumors have been swirling for a while that Halo Studios is planning to remake Master Chief's entire original trilogy – Halo CE, Halo 2, and Halo 3 – in the same style as its newly-released revamp, Halo: Campaign Evolved. That means yes to sprint, no to multiplayer, and sweeping changes to the rest of the game (new levels, weapons, updated visuals, etc.)

For anyone crossing their fingers for Halo 2 and Halo 3 to get the same treatment, good news! Halo: Campaign Evolved rather explicitly pours fuel over the fire of those rumors in its secret ending, unlocked by completing the game on Legendary difficulty. (Don't worry, there's no hard spoilers here.)

Finishing the fight on the game's toughest difficulty rewards you with an alternative ending that's surprisingly different to Bungie's 2001 shooter. The part that's important here is a line uttered by our good old Sergeant Avery Johnson, who caps off the entire game with: "See you in the sequel!"

While that's not hard confirmation of a Halo 2 remake in itself, the implication is crystal clear since an inevitable Halo 7 isn't exactly a sequel to Halo: Campaign Evolved, and I doubt HD Johnson is telling folks to go back and play the original Halo 2 after the series' latest remake.

Halo 2 has also actually been remade once before in Halo 2 Anniversary, which came bundled with The Master Chief Collection, but that was the case with the series' first game too, so it's not exactly a deal breaker for Xbox Game Studios.

The iconic Xbox sequel was also infamously a victim of a turbulent development cycle that left tons of content on the cutting room floor. The "finishing this fight" line became so recognizable in the first place because Master Chief did not, in fact, finish the fight until an entire game later when Halo 2's cliffhanger ending was finally resolved.

My point is, Halo 2 perhaps stands to benefit more than its older sibling should it get another, more comprehensive remake. It's also worth nothing that Halo 2 Anniversary was beholden to the source material's exact level layout since you could switch between both graphical options on the fly – a Campaign Evolved-style remake would presumably allow for more dramatic changes.

Our Halo: Campaign Evolved review calls it a "faithful remake of the 2001 classic that highlights exactly why the original Halo holds up so well 25 years later," even though Halo Studios could've done more to put its own spin on the classic game.

Halo 3's final mission could have been a flying banshee scene inspired by Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.

It would be easy to forget amid the whirlwind of Palworld 1.0 coming out just two weeks ago that Pocketpair handles other games as well. The latest indie project to emerge from the publisher is an island-builder that looks both incredibly clever and like it'll completely absorb all your time given half a chance.

The game in question is known as Clicky Islands, it's got an easy, pixelated aesthetic, and it comes from a pair of Polish developers known as Karrot Games. Pocketpair shares a new look at the release, which merges town management, clicker mechanics and the satisfaction of watching your creation gradually become autonomous.

"It's a really fun mix of clicker, incremental, automation and town building!" John 'Bucky' Buckley, head of communications and publishing at Pocketpair, says on Twitter. "It is, I promise, very addictive!"

He would say that, but he also points towards a new demo on Steam on the back of Pocketpair distributing the game, and I can tell you, there's definitely something here. Even after just a few minutes of playing, I could feel myself getting sucked in, which is a good sign for anything.

My first impressions were brief, but I'm immediately taken by just how quickly Clicky Islands gets you moving. The early game of city builders can be a little slow, as you're guided through all the menus and mechanics, but this is much more about just, well, clicking around and seeing how you go. The use of Factorio-type automation for how your civilization operates makes it immensely satisfying.

The clicker elements push you to make quick decisions too. I eagerly await more, and the full version is set for this year at some point.

Palworld lead promises "you will always be able to play" Pocketpair's survival game: "Why would you assume it had an 'end of service?'"

Ahead of Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Volume 2 releasing next month, Konami is letting everyone play Metal Gear Solid for free this weekend.

2026 has been a landmark year for those of us who are still obsessed with the year 1998. Spyro is getting a new entry, Resident Evil Requiem felt like as much of a sequel to Resident Evil 2 as anything else, Pokemon Gen 1 returned, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is set to get a remake releasing later this year. So, not to be outdone, Konami decided to remind everyone what the real best game of 1998 was, and is letting everyone play Metal Gear Solid.

Over on Steam, the Master Collection Volume 1 edition of 1998's Metal Gear Solid is free to play for anyone right now, which grants you access to the PS1 classic, as well as its expansion pack Metal Gear Solid VR / Special Missions, and the Japanese exclusive Integral. On top of that there's a full screenplay and "Master Book" which features artwork, character bios, a series timeline and the like.

This free weekend also arrives alongside Metal Gear Solid Master Collection's deepest Steam discount to date at £24.99 | $29.99 (which it's only been at twice before in the previous two Steam Summer Sales).

The best part of this deal, however, is that Metal Gear Solid is not really all that long. You could absolutely beat the entire game as part of this free weekend and experience one of the all-time greats free of charge

Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol 2 brings 4K 60fps to MGS4 and Peace Walker, Konami announces, but Switch 1 still gets saddled with 30fps.

A World of Warcraft game master has been fired from Blizzard Entertainment after the community caught them using "development-only spells" to help their friends breeze through a dungeon and instantly wipe two bosses. Essentially, they were caught helping some mates cheat.

The cheating scandal first came to light earlier this week when a couple of Reddit users shared evidence that a game master had used insta-kill abilities usually reserved for Blizzard employees to demolish at least two bosses. A player from the group all but spelled out the situation in a stream with Yumytv, too: "I go to my GM friend and I'm like bro please can you do me a solid? This thing has 20 million [health] bro, can you please just one-shot it?"

Things sort of escalated from there, with the community wondering how commonplace incidents like this were. "Now you know it exists, therefore the pandora's box is wide open," one Redditor writes. "Which make you question a lot of stuff." Were secret GMs all around, helping their pals achieve titles and record runs?

As PC Gamer reports, Blizzard has now investigated the incident, fired the employee responsible, and assured folks that GMs aren't regularly manipulating games in secret.

"As we mentioned, we internally monitored and confirmed a recent incident in which a World of Warcraft group gained an unfair advantage by abuse of access to development-only spells on a live realm," community manager Randy 'Kaivax' Jordan writes in a recent forum post. "Our tools confirmed what was also surfaced in community discussions, and we have investigated the incident carefully. We can confirm that this was the action of a single Blizzard employee, in violation of our Code of Conduct. This employee is no longer with the company effective immediately. We are also taking action against the player accounts that were complicit in this violation.

