I'm not sure I've ever had more fun listening to a game developer than when I watch Kenji Kanno introduce Crazy Taxi: World Tour to a small room full of journalists and content creators at Summer Game Fest. He's rocking long, gray hair that paints him as a rock star graced by the wisdom of age, and he speaks with such enthusiasm about the game that it's tough not to get on board with him.

Sega's reasons for bringing back Crazy Taxi are fairly boring – part of an effort to revitalize legacy IP to bring in a new generation of fans. For Kanno? "My biggest personal reason," he tells us via translator, "is that I really wanted to put out a game that can make people happy, that can make people smile as they play and express themselves in their own way."

Time to make some crazy money

Kanno softly sings "yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah" – the line from the opening of The Offspring's All I Want that's burned into so many Crazy Taxi fans' heads – as he demonstrates the basics of World Tour. It instantly looks familiar, offering the same blue skies and wild stunts that made Sega's arcade classic so memorable in the first place.

It looks doubly familiar since the map I'm seeing is a recreation of the original game's vaguely defined west coast city area. The Crazy Rush mode offers the classic experience of trying to deliver as many passengers to their destinations as you can in as short a time as possible. But there's a whole campaign this time, too, and the map is populated with all sorts of additional activities.

In one mission, you'll drive a pizza chef (confusingly named Cheeseburger) on deliveries, while trying to avoid disturbing the comically huge stack of pies. There's even a fishing mini-game, where you cast out a line from your cab and do a backdash to reel it in. It's all delightful stuff, especially with the promise that we'll be visiting five different countries over the course of the game – though Kanno laughs that "some of the marketing people will get mad at me if I say what countries they are."

I'm desperate to love Crazy Taxi: World Tour, both because Kanno's enthusiasm is infectious and because I'm always going to root for an old-school revival to succeed. But there's a lot here squarely in 'too early to tell' territory. There are clearly some changes to the core gameplay, especially in how you can just power through oncoming traffic and take advantage of a newly-introduced nitrous boost. It's also not immediately clear how old techniques like the backdash and drift work. In the original game, you had to master shifting between drive and reverse in order to pull these techniques off, but just watching somebody else play the game makes these techniques look much simpler than that.

Kanno offered a brief Q&A after the demonstration, but he responded to many of the questions posed by nervously glancing at the PR reps in the room and apologizing profusely for the fact that he couldn't actually answer just yet.

We saw Axel in the demo, but are there other playable characters? Can't say anything beyond "we won't betray your expectation." Does the soundtrack vary between locations? "Sorry," he can't say. There were an array of licensed shops and restaurants in the demo, just like the original game, but Sega emailed me shortly after to ask me not to publish any of them because they're "not yet final."

Most of my time at Summer Game Fest was spent on the ground, so I didn't have much time to see the internet's reaction to the event's announcements – including the revelation that World Tour was built, in part, using generative AI. The difference in vibe between the room where I watched series creator Kenji Kanno pledge to make the world a happier place and the community's actual reaction to the game has been pretty stark, and I've been having a hard time reconciling my own feelings in the month since I've seen the game. The goofy vibes and retro arcade sensibilities speak deeply to my tastes, but without actually playing it I have no idea how good it's going to feel with controller in hand.

What does Kanno have to say to fans who've been desperate for a return to Crazy Taxi for years? "Sorry to keep you waiting," is his simple message. "Crazy Taxi has a very special place in my heart as well. The fact that so many old fans are waiting for it – and so many people know about it right now, and even within the company so many people are very excited and want a new Crazy Taxi – it makes me feel very happy."

Final Fantasy Resonance is almost my dream FF game, but its link to Square Enix's mobile games leaves me cold

2026 marks Sonic the Hedgehog's 35th anniversary, and at Summer Game Fest, I got the chance to play maybe the most unusual part of Sega's celebrations: Sonic Pico Park, a co-op puzzle platformer that once again puts Sega's iconic blue blur in the hands of beloved indie devs. It's a sign of an evolving game industry, and the developers bringing Sonic Pico Park to life know that Sonic's continued evolution is key to the character's long-term survival.

My hands-on time with Sonic Pico Park is equal parts delightful and frustrating – pretty much as you'd expect for an indie couch co-op game. Just like the rest of developer Tecopark's puzzle platformer series, you and your fellow players take control of an array of boxy little characters and cooperate to work your way through challenges custom-built to ruin relationships.

Co-op for devs and players alike

The difference here is that there are now Sonic-influenced twists to all the levels. You can spin dash through cracked walls, run through big loops, and bounce off of strategically placed springs. Naturally, these elements play into the puzzle design, too. You can collect rings which, in true Sonic fashion, will save you from a single hit – which means you need to strategically choose who takes each ring to survive the death traps that'll follow.

In one instance, you need to build a wall that one player can spin dash their way up. In another, you'll need a Tails player to fly the whole group across a big gap. The joy is in the discovery, so I won't spoil too many specific puzzle solutions, but it's all great fun. Of course, you'll already know the basics if you've played any of the Pico Park games before, but Tecopark sought out this collaboration in part because it wants to bring in new fans.

Pico Park is already wildly popular on its own merits, having sold some 8 million units. Creator Shunsuke "Teco" Miyake wanted to expand even further, however, and in 2021 formed a company to help the property reach the next level. "We really wanted to start expanding on Pico Park as an IP," as producer Shintaro Shimazu tells me via translator. "It was really popular with casual gamers, but we wanted to reach out and get even hardcore gamers and other people excited."

Shimazu explains that "we really thought we need to start collabing with IP," and since Miyake once worked at Sega, it was an obvious first choice. "Sonic is a great IP to collab with. It's got tons of appeal. People love it worldwide. Let's go to Sega. I doubt they'll ever let us even do this, but let's at least pitch it to them and see what they have to say. Maybe we'll get a skin or something small. To all of our disbelief, Sega was like, 'Actually, this is a great idea. Let me introduce you to the Sonic team, and let's start talking about doing a Sonic and Pico Park collab game together.'"

For Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka, seeing the beloved hedgehog and pals take on such a different type of gameplay was something of a shock, but Sega's previous big indie collaboration gave him confidence that it would work out.

"When I first saw the concept and the whole idea, I was kind of like, 'Is this gonna be a Sonic game?'" Iizuka tells me. "Like, 'I don't know how this collab is going to work.' But our experience working with the Sonic Mania team – they were also an indie developer, and they also had these ideas and kind of core beliefs that they wanted to execute on creatively."

While an eight-player co-op game was "something we on the Sonic Team side had never made before," that type of gameplay "was something that the team at Pico Park was really passionate about making." Iizuka did have at least one big suggestion for Tecopark, however: all the Sonic characters should have unique abilities. "It totally breaks the core game design of Pico Park," Iizuka admits, "but the team at Pico Park were really skilled at understanding the request, and then building around it."

Sonic madness meets Sonic Mania

Sega has now let indie developers make their own Sonic game multiple times, and it's not alone. We've gotten games like Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, The Rogue Prince of Persia, Cadence of Hyrule, and even the upcoming Castlevania: Belmont's Curse thanks to established publishers being open to allowing other developers to use their IP, and the results have largely been excellent. What's made it possible for these sorts of collaborations to happen in the modern era?

"I can't really speak for the other companies and maybe what they're thinking, but you know, from a Sega perspective, we do realize that making our big titles, it takes a lot of time, a lot of money," Iizuka explains. "It's a huge investment of, you know, the staff and the resources that we have, and then once you've invested all that time and energy into something, you really need to sell a lot of units in order to survive in the industry."

Indie developers, meanwhile, "have an idea, and they'll very quickly create that idea – that game experience – and then they'll continue moving forward and making more stuff. That's one thing that larger companies really can learn from the indie development scene – just how quickly they can take an idea, capture that, and put that into a game experience. It's really stimulating working with those indie developers." Iizuka believes this is a lesson Hollywood is already learning, and that AAA game studios should follow suit.

Partnering with indie studios also gives companies like Sega a chance to work with the very people whose love of video games was sparked by their characters. "I grew up in a household where we had a Super Famicom, but I was asking for a Mega Drive," Shimazu says. "My brother wanted a PlayStation, and I wanted to play Virtua Fighter. So I've always been that Sega fan at heart."

Of course, Shimazu was a Sonic fan, too, and has watched the character grow from a platformer protagonist to a multimedia mascot just like many of us have. "It was this really cool, unique character that I got to play with, and I really appreciated and enjoyed that time with the games," he says. "But when we look historically at what Sonic has been and where Sonic is going – Sonic's in movies, Sonic's in lots of different media. All these different ways of presenting Sonic to lots of people, I think, has been one of those ways to help Sonic survive."

Sonic's survival wasn't always assured. A decade ago, Sega had the character on the chopping block. But Iizuka thanks the fans for keeping the series alive even now, 35 years later – not to mention making sure that Sega stays on the right path.

"I'm sure you guys remember the Sonic 1 movie trailer that went out there. The fans really said, 'We don't like this, and we want things changed.' The teams listened to that, and they changed the design of Sonic for the movie. We're always constantly listening to the fans when we're thinking about the next game we want to make. Because the fans are there and they have been supporting us so much, we want to take the time – for the past 35 years – and really listen to what they want and deliver something that they're going to enjoy."

Gotta go fast to our list of the best Sonic games of all time.

It was love at first sight. I knew I was meant to play cozy horror farming sim Grave Seasons as soon as I learned about its unconventional story of an ex-convict restoring the dark fairytale town Ashenridge, where handsome farmers, werewolves, and other serial killers exist in bloody disharmony.

"Grave Seasons is really special in that we don't hold back on the horror elements," developer Perfect Garbage co-founder and narrative director Emmett Nahil tells me during a Summer Game Fest 2026 interview, where I was happy to discover the game seems just as bold as I'd hoped.

I got to play a bit of Grave Seasons' introduction, where I wander a farm and dig up some plots for carrot plants, but I arrive in Ashenridge in a conspicuous prison jumpsuit. From just this experience, it's easy for me to determine the pastoral town isn't your typical, green suburbia, where khaki shorts neighbors smirk privately at those they think dress a little funny, and it isn't your Animal Crossing island, either, where you suppress feelings of hatred for community members because their little piggy noses are pretty cute. Developer Perfect Garbage's eerie countryside is different: there's death and emotional challenges as you define your new life as a reformed criminal, which makes my interest swell – like a diseased artery!

You have one in-game year to learn who's the supernatural murderer terrorizing Ashenridge, whether or not they're the love of your life, and what you should do with that information. Save the world and prove that you've changed? Or keep filling up your watering can like nothing's wrong?

It'll probably be tougher than you think. Nahil says, "I always want to see more moral ambiguity, generally" in story narratives, and Grave Seasons has no easy answers.

Nahil continues, "I find a lot of game writing, when done to the broadest audience possible, can fall into a sort of good-versus-bad binary. Some of the games that I like most have really embraced the middle area, embrace that moral grayness, embrace the complicated repercussions of player decisions."

Putting players into the trudging shoes of protagonist Dara – whose appearance is customizable, but who begins Grave Seasons in that sickly orange jumpsuit no matter what – is the perfect way to force a nuanced mindset from the beginning. Nahil says he wants players to "embrace the fun, roguish nature of Dara. I really want them to feel like they can experiment with their choices and have fun, and also experience the consequences of maybe not-so-savory reactions."

This is the kind of daring narrative ambition I always crave in horror, specifically, which I think has a duty to be visceral, itchy, and extra-impactful on an innocent audience member's sense of self. More specifically, Nahil says, "I want players to learn that it's worthwhile to get to know the people around you, to really learn deeply about the people that are in your community, no matter what kind of person you are. That's what Grave Seasons does best."

Maybe I should switch to rollercoasters, or a glass of wine, but I've always had the desperate need for art to encourage me toward emotional places I never thought of going before. With its unique premise and magnanimous thoughts about community, it seems like Grave Seasons can do that with only a few bite marks and bags of carrot seeds.

I can't wait. Grave Seasons' original August 14 release date has been delayed to this fall, but I'll sit around until its new launch time is announced. Not patiently!

I'm convinced this farming sim horror demo is better than anything you'll play during Steam Next Fest.

It's been 20 years since the last new Virtua Fighter game. In those decades, the fighting game genre has supposedly died and risen from the proverbial ashes multiple times over, but Sega's once-mighty series has remained dormant even as the likes of Street Fighter and Tekken continue to reassert themselves. I think it's safe to say that Virtual Fighter Crossroads – a narrative-driven action-adventure game from the Yakuza developers – is not the comeback the fighting game community had expected.

In a behind-closed-doors presentation led by producer Riichiro Yamada, I start to get a sense of what Crossroads is all about. I'm not convinced that RGG Studio's take on the fighting series will deliver on what the genre's most dedicated fans will want, since the traditional versus mode that usually powers these games seems to be a sideshow here. But for me, a casual fighting game fan who loves the lore and likes diving into a robust story mode? Virtua Fighter Crossroads is offering one hell of a pitch. And, incredibly, it's a pitch inspired by both Watchmen and Detroit: Become Human.

Expanding the niche

"In Japan, fighting games are a pretty small niche, honestly," Yamada explains via translator. When he presented his pitch for a Virtua Fighter revival, then, "there were a lot of people who were kind of against it." But Yamada, a veteran of the Yakuza series, had something very different in mind: an "open sandbox RPG" that blends Virtua Fighter's old-school fighting game mechanics with the robust narrative that RGG is known for.

I don't see much gameplay beyond what's in the extended story trailer, but it sounds like fans of RGG's previous games will be right at home here – it's just that you can expect a more intricate fighting system true to the Virtua Fighter legacy as opposed to the more straightforward brawling we get in the Yakuza games.

That sounds especially appropriate for the story of Cielo, which plays out similarly to a "kung-fu movie," Yamada says, but he's not the only central figure in the plot. The other protagonists will each give us "different tone and story feel," with one offering a "very dark and gritty" plot and another taking us to a noir-influenced detective story.

Yamada promises that "there's gonna be a lot of side content," ranging from "side quests with the legendary old cast" to a wide array of minigames. Those minigames are something else you'd typically expect from the Yakuza series, but Yamada suggests we shouldn't expect the same sorts of goofy, eclectic side activities that Kiryu usually gets up to, since when building the optional content the team "wanted to really ground it in this world" for Crossroads.

In fact, creating a grounded sense of reality was a particularly strong point of emphasis for crossroads, and here Yamada cites an unexpected reference as one of his "big inspirations": Watchmen. Yamada says that what he "really felt and loved about Watchmen was how the world – even if they're dressed as superheroes – it feels so believable." He wanted to take a similar approach to creating a believable world in Crossroads.

Meeting at the Crossroads

One key difference from the Yakuza series, Yamada explains, is that "player choice really matters." The story will play out differently depending on the decisions you make along the way, which Yamada believes will make the game feel "completely new" compared to RGG's previous titles.

For his part, Yamada – who served as a game design assistant on the JRPG-inspired Yakuza: Like a Dragon – "doesn't really like JRPGs." He reveals that detail with a laugh, worrying that "some people might be very angry" and immediately insisting he "didn't say that." It seems part of the issue is the linear narrative that JRPGs typically present.

Virtua Fighter Crossroads, instead, shares more in common with games that Yamada "personally really liked, like Detroit: Become Human, and stuff like that, where you really change the story. Depending on how you play, it becomes a whole different game."

How do these choices actually play out in Crossroads? Unfortunately, that's another area where Sega's currently a bit secretive. However, Yamada does say that he wants players "to play multiple times to get a multitude of different experiences, rather than just one time." Hopefully that means these choices are more than smoke and mirrors, and the differences between playthroughs actually feel meaningful.

Without actually getting to put my hands on Virtua Fighter Crossroads, I don't yet know how well RGG Studio's signature narrative and Virtua Fighter's signature combat will meld together in practice. But Yamada's pitch is a compelling one. Plenty of fighting games have had robust story modes in the past, but this looks much more like a full action-adventure game that simply happens to have fighting game combat at its core, and the major emphasis on player choice might just be the thing that ties it all together.

Here are all the best fighting games you can play today.

Putting together an RPG is hard. Regardless of type, they're nebulous projects that require all sorts of creativity to get right. The Outer Worlds and Avowed studio Obsidian Entertainment would know, since the studio's released quite a few, and according to its findings, putting out a beta build first doesn't necessarily help, though there are exceptions.

At Summer Game Fest 2026, Chris Parker, game director for Grounded 2, explained to us that letting players in earlier can work in some instances, but not for sprawling role-playing adventures. "Obsidian got its first real taste for this with Pillars of Eternity, which was not an early access game per se, it was a Kickstarter, but we were constantly updating the community and letting them know about stuff," he tells GamesRadar+.

"I think we recognized that that sort of relationship with the community can't be replicated with just a bunch of devs hanging out," he continues. "No matter how hard you try, and how Socratic your philosophical discussions may be, you're never going to get that huge big picture."

He admits that "it worked out amazingly well" for the first Grounded, but on the large narrative sandboxes Obsidian also develops, like The Outer Worlds games, the approach is less enticing. "It's not going to make sense for every game we make," he starts. "When you're making a huge, super crunchy story-based RPG, I think that's probably pretty hard to put into early access."

There are exceptions, as Larian Studios managed to figure out, but Parker considers that an outlier. "Baldur's Gate 3 seems to have done it pretty well, so maybe there's room for that," he muses. "But when we're starting a game, it's like, 'Hey, does this make sense for this game,' and I think you're gonna see sometimes for us it does, and sometimes it doesn't."

But, as he sees it, "for Grounded 2, it's perfect." The sequel became available for Xbox Series X/S and PC players in July last year, and PlayStation 5 fans can join in come August.

Baldur's Gate 3 and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 show "RPGs are as vibrant" now as ever, Obsidian lead says, even if the genre can look "a little tired" sometimes.

Pragmata star David Menkin says the team had no idea how the game would be received, but is now receiving a ton of positive messages about the game.

Pragmata has been in development for a long time. In fact it was one of the first games announced when the PS5 was revealed back in 2020. But from the looks of things, the wait was worth it, as it has stood alongside Resident Evil Requiem and Monster Hunter Stories 3 to contribute to Capcom's absolutely massive 2026 lineup in a big way. Not only that, but Pragmata hit two million copies sold within the first month, and Capcom has confirmed that it will consider "developing it into a series."

Menkin, who plays Hugh Williams in the game, recently spoke to GamesRadar+ about his experiences during the making of Pragmata, and despite it being in development for half a decade, he only joined the project in 2024. Menkin says, "They gave us time, yeah, which is so unusual when it comes to games, because by the time you get to the voice, you're almost starting post production, and it just didn't feel like that. They wanted to get it done right."

Menkin adds, "When I finished, they sort of did say to me, you know, 'We don't know how this is going to be received, we have made what we wanted to make, and now we just need to figure out if the gamers like it.'"

But as we now know, it was received pretty well, and since it released back in April, Menkin has experienced that first hand. "Not just the reviews, the DMs that I get, and people here [at Summer Game Fest] when they find out who I played, like they just go, you know, 'Man, you made me cry, you made me think about my relationship with my father, with my daughter, with my niece, with my nephew.' That is amazing."

Menkin also says he's "just glad everybody wanted to be space dad."

"I really couldn't sleep": In an absurd year for Capcom, Pragmata creators did not want to be the first ones to drop the ball.

By the end of my hands-on time with Blood Message, I feel like I've seen a magic trick. Tucked into a humid little booth at the edge of Summer Game Fest was a game that felt, at times, like the fulfillment of the dream that games like Uncharted were setting us up for decades ago: an intensely cinematic experience that makes combat look like a choreographed action scene while still giving you enough gameplay meat to keep the "playing" part engaging.

Blood Message is set in 9th century China, and I start my demo taking control of a gruff man trying to help his brother escape a city being ravaged by soldiers of the Tubo empire. I don't get a great sense of the politics at play here – I've only learned that Tubo is the ancient name for Tibet now that I've gone down a post-show Wikipedia rabbithole – but the stakes are quickly established in a handful of violent encounters with those soldiers.

Familiar foundations

If you've played any cinematic, linear, narrative-driven game released in the past decade, you already know how Blood Message plays. You'll squeeze sideways through a tight space. You'll mash a button to lift a heavy object out of the way. You will press a button near a tall wall to boost an NPC companion over the ledge. You'll engage in stealth by crouching in waist-high grass while waiting for enemies to pass by. You'll even, occasionally, be able to walk into a room off the main path and find a collectible there offering a bit of backstory.

But what's impressive about Blood Message is how seamless and polished the whole thing is, best demonstrated by its combat. I strike at enemies with a short sword and parry their attacks with a generous defensive window, but unexpectedly, my attack will sometimes drive a foe careening into one of his comrades and knock both of them off balance. If I parry while I'm on the ground, my character might grab a nearby pot to bash his attacker's head. If I knock back one of the soldiers near a water trough, a deadly struggle will ensue as I try to push him underwater.

Remarkably, even with all these cinematic flourishes, the fights still feel responsive and engaging. I have real control over how they play out, even among the many varied ways the environment can influence the battle. My roughly 20-minute demo felt like the kind of impossibly perfect demo you'd once see on an E3 stage – games you'd discover, once the game launched, were largely fakes. But while this was definitely a vertical slice, I played it, and it's very much real.

Top-tier choreography

The demo's largest combat encounter transitions seamlessly into a brief quick-time event and cutscene when, with two enemies left, one of them parries my attack and the other rushes up to grab me from behind. Certainly, transitions straight between gameplay and cutscenes are nothing new, but I'm impressed by how well it's integrated within a larger, more dynamic fight.

The ultimate quality of Blood Message is going to depend on how well its story lands, and I couldn't get a great sense of that, since the demo picks up right in the middle of the action and doesn't offer much context. But the characters are well-acted, and I'm intrigued by the ancient Chinese setting – a rarity in video games outside of the bombast of something like Dynasty Warriors.

Blood Message will clearly have some bombast of its own, judging by the massive battles showcased in the Summer Game Fest trailer, but the scale is human and grounded. I do go crashing through some walls and take out a fair few soldiers single-handedly, but my character feels more vulnerable than a rubber-boned Nathan Drake mowing down entire armies.

I don't know how well Blood Message will be able to maintain its impressive attention to detail and low-key but thrilling set pieces for the length of an entire game, but if you – like me – have a soft-spot for cinematic action games, this is absolutely one to watch. It's rare to see a game so convincingly convey the vibes of a film epic while also remaining fun to play, and Blood Message does it with style and confidence.

Star Wars: Galactic Racer aims to bring consequence back to racing games, offering the kind of white-knuckle thrills you can only get when your life is on the line with every corner you take. That's why its campaign is built on a roguelike-style, run-based structure and after an hour of hands-on time at Summer Game Fest, I can say that the combination has produced some spectacular results. This is a game that feels incredible to play, offers a real sense of danger, and captures the Star Wars vibe impeccably.

"We were trying to push the genre forward by looking at some things that we might have done and used to do in the past that have been missing," Matt Webster, founder and CEO of developer Fuse Games explains. The team aims to create the feeling that "when I crash, when I hit something, there is a consequence to that, and I feel like that's been a little bit missing out of the racing genre."

The deadliest sport in the galaxy

Certainly, I felt those consequences in my hands-on time. Each run sees you follow a tree of events, choosing at each branch whether you'd prefer to, say, take on a standard race, an eliminator challenge, or a mystery event. Fail to finish in the required position – or crash three times in one event – and you're out, left to start all over again.

"We think that that structure and racing is a match made in heaven, because racing thrives on replayability. Let's have a progression system that encourages replayability and mastery, and feels a lot, I suppose, more contemporary. That's a way in which we can breathe some new life into racing by using a more contemporary progression system that's very well in sync with the choices you make and the decisions that you take along the way."

I'd describe myself as a roguelike skeptic – there are entries in the genre that I enjoy, but I generally prefer a more crafted experience. That said, playing with that roguelike structure in a racing game instantly clicks for me. As Webster suggests, the replayability inherent to the racing genre is a perfect fit, and the choices I get for new upgrades between races feels all the more impactful when a mistake could force me back to the start of the tour.

Of course, none of this would matter if the racing didn't feel good to control. Thankfully, Galactic Racer has sublime fundamentals. You choose one of three types of craft to pilot through the races – the all-around landspeeder, the boatlike skim speeder, or the small, darting speeder bike – each of which feels distinct, complete with unique drift mechanics to help you take turns more efficiently.

The thing all vehicles share is a pair of boost mechanics. There's an afterburner that recharges over time, which you can naturally activate for a quick boost, as you'd expect to see in any arcade racer. There's also the riskier ramjet, which separately charges over time and has to be primed with a separate button press before use. The ramjet will shoot you off at out of control speeds with such force that you can shunt opposing racers off into walls in spectacular crashes, but if you use it too long your engine will overheat and blow your own vehicle to smithereens.

"We've spent time making Burnout games and making Need for Speed games, and it's great to bring some of that inspiration and influence into a new expression of this sort of racing," Webster explains, and if you've ever played a Burnout game before, you will absolutely recognize that influence in the slow-motion cutaways that let you indulge in the vehicular carnage for a few seconds before getting back to racing.

There's also a bit of MotorStorm – another sadly long-dormant racing series – in the way that each race sees several different vehicle classes all competing together, but there's one thing missing from the standard tracks: podracers. The opportunity to drive these vehicles is presented as a special treat, which you can access either from the main menu or as part of the campaign in a "fun and interesting way" that Webster was not willing to spoil.

My time in a podracer feels like going from street racing in a coupe to screaming down the highway in a McLaren supercar. The difference in speed is immense, and even after an hour of getting to grips with Galactic Racer's basic mechanics I'm struggling to go an entire lap without one of my twin engines smashing directly into a rock wall. But those few stretches where I'm able to keep it on track are extremely satisfying, especially playing as Sebulba and getting to unleash his racer's flame jets on nearby opponents.

There are so many more cool things in Galactic Racer, like the tactile little minigame where you start up your vehicle, or the paddock where you can chill out between races and chat with NPCs. It all feels like a complete package, and out of everything I played at Summer Game Fest, this is the one I'm most looking forward to. It's a tried and tested concept molded with a structure that makes it feel fresh, and I can't wait to be zooming around the galaxy far, far away once again this October.

These are the best Star Wars games you can play today.

Slimy tentacles slithering out of a decapitated skull. Flies descending on a corpse, grey and mottled beneath a waxy sheen of rot. Watching the latest ILL trailer shown during Summer Game Fest, every frame feels meticulously crafted to make your skin crawl.

"We have our own vision of how horror should work," studio co-founder and ILL's creative director Max Verehin tells me. While the game is inspired by survival horror games like Resident Evil – specifically the "resource scarcity and management, exploration, and the level design" elements – Team Clout aims to "lean towards the physics-based action gameplay."

The heft of each movement, be it the weight of a gun in the protagonist's hand as the trigger is pulled or the feeling of prising a pipe out of a wall by force, are paramount in creating a "fun playground for players to play with these characters". A distinct physicality sits at the heart of ILL's design ethos, from its anatomically-precise dismemberment system to the weapons used to defend yourself.

Having worked as an artist for IT: Welcome to Derry and various other Universal and Sony productions, it's clear Verehin lives and breathes the horror genre. This cinematic edge can be keenly felt in ILL, as Team Clout approaches its upcoming horror game with the creative techniques of filmmaking to make each gory scream off the screen.

Knifemare

Body horror is a huge hook in ILL. It's also one of Verehin's fascinations when it comes to what makes the genre tick in film, especially in terms of practical effects, with ILL recapturing "the feeling of making a shot" by taking the theory of cinematic mise en scene – the composition of a camera shot, from framing to characters, items, lighting, and more – and applying it to a video game.

"ILL is definitely a cinematic experience by its nature," says verehin. "When we started to grow the project and decided that there was going to be a story with [cinematic] cutscenes, we used our experience in how movie production works – how they make their animation drafts, and how they turn into the final results that you see on screen.

"I had the opportunity to see very early drafts of the scenes from Welcome to Derry, for example, and we are actually trying to make it the same [way] in ILL," Verehin says of the draft animation to final-product pipeline. Team Clout also storyboards each scene shot for shot, bringing the frames to life in steps. "Of course, there is the limitation of not being able to reproduce super photo-real visuals, but [we are] aiming in that regard to the fidelity of what you see visually in the movies, and using camera tricks to make it cinematic as well."

Along with a visceral dismemberment system and gnarly weighted weapon impact, striking a cinematic tone is "our main goal," he says. "We are trying to stay true to [a cinematic feel] and make it feel as immersive as possible, but we are never aiming for super realism," Verehin clarifies. "It is not a simulator game. We are trying to exaggerate things, so it feels cooler."

That means certain video game rules still apply – all melee weapons are breakable, though can be upgraded to enhance their hardiness. Bullets are in short supply, too, though the core combat function is more heavily weighted toward gunplay, though we can expect some scenes where the protagonist (voiced by Resident Evil Requiem and Remakes' actor, Nick Apostolides) finds himself totally defenceless.

Camera tricks come into play in all of the cutscenes we've seen so far, especially in the latest trailer, which is the first piece of story exposition we've been treated to. "We are trying to stick to the first person [perspective], but we allowed ourselves to be more real here, and we actually sometimes bring the camera away from the protagonist."

Verehin knows that some FPS fans might find that a bit immersion-breaking, but hey – they did it in Dying Light: The Beast, and no one batted an eye. "You cannot really create a cinematic experience if you're not playing with FOV or zoom effects, so we're playing a lot with this and having some fun around that."

One key difference between Dying Light hero Kyle and Nick Apostolides' character in ILL is the fact that we don't actually get to see his face. Shades of Resident Evil 7 again, right? Kind of – keeping the character's face a mystery is not only helpful for creating a similar "everyman" feeling to that of Ethan Winters' character, but it helps avoid "a lot of [development] headaches," Verehin laughs. "There are a lot of headaches. This is one of them."

Slay and pray

Seeing the world through the eyes of our as-yet nameless hero, woken from a coma to nightmarish horrors overtaking the research facility, is a sight to behold. I pick up on strange bits of retro tech in certain frames, old computers and typing equipment that would seem more at home in the 80s rather than the 2020s. "We are trying to create this feeling of analog sci-fi horror," Verehin says, channeling the retro '80s sci-fi movies that inspired him in the first place in a style similar to that of Alien: Romulus. "The game is set in the '80s too, but I'm not going to spoil exactly when."

One thing's for sure, though: ILL is not a zombie game. "We're actually trying to get away from the feeling that we have zombies in our game," Verehin says. The game's official Steam page describes the humanoid monsters as "aberrations" with violent tendencies and "unique behavioral abilities," though where they came from and what exactly happened at the facility is yet to be revealed.

There also seems to be a degree of unpredictability as to when and where Aberrations might show up. "They might appear in really funny and surprising circumstances, animation-wise," Verehin says. "You might walk around, see a fridge, and there is an enemy in the fridge who just slams open the door and takes you into the fridge. This is a random situation. This is not from the game, I'm just making it up," he says, but the point is that the enemies don't always do "bad" things – they get a little weird, too.

In a trailer filled with blasted-off limbs, grinning naked men inching toward you with a weapon, and a gigantic toothsome head crashing through a solid concrete wall to take a side-swipe at you, being yanked into a refrigerator sounds quite relaxing. ILL's penchant for cinematic oddity seems tapped from an endless well of grotesque, delightful weirdness, and I can't wait to experience the ghoulish torment for myself when I finally get my hands on it in 2027.

Grounded 2 is approaching a meaningful destination on its journey through early access. August 11 marks the launch of a massive new content update, with 'Into the Abyss' opening up the pond for exploration in Brookhollow Park. The community is also expanding, with PS5 players entering the action just as developers Obsidian Entertainment and Eidos Montreal push the survival game to version 0.5. It's going to be a big year for Grounded 2. To learn more about it, and to better understand the challenges of building such a complex project, we sat down with Obsidian legend and Grounded 2 game director Chris Parker.

We spoke this time last year to get into the reveal of Grounded 2. How have you found the last 12 months, as your game moved through the first stages of early access?

Chris Parker, game director: Getting Grounded 2 into early access was a hurdle. But we got it out there and the community has been totally behind it. They loved it, but they also played through all of the content quickly and have been asking when we were going to give them more. So for us on the development side, at both Obsidian and Eidos, our focus has been on getting this done. We've had three major updates since then.

Every time that we think we're done we can take a breath – just one breath, that's all you get, and then we keep going. At the same time, we're constantly processing all the community feedback, and trying with love to figure out how we do as much of it as we can, while recognizing that we can't possibly do all of it. And now we're on the cusp of releasing the largest content update that we've done. It's bigger than Garden, and to be launching on PlayStation 5 effectively makes this our second launch, right? We had the early access launch before, but this is like doing it all over again this summer.

Obsidian has always been very proud of its ability to co-develop Grounded 2 with Eidos, how have you found that collaboration throughout early access?

Chris Parker: I'm the one who has been working with Eidos the longest, because I launched the project with them back when it was in its infancy. They've always been great, but what's interesting about our relationship is that it's not just that we're professional or that we all care deeply about this franchise, but it's that we've learned to continually work together better, and to be stronger as a team over time.

There were a lot of times, getting into early access with the early access of the game, that we had some struggles. We would butt heads on some things, but we would ultimately figure out what the best solution for the game would be and move on. Those things occur less and less often now. What's far more likely to happen is that Eidos comes and pitches something to us, like the story for the pond, and I will just plus-one that with them. Then I'll suggest something and they get excited and plus-one that.

And then at some point, of course, we'll be out of scope and we have to pull it all back again. But it's because we built Grounded 2 into a good place together, everybody is super jazzed about it. We're ready to get in there and make this thing. Ultimately, we just keep getting better at doing this together.

Grounded 2 coming to PS5 feels like a pretty significant milestone?

Chris Parker: Releasing Grounded 2 on PlayStation 5 is huge for us. Obviously, we've been working on it for a while, it's coming out on August 11, and we didn't have the opportunity with Grounded 1 to do this with the PlayStation community. The PS4 and PS5 versions came out a year after 1.0 was released. So almost from day one, we knew that it would be truly amazing to expand the community and include PS5 users.

Getting here and being able to realize that ambition is awesome. Now we have our fingers crossed that PS5 players do want to come into the community, and that they are as genuinely interested in the development of this game as the existing community already is. I think they will, because the Grounded 2 community is super healthy, so we're just excited. It's going to be fun!