"It has always been the case that a small number of Blizzard employees can use developer tools and spells on live servers: this lets us test and make urgent fixes to the live game when they’re needed," Kaivax explains. "Every use of these internal spells and commands on live realms is logged and shared with our Platform Security team to help ensure that the occasional use of this access is warranted. The use of development tools for anything other than development work is against company policy. It's because of the process we have in place around use of these tools that we're confident this incident was isolated to one individual."

The community manager than thanks everyone who brought the information to light, alongside community-led sites. "When your findings line up with ours, it helps confirm that our own tools are catching what they should, and we're grateful for the way we work alongside you all to protect the game and each other."

"You'll never get another World of Warcraft or Morrowind in the current climate," id Software producer says as constant layoffs batter the industry.

AI vibe coding has done the impossible: make Nintendo fans unexcited for Mario Kart Wii on PC. A new static recompilation project promises to give us a fresh way to play one of the best Wii games of all time, but as with many similar projects, the sentiment soon soured once prospective players realized it was built using AI.

"Announcing Mario Kart Wiicompiled," developer patchzy exclaims in a tweet alongside a teaser trailer for the project. "The first static recompilation of a Wii game: Mario Kart Wii, rebuilt for PC. Releasing in beta this August, with online play and optional Retro Rewind support, bringing over 200 tracks!"

Wii games finally getting the static recompilation treatment would be reason enough to get excited, since that would, in theory, open the door for many more Wii titles to become playable on PC. Decompilations and recompilations have been a rallying point for the communities around many classic games, as with the upcoming Spyro project – whose developers proudly proclaim that "no AI" was used in its making.

But, as Time Extension notes, there are no such promises for Mario Kart Wiicompiled. In fact, the project's Discord explicitly confirms that AI was used "for code" – though "no ai art or assets were generated."

That's a distinction that might satisfy some players, but you can just scroll down through the responses to the original tweet to see there are plenty more ready to reject a AI vibe-coded project outright. Only time will tell if Mario Kart Wiicompiled will actually play well, but many members of the various fan development communities are ready to dismiss vibe coding completely.

Such is the case for PS3 emulator RPCS3, whose developers are begging contributors to "stop submitting AI slop code." It's also a key point for the developers behind Donkey Kong 64: Recompiled, who announced their project early in an effort to get out ahead of a vibe-coded rival. A poorly-made AI project can discourage traditional developers from putting in the effort to do it right, and that's a fear hanging over many potential PC ports for classic games in this new vibe coding era.

"It creates lesser games": Indie game studios are supposed to love generative AI, so why do the 25 devs I spoke to avoid it?

PlayStation might make the growing $7.2 billion second-hand games market shrink down to roly-poly size once it officially abandons physical discs in 2028, analysts say.

A CNBC report cites data from market researcher Dataintelo describing the video games resale market as worth $7.2 billion in 2025, though experts anticipated in March that it would expand to $13.8 billion by 2034. But that estimate might look dramatically different now that PlayStation has decided to stop feeding it.

"Brick and mortar game retail is doomed," Wedbush Securities managing director of strategic planning Michael Pachter tells CNBC definitively. He explains that at least one-third of sold games are used, and these sales help fuel new game purchases, too. Fewer discs from PlayStation lead to fewer opportunities to purchase games in general, whether new or old.

Morningstar equity research director Kazunori Ito likewise imagines the secondhand games market will "keep shrinking and eventually disappear" once Sony makes the transition to digital-only. PC games are already there with the help of major online shops like Steam, Epic, and GOG, and while Xbox technically hasn't renounced game discs yet, it's apparently headed that way, and it's practicing by testing a feature that digitizes entire disc collections.

Without new PlayStation and Xbox games to keep it freshly stocked, the secondhand games market will grow stale. We'll all be passing around the same 5,000 copies of Cabela's Monster Buck Hunter until they'll rot, and then I'll really have no chance at securing one of the world's highly coveted Silent Hill 2 discs for less than $300.

Ito adds, "There is an important difference between players accepting that shift [to digital] because they see value in it, and having it effectively forced on them by taking away the alternative." But it doesn't seem to matter to PlayStation.

PlayStation killing discs is bad for everyone, whether you care about physical games or not.

Tim Cain knows better than nearly anyone that the earliest computer RPGs – like Fallout, which he helped create – had a huge advantage over their feeble brethren on consoles, which were afflicted with hardware limitations for at least two decades. After that, we were living in a post-Morrowind society.

"In the '80s, console RPGs were incredibly primitive. I'm talking, stone knives and bear skins," Cain says on his YouTube channel in response to a fan question wondering about how consoles changed the RPG market over time. "I mean, tabletop RPGs were really the way to go if you wanted really in-depth rules, but even computer RPGs had more complex rules than console RPGs, because everything from the graphics, to the system mechanics, and sound effects all had to be really, really simplified and reduced to fit in that very limited memory storage that it had, and CPU bandwidth."

"To me, console RPGs were kind of like toys that you could kind of play," Cain continues. Their controllers demanded select screens rather than the point-and-drag you could accomplish on PC, and checkpoint saves were a necessity for preserving their limited storage. But "all of this changed in 2002," when Bethesda launched The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.

"Morrowind came out on the Xbox. It was an open-world Western RPG that felt like it had none of the limitations of previous console games," says Cain. "It was a PC game playing on an Xbox."

"It stunned me when it came out, because I remember thinking, 'This…this is it,'" he adds. "Not so much because of what the game was, but what it represented, which was – from now on, there's going to be a lot more parity between these two things.

GamesRadar+'s Morrowind review apparently published in 2006 frothily declares "a new standard in role-playing games. [Morrowind is] astonishing in its depth and detail, and also sets a new benchmark in graphics."

Morrowind was an in-depth spectacle – and not easily replicated. Cain thinks that buggy launches became more common for console games by at least the mid-2000s, once the Xbox 360 and PS3 had established digital storefronts where people could directly buy and download their games, which "meant it was also easy to patch them."

"Maybe this was a coincidence, maybe it wasn't," Cain says generously, "but, suddenly, console games seemed to ship with bugs in a way they had never shipped with bugs before. They weren't as tight. Then, by the 2010s and 2020s, it felt like parity had been established and reached between PCs and consoles." With both of them covered in bugs, PC and console had reached equality at last.