Xbox announced it's reinvesting in console exclusivity. Is this something you think about during development, or do you just want your game in as many hands as possible?

Chris Parker: As a game developer, what I want is for the most amount of players to love my game on their platform, whatever that might be. I'm going to put a lot of work into this thing, I'm going to put my heart into it – so I want you to love and enjoy it too. Ultimately, that's it. So there are other people above my pay grade that might have other opinions about what needs to happen with all that. It's not up to me. I'm just going to give it to as many people as I can. And for Grounded 2, I'm just super excited that this time around I get to pull PlayStation 5 players in with me. That's a great thing.

Grounded 2 has enjoyed a strong first year, but how are you thinking about that roadmap moving forward?

Chris Parker: From day one of this project, we had a pretty good idea of how big the park was going to be and a rough idea of how we were going to cut it. We had a solid idea of how many weapons there were going to be and how our weapon tiers were going to work. But the first hurdle was to distill all of that down to get the game into early access – a foundational level of all that stuff, just enough to build everything else on. So then the next steps were to add to the Garden. And I'll be honest with you, our original ambition for the Garden was too big, we had to scale them down a bit, and that content came out stronger as a result.

So yeah, we have ideas for the future, but the most important thing for us right now is the Into the Abyss update that's coming to PS5 and all other platforms on August 11. It's a huge content update with multiple biomes in it, there's a new buggy joining the group, we're bringing back swimming as a gameplay experience, and we're offering some other things that you can do while you're underwater too. We'll be talking about all that later.

How do you balance the need to release big content updates with the demands of a vocal, passionate community?

Chris Parker: A lot of the things that we focus on outside of the big content updates – new regions of the park, bosses, that sort of thing – are things for the community. They are actually more carefully planned, where we see things the community wants and try to deliver that. Custom Game is a good example of that, which is coming back in the 0.5 update. We always wanted to bring it back, but we were like, whatever, we'll bring it back whenever. And the community has been like, 'No, for real guys, we want Custom Game back; come on, give it to us!'

So we talked to Eidos, we did some finagling with the schedules, and we freed up resources to bring Custom Game back sooner. It won't be quite as robust as it was in Grounded 1 at first, but we are getting the big pieces in place and then we'll continue to add to it. So part of our roadmap is looking at something like Custom Game and understanding when we want to finish it, right? We want to do more with buggy progression; we got the first bit of it in with the 'Beat the Heat' update, but when are we going to finish it? So a lot of our roadmap is really about taking something that we have in the game, asking the community what they think about it, and us understanding if they want us to take it further.

Grounded 2 doesn't have a clear 1.0 release date, but it's expected to be on the 2027 gaming release calendar. The 'Into the Abyss' update is coming August 11 to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X.

Eight years and 68 updates later, the wasteland has never looked better. It's funny to think that few thought that Fallout 76 had a chance of surviving, let alone thriving, back when Bethesda Game Studios first announced its shared-world RPG – assumed to be too vastly out of step with the foundational Fallout experience to succeed.

And yet here we are, with Fallout 76 hosting one of the loveliest communities in all of gaming and providing safe haven for Fallout show fans looking for continuing adventures out in the wilds. Bethesda released a major new Fallout 76 update on June 2, Infestations, so we caught up with creative director Jon Rush and production director Bill LaCoste to get an update from the frontlines of Appalachia.

Talk to me about the Infestations update, what does it bring to Fallout 76?

Jon Rush, creative director: The wasteland is a dangerous place, and sometimes us wastelanders need to be reminded of that. Each update to the game that we've made since launch has kind of been the next chapter, and a lot of the focus has been different groups moving into Appalachia and setting up shop there. But the Super Mutants, the Scorched, and all of those misprogrammed robots are kind of getting tired of that – they want some of these places back. So Infestations unlocks close to 40 unique locations in the game that were once abandoned and are now full of action. Areas that have been taken over by these nefarious groups, and it's up to us Wastelanders to take them back and reclaim the wasteland.

It's still early days yet, but are players already shaping the way you're thinking about this update moving forward?

Jon Rush: You know, Bill and I largely consider ourselves to be pretty good players of our game. When we were playtesting Infestations with our team before release, they were a pretty good challenge. Little did we know, once it went live, people would be mowing through it much quicker than we ever did [Laughter]. So that has given us the next steps forward for making the feature better. So Infestation quests will get harder – much harder. And we have plans to continue improving that feature and expanding on it for the next patch and the one after that, and so on. Player feedback is so important.

This time last year we were talking about Gone Fission, which introduced fishing to Fallout 76. How do you avoid whiplash shifting between such different concepts?

Jon Rush: In the past, I've used the phrase: 'thickening the experience of Fallout 76.' What I mean by that is that we're always looking for ways to enrich existing features and playspaces in the game. Fishing did exactly that. 'Anywhere you can swim, you can fish!' is something you probably heard us say last year – that tells me, as a player, that I should be exploring the whole map again, just to see what kind of stuff can be pulled out of the water. In many ways, that fishing feature inspired what future features will look like, in that they are designed to thicken and enrich that experience.

How does that focus apply forward to what you delivered with Infestations?

Jon Rush: Despite how obviously different Infestations may seem from Gone Fission, they actually aren't that different. Both have experiences that can take place across the entire map, perhaps in places that you haven't ever been to or haven't been to in a while. So really, the main difference here is that there's no water and that the fish fight back [laughter]. So yeah, it's about hitting those same hallmarks of us wanting to enrich the existing play experience in a new way.

To deliver Gone Fission and Infestations in the space of a year, it highlights something that's so core to Fallout – its capacity to be quite whimsical in an otherwise bleak world.

Bill LaCoste, production director: It's all about getting that Fallout feel right. We're looking for a balance between these darker, more serious tones and more levity, humorous moments. It's the balance of these aspects wrapped under a blanket of retro-futuristic Americana that makes Fallout – that's the Fallout sweet spot! It's echoed in the games and in the show, and that's where the stories are most effective. And so as we expand Fallout 76, making new features and crafting new stories, that's something we're always very mindful of.

Given the importance of that Americana vibe, does it rule Fallout 76 from taking wastelanders further afield in future updates?

Jon Rush: Americana provides such a unique timbre to the game and to the tone that, if you removed that, a big part of it may no longer feel like Fallout anymore. That's not to say that there aren't numerous other stories happening in the world outside of the United States that take place in the Fallout universe, but in the way that we present our stories, that Americana element is a crucial element to our world.

Bill LaCoste: There's also this sense of players being able to think about what's happening across other parts of the world on their own, there's some mystique there and we like that. I don't know if there will ever be an expansion beyond America, but I think there's a lot of importance in keeping it that way – so that players can think about what is happening around the world and create their own stories, which the modding community can take advantage of too!

Jon Rush: I mean, let me give a special shout-out to Fallout London! It's great to see people picturing what's happening in other parts of the world at the same time, I think it's fantastic. That's a strength of Fallout – that it can be a spark which ignites all these stories in people's heads, and it's great to explore those.

Bethesda Game Studios released two major Fallout 76 updates since Fallout Season 2 concluded earlier this year, I assume the show has been a motivating force?

Jon Rush: It's been great. It emboldens the team to continue telling great Fallout stories. A strength of the show is that its creators are such huge fans of the IP and of the world, so the stories they're telling are genuinely Fallout in every way. People watch it and they want more of it, so they come to Fallout 3, 4, New Vegas, and 76 to get more of that storytelling. So it emboldens the team to see that kind of reaction. And our community has been so great – so welcoming to all of these new players into the game. I know that's something you wouldn't really expect to see in a wasteland, people being charitable and giving things to each other, but it's been really great.

Bill LaCoste: I think that the big question of 'how do I get more of this' that Jon just noted, it's like 'hey, we have these games that do this!' And I think some of those people are actually surprised when they come into the games, that they are so much like the show – with the same humor and style. Kilter Films and Amazon have done an amazing job with the detail, and with the way that the stories being told are exactly like the Fallout games.

It must be pretty energizing to see so much enthusiasm around the franchise?

Bill LaCoste: I've watched both seasons multiple times now, with other friends and family, and I just never get bored of it. That's a great feeling for us and the team, because we don't ever come into work not wanting to do something with the Fallout universe, to make it better, and to do something new for our fans to keep this world going.

Jon Rush: The Fallout show has brought in new fans of Fallout. It's also brought in new gamers, who can also then go and experience all of the games that everybody else is making! It's funny, I was at a restaurant one time and my phone case says 'Fallout' on the back, and I just put it on the table not even thinking about it. The waiter comes by and he's like, 'oh yeah, you like Fallout too?' So I asked him which game was his favorite, hoping that he would say 76 [laughter]. And he goes 'Wait, there's a game? I just watched the show!' And I'm like, 'Dude, there are multiple games, get in there!' He said he was going to download [Fallout 76] when he got home, and I said, 'yeah, good for you!'

Looking for something else to play? Check out the upcoming Xbox Series X games, or our pick of the best MMOs to play in 2026.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka reveals Sega was ready to give up on Sonic at the low point of its history.

Sonic has had many ups and downs throughout its 35-year history, and while the classic line of "Sonic had a rough transition to 3D" isn't exactly accurate, given how beloved the Adventure duo is, the mixed reception to Heroes, before the triple bill of Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic Genesis, and Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), led the series to a low point.

And while Sega did bring things back around with the beloved Sonic Colors and Generations, the series was right back in the bad books with the likes of Sonic Lost World, Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric, and Sonic Forces.

And while Sonic has always had a dedicated fanbase, his reputation wasn't the best, so much so that Sega delisted sub-par Sonic releases in 2010, ironically just before the worst Sonic game ever made – Sonic Free Riders – was released.

Speaking to GamesRadar+, Iizuka acknowledges "there's been a lot of ups and downs in our history," and recalls "There was even a time when Sega said, 'You know what? We don’t need you to make any more Sonic games. We’re good. We’re done with Sonic.'" He adds, "10 years ago, when I first moved to America, Sonic was really at a low point, and they [Sega] said, 'Iizuka-san, if you don’t go over to America and don’t start building this up and raising Sonic back up, Sonic is going to end, and we’re just going to be done with it.'"

10 years ago was 2016, which would place this moment as just over a year after the release of Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric, a game so disastrously buggy that it instantly became a meme for glitches like Knuckles' infinite flight. While the next 3D game in the series, Sonic Forces, was also slated, Sonic Mania, released a few months prior, is one of the most beloved Sonic games to date. Iizuka also thanks the fanbase for sticking with the series through those low points, saying, "It's really thanks to the fans that Sonic lives on.

Not to mention the Sonic Boom cartoon amassed a big fanbase, and of course, the movie series kicked off in 2020 – which Sonic voice actor Roger Craig Smith credits with launching "the notoriety of the character" into "a whole other stratosphere." So thankfully, Sonic seems to be back in a good place, even if Frontiers and Superstars aren't the most beloved games in the series.

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 director calls it the "best Sonic movie yet" as filming officially wraps.

The future of Compulsion Games, Double Fine, and Ninja Theory are unclear. There are reports this week that Xbox is in discussion to shutter all three legendary studios, and rumors that the teams responsible for South of Midnight, Psychonauts, and Hellblade could buy back their independence. At a time where both first-party creative houses – PlayStation Studios and Xbox Game Studios – have shown little hesitation in closing development houses, the idea that these three could walk away seems unlikely. And while no two situations are alike, it isn't unheard of. Just look at Toys for Bob.

"Toys for Bob was acquired by Activision in 2005, and for many years we enjoyed a long and successful partnership," says studio head Paul Yan, who took on the role following the departure of founders Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford in 2020. It wasn't long before Yan was steering Toys for Bob through one of the most challenging periods in its 30 year history. "Covid hit, and the world turned upside down. There were many changes that happened as a result. One was a corporate mandate [at Activision] to support the large blockbuster IPs – Modern Warfare, Warzone, and Overwatch 2, to name just a few."

Before the studio was drawn into the Call of Duty ecosystem, it was doing industry-leading work – breathing new life into the mascots that fuelled the imaginations of an entire generation of millennials. It spearheaded the burgeoning Toys-to-Life genre with the Skylanders series, "an original IP inspired by Spyro" before being given the opportunity to go a step further.

As Yan explains: "We spent time meticulously handcrafting the first three classic Spyro games for the Reignited Trilogy, and we really got an understanding of the character during this period. And then we moved on to Crash Bandicoot, breathing new life into that series with a sequel, as well as an experimental multiplayer spin-off with Crash Team Rumble." It's a period of prolific creativity, where Toys for Bob was able to leverage its growing confidence and expertise into long-overdue platformers.

And then the world changed. "We learned a lot after we shifted into a support structure to assist other teams with various initiatives, games, feature-sets, and updates. We spread into a lot of territories that we weren't familiar with, or at least hadn't spent a lot of time with. We're very proud of the work that we did there, and of all of the collaboration. But if we're being honest with ourselves, we knew that we were just straying too far from the games that we're passionate about – that we're known for. So at that time, in the back of our mind, we knew we wanted to get back to them somehow."

Soon, Activision began to change too. In 2022, as Toys for Bob was supporting Infinity Ward to get Modern Warfare 2 out the door, Xbox announced its intention to acquire Activision Blizzard King for $68.7 billion. Former Xbox CEO Phil Spencer went on record to say that he was interested in Toys for Bob dusting off older Activision IP, but nothing changed. As the deal closed in 2023, Toys for Bob were locked into supporting development of Overwatch 2 and Modern Warfare 3. Then the Xbox layoffs hit. One of the Toys for Bob studios was shuttered. A month later, it was all change again – the studio secured its freedom.

"In 2023, Microsoft was in the process of acquiring Activision. This was a long, drawn out process which gave us a lot of time to soul search – to ask ourselves, well, how can we get back to the games we're passionate about making? So we got in front of leadership at both the Activision and Xbox level," says Yan. "We proposed a really bold plan. We asked that Toys for Bob would buy back its independence – taking creative, financial and organization control – to spin-off into a separate company. One where we could get back to the games we were known for, and preserve the tight-knit team and the long tenure that we had built up over the years."

There was a major caveat in the proposal. Toys for Bob needed the security of knowing that it would immediately receive funding for a project. So if Toys for Bob was going to spread its wings, it was going to do it with Spyro: the character that had first freed it from the trap of making Disney licensing games with Activision back in the early 00s.

"The other half of the proposal was that the first game we would develop out of the game would be a new title for Xbox, and that it would be based on a concept that we had been stewing on ever since 2018," says Yan. "We learned a lot about Spyro in this time, and we had ideas on where the series could go and how we could evolve the character. So fast forward a bit, and leadership was very supportive of the move and of the game pitch. And for the last two years we've been quietly working on exactly that title: Spyro: A Realm Beyond."

Built in Unreal Engine 5, in development for PC, PS5, Nintendo Switch 2, and Xbox Series X, A Realm Beyond is in many ways a continuation of the iconic Insomniac era of games – with Toys for Bob leveraging everything it learned through remaking that trilogy and then pushing on beyond it. Given how eager Toys for Bob was to regain its independence, I was curious as to why the studio would draw such a hard line in the sand – that it would get what it wanted, only so long as Xbox funded the group as a third-party entity.

Granted anonymity to speak candidly about the situation, multiple staffers at Toys for Bob have told me that it would have been 'near suicidal' to reenter the market without a project in active development, and that the arrangement works for everybody involved: the studio regains control of its future and a degree of security; Xbox gets to revive a legacy IP the community is desperate to see return with little risk; and that this could all ultimately lead to a fruitful partnership between the two in the future.

When I spoke with Xbox's executive vice president and chief content officer last week, Matt Booty didn't wholly shut down the question of whether third-party studios could be entrusted to revive other IP that the publisher has in the vault in the future: "I think the answer is there are options to do all kinds of things, and we're certainly looking at those all the time."

I did ask Toys for Bob associate creative director Lou Studdert why the studio went all-in on Spyro, rather than, say, Banjo-Kazooie, and he was clear about the studio's priorities. "Spyro has a deep place in the studio's heart. Having worked through Skylands and the Reignited trilogy, we've always admired that small but mighty underdog story of the character taking on these overwhelming odds – we see ourselves in that a little bit. And, honestly, it was also a no-brainer."

Yan adds: "Going independent meant taking a massive, massive risk. It's taking a bet on ourselves, but we had confidence in making that move [...] Reignited sold over 11 million copies, so there's an audience that showed up for the series."

As my time with Toys for Bob drew to a close, I asked Yan whether there was ever a world where the studio would have pursued independence without the Spyro sequel in place. "The proposal that we had was complex, and that was part of the equation from the beginning. That in order for us to pursue this, we would go independent. Is there a possibility that could have happened in some other alternate timeline?"

"I can't speak to that, but I can say that those two things together are exactly what we proposed," he says. "That Toys for Bob would spin off and have control over the types of games we wanted to focus on, and that Spyro would be number one."

Spyro: A Realm Beyond is set to release in 2027, although it doesn't have a confirmed release date. Toys for Bob may be developing the title as an upcoming Xbox Series X game, but it's also set to launch for PC, PS5, and Nintendo Switch 2.

A retailer has updated the release date for Onimusha: Way of the Sword, suggesting that Capcom will be next to move out of the way of the late-September rush.

If you paid attention to Summer Game Fest's myriad showcases, you'll have no doubt picked up that September is an absolute nightmare. Marvel's Wolverine, Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave, and Velheim 1.0 already make the middle of the month pretty jam-packed. But then for the last week of the month publishers are going ham with Silent Hill: Townfall, Hot Wheels Infinite Rush, Control Resonant, and Switch 2 editions of Dragon Quest 11 and Shinobi Art of Vengeance all releasing on the 24th, then Onimusha: Way of the Sword drops a day later on the 25th (and that's not even mentioning how much comes out in the first week of October).

What started as games getting out of the incoming GTA 6-shaped behemoth has turned into a massive mosh pit, and we've already seen first-person soulslike Valor Mortis moving out of the week to mid-October. And now it looks like Capcom may be next to shift.

As spotted by Cheap Ass Gamer, retailer PNP Games has listed Onimusha: Way of the Sword with a release date of September 4, 2026 – 21 days before its announced release date. This, in turn, has caused speculation that Capcom will be moving the release date of its samurai hack-and-slash in order to avoid the flood.

There is precedent for this, after all, as earlier this year, Capcom moved the release date of Pragmata up from April 24 to April 17, presumably to avoid another major sci-fi shooter in PlayStation's Saros (even if it certainly feels like Pragmata ended up being the more popular of the two). If anything, this is the best case scenario, because Onimusha is the most interesting release of September, so giving it room to breathe so I can enjoy the likes of Control Resonant later in the month. Plus, Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen is also in early October, giving it less competition, and a quieter end to September is probably a good move too.

Capcom made twice as much money on Steam compared to PlayStation in the last year as PC gaming continues to grow

Modern Warfare 4 is the Call of Duty I have been waiting all generation to play. It's a slickly produced first-person shooter that truly feels as if it is pushing at the boundaries of what this series can achieve when it's firing on all cylinders.

Activision has finally allowed its vast network of video game studios (who keep the gears of this annualized machine turning) to cease support for the PS4 and Xbox One, and the results are astonishing. There's a fluidity to the movement systems; weight to the weapon handling; a density of detail to the visual and auditory design that's apparent from the first kill to the last. You love to see it.

Jack O'Hara, the co-studio head of Infinity Ward and game director of Modern Warfare 4, believes the decision to leave last-gen systems behind has had a transformative effect on ideation and execution. "The processing power of the PS4 was great in its time, but it was starting to get in the way when it came to certain innovations. Support was making the development of new features harder, because you have to account for the differences between platforms."

"Console generations have been living for longer and longer, so we got better and better at optimization, but it does reach a point where you might be optimizing more than you're making something new. So, once you reach that threshold, you have to make the call," O'Hara adds. It's an exceptionally reasonable argument that has led to compelling results.

I'm told that Infinity Ward has engineered a lot of technology to deliver better balanced firefights. "Every shot should tell the truth" is a phrase I have heard more than once. Basically, there's a stronger alignment between bullet trajectory, weapon motion, and operator stance. Target visibility has been refined as IW introduces solutions to longstanding issues with bloom and depth of field. Weapons now make micro-adjustments as you push into tight spaces and begin to peek corners. It's wonderfully immersive, and feels utterly fantastic.

There's a control and a stability to the way that Modern Warfare 4 plays that simply wasn't present in Sledgehammer Games' disastrous Modern Warfare 3. Infinity Ward has effectively picked up from where it left off with MW2 in 2022. The recoil patterns and damage profiles are familiar, so too is the snappy TTK – though IW promises it's slightly less severe this time around.

"We are dialing in on the details to make that TTK feel consistent and strong," says Jacky Reynolds, multiplayer design lead. "One thing I'm really stoked about is that we made the TTK slightly longer at further ranges. If you played MW2, you probably felt yourself getting beamed across the map a lot. You'll feel that a lot less in Modern Warfare 4." Fighting at range requires more precision aiming than before, but Call of Duty is as lethal as it's always been once you're within sprinting distance of an enemy.

Consecutive Black Ops releases means Call of Duty has been saddled with hyper-mobility for two years. While I was certainly a fan of the omni-movement system within certain contexts, I was worried its introduction had defined a new direction for the wider franchise. IW has leveraged elements of this system to generate more fluid transitions around maps, and to give you new ways to change angles or adapt to pressure. So while you can't sprint, slide, or dive in any lateral direction like you could in BO7, you can now take advantage of backwards slides, mantle cancels, and faster climbing.

Combat Ready

I'm impressed with what Modern Warfare 4 is shooting for. I was able to play two multiplayer maps, and they are very in-keeping with the traditional Infinity Ward style – largely designed around three distinct lanes, promoting constant engagement and shifting momentums. There are some nice tweaks elsewhere too. The Riot Shield being reclassified as 'Equipment' and degrading through repeated use. There's now two Prestige paths, and IW is also very proud of a new Apex Attachment system – a set of unlocks that drastically transform a weapon's lethality and adaptability. Absurd incentives for weapon progression meet a more robust Gunsmith, enhanced customization, and a redesigned Create-a-Class system. There are more maps, modes, weapons, killstreaks, skins, and so it goes on and on.

All told, Modern Warfare 4 recalls memories of Call of Duty at its finest, albeit with a slick new-gen set of refinements, evolutions, and improvements. Beyond multiplayer, Infinity Ward has a lush campaign offering, following the exploits of Task Force 141 in the western hemisphere and a team of ordinary soldiers battling on the frontlines of a Korean war, and a returning DMZ mode that seems primed to take the fight right to Arc Raiders and Marathon. It's still early days, but I can't shake this feeling that Modern Warfare 4 couldn't have come at a better time for Call of Duty.

The series had clearly reached a breaking point. Back-to-back instalments of Black Ops and Modern Warfare titles created fatigue. Overbearing integration between mainline games and Warzone sowed frustration. There's a general sense that Sledgehammer and Treyarch (with three and two contributions this generation, respectively) haven't done enough to push the series forward – problematic as Arc Raiders, Battlefield 6, and a resurgent Overwatch offer competition elsewhere. But there's a quality to Modern Warfare 4 that is undeniable, and I'm desperate to play more.

Modern Warfare 4 is set to release on October 23 for PC, PS5, Nintendo Switch 2, and Xbox Series X. However, the new game for 2026 will no longer land day one on Xbox Game Pass.

It's time for Spyro to take flight once again. Developer Toys for Bob would never come outright and say it, but I get the sense that Spyro: A Realm Beyond is trying to pick up where Insomniac Games left the character in Year of the Dragon. It's not like the character has been left to gather dust since the year 2000, he has been on plenty of adventures of differing qualities, but there's something about the vivid colors and ambitious approach to play that's being presented here which recalls the glory days.

Toys for Bob studio head Paul Yan tells me that the team is "building A Realm Beyond from the ground up" as a brand new adventure, one that's built to offer a new entry point into the long running series and speak to "the longtime fans and legacy of who Spyro is." Actor Tom Kenny (best known for his work as SpongeBob SquarePants) is reprising his role as the titular dragon, having voiced the character in Ripto's Rage and Year of the Dragon, as well as Toys for Bob's 2018 Reignited Trilogy.

It's likely that the confident, slightly arrogant, persona that defined Spyro in the original trilogy will go through some changes for A Realm Beyond. As a new antagonist rises across a new and mysterious realm, an older and more boisterous Spyro will be there to meet them.

Associate creative director Lou Studdert can only talk around whether the hero is entering his teenage years: "You know, dragons age differently than people," he laughs. "You've noticed there are some slight adjustments made to reflect that Spyro is really coming into his own. You can see it on his crest, you can see that his wings have gotten significantly bigger… there's more to come on the narrative!"

With Spyro: A Realm Beyond set to release in 2027, it's too early to dig into all the details. What Toys for Bob is willing to talk about is one of the reasons behind Spyro's increased wingspan: "When we realized that we wanted him to fly, those small wings just weren't going to cut it," says Studdert.

It's been a long time since Spyro Reignited Trilogy, and even longer since the classic Insomniac trilogy first landed, so perhaps a little refresher is in order. Spyro's primary form of aerial traversal was a gentle glide from jumps, and in very rare instances, flight under time-pressure in specific mini-levels. Yan says "I always wondered what it would be like if these two experiences could somehow be collapsed into Spyro’s core ability kit," and that question has been at the very heart of A Realm Beyond's design since.

"We started prototyping this game with flight and with a more unique moveset in mind," Studdert adds. "As we started building it out, finding that fun, we then realized that we'd need a bigger sense of scale to support that moveset – and so the world is far more vertical and expansive." The associate creative director stops short of confirming whether A Realm Beyond will run across wider, interconnected spaces or a full open-world – more detail to come there soon, I'm told.

Taking Flight

For now, Toys for Bob is only willing to confirm that "taking to the skies and owning the airtime" is going to be a massive focus for this adventure, with Yan confirming that you'll be able to "experience the freedom of true dragon flight." The pair tell me that figuring out this fantasy is core to what Toys for Bob wants to achieve with this long-awaited sequel, giving you the freedom to take to the skies at a moment's notice, shifting from charges on the ground to graceful flight in the sky on a whim.

"We want a zen-like fluidity, we want chaining of moves and exploration – for you to really be interacting with the environment as this quadruped who is its own unique beast," says Studdert. "Honing in on that feeling, that experience, has been our north star. We want to push the sense of wonder, adventure, and awe that this franchise uniquely delivers."

The challenge that Toys for Bob faces with Spyro A Realm Beyond is in knowing how far to push the series without diluting what made it so special to begin with. The studio has exceptional knowledge of this universe, having steered the character through the Reignited trilogy remake (which Yan says sold over 11 million copies) and the beloved Skylanders spin-offs. "We felt this when we worked on Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time as well," says Studdert. "What we like to do when we start working on a new project, especially if it is an established IP, is to really hone in on what emotions it brings out."

"That tension is so real, right?" adds Yan. "I'm proud of the team. They are thinking that through very thoughtfully, and listening to the community as we do. Because you have these two extremes: If you stick too much to nostalgia, then you basically just rehash what's been done before; and on the other extreme, if you innovate too much then all of a sudden players don't recognize the series anymore."

"We learned a lot during the development of Reignited. We've carried a lot of those lessons forward into A Realm Beyond – and obviously they are very different projects, we aren't recreating classics this time. But we've built up a confidence in our instincts for what feels tonally right for this character," says Yan, adding, "and I can't wait for fans to see the direction we're taking the series in."

Spyro: A Realm Beyond is a key new game of 2027 where it's set to take flight on PC, PS5, Nintendo Switch 2, and Xbox Series X.

I couldn't comprehend the woods. As a child in New York, I saw that sleepy horses trotted around the Alice in Wonderland sculpture in Central Park, and I waved to the lonely polar bear at the zoo without wondering why she lived in the Bronx. But the demo I'm playing at Summer Game Fest 2026 for Fractured Blooms, the upcoming farming horror sim from Doki Doki Literature Club publisher Serenity Forge, makes me feel like I've started life over again from a filthy forest in West Virginia, and the odd thing is, I don't mind. I'm also sure that the Fractured Blooms demo available now is more intoxicating than anything you'll touch during Steam Next Fest.

It gives me the sensation that I've walked into someone else's dream – there are some concrete reasons for that, as Fractured Blooms is based on a true story, Serenity Forge founder and Fractured Blooms creator Zhenghua "Z" Yang tells me, though he evades me when I ask him for more details. I suppose I don't need anything as finicky as that, as Fractured Blooms is soaked in the sugar of Appalachian mysticism, and perhaps the wrath of God.

Teen protagonist Angie begins my Summer Game Fest demo with confession: "Can I tell you a secret? I'm not scared." She talks about mud caking the white skirt of her dress on her way to the old church, where I think something covered in fleas is probably waiting for me.

That's the feeling of Fractured Blooms – Angie speaks with a childlike evasiveness I relate to, being a Christian who loves Jesus as much as she is aware His wound is always bleeding. It's obvious something is wrong with these woods, even though Serenity Forge has cleverly depicted them with lovely gauziness, and it makes me want to lie down for a nap among the poppies…

Angie remembers trudging through this particular forest path with a shining white bouquet of flowers, but it's red petals that fall from the sky as I make my way inside the church, where... there's a plate of raw meat staring at me from the altar as a congregation recommends I partake in His flesh.

Yang tells me later that this demo represents the start of Angie's time loop of chores, where she must farm, cook, and pick up after herself to the point of pain. This is the kind of idea that really frightens Yang, who realizes he isn't scared of much else over the course of our interview. Daily dramas – folding the laundry while your unmade bed is pleading for your return, picking all the fresh tomatoes before the bugs get them first – upset him more than the average horror game or film, which he rarely interacts with.

"The most difficult part about launching a horror game in general," Yang says, reflecting, "is to try to break through the noise of a now established and generic formula, which is typically some kind of combination of mascots, jumpscares, asset store flips, and some kind of PS1 graphics." Fractured Blooms is a soft bunny in comparison, eager to lead you to a more contemplative horror rather than shit your pants.

For example, "I think it's very important for players to see the version of God in their own way, because I believe that that is the truth of how it works," Yang says.

The Fractured Blooms demo currently available to play on Steam showcases some of the rituals players will carry out while weighing the idea: harvest a tomato from the golden garden, notice the treehouse is rotting, make venison stew with noodles and thyme. At one point, Angie sobs mid-sentence, because the work never stops. During my Summer Game Fest demo, she eagerly drowns herself at the behest of an anime redhead (Yang tells me there will be "a major payoff" to why Fractured Blooms' character and environmental art styles are so different).

"I split the self apart to bud anew, and shrank into the dirt as she advised," Angie says unremorsefully. I understand. It's complicated – her crying, her temporary suicide don't read as purely tragic to me. Angie seems to act out of commitment.

Again, I relate to her, being a woman who loves life as much as she is aware it requires suffering. Yang shares this grim understanding, as he tells me when I ask for his greatest fear, "I don't think I am scared of death, just like how I'm not scared of before I was born."

"I don't know if you know too much about my history," he says, "but when I was 18 years old, I was diagnosed with a near-fatal illness that caused me to be hospitalized for two years. I was told I was going to die in three hours when I was 18.

"At that point, I was writing my will, I was thinking about how to come to terms with death. For the next two years, I was going through chemo, and I kept on being told by doctors that maybe I have a couple days. Maybe I have a couple weeks. I spent years just expecting to not have a future and to only have a very limited amount of time to live.

"It kind of removed my fear of death, because I just had to be so OK with it from such a young age. It also removed my fear of needles. I find a lot of comfort when needles enter my veins."

Nestled in the burnt heart of the Virginia woods, Fractured Blooms seems like a comfortable place to consider these kinds of human peculiarities. I feel safe here, even with the leaves and sliced venison telling me I should question that, and Jesus' cut continues to drip.

It seems I've finished the journey from New York to Fractured Blooms' cracked porcelain, Appalachian kitchen from just my Summer Game Fest demo. 20 minutes of gameplay has never made me feel this way before.

The most popular Soulslike in Steam Next Fest makes a very powerful argument for adding a shotgun to Dark Souls.

Here's a truth about Gears of War that has persisted since 2006: The folks that love the series' particular style of skittish multiplayer really love it, and everyone else thinks it's a sweaty killing field. I was there for the Xbox Live outages on day one, and have played every instalment since – it's exceptionally rare to find a player who resides on neutral ground. The Marmite effect that Gears multiplayer has is a direct result of design decisions that were cemented into the foundations of the franchise; there has been no solution to the chaotic combination of overpowered shotguns and manipulated cover mechanics.

I suspect that The Coalition is looking to change all that with Gears of War: E-Day. The studio hasn't been afraid to signal that it's making massive alterations to core elements of the series, shifting the position of the Active Reload bar is just the tip of a blood-stained iceberg.

When The Coalition began production of E-Day in Unreal Engine 5, it made the unusual decision to start from an "empty harddrive", as creative director Matt Searcy puts it. Every animation, asset, mechanic, and system has been rebuilt from scratch – giving the studio the excuse it needed to modernize Gears' movement.

"Gears plays best in a city, and Kalona is the ultimate battlefield. Its density, tight streets, mixed with more open spaces let us rethink how a Gear moves through the world. And it created a greater stage for more scale and verticality in combat. Our soldiers are basically giant tanks in armor, they slam into cars while weaving through hails of bullets. We wanted to keep that heaviness but add more fluidity with how you move through the battlefield," says Matt Searcy, creative director.

These changes operate at different scales. Searcy tells me that a subtle change is that "the sprint camera no longer pushes in when you're on a run", with a wider view "helping with the player's ability to move through the world and use a lot more of the entire battlefield." It's easy to understand how having improved readability of combat spaces will impact PvP multiplayer – which Searcy says will comprise "a collection of 4v4 modes and all-new maps set in locations in and around the worn-torn city of Kalona."

The studio has largely demonstrated these changes to core systems and mechanics through the lens of the campaign, a prequel that charts Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago's budding bromance on the days following the first emergence of the Locust Horde.

You're now able to jump and slide, opening up new opportunities to escape enemies and discover flanking routes; new cover mechanics are designed to increase your mobility and lethality in equal measure. It's exceptionally likely that these additions and alterations will be present and accounted for in multiplayer – and that means change is coming to the upcoming Xbox Series X game.