"Unconscionable": The day of Bethesda's Fallout reveal explosion, its laid-off Montreal devs were told they "would receive the smallest severance legally possible" and "immediately" lose health insurance benefits, union says.

Even Ubisoft seems surprised you all wanted classic-style Assassin's Creed back this bad. Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced has sold 3.5 million units in 14 days, already beating the publisher's internal sales projections for the full year.

"The strong launch of Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced in early July by Vantage Studios is an encouraging proof point" of Ubisoft's new corporate structure, CEO Yves Guillemot says in the company's latest financial report. That same restructuring has also cost numerous developers their jobs, including many of the very people who brought Black Flag Resynced to life.

Black Flag Resynced is the first Assassin's Creed game to reach over 100,000 concurrent players on Steam. According to Ubisoft, "this translated into a historical proportion of sales for the franchise on PC, led by the US and Chinese markets."

As part of today's financial report, Ubisoft announced net bookings of €256 million for the first quarter of the fiscal year, "down 9% year-on-year and slightly above guidance." Notably, that does not include any boost from Black Flag Resynced sales, which launched just after the start of the second quarter. Instead, those first quarter revenues were "driven by a record performance for Invincible: Guarding the Globe," an idle RPG for mobile.

Clearly, though, Ubisoft expects investors to be pleased with the performance Resynced is going to show next quarter. "The game is the highest-rated Assassin's Creed title since the original Black Flag, and we are very pleased with the praise it received from players," Guillemot continues. "Two weeks in, the title has already exceeded the annual expectations we had. I would like to warmly thank the teams whose talent and dedication brought it to life. This launch illustrates the enduring appeal of the Assassin’s Creed brand, as well as the early benefits of our ongoing transformation and commitment to delivering very high-quality experiences."

Ubisoft CEO says ditching physical games "helped" PC gaming, and PlayStation ending discs won't "disturb" the industry much anyway.

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot seems largely in Sony's corner regarding the scheduled end to physical PlayStation games, going to bat for some advantages of an all-digital future.

Guillemot fielded a question about the January 2028 discontinuation of physical PlayStation games during Ubisoft's financial call earlier today.

One caller asked how Ubisoft feels about Sony's decision and if it has any worries about its direct or indirect effects, such as the end of the used games market which can enable gamers to pawn games and use those funds to buy new games.

"What we saw on the PC is that it helped to grow the market," Guillemot replies. "There's also some pressure for the future on the cost of machines, and being able to be only digital will help to have a more accessible machine, I would say. As you said, there are pluses and minuses. But we think it will not disturb, too much, the industry."

There are a couple of points to unpack here. PC gaming has been functionally digital-only for decades, and the popularity of Steam proves that a lot of people don't have a problem with digital games, even if that means licensing rather than owning them.

However, other storefronts are also available on PC, whereas PlayStation only has the PlayStation Store. Additionally, since Steam isn't built for any one hardware specification, it won't up and vanish alongside aging, unsupported hardware the way the PS3 and PS Vita stores will soon enough, and even if it did, we'd still have the likes of GOG. And as general use machines, computers make it much easier to back up and preserve games, so in digital game debates, PC and console aren't perfectly equal.

We have seen digital-only consoles used as a way to lower price points, and with AI data center-induced component droughts continually pushing platform holders to raise console prices, almost anything that can lower entry points will be welcomed as we stare down an increasingly likely $1,000 console generation. But the idea of losing physical games to the AI boom has not gone down well with many.

Digital-only PS5s are outselling disc versions today, according to analyst Daniel Ahmad – but roughly 70% of PS5s sold do have a disc drive. Likewise, many of the games that are actually available physically see much greater diversity in digital and physical sales split compared to the lopsided, collective figures that Sony touts as evidence of the shrinking physical market.

Two truths exist: physical copies are important and can sell well, and relatively few people buy physical games globally. People have already voted with their wallets in the enormous shift to digital games, but a relevant audience of physical buyers remains – it's just not relevant enough in Sony's eyes.

Nintendo is now selling some digital Switch 2 games $10 cheaper than physical versions – building out a more enthusiast market for the minority of people who do want boxes – but it's unclear how Sony's digital future could see savings handed down to players, if at all. Frankly, I wouldn't bet on it. The games industry's got multiple fires to put out and taking less money from players is generally not high on the to-do list. GTA 6 is digital-only, for instance, but it's still $80.

It's not just savings, either. Sony – and, let's not forget, publishers like Ubisoft – will earn more per copy from digital games, so it stands to earn a lot more if all game sales become digital, even if it does lose some users by abandoning discs. Obviously, this is also another reason digital PS5s are sold cheaper: Sony makes less up front, but much more off game sales, so it wants the digital option to be appealing.

Only 7 PlayStation games have sold over 100,000 physical copies in the US this year, says analyst, as commenters demand discs without buying them.

The One Ring in The Lord of the Rings is generally bad for you. Besides attracting Sauron's attention, the dark magic imbued inside doesn't yield many positive side effects. A particular piece of jewelry in Diablo 4 is garnering a similar reputation, since players are finding it causes them to die unexpectedly.

According to its stats, the Wendigo Brand is meant to make you more powerful the more kills you get. Specifically, getting 15 kills within 50 seconds makes you tougher and increases your life. What's not included is that wearing it could cause you to suddenly and inexplicably drop dead.

That's what fans across the community are reporting, anyway. Threads across Reddit, dating back months, have players saying their health is depleting rapidly after partaking in encounters wearing the ring.

One ring to rule them all. This ring will make you go crazy and eventually will kill you. from r/Diablo

This has led to people losing battles they really should be winning while grinding in the action-RPG. "One ring to rule them all," reads a Reddit thread. "This ring will make you go crazy and eventually will kill you."

The comments contain several more anecdotal reports of the equipment harming their progress. "Removed it from my build and random deaths just stopped," says the top commenter. What's happening, according to those who've experienced it, is that when you reach 50 stacks on the health effect, it starts draining your life instead.

Whatever's going on, it isn't good, and claims that it's a bug have been substantiated to an extent by Blizzard itself, as the developer is now investigating. "Thank you all for the reports, team is looking into this," Marcus 'Marcoose' Kretz, senior community manager on the Diablo games, said on the official forums.