Change Is Good

"We've completely rebuilt our cover and movement systems. There are smoother transitions with a bigger range of cover heights and shapes, including new low-ground cover," he continues. "From sprint you can now slide, which lets you quickly get under objects, slide around corners, and transition more smoothly into cover from a run."

The increased fluidity and mobility at the heart of Gears of War: E-Day's movement has the potential to fundamentally reshape the way we play multiplayer, particularly as Searcy confirms that you won't be able to wall cancel and bounce "the way you've done it in the past."

The creative director is keen to stress that "your relationship with cover, and how you move between it, is still the most important thing to us – cover is life in Gears of War" but it's clear that heightened fluidity will fundamentally alter familiar multiplayer rhythms. The ability to hit low cover and high mantle around more vertical spaces will open more tactical flanking routes, while the ability to more quickly slide under objects and around corners could increase the pace of combat dramatically.

There's also increased destruction, "more than we've ever put into a Gears game" which sees hiding points chip away more dynamically while under concentrated fire. Again, it's unclear if this will transition to multiplayer, but if it does we should be battling in more organic and shifting playspaces.

And then there's the addition of jump, a mechanic introduced to "make the battlefields feel like they have more options and ways to get to a flanking route," Searcy says. "Think of all of this as us taking that classic Gears formula and adding new layers of strategy and traversal to it."

The Coalition is yet to reveal its plans for Gears of War: E-Day multiplayer beyond stressing that Versus will remain "sweaty squad-based PvP" and that the studio plans to support a "seasonal roadmap of killer combat, most of which you can just earn by playing the game – completing in-game challenges, events, and achievements."

All of that sounds great, but it's the way these enhanced movement mechanics intersect with the classic Gears multiplayer experience that has gotten me truly excited. We won't need to wait all that much longer to find out for certain, as Xbox has confirmed that Gears of War: E-Day will run a multiplayer beta split across two weekends, starting on August 6.

Have Your Say: How are you feeling about Gears of War: E-Day now that Xbox Game Studios has announced that it'll be a console exclusive? Vote in our poll, and let us know what you think about the biggest Gears changes in the comments section below.

Minecraft Dungeons 2 is making a big change. When its predecessor launched in 2020, it was a compelling side-quest for Mojang – a dungeon crawler which sought to deliver a more accessible entry point to the ARPG genre than the likes of Diablo and Path of Exile. It was a fun experience, although its limited points of exploration made it something of a divergence from what we've come to expect from Minecraft games. So Mojang is making some changes for the new game of 2026.

"In Minecraft Dungeons, we had a simple game loop," says Mans Olson, creative director. "You played a mission through to the end, you got a reward, and then you went back to your camp. In Minecraft Dungeons 2, we have what we call an interconnected world."

Internonnected, but not fully open. Olson stresses that Mojang "is purposefully not calling it an open world" as the studio is still creating a curated-style of game. "It's more of a guided experience that we think works really well for Minecraft," he says, adding: "But you will be free to explore the overworld; Minecraft Dungeons 2 is a lot larger than the first game."

Design director Laura de Llorens tells me that "you can walk from one end of the world to the other" in the upcoming Xbox Series X game, as the team emphasises the importance of exploration – unique and rare items, along with powerful Talismans, can be found by digging into every corner of the map. Speaking of maps, there's been some other changes to the Minecraft Dungeons 2 UI to accommodate the shift in focus. "Up in the right-hand corner we have a little mini-map, and we also have a very beautiful world map as well."

Given the 'All-Ages' framing of Minecraft Dungeons 2, are there any concerns over players getting lost in this interconnected world? Thankfully, a click of the left-thumbstick will enable a 'Guiding Light' (that can be activated by any member of your party, at any time) which will "always assist you in finding the next step in your quest," says de Llorens.

Minecraft Dungeons 2 may not be an open-world game, but it is inching ever closer to reflecting its ARPG ambitions into the original Minecraft style with this new interconnected world. The game is an exceptionally fun time, as you can learn more about in my Minecraft Dungeons 2 hands-on preview.

Minecraft Dungeons 2 is out for PC, PS5, Nintendo Switch 2, and Xbox Series X on September 29, 2026.

A detective in a fleece-lined jacket surveys the scene during my first look at The Wolf Among Us 2. Armed with a gruff exterior and a sharp eye, he examines an apartment looking for clues with the aid of police officer Faye, as both law enforcers look to solve a murder. The duo uncover a note which magically forms the name Bigby.

Faye points a gun at the detective, demanding he explain why his name is linked to an apparent crime scene. The detective explains the note is magic, and as Faye looks on in disbelief it's clear that Telltale Games' long-awaited choice-driven fairytale noir is going places the 2013 original didn't – this is a mystery Fabletown alone isn't going to be able to contain.

Return to Fabletown

At Summer Game Fest 2026, I was invited to see The Wolf Among Us 2 in action. Accompanied by creative director Zak Garriss and design director Jess Campbell, I was able to watch the latter play through a small section of the upcoming sequel, choosing how Bigby would act or respond in certain moments of the work-in-progress demo.

It's immediately evident from the dialogue choices that Fabletown's gruffest, sharpest detective Bigby Wolf can be both wise and endearing, a balance that's hard to achieve. "There's something incredibly rich about playing a character, not just a character who's centuries old, but who has the kind of baggage that Bigby has," Zak Gariss explains when I ask about the importance of this setup.

The Wolf Among Us 2 is aiming to give "a deeper look into Bigby, into what makes him tick, into his history, into his scars, in pretty exciting ways, pretty dark ways," Gariss continues. It's a welcome notion given the character's popularity, but another reason behind this is "because great storytelling ultimately comes down to characters". Fabletown is home to some big personalities – a secret community of folklore characters in New York City – which means plenty of conflicting desires, and a whole lot of suspects whenever Bigby has to intervene in a crime.

As Bigby walks around the suspected murderer's residence, with a third-person camera following his movements instead of remaining fixed on a frame like in the previous game, Gariss opens up about the narrative; "It leads to an interlocking series of mysteries that go from something as simple as a murder case to something far more complicated that points to a conspiracy that threatens to undermine the structure of Fabletown."

It's at this point that Gariss talks about how The Wolf Among Us 2 is a noir, with its hard-boiled detective protagonist Bigby and his place in the game's story. "There's always a cost to something, and so Bigby is always going to be standing at the crossroads of having to make an impossible decision around what's the best version of a series of bad outcomes." When I press Gariss on the value of this type of character, he concludes that "within that framework vulnerability abounds, and there's a lot of opportunity to really resonate with the wounds that he's incurring or has incurred, and it kind of carries through the narrative."

But who is Bigby's companion anyway? Gariss tells me that "Faye is a new type of character for the franchise that represents what it's like when a mundy starts knocking on the door, and it's a particularly charged challenge for Bigby because it's a mundy cop." Given that the player can have Bigby tell Faye about the magical secrets of Fabletown, it presents a luscious prospect with serious ramifications down the line, but the demo is over well before I can see a meaningful conclusion.

Once upon a playtime

The Wolf Among Us 2 improves on the original's sleuthing gameplay. The player can move freely around environments, exploring the scenery at their own pace. "We always want the player to feel invited in, deeply respected," Gariss tells me, highlighting the mindset behind the enhanced design.

There's even the option to bypass puzzles should they prove difficult, something I ask Jess Campbell about. "We don't want people having to put the controller down and go look it up online, because that means we didn't do it right," the design director explains. While I can quite enjoy hitting my head against a metaphorical brick wall (or a straw or wooden one, for that matter), I've seen firsthand how frustrating it is for the momentum to stall over a challenge, so it's easy to admire the inclusion of such a feature.

Just as the game's mechanics reach new depths, so too does the narrative. "It is truly the darkest story in Fabletown yet. We're going to go to some dark places," Gariss asserts, refusing to say too much more for fear of spoilers – a restraint I'm thankful for – but he does tease a bit more for the sequel after I ask about an in-game clue seemingly inspired by The Wizard of Oz: "There are many characters that are returning from the first game, reprised by the actors who played them, and it's a reunion [...] but we're also bringing in new kind of legends from the lore, and we're really excited about that too, and that extends – that newness – to some of the places."

Compared to the tight rooms of the original, it's clear even in this work-in-progress demo that the sense of scale is much larger, and will see Bigby whisked between lots of new locations – though, again, quite where is still tightly under wraps.

As our session comes to a close, my last question for the developers is whether players need to have played through the first game in order to enjoy The Wolf Among Us 2. Gariss fields this one: "While this is a true sequel, our Bigby is the Bigby who went through the adventure in the first game – it's six months later in his life – you don't need to have experienced that adventure to jump right in here and enjoy the experience that unfolds. And if you have, you will see context, you will understand, you will see characters that you get to interact with, fight, build friendships with, but it's by no means required, and if you do play Wolf 2, and really love it, you can absolutely go back and experience the first one."

The Wolf Among Us 2 will release on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 in 2027, although there's no exact launch date yet. Lucky for us the first game is getting a remaster later this year, so we've got the perfect excuse to revisit Fabletown before the sequel drops.

Want to follow more great tales? Check out our best gaming stories list for more recommendations like The Wolf Among Us!

Developer One More Level is proficient in making gameplay feel smoother than a stick of yellow butter, as it exemplified with cult hit action platformer Ghostrunner in 2020, but I wasn't convinced I'd be interested in its upcoming title Valor Mortis during Summer Game Fest 2026, when I first had the chance to try the demo now available during Steam Next Fest. But Valor Mortis' first-person Soulslike combat is so slick, even more silky than a vat of canola oil, the historical horror game easily convinced me to become another one of its loyal zombie soldiers.

I awake on the battlefield in reddish mud, tinted with the blood seemingly oozing from my arm until Napoleon Bonaparte himself commands me to stand, and my wounds miraculously disappear. At this point I think, Who does this Napoleon guy think he is, reanimating me like that… but Valor Mortis is a game about supernatural warfare in an alternate version of 19th century France, so I go with it. Napoleon better have a freshly torched crème brûlée waiting for me if he's going to wake me up from my eternal slumber, just to serve his selfish goal of building an army that cannot die.

But Valor Mortis protagonist William doesn't seem to mind. The Foreign Legion soldier is resolute in his love for Napoleon, so I glide over bodies of my fellow blue coat military men like my extremist daddy tells me to, not questioning the glowing turquoise vial of… stuff I now need to crush in my fist to stay healthy. Though, Valor Mortis is made with your death in mind, and I find myself better able to carry out perfect parries each time I'm slain and need to restart from my last checkpoint a couple hundred corpses back.

The entirety of France is apparently sick with sudden zombie disease. I've been chosen to slay my former brothers in arms, some of whom are now spending their time mindlessly slicing up their horses, and shooting each other in the head. If I'm not quick about grabbing them by the shoulder for a backstab, or aggressively slashing at their torso until it completely severs in two, I'm the next victim of their mutiny.

So I cut them. And I send rivulets of blood shooting across the grass stars. I push on, scampering around the French forest One More Level has made a lovely, fairytale green – though what I suspect are snowflakes of ash fall softly around me, never letting me forget that for every pretty, upturned tree root I see, there's at least 10 men slowly bleeding to death. It's a complex mood, both idyllic in the woods and uncomfortable from the irregularity of the situation, the zombie-ness of it all, and I'm impressed. Valor Mortis is a potent warning, it seems, of how dangerous it can be to let ridiculous men in power feel special.

I also get glimpses of Valor Mortis' other supernatural elements during my time with its demo during Summer Game Fest, like paths blocked with a yellow goop William says he's never seen before, trees stuffed with a different, more orange goop I can shoot to knock them down, and shadowy time rifts that tell me army secrets – like a soldiers' suspicion that Napoleon doesn't really love all of us children in the army.

By the end of my demo session, I'm having my own, more pleasant flashbacks to the first time I played games like the intuitive Dark Souls 3 and Shadow of Mordor, both of which made combat feel easy to learn and satisfying for me. Like those other action games, Valor Mortis requires a bit of patient strategy with maneuvers like parrying, but it also rewards a flurry of hack-and-slashing – my preferred method of handling Soulslikes. I'm eager to pick the sword back up once Valor Mortis is out in full on October 13, though I really need to set some boundaries with Napoleon first.

The most popular Soulslike in Steam Next Fest makes a very powerful argument for adding a shotgun to Dark Souls.

Humanoid monsters line up to face my blade. I dodge and parry their incoming strikes, carving through each foe with relish. With my protagonist's supernatural speed and meaty swings, I briefly forget that I'm not playing God of War Ragnarök, before the eerily beautiful rendition of Edo-period Kyoto (fictional, of course) drags me back to my senses. Onimusha: Way of the Sword is an action-adventure title that instantly feels at home in the hands of modern-day Kratos fans, but trades Norse deities for Japanese mythology.

Diving into the latest demo at Summer Game Fest 2026, I'm enraptured by the world of Onimusha: Way of the Sword. This new slice of the game is larger, deeper and more immersive than the recent sampler shadow-dropped on PS5 after Sony's last State of Play. NPCs populate the map, existing out of sight of the genma, the demonic enemies that constantly find themselves impaled on my blade; while the map features more streets and buildings to explore.

Myths and monsters

The way in which Onimusha: Way of the Sword serves up an in-game world full of the supernatural and yet realistic in feel is impressive, and is in touch with the franchise's roots as an old-timey alternative to Resident Evil. The key difference compared to its contemporary, biohazardous cousin, though, is in the game's combat.

Main character Miyamoto Musashi wields his blade with a sumptuous smoothness, cutting down basic monsters with moreish fluidity, and savoring boss encounters like warm sake. It's a combat style that brings to mind Kratos, although Musashi's personality isn't quite a perfect match. Both characters are stoic, but where the Angry Spartan is often, well… angry, Onimusha's protagonist tends to be more tongue-in-cheek when met with antagonism.

It's shortly after eradicating a group of genma and helping myself to the nearby treasure chest that it dawns on me just how similar to God of War this new Onimusha is. The dynamic combat, mythological mobs and deific forces at play are all akin to Sony Santa Monica's epics, but set in a time and place that some may find more appealing. I'm not saying it's God of War Japan, but there's a welcome sense of that flavor.

This fictional version of Edo-era Kyoto is loaded with atmosphere, in part thanks to the presence of blood-red fogs that make parts of the map inaccessible to Musashi. The way enemies chase down civilians – some we can save, some not so fortunate – adds a grim reality to the world. The bleakness levels up when I talk to a one-legged man who cheerfully tells Musashi how his knee used to ache terribly before he was kindly separated from it. I pull the same dumbfounded expression as the sword-swinging hero as I digest what's just been said, before long encountering the cretinous being that offered the deal.

Named Rasho-gan, this medley of assorted limbs is the boss fight of the demo, and I eagerly face off against them. Slash, dodge, swing, parry, slice, kick; playing on Action difficulty (the game's harder mode) I'm bemused by the creature's poor offering. This thing is supposedly capable of extorting limbs from humans and yet can barely hold its own in a fight? Get your refunds, my friends.

My arrogance is dashed when Rasho-gan hits me through a dodge, knocking me to the ground and throwing me off my rhythm. As I try to regain my composure I'm hit again through a dodge, clearly not timing it correctly. I implore Musashi to stand back up, but he's already dead.

Attempt two starts much the same, only this time I know to parry instead of dodge certain attacks. I quickly put the wretch down but they have a second health bar. Fine by me, I'm enjoying the contest. Turns out Rasho-gan has figured out my strategy as they ignore my seemingly-ill-timed parry and body me, unleashing a flurry of blows that drains me to zero before I can think.

Attempt three proves to be the charm as I combine my previous learnings to best the abomination before me, smugly dodging, parrying and hacking through the boss with an earned sense of ease. The duel ends with Rasho-gan running away before being shot down by an archer with a golden, godly aura. Once again I'm reminded of God of War, as Musashi converses with this divine figure as both lesser and equal, as only a true hero can do.

As the demo comes to a close, I'm in awe. Capcom has produced a unique title that blends many of the elements behind the success of God of War with the developer's own expertise for crafting worlds teeming with horror and intrigue. It's a breathtaking cocktail, and one I can't wait to guzzle down when Onimusha: Way of the Sword releases on September 25, 2026, for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2.

Capcom is "quite confident" Onimusha: Way of the Sword will give players a challenge after the demo was "too easy"

The Hellraiser horror franchise has simple rules. You should never ask for the truth unless you've prepared your mind and body to know it. Then, you must recognize the perversity of that truth: pain and pleasure are sisters. And I'm OK with that, but I was surprised to see it reiterated at Summer Game Fest 2026, while I played a demo for the upcoming torture-shooter Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival.

I don't know what else I expected. I guess I thought developer Saber Interactive would stick to typical video game conventions like most studios adapting major horror franchises do; Friday the 13th: The Game never dared to show a bit of nipple, for example, even though toplessness famously makes Jason feel extra murderous. But, no, Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival is faithful to Hellraiser writer and 1987 movie director Clive Barker, whose oeuvre of fantasy film, horror writing, and 2000s PC shooters obsesses over unctuous, black, and unspeakable things – especially if you can find them between human thighs. It's freaky incarnate, and it makes Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival better.

My Summer Game Fest demo starts somewhere in the middle, after new character and wayward sadomasochist Aidan is forced to retrieve his girlfriend Sunny from Hell. Having had enough with injectables, bad sex, and other earthly delights, Sunny did what you should really never do in the Hellraiser franchise and opened a strange puzzle box, banishing herself to the blood-drenched Labyrinth to be tied up and stripped of her flesh for all eternity. Bummer.