I implore them to proceed with caution. We all saw what happened to Gollum. And Isildur. And Boromir. And Frodo himself. Patch it out quickly and effectively.

Diablo 4 hotfix makes it easier to farm Mythics as Blizzard confirms Season 15 will remove Mythic reroll crafting from the Horadric Cube, "adding a direct upgrade" instead

Indie adventure game Future? No Thanks! Has been delayed at the last minute thanks to Steam needing to look at some boobs and butts.

Molleindustria, the developer of satirical games like Democratic Socialism Simulator and New York Times Simulator has announced on Bluesky (spotted by PC Gamer) that its latest game Future? No Thanks! – which was supposed to be released today – has been pushed back.

The post says, "We were foolish to disregard the only authority on the matter: Steam, which has kept our game under review for more than three weeks in order to properly assess the scale and scope of the nudity contained within it."

As for the nudity involved, the post explains that "Future? No Thanks! deploys dozens of untextured polygons depicting ass and boobs. They appear statically on screen for several seconds. We understand that such sexually charged content warrants a very careful examination."

Molleindustria adds, "We are thankful to Valve's review team for its thorough work in keeping Steam free from obscene and horny content," which is very valid to say about the platform that features multiple NSFW games that very much breach what can be considered 'good taste' (thanks, Vice).

Of course, yes, Steam does platform adult games, something the replies to the post were quick to point out. However, Molleindustria does clarify: "Less jokingly: I believe the delay is due to the mild nudity not warranting an age verification plus Steam not accepting video documentation to examine the content, which is not immediately accessible in the game. Fingers crossed."

The dev also notes, "I literally had to submit a special build with a 'watch the sex scene' button," and that the demo – which is available right now – "is identical and passed the review months ago." However, Molleindustria promises "the game will be released whenever their assessment is complete."

Avatar: The Last Airbender fighting game delayed on Xbox just hours before release, but not on PS5 or Steam.

The momentum in the desktop CPU market has been going all AMD's way for years now, and while that's down to AMD for making the right choices, it's also been due to multiple missteps by Intel. I don't want to speak too soon, but Intel feels like it's turned over a new leaf in 2026, to the point where the competition could be about to get very fierce. Even the way Team Blue is getting its messaging across has shifted. AI is so far from its desktop CPU conversation; gamers are a priority, and there's been a brilliant refocusing on value for money. As someone who's really interested in the best CPU market, I'm daring to hope, but there's a lot still to prove.

I'm sure I don't need to fill you in on the PR and consumer nightmare that was the Raptor Lake refresh issues. I'm sure I don't need to talk to you about Intel's longstanding reluctance to support its motherboard sockets compared to AMD. And even if you didn't hear about the lacklustre price-to-performance of the first batch of Core Ultra CPUs at their launch, I'm sure you've been hesitant to grab one because of all the noise AMD's been making.

Intel's course correcting with two new flagship desktop processors this year. It's not calling them flagship products because neither of them has the number 9 in their name, but I'm calling them flagship because their reasonable price tags and refreshed attitude toward gamers feels like a statement of intent for where the brand wants to go. The Core Ultra 5 250K Plus stands as a budget option at $199 / £199, but its specs, performance, and remedies of past Intel CPU generations are nowhere close to the "budget" end of the scale.

Specs & Features

So, after one thoroughly whelming generation of processors on the LGA 1851 motherboard socket, we really weren't sure whether a follow-up was going to arrive. Rumors swirled that Intel was already finished with it before the Plus variants were announced. By all accounts, it looked ready to move straight onto the next "Lake". Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed, and we've seen this latest refreshed generation use the same motherboard socket as 2024. Intel now claims it's planning AMD-style support and longevity for its platforms, including Raptor Lake, but in a PC market this volatile due to AI-induced RAMflation, it all remains to be seen.

In other words, Intel has a lot of good faith to build up with consumers again. I certainly hope we see this platform get support into the future, because as I'll come onto, there's some really strong performance to be unlocked from it. I want to believe that Intel has turned a new leaf, but it's going to have to back up the talk with action if it wants to become the trusted CPU maker AMD has become known as.

It's certainly going to be hard to argue with a decade of AM4 support.

All of that is to say that the Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus uses the same motherboard socket as the original batch of Core Ultra products, but it's not one you can upgrade to if you have an Intel 12th, 13th, or 14th generation CPU/motherboard.

The 250K Plus might feel like a successor in name to the Intel Core Ultra 5 245K, but its specs land it somewhere between last gen's Ultra 5 and Intel Core Ultra 7 265K. It has 18 cores and 18 threads with a 5.3Ghz boost clock. That's up from last gen's Ultra 5 at 14 cores and threads at 5.2GHz, but just under the 265K at 20 cores and threads at 5.5GHz.

Considering the 265K retails for £269-£300 in the UK and roughly $300 in the US, and the 245K sells for ~$194 / ~£170, the new-gen model provides a serious price-to-performance boost and is clearly all about value for money. That's bold, because it's trying to beat AMD at its own game, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

There's a 30MB total cache on board, which isn't close to AMD's Ryzen 7 7800X3D, which offers a 96MB L3 cache - remember, this is the part of the CPU that the X3D options double up on to provide better gaming and content creation performance. Considering that chip is usually sold in the $350 range on a good day, you're getting some great value for money here with the 250K Plus.

The latest set of Intel processors doesn't have an answer for AMD's X3D architecture, but that doesn't mean they don't have other tricks up their sleeve. The Intel Binary Optimization Tool is a feature to watch. It's, I suppose, akin to DLSS in a way in that it's a subliminal software perk that goes hand in hand with the latest generation of hardware. There's no AI upscaling happening here though; the Binary Optimization Tool simply allows Intel's software to run games more efficiently on its hardware (in theory), which could lead to better performance overall in certain games.

The reason I say it's one to watch is that, like with DLSS, it is going to rely on compatibility within games on a software level. It's not like AMD's 3D V-cache where the hardware supplies performance boosts across the board because it's a result of architecture. It's still in its early phases, and I haven't heard a whole lot of noise about it since Intel launched the Core Ultra Plus chips. So far, looking at the list of games it can provide you boosts in, things are fairly thin.

To make matters more confusing, some games have compatibility with Intel's APO Optimization, but only some within that list (bolded ones) have compatibility with the Binary Optimization Tool.

• Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail
• League of Legends
• Serious Sam 4
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• Watch Dogs Legion
• Assassin's Creed Mirage
• Battlefield V
• Borderlands 3
• Cyberpunk 2077
• Far Cry 6
• Geekbench 6.3+
• Hitman 3
• Hogwarts Legacy
• Kerbal Space Program 2
• Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered
• Naraka: Bladepoint
• Remnant 2
• The Callisto Protocol
• Tiny Tina's Wonderlands
• World of Warships

Performance

Intel's desktop CPUs have never really had all that much trouble offering decent gaming and content creation performance, especially because they cram so many cores and threads in that there's always enough muscle within to handle even the heaviest lifting in demanding games.

The questions for me going into testing were more about thermal control, volatility, and a bit of bloody peace and quiet.

For context, I reviewed the Intel Core i5-3600K, which I loved. But then I moved on to the Intel Core i7-13700K and after that, the 14700K. While both of the Raptor Lake i7 chips booted out some really decent power, they were just a pain in the arse.

Thankfully, I didn't get hit with major volatility issues to the point of damaged CPUs or anything, but even with the BIOS updates to counter the issue, I was still getting the most annoying, random fan flare-ups because thermal control was just non-existent and voltages were doing whatever they felt like. This resulted in an irreversibly loud PC while working day-to-day, but manifested in random and very annoying frame stutters and dips while playing games. I also couldn't play games without the CPU riding a low of at least 70 degrees no matter the title, and that was with a full-sized NZXT AIO cooler.

I immediately noticed a massive difference with the Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus. Ambient temperatures were sitting in the mid 30s with an ambient power of 30-42W when idling or running my work applications. And even during this ludicrous heatwave-riddled summer in the UK, it's sitting at about 42 degrees when I'm working, and there are no random, annoying temperature spikes. Playing my go-to Hunt Showdown with a 14700K meant temps in the 70s and even 80s, but with the 250K Plus it's so steady in the high 50s and 60s with no trouble at all.

In this entire sitting of review tests, I've only seen a peak of 75 in one of Blender's benchmarks. For the most part it's still calm, cool, and collected under pressure and tends to sit in the 60s. That's all with the same thermal paste and NZXT Kraken Plus AIO cooler I was using with the 14700K, which shows you the serious performance boosts of this motherboard platform versus Raptor Lake.

Non-gaming benchmarks are pretty impressive. The Core Ultra 5 250K Plus demolishes the Ryzen 7 7800X3D in Blender. I haven't gone back to test that Ryzen CPU in the updated form of Cinebench, but compared to the AMD Ryzen 7 9700F I tested in the Quoted Tech Horizon, the 250K Plus does come out on top. Content creation is pretty great for the money then, even if these comparisons aren't exactly like-for-like because my testing rig is using a PNY RTX 5080 Slim, while the AMD reviews used a 7900 GRE and RX 9070 XT respectively.

The question I wanted to ask with gaming tests in this review was: could the latest Intel Core Ultra 5 keep up with an RTX 5080, to the point of negating the need for spending more on the Ultra 7 Plus. Honestly, while I haven't tested the more powerful 270K Plus yet, I'd argue the answer here is yes. While I'm sure there are better gaming performances to be netted, I think for $200 you're getting a really great 4K gaming processor here. The caveat to that is whether or not you're playing CPU-intensive games all the time. Let's look at some numbers.

In Total War: Warhammer 3's Battle benchmark, the Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus combined with the RTX 5080 scored 86fps, which is up from Quoted Tech's Ryzen 7 9700F score of 72fps, and up from the Ryzen 7 7800X3D's 53fps. Across the board, the Intel Core Ultra provided strong scores in Total War against comparable Ryzen chips, but that could be due to the better GPU used in these tests. In less formal testing, things are interesting because the Ryzen 7 7800X3D did pack some inexplicable performance boosts.

Cities: Skyline's community-made scenarios still fall in favor of AMD, despite Intel's updated architecture and a more powerful GPU. While these numbers aren't as set in stone as formal benchmarks, they're averages taken while playing the same sequences, and AMD wins it comfortably. In Planet Zoo, while the Ryzen 7 7800X3D scored an average of 95, the 250K Plus was a bit humbler at 78fps when operating a fully populated scenario at normal speed and 57fps when speeding up time and zooming into those busy areas of a park. Keep in mind the slowly ageing 7800X3D has ten fewer cores than Intel's latest Ultra 5.

I wouldn't argue these more modest scores are reasons not to opt for the Ultra 5, but it does show you that the X3D chips are capable of some really bold performances, especially since those numbers were recorded with an older GPU that's not got the oomph of the RTX 5080.

The only other gaming-based question I wanted to address was how the Binary Optimization Tool can impact things. I went into Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Cyberpunk for that, and compared my benchmarks with when it was turned off.

Unfortunately, in both the games I had access to that have support for this feature, I saw only tiny differences in benchmarking scores with and without Binary Optimization switched on. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, I saw an increase by one solitary frame, and in Cyberpunk it actually decreased the benchmarking score by two. There is also the chance that I haven't managed to get it to work properly, because other sites have reported a 5% to 20% performance boost from it on average.

One more thing I will say as a general use note is that if you're planning to overclock your RAM with this CPU, maybe look elsewhere. I've paired the 250K Plus with some G.Skill performance memory that was provided by Intel to review both of its new chips with. I can see one XMP profile onboard which attempts to unlock 7200MT/s, but anytime I've attempted to boost past 4800MT/s with the 250K Plus I've been kicked back to the BIOS and told no. I'm sure with your motherboard and RAM, your mileage may vary. It's unlikely this is going to be an overclocker's first pick anyway, but it's worth keeping in mind.

Should you buy the Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus?

Intel has said that it plans to support its existing motherboard platforms from here on out, and although there are rumors around the next motherboard socket arriving, I'd be inclined to believe that Intel isn't going to go back on its word, especially since we all see how the momentum in the CPU market is drifting more and more in AMD's favor. Intel needs to provide long-term socket support to win back some good faith, but judging by its track record, it all remains to be seen. That's maybe one of the bigger question marks looming over the Intel Core Ultra Plus CPUs right now, but if you're willing to trust this new-age Intel culture, there isn't much preventing me from recommending the 250K Plus.