Good suffering

Developers Vid Rajin and Danira Karović Lačević tell me they needed vomit bags for players during a different demo session, which included a sex scene at the beginning of Hellraiser: Revival. During my time with the first-person perspective game, I never feel sick. I take stock of all the interesting ways Saber Interactive has chosen to apply leather.

True to the Hellraiser films, in which the extradimensional Cenobites summoned by the puzzle box inform clueless solvers that their suffering will be legendary, Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival clearly wants me in agony – but it expresses this with the mutilated wink of an eyeball pinned open. My demo takes place within a pleathery clubhouse, in which Aidan is in the midst of incinerating Cenobite cultists with the Genesis Configuration, an alternative puzzle to the Lament Configuration of the movies. Instead of playing an odd lullaby and opening up a portal to the sex dungeons of Hell, I discover the Genesis Configuration can swallow light and fire from nearby power sources to completely cremate my enemies. I never fully figure out how to best aim the box during my more advanced demo, though, and I'm miserable when I learn the Genesis Configuration's blast radius doesn't discriminate. When I hold it too close, it sizzles pink, orange holes into my skin and I swear I can smell burnt pork through the screen as I try to slap the fire out with my palms.

The pistol I have equipped feels practically pacifist in comparison, and I reach for it often while sneaking around the clubhouse searching for a way out, occasionally ogling posters advertising things like the Voyeur Fetish I should "CUM and SEE," or a cultist's relaxed stance in his skintight pants as he describes slicing Aidan's "cock off and [shoving] it down his throat." I get the sense that, in some circles down here in Hell, that would be considered a compliment.

But things in my Revival demo don't really get fucked until the Voyeur Fetish show. The serrated sword I carry in my Resident Evil-style inventory helps in calming my nerves, as I know that I can simply slice the forearms off anyone who approaches me with unfriendly-looking clamps. But once I'm through that red door to the show, Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival shifts into the jagged fantasy the Hellraiser movies present as being a constant presence in buttoned-up, daily life, only tucked away in the attic.

In the Fetish room, Aidan is blasted with visions of both his past and, seemingly, his future as Cenobite leader Pinhead (whose role here is reprised by the indomitable Doug Bradley) would like it. A woman – Sunny? – is suspended by chains pulled into the shape of a grotesque star; hooks pull at her lips, breasts, and stomach, encouraging various white organs to spill down her legs like exposed worms.

I'm transported into a hallway lined with more of these chains, which chime sadly and gently as they knock into Aidan's thick skull. Reality is flexible here, as it was in 1988's Hellraiser 2, which also sees its protagonist braving Hell to save the one she loves. Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival, though, is more cynical about it in this demo.

After managing not to be disemboweled by a few environmental puzzles, including a room-size Configuration box, I get trapped in Aidan's initially unremarkable house. Old post-it notes left to Sunny reveal our supposed hero's desire to poke her sensitive flesh with needles and lick up the blood, plus empty syringes, and other evidence of the numerous ways the lovers destroy themselves just to feel anything. Finally, Aidan finds Sunny, or maybe his idea of her, hogtied in their bed. Her eyes have been completely scooped out of her skull, so when he reaches his hands out to caress her mottled cheeks, a part of me expects him to press his thumb into the muddy holes left over.

I think that's because I, like all those who dared to open the box, often turn to the taboo for comfort. When you're a self-conscious person, it can be easier to place yourself among things that are already dirty and unwanted – broken porcelain and soiled dresses – instead of daring to imagine yourself as lovely, or loveable. I look to horror games to indulge in this dark sense of belonging, as my favorite characters like Alice from Alice: Madness Returns or Jennifer in Rule of Rose also inspire me to come up from the mud, at least sometimes.

So far, Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival seems poised to do the same thing, while daring to be even more explicit in its imagery – including genitals, yellow fat, crushed skulls, and other things I've never seen a rated-M game utilize for their artfulness, rather than just shock value. Through them, I think I'm starting to pick up on a message. You can try eviscerating yourself through bloodbaths and sex magic, but your soul remains intact. It'll cry and ask you why you've ignored it, but it'll still be there.

Upon realizing this, suddenly, I want to shut the demo off and make a bowl of my favorite apple cinnamon oatmeal. But, like Aidan, I instead dare to coexist with the muck I've chosen to live with. But I can tell Hellraiser: Revival has many more lessons for me once it releases in full, and I'm ready to receive.

Can't wait to be punished? These are the best horror games you can play today.

Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival is launching October 8 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, developer Saber Interactive just announced alongside a new trailer. Considering the quickly closing wall of death for video game releases in September – Marvel's Wolverine, Silent Hill: Townfall, and Control Resonant are only some of the major titles out that month – it feels like Saber is giving us a surprising, but much needed, break with its October plans. At the same time, I expect that Hellraiser: Revival will spank us into the Underworld.

You can watch the latest redband trailer for the upcoming Hellraiser survival horror shooter on the game's website, and I recommend you do so on an empty stomach. Saber developers told me during Summer Game Fest 2026 that they had to keep vomit bags around for a recent demo session featuring a typical Hellraiser franchise sex scene (the series' lovers may end up in Hell, or with their intestines missing. Usually both). I already got a sense from my Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival preview that Saber takes series creator Clive Barker seriously, and Revival's latest trailer makes this only more painfully/pleasurably obvious.

"These are experiences like no other," declares lead Cenobite and most fashionable pin cushion Pinhead in voice over, with original actor Douglas Bradley's characteristic snarl. Indeed, I don't think I've ever seen some of the things Hellraiser: Revival seems to have in store in a mainstream video game before; we've got our hero Aidan gushing blood from his mouth to his exposed penis, and the interdimensional, demon Cenobites' hooks are so deeply sunken into his flesh, his bare butt quivers like maggot-infested piglet until the metal rips it from his spine. Chunks of blood and muscle collapse on the ground in heavy ice cream scoops as the Cenobites – who we get a long, luxurious look at – watch impassively.

All our best friends from the original Hellraiser movie are here. There's Pinhead, of course, who would chain up each molecule of our bodies in his basement if he could, plus the lipless Chatterer, the sluglike Butterball, and the woman Deep Throat, whose neck is held open with needles to expose the diamond of her trachea.

"Take on Hell's wretches, deviants, cultists, and its most infernal priests in an unholy war for your immortal soul, all while trying to thwart the sinister plans of the Cenobites," recommends Saber in a press release. Hey, those are our friends you're talking about.

Pre-orders for the $39.99 Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival Standard Edition will soon begin, and Saber will later reveal contents and pre-order information for its $49.99 Deluxe version of the game. Hellraiser: Revival also still has a $199.99 Collector's Edition available, which includes the game, an art book, and more, if your dorm room in Hell has enough space for all of that.

Need something more tame? Can't help you there, unfortunately, but I can point you to some of the best horror games according to our ranking.

Persona is one of the most iconic RPG franchises for a reason. Since Atlus released the first game in the series, Revelations: Persona in 1996, the series has been a critical darling and fan-favorite for years. We've had countless spinoffs and remakes over the years, but there have only been six main entries in the Persona series, with the last, the phenomenal Persona 5, releasing back in 2016. Ten years later, we’ve finally got a teaser trailer for Persona 6. It’s extremely dark – so much so that it looks like Persona is finally ready to take a surprising leap into horror. And I, for one, couldn’t be happier.

The teaser gives virtually nothing away, but it’s got a seriously sinister energy. There’s a green tint over the proceedings, as we're taken to a shadowy graveyard. Ominous music builds as eerie discordant sounds flood our ears. The camera moves slowly, lurking in menace towards a large, ornate gravestone in the middle of the cemetery. The shadow of a hand is seen outstretched towards it. Before the hand can make contact with the grave, the teaser cuts to a rapid montage of footage and cutouts of body parts that wouldn’t feel out of place in the Resident Evil franchise. Then, in bright, toxic green, “P6” flashes on the screen before the title “Persona 6” appears below. This may not be the Persona we've come to expect.

Reach out to the truth

The teaser's description makes vague but unsurprising promises: Persona 6 is a “new standalone story blending heartfelt daily life and new characters with pulse-pounding, supernatural adventure. Whether it's your first Persona game or you’ve been here since the beginning, this one's for you." “Heartfelt” is the only word that suggests this might not be horror, but plenty of great horror has heart. And “pulse-pounding” certainly suggests things are gonna get intense. I don’t know a genre more pulse-pounding and nerve-shredding than horror.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: Persona has never done horror before. It's had plenty of spinoffs, including two fighting games, Persona 4 Arena and Persona 4 Arena Ultimax as well as three rhythm games, Dancing All Night, Dancing in Moonlight, and Dancing in Starlight. But no horror. But Atlus’ fascination with taking these characters into different genres is all the evidence I need to know it's capable of diving into the deep end of horror.

For those quick to say that Persona would never take the jump into horror, there’s something important to address here: Persona has always been a degree or two away from being a true horror game. Throughout the main series, you battle with twisted manifestations of your own psyche called shadows at night. Persona 3, arguably the darkest game of the series, is about coming to terms with the inevitability of death. Every Persona game has enemies that look like they’ve come straight out of Silent Hill, with plenty of murder to boot.

The farthest Persona has strayed from horror was Persona 5, with its infectious upbeat jazz soundtrack, but even that game dealt with heavy topics. Atlus has steadily pushed the boundaries with what we can expect from turn-based RPGs, and I seriously doubt Persona 6 would be an exception to that rule. Horror is precisely what Persona needs to take things to new heights. With a few tweaks, the dungeons we’ve come to know and love could become dense, relentless nightmares, while the daytimes at school could be used to grapple with the psychological impact of the horrors that await at night.

Now, Atlus is no stranger to delivering a creepy teaser trailer for a new Persona game. For Persona 5, the all-red trailer showcased five chairs with shackles on them. On screen text reads “You are a slave. Want emancipation?” before revealing the title Persona 5. It was undeniably sinister. Yet when you compare the two, the Persona 5 teaser comes off looking like an episode of Peppa Pig. If the Persona 5 teaser promised the chance for freedom, the Persona 6 teaser offers a full descent into darkness. And I can only hope Persona 6 delivers on this promise of a full-blown horror game. It’s been a long time coming.

With Atlus keeping quiet on Persona 6, we've ranked the best Persona games you can actually play

Depending on how much you have played the first Halo, one of Halo: Campaign Evolved's biggest changes may fly – or run – under the radar. I'm talking about sprinting: while Master Chief only had one pace in 2001's Halo: Combat Evolved, its upcoming remake will take cues from later Halo games and let the Spartan sprint.

It may not seem like it, but being able to run is a foundational change. Having played two levels from Halo: Campaign Evolved on Heroic difficulty, there were plenty of times where being able to sprint saved my life, from outrunning grenade blasts to reaching cover with a scrap of health left.

Silent running

Speaking to GamesRadar+ at Summer Game Fest 2026, creative director Max Szlagor says the team at Halo Studios has done "a lot of work" to ensure being able to sprint doesn't change the game in unintended ways. "There are some encounters that are quite dangerous if you try to get past them," he adds. I can vouch for that: I tried to sprint past the Covenant's in The Silent Cartographer's climactic escape sequence, with multiple attempts ending with me being hounded out of position and killed.

"Every encounter's hand-crafted, and we've thought about that space for all of the sandbox, the co-op experience, things like that," says Szlagor. "It's really just about making sure we dial in the mood, the intent, the feel – we really want to make sure it's there."

Szlagor also points to vehicles now being destructible. "You could lose your Warthog, or your tank, at various points in time. And some of these spaces are quite large, so you want to be able to traverse [quickly]," he explains. "It's very natural to want to get in and play as you might have played a modern Halo title, so that's really the inspiration."

Sprinting seems to have been implemented with newer fans in mind, but executive producer Damon Conn stresses that recapturing the original tone of Halo: Combat Evolved has been a guiding light to the team. "You will have the same feeling of dread when you meet the Flood at certain parts of the game, and sprint isn't going to give you any flexibility – other than having maybe a few more moves you can make," he warns. "But you are absolutely going to come to terms with the enemy that is there, and it will be spooky, but if you want to enable [challenge modifier] Skulls, you can go back to the way it was originally."

Paired with Halo: Campaign Evolved's other retroactively-added features – including weapons from later games and the ability to hijack vehicles – it feels like the remake is taking a cautious approach to revisiting the 2001 original. That scope speaks to Halo Studios' broader ambition – to get back in touch with Halo as it looks towards its next entry – but Conn says the team also wanted to be "truthful" to its source. "We're not trying to necessarily replace what Bungie did," he says. "We're just trying to build something that sits beside it."

"We didn't set out with this game to modernize for modernization's sake. We did a lot of intentional gameplay adjustments, or tuning, or development that actually sets us up with a great foundation for features [going forward]," he adds. "It's a bridge from the past to the future."

We've rated the best Halo games. Where does your favorite land?

There's a lot of pressure bearing down upon Senua's weary shoulders. Ninja Theory announced a new saga at the Xbox Games Showcase, a premium action-adventure that's set to release in 2027. The decision to sacrifice the Hellblade moniker is an interesting one. It's perhaps a signal that Senua has outgrown her own origins, or that the franchise itself has gathered too much baggage.

Hellblade is known for its intimate storytelling, introspective action, and stunning production values. It's also become synonymous with a certain style of play – cinematic to a fault, sometimes puzzling and ponderous. Speaking with Xbox Wire, Ninja Theory studio head Dom Matthews said that he spent a lot of time exploring the reaction to Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 before his team embarked on its next adventure.

"The resounding feedback, frankly, was that people loved the presentation, the story, the tone, and the atmosphere that we achieved, but they’d just love to be able to engage with Senua at a deeper level, with more gameplay, with more agency."

This introspection has caused Ninja Theory to change the way that it likes to work. Rather than silo small teams across different projects, Matthews has pulled the entire group onto development of Senua – it's the first time a production has been approached this way since 2013's DmC: Devil May Cry. That's been necessary to widen the complexity and fluidity of combat, traversal, and puzzle-solving.

Senua is aiming to be a more rounded package, one shaped by myth and madness as the celtic warrior fights through a fractured vision of purgatory. To reach the afterlife, you'll need to contend with larger groups of enemies and denser playspaces than the series has dared to attempt in the past. "It’s all about taking Senua’s combat and liberating it, so players can really express themselves a lot more."

Say what you will about the combat in Hellblade and its sequel, but I always appreciated its ferocity. The challenge now is retaining that weight whilst increasing Senua's mobility. The combat set has been deepened as Senua faces off against multiple enemies, all occupying space on various verticalities. You'll acquire weapons from slayed monsters, such as short axes which can be thrown, or combine Senua's primary sword with something like a flaming torch for slick dual-wield action. Honestly, I can't remember the last time I was this excited to fight manifestations of destruction, fear, and pain.

It's clear from my first look at Senua that this isn't Ninja Theory returning to its combat-action game roots but I do get the sense that this will be a more balanced action-adventure experience – one that recalls the studio's fine work on Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. The speed in which she's able to traverse environments is clearly increased, and more dynamic too – and I'm not just referring to widened exploration as Senua clambers up and around mountaintops.

Another deft decision sees Ninja Theory resist the impulse to head into open world territories. Senua may feature a map that's twice the size of Hellblade 2, but it's still ostensibly a structured narrative across a larger, wider world. Matthews says that rewarding exploration is a key focus for the team, but that the game is ostensibly a "linear story told through a map built of interconnected locations."

Ninja Theory has always been a leader within Xbox Game Studios with its animation quality, leveraging a world-class motion capture setup at the heart of its headquarters, and there's a sublime quality to the slickness in which Senua is able to channel fluid sword attacks into sharp dashes, blocks, and parries. Feed in an array of special Focus Abilities, and we're looking at something that's ambitious in a different way to anything the studio has released in the eight years since its acquisition.

Senua's Saga

I mention the acquisition, only because I do get the uneasy sense that Senua could be a make or break moment for Ninja Theory. While there's no doubt that production timelines were disrupted by COVID-19, and that the studio has been given leeway to advance its technology and pursue internal experiments like Project Mara, the truth is that it has only shipped two games as a part of Xbox Game Studios – the ill-fated Bleeding Edge (2020) and divisive Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 (2024).

Ninja Theory brings prestige to the XGS portfolio. It's a beloved studio that's stacked with talent, a group wielding cutting-edge technology to create standout experiences. I do worry that this isn't enough in the current environment, at a time where new CEO Asha Sharma is signaling both a renewed focus on Xbox's 'industry-defining franchises' and a need to execute an internal restructure.

"We expanded our studio system when we needed a pipeline of content to meet multiple strategies across subscription, streaming, and devices," says Sharma. "In the process, we have found ourselves over extended as we executed on changing strategies in a landscape of more readily available content."

What does this sort of rhetoric ultimately mean for Ninja Theory and Senua's latest saga? It's natural that there's some fear here, given the fate of studios like Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks. It's impossible to know for certain of course, but it's difficult to ignore the nagging sense that the decision to realign this character with a more broadly approachable action-adventure frame comes at a critical time for the studio.