Because that's the real issue for Intel here. Putting the lacklustre launch of Core Ultra behind us, and ignoring the blip of Raptor Lake volatility, the problem with Intel in recent years hasn't been to do with poor CPUs. Sure maybe small upgrades for full prices haven't been the most inspiring thing, but it can't be disputed that this brand makes really good desktop processors. But excellent entries alone haven't been enough. AMD has been beating Team Blue through value for money, socket longevity, and innovative architectural developments.

You can't really just determine whether a CPU is worth investing in based on performance alone anymore, because AMD has it beat through years' worth of upgrade paths. If LGA 1851 is indeed a dead platform, then the insane value for money here is a small blip that'll fade into obscurity very quickly.

There's excellent gaming and content creation to be had here for the money, and the value is hard to argue with, even if X3D chips can offer you bolder frame rates in a wider suite of games. Binary Optimization is there to be built on, and I hope it becomes a feather in the brand's cap. Personally, I'm just happy with the genuine improvements that have been made to thermals and stability since the Raptor Lake refresh scandal.

I'd thoroughly recommend this processor for its price, and for many it's all the 4K power you're going to need for gaming, work, and content creation.

How I tested the Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus

I used the latest Core Ultra 5 in my own gaming PC for over a month before writing this review. In that time, I used it for all sorts of work, play, and creative tasks, but also undertook more formal benchmarking to put it through its paces.

I evaluated its performance through comparisons with spec-similar AMD chips, as well as price comparisons with the rest of the market. I also used my knowledge of the CPU market to make a thorough review for consumers to help them while making a buying decision.

For more on how we test gaming PCs, check out the full-length GamesRadar+ hardware policy.

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A group of investors led by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund have received approval from the European Commission to go ahead with their proposed acquisition of EA, the blockbuster game publisher behind Battlefield, The Sims, and EA Sports titles.

Last year, EA confirmed it had entered a deal to go private and fall under the joint ownership of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners (a private investment firm led by US President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner). Should the $55 billion buyout proceed without a hitch, Saudi Arabia's PIF will own 93.7% of shares, Silver Lake will have 5.5%, and Affinity Partners will hold onto 1.1% of the company.

That mega-deal is now one step closer to closing since the European Commission just concluded that the buyout wouldn't lead to significant competition concerns. (Good spot, Game Developer.)

"The European Commission has approved, under the EU Merger Regulation, the acquisition of sole control of Electronic Arts Inc. of the US by the Public Investment Fund ('PIF') of Saudi Arabia. The transaction relates primarily to the production and distribution of video games for mobile devices, PCs and consoles, as well as the organization and commercialization of video game competitions, commonly referred to as electronic sports events," the European Commission's website explains.

"The Commission concluded that the notified transaction would not raise competition concerns, given its limited impact on competition in the markets where the companies are active," the note continues. "The notified transaction was examined under the normal merger review procedure."

The buyout has been subject to much scrutiny in the months since it was made public. Several The Sims content creators quit EA's Creator Network earlier this year, citing long-term concerns over the ethics and history of the publisher's would-be owners. Saudi Arabian authorities, for example, have frequently been accused of countless human rights violations over the years.

For now, check out the new games of 2026 and beyond.

It's always fun to see what lurks just below what we can see in a video game through datamining and the like. You can find remnants of ideas that hit the cutting room floor, or perhaps suggestions of what's to come in DLC. A lead developer on Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced respects the curiosity, but asks we don't put much stock in what's uncovered.

"Many games get datamined, it's very clever, I understand," Richard Knight, game director on Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, says in an interview with JorRaptor (below). "Sometimes these are for assets that don't even exist yet, and sometimes they're placeholders that were done three years ago."

For projects as big as the Black Flag remake – or any triple-A game, really – all sorts of little curios and oddities tend to sneak into the finished product. Perhaps it was easier and faster to just cover something up than to take it out entirely, or, as Knight suggests, there was the kernel of an idea that didn't pan out, but you can still find a little marker, left however long ago in the game's past by god knows who.

They make for good discussion around the game's development, but holding people who worked on it to account for them is difficult. If they're placeholders, the devs genuinely might not remember what the point was, and if they're hints at what's coming, nobody will be allowed to talk about it yet.

Naturally, this comes up because JorRaptor asks about costumes that have been found in the game's innards. Multiple get-ups for Edward drawing on several entries from the storied franchise have been discovered, leading people to believe they indicate what's coming.

Knight is saying nothing, however. "This is my way of saying I don't actually know," he responds, remaining coy. "I can't spoil it because I don't know."

He does say whatever comes, the team will "support the brand legacy." Take that however you like.

If you're yet to set sail in the remake yourself, be sure to read our Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced review to see how it compares to the best Assassin's Creed games in the series.

The length of Halo Campaign Evolved isn't really all that different to the original 2001 game, clocking in at roughly 10 hours. However, this remake packs in a few extras – namely a three-mission bonus prequel campaign and over 50 collectibles in the form of Skulls and Terminals – that will extend how long it takes you to complete the game, depending on what your definition of 'complete' is. With that in mind, here are some estimations for how long Halo Campaign Evolved is based on how you play.

How long is Halo Campaign Evolved?

The average playthrough for Halo Campaign Evolved is about 10 hours, but with things like difficulty, prior knowledge from the original, and collectibles to find, your completion time is affected by many factors:

• Main campaign: 8-12 hours
• Main campaign + bonus missions: 10-14 hours
• 100% completion: 20+ hours

As mentioned, the core campaign – that's the 10 main missions from The Pillar of Autumn to The Maw – should take you 10 hours, give or take a couple. If you're charging through each mission on Easy difficulty or have played the classic Halo Combat Evolved already, you may even be able to get through it much faster. Conversely if you're committing to a Heroic or Legendary playthrough, plenty of deaths will add up to a couple of extra hours.

The Operation Meteorite campaign, comprising three prequel missions featuring Master Chief and Sergeant Johnson, adds a couple more hours of story content, but you should still get through the whole thing in under 15 hours. I completed all 13 missions on Heroic difficulty in about 13 hours, having also played Combat Evolved a few times before.

Finally, those that commit to finding all 39 Skulls and all 13 Terminals spread across each mission, you'll be spending several more hours replaying and scouring each level. If you're going for the Platinum Trophy too, there are plenty of tough challenges that will likely take you multiple attempts to complete, so don't expect a quick walk in the park!

The game is only in early access at the moment, so make sure you know when the Halo Campaign Evolved release time is and ensure you pre-load Halo Campaign Evolved before then.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

It's a good day for fans of Avatar: The Last Airbender on every platform except Xbox. The new release based on the property, Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game, has suffered a sudden delay on Xbox Series X/S, while other versions came out as planned.

The game was scheduled to come out today, July 23, on PC via Steam, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and the aforementioned Xbox systems, and players across almost all of these are getting to jump in as planned. Sadly, Microsoft's brand has hit a snag, forcing a change in plans.

"For the Xbox community, we are forced to delay the release," says a message from developer Gameplay Group on Twitter. "Due to unforeseen circumstances on a backend feature, we will now launch by September 3. Existing pre-orders will remain active and will not be canceled."

While delays happen, it's rare to see one so close to the expected launch, and rarer still on just one platform. I do wonder what the feature could be that requires such a drastic pivot, but obviously whatever it is needs particular attention.

Avatar Legends was the subject of scrutiny earlier this month, when Paramount confirmed that Mike Zaimont, a game developer who's been accused of sexual harassment in the past, is involved in the project. He "holds a position as an individual contributor" according to the company.

Despite Gameplay Group keeping pre-orders, there are players taking refunds. "Returning this shit at light speed," says one frustrated reply. "Huge scumbag move," writes another.

Others are just plainly angry. "Delaying an anticipated game by a month and a half less than 24 hours before release is actually insane," one account posted.

As of now, the Steam and PS5 versions are available to buy and play now. A Nintendo Switch 2 version is set to come out sometime later this year.

The Japanese Patent Office has officially had enough of Nintendo, rejecting a patent attached to the Palworld lawsuit with "rarely seen" sass

It takes a moment to adjust to the fact I'm using a DualSense controller and my PS5 to play a Halo game – something which seemed like heresy only a few years ago. But from the moment I fire the iconic M6D Magnum pistol in Halo: Campaign Evolved, my muscle memory from years past kicks right back in. Navigating space cruiser Pillar of Autumn's rat's nest of corridors before crash-landing onto Installation 04 and mounting up in a warthog remains one of my favorite openings for a video game, and Halo Studios has recreated it with stunning accuracy.

Despite being a ground-up remake of the game that started it all for Halo (and arguably Xbox) 25 years ago, it's impressive not only how instantly familiar Halo: Campaign Evolved feels but also how well it holds up. But, after a full run of the campaign and its three new bonus missions, I can't help but feel that such a faithful approach might be to Halo: Campaign Evolved's detriment. It certainly looks the part, but there are so few flourishes that I also can't find many reasons to play it over what's come before.

Sacred Icon

Playing through the opening half of Halo: Campaign Evolved reminded me that The Pillar of Autumn through to Assault on the Control Room really is an all-timer sequence of levels. You get to see almost the whole gamut of Halo environments, from claustrophobic spaceships to lush landscapes, rugged canyons, and esoteric Forerunner facilities.

These have all been beautifully and vibrantly rendered in Unreal Engine 5. Levels like 343 Guilty Spark and The Library benefit greatly from some significant visual improvements. Advanced lighting, a ghostly knee-high fog, and plenty of Flood goop all add to the mysterious atmosphere of these ancient installations, break up the monotony, and even amp up the horror.

I also can't deny that such dedication to realism means Campaign Evolved lacks a certain charm compared to the polygonal and yet timeless look of its precursor. Even so, it's also much kinder on the eyes compared to the brightly lit and overly detailed Anniversary remaster in The Master Chief Collection.

The visuals for Halo: Campaign Evolved are where the most obvious changes to the original lie, though there are a few mechanical additions to bring the original up to modern Halo standards. Namely, Master Chief can use smart-link aiming with any weapon and is now allowed to sprint. I found that both can be safely ignored for a classic feel (there's even a Skull that fully disables sprinting if you hate it that much), with sprinting being a nice addition to simply get around some of the larger levels a bit faster. It hardly dictates the flow of combat with the only foes that really pushed me to sprint mid-combat being aggressive chargers like Hunters, energy sword Elites, and the hulking Pure Form Flood.

Although, I was a little disappointed to see health packs have been cut in favor of Chief regenerating health. This always felt like a nice separation between his Mark 5 and Mark 6 Mjolnir amor, with the latter appearing from Halo 2 onwards along with fully regenerating health – a reminder that Master Chief isn't quite so invincible that encouraged you to play a little more tactically rather than charging in like a barbarian.

With that said, going in guns blazing at all times on Normal difficulty is where Halo: Campaign Evolved really shines, feeling closer to the original game's Heroic difficulty. Measured aggression in the face of the Covenant and using every tool in Chief's arsenal means you can play more like Doomguy, strafing around and filling each enemy with lead or pistol-whipping them before charging to the next. And it’s still as satisfying as ever to perfectly Hail Mary a plasma grenade into a cluster of Grunts, sending them wailing and flying.

So, with the 2001 classic acting as such a solid foundation, it's practically impossible to not have a good time playing Halo: Campaign Evolved, at the very least. I was initially apprehensive that these relatively simple 25-year-old design principles just wouldn't hold up in a time of fast-paced movement shooters and vast open worlds. Surely such a basic feel would make for a terrible first impression for PS5 players who may have no idea what Halo even is, let alone never played it before. But I think it's this simplicity that makes it shine. As such a faithful remake of its forerunner, Halo: Campaign Evolved is a first-person shooter in its purest form.

Unnatural formation

The more I play Halo: Campaign Evolved the more I also realize that this commitment to faithfulness is a double-edged sword. How can a game titled "Campaign Evolved" claim to be an evolution if it sticks so closely to its source material?

Sprinting, regenerating health, and other modernizations are joined by minor tweaks to level design and dialogue, and an expanded arsenal. The Energy Sword, Sentinel Beam, and Wraith tank, all previously tantalizingly out of reach for Chief in the original, can now be wielded to great effect on the ring – they're even joined by the Needle Rifle, SMG, and Fuel Rod Gun, further fleshing out the already excellent weapon sandbox.

The Library, my least favorite level in Halo: Combat Evolved for its monotonous and labyrinthine structure, has been redesigned a little to trim the fat and inject a bit of variety to its vast halls. You go down instead of up now! That vastness certainly had its own appeal, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't glad that it's a considerably more intuitive place to navigate in Halo: Campaign Evolved. It still feels maze-like without you getting lost, providing a greater sense of momentum even as the incessant monitor orb Guilty Spark dawdles and spouts nonsense. But it's a crying shame that Cortana no longer tells him to "sod off" at the start of Two Betrayals.