Senua is set to release in 2027 as a key upcoming Xbox Series X game. It won't, however, be a console exclusive – and is expected to launch on PC and PS5. For more on the key new games of 2026 and beyond from Xbox, be sure to check out our Summer Games Preview.

Onimusha: Way of the Sword finally gave fans a playable taste earlier this month in the form of a free demo, and Capcom heard you: the game feels too easy. Criticism was widespread enough that producer Akihito Kadowaki even addressed it in a video message to fans on social media, and Capcom responded to those concerns in more detail for me in an interview at Summer Game Fest.

Capcom has seen "very positive feedback" about "the combat, the swordplay, the characters, and the relationships," Kadowaki and director Satoru Nihei tell me in a joint interview conducted via translator, but they admit, "a lot of people say that they find the demo too easy in some cases."

Reiterating comments from their Twitter video recognizing this fact, the devs say their demo represents "quite an early part of the game," and that Capcom "custom built the demo to give Musashi skills that you would get later on in the game." Those two factors "combined to make" the demo "easier than it should be," but Capcom is "quite confident" that players will find a more satisfying difficulty curve in the final game.

That said, I still wouldn't go into Way of the Sword expecting a Soulslike level of challenge. We'll have a more extensive report about the hands-on demo that was shown at Summer Game Fest soon, but I found it quite similar to the demo that was released to the public. The boss shown at Summer Game Fest was substantially harder than the one in the public demo – at least in my experience – but I still found the basic enemies to pretty much be pushovers.

That sort of rhythm seems, at least to some extent, to be an intentional design choice. "If every enemy was really tough to fight," the devs explain, "it would lead to stress, eventually, for some people." Capcom is "definitely trying to gear it so that the basic enemies, you can enjoy fighting them at an easier pace," though there will be "quite challenging" additions to the basic roster of enemies later in the game.

"Then we have some mid-bosses that are not necessarily the big sort of story bosses, but they're also quite difficult." Then, of course, the main bosses will be "more difficult" still.

I also asked whether there would be more challenging difficulty options for players who want to be tested, and the pair tease that while "we can't go into the details right now," there will "definitely" be something to encourage hardcore players to stick with the game.

Check out our full guide to all the new games of 2026 and beyond.

I thought I needed a break from action-RPGs. I've been a massive fan of crawling dungeons, hoovering up loot, and clicking enemies into oblivion ever since I discovered Diablo as a kid – the terrifying cover art is still seared into my memory to this very day. But after sinking countless hours into Diablo 4 and its expansions, Path of Exile 2 and its (frankly ridiculous) skill tree, and plenty more indie hits besides, I was ready to give myself some time away from the genre.

And then Minecraft Dungeons 2 came along. Listen, I'm not going to sit here and pretend that the spin-off is as densely populated, visually rich, or challenge oriented as the mass of video games that have gone after the genre crown in the last five years, but there's something delightfully refreshing about Mojang's approach. It's every bit a relaxing introduction to dungeon crawlers, as it is for experienced players to share their love of ARPGs with a new generation of players.

Supporting up-to four player co-op, in both couch and online compositions, there's an ease in which Minecraft Dungeons 2 introduces its action. Familiar mobs from the vanilla Minecraft experience swarm as you beat and bash your way through the horde; loot pours from enemies as they explode off the screen, with dungeons carefully lit for maximum awe as Mojang pours more focus than ever before into making blocky spaces worth exploring.

Exploration is a key focus for Minecraft Dungeons 2, with the sequel earning itself an interconnected overworld that's full of collectibles and hidden talismans to uncover – a new type of item with unique capabilities, scaling once equipped in tandem with your levelling to produce more power and panache. Creative director Måns Olson tells me that Mojang is "purposefully not calling it an open world" although is quick to highlight a richer playspace with more room to dive into the depths of dungeons.

Speaking of dungeons, Mojang has answered your calls for more varied biomes. Minecraft Dungeons 2 will finally let you venture into the Deep Dark, complete with mobs that are unique to the playspace. One such enemy is the Twisted Warden, a towering boss that requires all four fighters to work together in tandem to take it down. I should note that this battle revealed one aspect that Mojang hasn't been able to solve between Minecraft Dungeons and its sequel: It's still exceptionally difficult to track your character in battle once the going gets a little chaotic.

That's also true while traversing the dungeons themselves, particularly as the studio has introduced the ability to jump this time around. In combat, this means you now get a unique jump attack which plays off of the weapon-type you have equipped (enhanced further by certain rarity buffs), although in exploration it means you'll get some light platforming sections with distances that are tough to judge.

Small frustrations with character-tracking and pathfinding aside, there's plenty of neat quality-of-life improvements. Armor is now split across head, chest, legs, and arms as Mojang tries to bring Minecraft Dungeons 2 a little closer to the core Minecraft experience, while the introduction of a mini-inventory system feels like a real game changer. You can now press 'up' on the D-Pad to adjust your weapons, swap in new weapons, and mess around with items actively in-game, rather than pulling everybody into the pause menu. It's a nice touch, one that makes Minecraft Dungeons 2 feel more responsive.

Into the Depths

Minecraft Dungeons 2 is a real breath of fresh air. ARPGs have embraced complexity in the modern era, which is delightful – if you have the time to tumble down wiki rabbit holes and assess every minute details of the hundreds of items which fill your inventory. MD2 feels like the sort of title which has a pick-up-and-play simplicity that's missing in the market, even as design director Laura de Llorens stresses that you can make life more complicated if you want to. "We don't have set classes, but you can combine different items to create your own and make your own playstyle. So you'll be able to do plenty of min-maxing here, if that's what you like to engage in."

With a contiguous, interconnected world that's full of dungeons to delve into, a more responsive and layered combat system, widened opportunities to customize your character, and a visual experience with truly vibrant fidelity, it should come as no surprise that I'm pretty keen to dive into the game proper on September 29, 2026 – that's when Minecraft Dungeons 2 releases for PC, PS5, Nintendo Switch 2, and Xbox Series X.

If there's any room for improvement, it's going to be in the way that Mojang identifies and tracks your character on screen, but with months to go until launch there's still time to refine its pathfinding systems. But if nothing else, it speaks volumes that I'm considering diving back into another ARPG right now after Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred decimated another 20 precious hours. Bring it on, Mojang.

Minecraft Dungeons 2 is set to release on September 29, 2026. It's a key upcoming Xbox Series X game, although it's also set to launch for PC, PS5, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2. You can learn more about the new Mojang game this week as part of the GamesRadar+ Summer Preview.

Gears of War: E-Day is the video game I have been waiting 10 years for The Coalition to create. It's hard to believe that the series has already been under the stewardship of this studio for a decade, following Epic Games' decision to sell the intellectual property to Xbox in 2014. But you know what they say, time flies when you're dragging a Chainsaw Bayonet through mutating flesh and malfunctioning circuitry.

In that time The Coalition has become a technical powerhouse, has led the Xbox Game Studios transition to Unreal Engine 5, and delivered some pretty entertaining third-person shooters too. Gears of War 4 was a faithful continuation, and Gears 5 a pretty bold experiment in stretching solid foundations across more open-ended environments. I'm a fan, but there have been missteps.

The Swarm never clicked as a forbiddable force that could rival the Locust, and the DeeBees exposed Gears of War's need for ultra-violence to truly sing. Naturally, the introduction of exploration, wider playspaces, and RPG-lite systems in Gears 5 divided the playerbase. And so The Coalition is doing what I always hoped it would – channeling its reverence for the franchise into making the familiar feel fresh again, all while taking us back to the earliest adventures of Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago.

That's what we're getting in Gears of War: E-Day. It's a shooter that wants to honor the legacy of what Gears of War achieved in 2006, all while developing an experience that feels fighting fit as a new game for 2026. Did it take the divisive nature of Gears 5 to push The Coalition in the direction it should arguably have taken right from the outset? The studio has a different perspective.

"We didn't make E-Day as a reaction to Gears 5," says Nicole Fawcette, with the studio brand director stressing she doesn't agree with commentary that suggests The Coalition strayed too far from the Gears formula in 2019. "We're making E-Day because we had an opportunity to make what we wanted to make. We wanted to take on Emergence Day, and to have players rediscover Marcus and Dom, as we made the pivot to a new engine. That's what we wanted to do, and it's exactly what we have done."

Back to the Beginning

Creative director Matt Searcy tells me that "E-day is a return to Gears of War's roots" and an attempt to recapture the vibes of the original trilogy. "The best way we could think to do that was to go back to Sera at its darkest hour: the day the Locust came out of the ground." Emergence Day is an untold story that's long been at the heart of the Gears of War universe, where a populace already beaten down by the Pendulum Wars is brought to its knees as cities crumble and civilization collapses. Searcy adds: "It's such a great place to reimagine the tone of what we think makes Gears great."

Vicious monsters, unbridled brutality, towering architecture, and layered playspaces littered with waist-high debris. Gears of War: E-Day is set entirely in the city of Kalona, following Bravo Squad across three days as it attempts to battle the Locust Horde back to hell. "We put you right into the chaos of E-Day – in the beginning there's no soldiers around, only people getting torn apart by Wretches. You'll experience the moment Marcus and Dom first pick up guns, pulling Snubs out of the trunk of an abandoned police car, before setting off into the city where all hell is breaking loose," says Searcy.

"We believe that Gears plays best in a city," adds art director Aryan Hanbeck, "and that Kalona is the ultimate battlefield." Hanbeck points to the more linear structure and consistent playspace as a big point of difference between E-Day and its predecessor. "Gears 5 was more of a globetrotting adventure, you went from desert to forest and so on. A big way that E-Day differs from Gears 5 (and other Gears games) is that this entire game is set in one location."

"This isn't an open-world game," says Searcy. "Something we learned from Gears 5 is that going out on vehicles doesn't mesh perfectly with Gears, and that the freedom to choose your mission and what you're doing doesn't vibe with Gears either." Searcy tells me that The Coalition is pushing for a tighter alignment between claustrophobic missions and larger combat arenas. "We have very classic mission design – especially on that first night, where you're fighting back-and-forth in the streets – and there are parts of the game where you get these larger arenas, where multiple city blocks open up to you."

These larger missions are described to me as being akin to Black Hawk Dawn. Where "you're on a single mission, you know where your objective is, but how you get there is up to you," says Searcy, who notes that you'll have opportunities to delve deeper into the carnage of the day by assisting civilians and other soldiers if you want to. That's all a part of The Coalition's attempt to channel more player choice into E-Day, something the studio wanted to retain from Gears 5.

"One thing that we learned from Gears 5 is that if we want to give players more choice, and to still feel natural to what Gears is, then we need to do it differently to just giving you a vehicle in an open world. I think Gears 5 was really cool, but if we wanted to hit that core Gears DNA we had to increase the density. We had to make every street corner a combat opportunity," he says.

I've seen more of Gears of War: E-Day than what was shown in the Xbox Games Showcase, and I'm mesmerised by what The Coalition is delivering here. The visual fidelity is out of this world, with E-Day positioning itself as a true late-gen system showcase for the Xbox Series X; Kalona seeming like the perfect playground for Gears' heavy combat, with more fluid movement and vertical playspaces only helping to advance the idea that The Coalition has higher aspirations than ever before.

Starting From Scratch

Putting The Matrix Awakens tech demo and Gears Reloaded remastering experiment to one side, Gears of War: E-Day is the first title from The Coalition to be built natively in Unreal Engine 5. This has given the studio cover to do what it should have done in 2014: rip up the foundations of the franchise in an effort to refine and innovate the mechanics and systems so central to the way that Gears plays.

"We started with an empty hard drive," says Searcy. There are no ported assets in E-Day. Every animation, sound, mechanic, and system has been rebuilt from scratch. We have built a game that feels like Gears but plays like new. Many of us have worked on Gears for over a decade; we know how the cover system works intimately, we understand the importance of it and have built the game around the same pillars that defined the original trilogy, but we approached E-Day like a new game built for 2026."

If there was any fear that Gears of War: E-Day would be a continuation of Gears 5 – albeit with a tighter focus – this dedication to starting afresh should put them to bed. E-Days will play quite unlike any Gears of War game before it, as The Coalition makes some much needed quality-of-life improvements to the way that you shift your weight around these utterly gorgeous combat arenas. "Kalona – with its dense, tight streets and more open spaces – let us rethink how a Gear moves through the world," says Searcy.

"We've completely rebuilt our cover and movement systems, with smoother transitions and a bigger range of cover heights and shapes," he adds. "Our soldiers are basically giant tanks in armor, they slam into cars while weaving through hails of bullets. We wanted to keep that heaviness, but add more fluidity with how you move through the battlefield." Gears of War: E-Day is making fundamental changes as it introduces denser playspaces. You can now dive into low cover and mantle into more vertical positions, introducing more tactical variety to play; the sprint camera no longer pulls into your shoulder, giving more awareness of the world around you, and E-Day will finally let you slide under and into cover for more fluid, kinetic encounters.

The Coalition isn't making changes on the margins for Gears of War: E-Day. It's engineering a series revival that can channel the spirit of the first adventure and still push for genuine evolution of the systems that defined a genre for 20 years. That's why E-Day has been chosen by Xbox Game Studios to lead the return to console exclusivity – a statement of intent that can remind the world of why Xbox was a platform that shouldn't, couldn't be ignored. "We couldn't be more excited to be an Xbox exclusive," Searcy tells me. "Gears and Xbox have been tied so tightly for 20 years now, and it's an honor and a privilege to be seen as a flagship title in this way."

Gears of War: E-Day is coming to PC and Xbox Series X on October 6, 2026. The latest game from The Coalition is one of the key upcoming Xbox games and we'll have more insights to share as part of our Summer Games Preview this week.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation game director Naoki Hamaguchi wants to encourage challenge seekers to brave the JRPG's endgame content rather than tackle something like a New Game+ with added difficulty.

Following the reveal of part three of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy as part of Summer Game Fest, Hamaguchi has been doing the media rounds to drum up some excitement while trying not to give too much away.

As part of that, we've got some idea what Final Fantasy 7 Revelation's endgame might look like. Talking to Italian outlet Everyeye.it, Hamaguchi reveals that you will face some of the JRPG's infamous Weapons during the game.

Much like the original JRPG, though, there will be a few more to face as optional encounters unrelated to the main story, and they'll be among the hardest fights you can subject yourself to in the upcoming game.

"I think one of the differences between Revelation and Remake/Rebirth is that the first two were designed to encourage players to replay the entire adventure on hard mode after completing it," Hamaguchi says (thanks, WCCFTech). "In Revelation, it will be different. There will be several endgame contents here, unlike Remake and Rebirth."

If you need a quick refresher of the OG JRPG, narratively speaking, Weapons are produced and unleashed when the Planet senses a threat to its existence – Sephiroth, basically.

You see plenty of them in the main story, but there are two optional superbosses if you crave the punishment – Ruby and Emerald Weapon. They appear on the open-world map when certain criteria have been met, and are typically best faced when you have really maxed your characters out.

Considering how Square Enix has approached the Remake series so far, I can't see things being too different here. There will likely be more layers, sure, but the bones of the fights will likely stay the same.

What I wouldn't read this as, however, is any confirmation that Final Fantasy 7 Revelation won't include New Game+. Rather, it sounds like Hamaguchi and the game want to give challenger seekers a way to challenge themselves that doesn't mean restarting the game.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation lead thinks a potential Final Fantasy 6 remake would "be in better hands if it went to another creator in Square Enix."

Sonic the Hedgehog producer Takashi Iizuka thinks big-budget game makers could learn a thing or two from indie developers in the same way that major movie studios should be taking notes from this summer's biggest surprise success stories, Backrooms and Obsession.

The Blue Blur's trading dizzyingly speedy platforming for co-op puzzles in Sonic Pico Park, an upcoming spin-off game revealed at Summer Game Fest made by the developers behind indie hit Pico Park, naturally.

But Sonic Pico Park is part of a growing trend as AAA publishers increasingly work with indies on some of their big franchises - Ubisoft's The Rogue Prince of Persia and Konami's Castlevania: Belmont's Curse come to mind. So when GamesRadar+ had a chance to sit down with Sonic Team's Iizuka, we had to ask him what makes collaborations with indie teams so attractive.

"I can't really speak for the other companies and maybe what they're thinking, but you know, from a Sega perspective, we do realize that making our big titles, it takes a lot of time, a lot of money," he says via a translator. "It's a huge investment of, you know, the staff and the resources that we have, and then once you've invested all that time and energy into something, you really need to sell a lot of units in order to survive in the industry."

According to Iizuka, indie developers can instead generate an idea and then "very quickly" execute it before "moving forward and making more stuff." He reckons that's a huge lesson larger companies like Sega could "learn from the indie development scene." Not to mention, it's "really stimulating working with those indie developers, because you get to feel that that smaller team energy and that quickness of working to get an idea into an experience."

The Sonic producer then likens the AAA game industry's problems to what the movie business is going through right now. The summer box office's biggest story so far is how Disney's Mandalorian and Grogu, an expensive Star Wars blockbuster, was pretty easily outperformed by two scrappy horror flicks made by 20-something-year-old directors.

"It's a little bit a different type of media, but the movie industry is kind of going through similar issues that we in the game industry are going [through]," Iizuka explains, pointing to how studios like Disney are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on bets that will maybe pay off "many, many years from now."