The stunning scenery that is arguably one of the main draws of Halo: Campaign Evolved also comes at the cost of Unreal Engine 5 choppiness. I noticed that whenever there were lots of enemies on screen or plenty of particle effects going off at once, animation frame rates would noticeably plummet. Nothing game-breaking, but hardly what I'd expect from something that is so otherwise polished.

Hopping back into Halo: Combat Evolved via The Master Chief Collection made me realize that this remake's changes are unfortunately quite inconsequential. Halo Studios has imitated the original so well that there is little that Halo: Campaign Evolved does that makes it an essential play. Obviously, if you only have a PS5, then Halo: Campaign Evolved is your sole option – that's also ultimately who this game is for too – but I find it difficult to recommend to anyone else when The Master Chief Collection, and therefore the original Halo, is widely available.

I think we're just getting started

Of course, Halo Studios already thought about this and so Halo: Campaign Evolved also includes a new three-mission prequel campaign, Operation Meteorite. These bonus missions see Master Chief teaming up with his best non-AI pal and fan-favorite Sergeant Johnson to investigate a mysterious research vessel to hopefully learn the location of the heart of the Covenant.

To be blunt, these missions are quite unremarkable. Despite taking place one year prior to the main campaign, what transpires is of no real relevance whatsoever. It essentially just establishes that Johnson and Chief are two bros who like to kill aliens together and find themselves in an almost Rogue One-style plot-hole-that-didn't-need-explaining story. Narratively, these missions end up being more relevant to Halo 2's story, so Halo fans can do the Leonardo DiCaprio pointing meme while it flies right over the heads of PS5 greenhorns.

These missions are also the only place in all of Halo: Campaign Evolved where you'll get to use the Battle Rifle and fight Brutes. Couple that with the limp narrative and Operation Meteorite ends up feeling more like a chance to deploy some fan service in the form of mild banter between Chief and Johnson, who wears Chief's 1999 MacWorld demo Orion armor, while also testing some things for the surely inevitable Halo 2: Evolved – there's even a gondola section!

Halo Studios clearly has a lot of respect for Bungie's legacy but has also avoided doing anything particularly interesting or new with it. I would have liked to have seen more substantial structural changes to levels given that the developers aren't bound by the technical limitations of the original Xbox. That resulted in recycled environments and backtracking through levels, which are neatly woven into the narrative, but it feels like a wasted opportunity to leverage such modern technology and then not put your own spin on those classics.

However, after trying to go bold with Halo 4, Halo 5, and Halo Infinite and having to go back to the drawing board every time, I'm hardly surprised that this is how Halo: Campaign Evolved turned out. A modern recreation is certainly the safest option for Halo Studios and Xbox Game Studios, and it's a solid effort that resurrects what feels like a bygone era of single-player shooters. But, only because it copies the genre-defining Halo: Combat Evolved so closely. Why iterate on near-perfection? Yet, the promise of an evolved campaign experience, like Installation 04 itself, rings hollow, and I'm left wondering if playing it safe is really what Xbox should be aiming for with Halo right now.

Halo: Campaign Evolved was reviewed on PS5, with a code provided by the publisher.

Halo: Campaign Evolved is one of the best FPS games you can play this year, and if you're interested in the rest of the Halo series, take a look at our list of the best Halo games.

Halo Campaign Evolved pre-loading is now available for all platforms and all editions, so whether you're on PS5, PC, or Xbox Series X, you can get the game installed now, ready for the full launch. With the early access period still running, many players can still upgrade, download, and start playing right now, but you may as well get set for July 28 instead. With that, I've explained everything you need to get done before Halo Campaign Evolved's full launch, including pre-loading, so that you can dive in as soon as possible.

How to pre-load Halo Campaign Evolved

To start pre-installing Halo, you obviously must have pre-ordered the Standard Edition of the game on your platform of choice. Bear in mind that if you've got the Premium Edition or the Premium Edition upgrade, you can install and start playing the game now before the Halo Campaign Evolved release time thanks to the included early access period.

With the game pre-ordered, your platform's storefront should automatically begin pre-installing the game right away, assuming you have automatic downloads switched on. Otherwise, check the Halo Campaign Evolved page on your platform's store front or your game library and you should be able to start the early download from there. To ensure you have enough space for it, you should have about 100GB of free space on your console or PC's storage.

I also highly recommend making sure you get your Microsoft account details ready – or make an account if you don't have one while you wait – so that you can get your account linked and start playing Halo with minimal hassle. You can't play the game without an account, and it's used to make crossplay and cross-progression function, so you can play Halo Campaign Evolved with whoever and on whatever eligible platforms you have available to you.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

The next Helldivers 2 Legendary Warbond, this time a collaboration with Warhammer 40,000, is getting a full reveal on July 30.

Arrowhead Game Studios tells fans to tune in next week with a short trailer showing nothing but a handgun, a date, and a couple logos. A trailer for an incoming trailer two months after the crossover's announcement trailer, then.

"Attention, Helldivers," the developer tweets. "July 30 has been designated as a date of operational significance. Update your calendar accordingly. Further briefing to follow."

Not much is known about the forthcoming Warhammer 40,000 Warbond, but if it follows in the footsteps of the Killzone and Halo collaborations, then we're likely to get some sick cosmetics and cool weapons that would almost fit right into the sci-fi settings of both universes.

Squashing legions of juicy bugs and spreading democracy to all corners of the galaxy with the light touch of ultra-violent, ultra-deadly, sometimes fascist soldiers is common ground for both Helldivers and Warhammer, making this a match made in heaven. Here's hoping the Legendary Warbond can live up to its potential.

Arrowhead actually had another Warbond planned to release this summer, but the developer needed "more time to cook" and "would rather hold back" than apparently launch something half-baked. The unannounced Warbond doesn't have a new release date yet, though the studio says it'll keep players posted once the package nears completion.

Elsewhere in the bug-alien-killing video game world, July 30 is also the same day Gears of War: E-Day plans to show what it has in store for its multiplayer modes. Big day ahead for fans of chainsaw-adjacent weapons and meat-grinding shooters.

Helldivers 2 targets Super Credit cheaters with "radically improved" tools, but not everyone's on board with Arrowhead's announcement.