"But then you see movies like Backroom and [Obsession], these much smaller creative efforts that are still becoming these great successful hits, so I do see a parallel in the movie industry to what's kind of happening in the game industry with the amount of investment and the actual entertainment that people are consuming and enjoying," he concludes.

Backrooms director Kane Parsons is seemingly considering a Portal movie “with a lot of caution and a lot of curiosity”

Lara Croft's newest voice actor accidentally dislocated her jaw and popped it right back in while trying to record a fight scene for Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, just in case you were worried she wasn't tough enough to play the badass icon.

Dragon Age: Inquisition star Alix Wilton Regan is now adopting the iconic dual pistols and blue tank top of Lara Croft in two new games. Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis looks to remake and overhaul the series' very first entry, while Tomb Raider: Catalyst takes her on an all new adventure sometime next year.

Though it seems digitally inhabiting the role also comes with the workplace dangers you'd expect a raider of tombs to run into, as Wilton Regan told GamesRadar+ she got so excited about a fight scene that she punched herself in the face by mistake.

"The biggest challenge on this has been me restraining myself at points because I throw myself into every scene with such energy," she says. "I actually punched myself in the face the other day. This is a true story, by the way. You guys can check this with the dev team."

Three-and-a-half hours into a recording session, the developers at Crystal Dynamics wanted to capture vocalizations for a fight scene that apparently involved lots of kicking and punching. "I can't do anything by halves, this is me we're talking about," the star explains, so she also acted out the movements herself while making the sounds Lara would.

"As I go to do the punch across, right as I go to do the hook, I literally hooked myself in the jaw, dislocated my jaw, popped my jaw out... Anyway, it's fine. I've done it before, but everyone on Zoom was like, 'Shit, no, we killed Lara.'" That didn't stop her for long, though. "So we obviously paused recording for 20 minutes while I popped my jaw back in place, put an ice pack on it. It was really quite intense."

"I was only reminded by this because the big, big boss who's here today was like, 'What did I hear about what happened to you in the last session? I got told that, like, you punched yourself in the face or something,' and I was like, 'I'd really actually rather not talk about it, Chris, but fine, whatever.'"

In her own words, "they hired the right woman for the job." And that's hard to argue with after hearing a story so intense.

Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis brings back separate difficulty options from Shadow of the Tomb Raider, which is perfect for yellow paint haters

Final Fantasy Resonance makes a striking impression. While Square Enix, and specifically the internal division Team Asano, have been making some excellently modernized takes on retro-styled RPGs for some time across the likes of Octopath Traveler and Dragon Quest, the publisher's premier series, Final Fantasy, has always been left out. Until now. That immediately puts a whole lot of weight behind Final Fantasy Resonance as a project, and as a huge fan of the classics – Final Fantasy 4 'til I die – it was an electric reveal at the recent Nintendo Direct.

That is, until the trailer revealed it'd play host to a litany of returning characters from previous Final Fantasy games, which sounds an awful lot like the grindy, gacha-hungry Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. That makes sense because, well, it is. Looking more closely, Final Fantasy Resonance adapts that mobile game's first story arc. Ah. Generally, I'm happy for mobile games to shed their on-the-go, often-money-hungry trappings, but it's deflating that the RPG series' first true foray into the HD-2D treatment, from Team Asano no less, has to work within the confines of Brave Exvius rather than being an original undertaking.

Swipe left, or right?

As a series fan, I've put my fair share of time into some of the franchise's many mobile games – in particular Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, Final Fantasy 7 Ever Crisis, and the long-defunct Mobius Final Fantasy. I've never come out of the end feeling particularly good about myself, suffering through long, drawn out storylines with staccato, weightless gameplay, juggling the pros and cons of a multitude of live service, lootbox-esque, gacha spins. Yes, I did have Ariana Grande in my party. No, I'm not proud of it.

OK, fair complaints. We've all slipped into live service stupor at one time or another. At any moment, I'm primed to slip back into something like Honkai Star Rail. But then, surely Final Fantasy Resonance, which is "far from just a direct port" and has "been refined and extensively rebuilt as a full-fledged console-quality RPG experience" should be exactly what I want to fix my problems with Brave Exvius, right? On paper, that's correct – I did spend a lot of time playing Brave Exvius wishing it would just let me get on with the story, and that it could have properly designed RPG battles that don't just lean on power scaling and flashy pixel effects.

The problem is that I still feel burned by the experience all this time later. And it's compounded across the other mobile games too. I feel a bit of a sting when I remember all the time I put into Mobius Final Fantasy is lost. When I remember that an interesting dive into the Final Fantasy 7 backstory is locked behind dull-as-a-badly-kept-Buster-Sword battles in Ever Crisis. My respect for a project that aims to salvage and reimagine Brave Exvius butts with my desire to simply see a brand new retro-styled Final Fantasy, and the bad memories have me wondering about the capacity Brave Exvius has to delight given how bogged down in being a mobile game I remember it being.

Don't get me wrong, I really like Final Fantasy's capacity to change and evolve as the RPG series has become more modern. But, as someone who also loves to dip back into old school RPGs to grind levels, weep against unfair bosses, and explore vast worlds that would simply be impractical to develop to a modern fidelity – there's something truly special about the first six Final Fantasy games. The idea of taking modern design principles back into that framework is tantalizing (and I'd say the same if they made one in PS1 style too). I worry Final Fantasy Resonance's big first swing into FF doing something legacy facing that isn't a simple spin-off could be wasted on adapting Brave Exvius.

Yes, I am a bit grumpy. My time with Square Enix's mobile games have given me reason to be. Except… There is one glimmer of hope left, and it comes from another RPG series: Octopath Traveler 0. Released just last year, this is another HD-2D RPG that Team Asono worked on, and it's phenomenal. I've still not finished it, but I've been treasuring melting into its world when I get the time, and I can see why we called it "the strongest entry in this retro-styled JRPG series yet" in our Octopath Traveler 0 review.

Like Final Fantasy Resonance, it's also an adaptation of a mobile game – Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent. That mobile game got a middling reception. I didn't even know it existed until the redo was announced. While I'd still prefer a fresh take on a retro-styte Final Fantasy, maybe a part of me is just too close to Brave Exvius to feel completely at ease with the idea of Final Fantasy Resonance until I see more. But, thanks to Octopath Traveler 0, I'm willing to give it a chance – maybe it'll resonate with me after all.

Check out our best Final Fantasy games list for more adventures while you wait!

Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis might be remaking Lara Croft's very first adventure, but the developers are instead ripping inspiration from 2018's Shadow of the Tomb Raider when it comes to difficulty options.

As you might remember (or not, it was eight years ago!), Shadow of the Tomb Raider had a really nifty approach to difficulty, giving players three separate sliders to adjust the difficulty of combat, traversal, and puzzles individually. Players with twitchy trigger fingers could make fights tougher, say, while dialling up how often supporting characters would give you hints about puzzle solutions, and vice versa.

Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis is following suit, game director Raul Siqueira told GamesRadar+ in an interview from Summer Game Fest.

"I think the biggest lesson that we took from [the Survivor Trilogy] is tuning difficulty based on players' expectations," Siqueira says. "One of the things I think we got really good at towards the end of that trilogy was we had a lot of different options for players that wanted to tune the experience to their liking. We found, because Tomb Raider blends a bunch of different things together, there are people that are really into puzzles and they want puzzles to be very difficult, but they're not great at combat, so they want combat to be easy."

Speaking on the individual knobs players could toy with in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Siqueira says the team at Crystal Dynamic wanted to do the same thing so fans could "customize their challenge to their liking" because someone who's great at gun fights isn't necessarily good at all parts of the Lara Croft fantasy.

"That was one of the things that we really wanted to preserve and make sure that players had a good foot. The balance of that is an ever-changing thing. We're tuning it pretty much until the end," the game's lead adds.

When asked how similar Legacy of Atlantis' sliders would be to its older sibling's options, which could even wash away the controversial guiding yellow/white paint out of levels, Siqueira simply says the knobs are still being adjusted and the team will have a lot more to share about accessibility options soon... "but, like, you can expect a very similar mode for it."

Could Legacy of Atlantis make it onto our list of the best Tomb Raider games of all time?

My hands-on demo of Stuntman: Hollywood was only 15 minutes long, but it was the best 15 minutes I spent at Summer Game Fest. I've never played the original games, but even without the rosy tint of nostalgia this is a fantastic arcade driving game that already has me eager to revisit its stages again and again to complete the perfect run.

As the name suggests, Stuntman: Hollywood puts you in the driver's seat of a car performing stunts for various action blockbusters. Your director shouts out instructions to you alongside visual indicators along the track, prompting you to, say, drift around a corner, launch off a ramp, and narrowly squeeze past an oncoming car. It's a bit like having a rally co-driver warn you of upcoming turns, just with a lot more explosions along the way.

Stunt on these bros

Each run is just a minute or two long, which prevents repeated attempts from getting exhausting. None of the five levels I play are difficult to complete, but getting perfect marks on every stunt along the way is a real challenge, and one that keeps me hitting that restart button over and over. (Producer Tim Lohrenz, who was overseeing the demo, jokes about how glad he is that current-generation consoles have effectively eliminated loading times.)

It's the excellent controls that really put Stuntman: Hollywood over the top. The car physics are by no means realistic – this is an arcade-style driving model through and through – but that just means you have a lot of leeway to get your drifts and corners just right. On the first run through a level, I feel like I'm just on the edge of control of my vehicle. By the second or third attempt, I'm already starting to build my flow toward that perfect run.

The big gimmick with Stuntman: Hollywood is that the game now features an array of courses licensed from actual car-focused action films and shows, ranging from Fast & Furious to Miami Vice – with more unannounced collaborations to come, Lohrenz teases.

I play through one of the Back to the Future stages, recreating the scene where Marty McFly escapes the terrorists in the mall parking lot. It's not exactly a one-to-one match for the scene as it's shown in the film – there are a lot more terrorists here, for example – but it nails the vibe, especially with the original soundtrack blaring in the background throughout the ride.

But honestly, I think the original courses might be even better. My favorite came at the end of the demo, featuring a collapsing stretch of highway covered in falling boulders, ruined cars, and even crashed airplanes. The undulation of the broken road creates a great sense of verticality, and drifting through the danger is even more exciting when you're sliding across a 70-degree slope.

Even the simpler tracks are still thrilling, however, thanks to the precise controls and fast-paced action. During my brief demo, I was already getting the urge to go back through each one to perfect my line and nail every stunt, and I can only imagine that urge growing once I've got the final game and all its checklists and trophies.

If you like to put the pedal to the metal, check out our guide to the best racing games.

Fog clings to the island of St Amelia like taut plastic on skin, but I'm still not convinced Silent Hill: Townfall makes sense in the Konami psychological horror franchise. The 30-minute hands-off demonstration developer Screen Burn shows me during Summer Game Fest 2026 is laden with Silent Hill's trappings, milky fog and scabby monsters, but it's missing the cigarette-burned soul.

It's all too clean. Leading man Simon Ordell has ripped himself out of a hospital bed with all the tape and needles attached. A cannula pokes through a vein between his fingers, allowing healing liquid to revive him when he's injured, and a tight medical bracelet sticks to his wrist. But Simon is otherwise spotless while investigating St. Amelia in 1996, with vague instructions to find a brunette who I need to double check isn't Mary, the missing brunette from the soul-tearing Silent Hill 2. In only 30 minutes, I notice many callbacks to fan-favorite, early Silent Hill games – and I worry the unique parts of Silent Hill: Townfall can't compare.

Take me upstate

Townfall follows 2025's Silent Hill f, which was set in Japan, in taking Silent Hill international. I still yearn for the original lakeside town in Nowhere, USA, and the slow, somewhat inviting decay it represented, but I appreciated Silent Hill f's invention of a highly stylized, red spider lily landscape, too. Townfall's Scottish island St. Amelia is ruled by realism. Its cobblestone streets and neat white houses are hyper-realistic, looking better-suited to Call of Duty than an introspective horror game. Nonetheless, they are impressive. When the camera lingers on a bit of patterned wallpaper in an abandoned home, I can imagine what it would feel like just by looking at it.

Less tantalizing to me, someone whose favorite aspect of the best Silent Hill games is the poetry of their strangeness, is that Silent Hill: Townfall also employs realism in its puzzles. Rather than adding names to the Grim Reaper's list, as you do in the original Silent Hill, or burning pork liver to reveal a path in Silent Hill 3, the Townfall demo I saw has Simon searching for a prepaid electric card common in '90s Scotland to get the house's lights working.

Again, Screen Burn is demonstrating an impressive attention to detail here. But I don't play Silent Hill games for their faithfulness to history, and especially not to reality. I love them for the way they use magic to reveal our skeletons. Whenever the occult Otherworld falls over a Silent Hill protagonist, you're confronted with the rust under the hospital room paint, blood beneath a young woman's skirt, denial before freedom. I've always thought the supernatural was more real than real, so I've found comfort in past Silent Hill games, which lie on the cliff between observable life and hidden feelings. They push into each other, yin and yang, to make a whole world.

But Silent Hill: Townfall seems more oriented toward its surface. I'm first introduced to Simon as he's seated near a town monument littered with protest signs – "We Need The Truth," "Whatever Heart This Town Had Has Stopped" – and their unsubtle nature reminds me of Dead Space graffiti that routinely took me out of that game's horror. A Screen Burn developer also suggests during my Summer Game Fest session that Townfall uses first-person perspective because the series' usual third-person does more to coddle you from horror. In a sense, that's probably true. It's more viscerally horrifying to play Resident Evil in a VR headset than with ungainly tank controls, after all.

But third-person also encourages players to connect with a game's protagonist, as you can observe them as you control them, linking your movements with their mind. And since the average Silent Hill story is a storm whipped up to torment its main character, specifically (there are very few all-purpose spooks aimed at you, the player), third-person helps its effectiveness.

Though, Townfall isn't completely devoid of fantasy. It pays homage to the series' early convention of letting you identify monsters with a stammering radio by replacing the tech with a handheld CRT TV, which also swaps the need for on-screen UI by flashing cryptic images of your next location. It's an intriguing change, as the CRT TV is an elegant way to focus the player's attention on their next game objective while still being immersive in its story. However, I don't think a Silent Hill game's user interface has ever dulled the impact of its corpse nurses and brown toilets for me.

Ultimately, I feel like Screen Burn is worried about iterating on the wrong genre conventions.

I'm confused by all the changes I see in my Silent Hill: Townfall demo that are neutral at best. When the monster finally arrives, it's a melted flesh humanoid with its head sharpened into an axe. It looks like a struggling Lying Figure from Silent Hill 2... except with an axe for its head.

I thought this was supposed to be the fun part, but it's still too tame.

Refresh your memory of the Silent Hill we left behind with our list of the best Silent Hill games.

Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave is confirmed to be bringing dungeons back to the series after they were last seen in the 3DS remake Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia.

This year's Summer Game Fest was a pretty big one in general, with the Nintendo Direct being the perfect finale to proceedings, giving us the best show of the lot,. revealing The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake, giving us a new look at Kingdom Hearts 4, and more. Another of the highlights was Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave, which got a massive new trailer explaining the game and revealing its release date.

Except, despite feeling like a proper deep dive, it turns out Nintendo hid a major detail from the Nintendo Direct. On the store page for the game, Nintendo describes some of the things you can do. "You can explore the world to strengthen your army and find resources. Train and recruit allies in Dagsion, or venture out into the land to fight bandits and monsters, delve through dungeons, and more."

There's an interesting detail in there, that being "delve through dungeons." These haven't been a feature in the series since 2017's 3DS remake Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia (which was itself a remake of 1992's Japan-only Fire Emblem Gaiden for Super Famicom). As Nintendo Everything points out, there's actually a shot in the trailer that shows what looks like a dungeon, with Leda opening a chest, so strangely, Nintendo just didn't point this out at the time.

Fire Emblem games tend to be fairly long in the first place, and dungeon crawling is likely only going to add to that. So, if you're planning to pick up Fortune's Weave in September (already a very busy month for game releases), you can probably expect it to steal quite a lot of your free time.

Xenoblade Chronicles Genesis is coming in 2027, and it looks very different to Monolith Soft's last JRPG trilogy.

The first thirty seconds of The Blood of Dawnwalker's latest trailer had me begging for the end. Mostly because I, like many others, was successfully fooled into thinking it was a completely different game.

A doomed courier delivers a box to a high-rise apartment in some major city at the dead of night, and suddenly, I'm convinced this must be a Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 DLC. But Coen's sudden appearance – silver-streaked at the temples, strung out in an armchair, suckling on a bloodbag in the murky gloom – had me fully locked in. A modern-day scene in a late-medieval fantasy game makes absolutely no sense, but I should know by now to expect the unexpected when it comes to this upcoming RPG.

Catching up with developer Rebel Wolves at Summer Game Fest 2026, the beginning seems like a good place to start. Its modern-day teaser is a "promise" that The Blood of Dawnwalker's future extends beyond plans for a single game, game director and Rebel Wolves CEO Konrad Tomaszkiewicz tells GamesRadar+. "Our ambition is to create this series of games which will lead to this particular point and tell the story of Coen – not only Coen – and give players the opportunity to shape his character and see how it will end."

First blood

Outlining plans for a series before releasing its debut game is a strong sign of confidence. So much so that, much like in The Witcher and Mass Effect trilogies, players will be able to carry their Blood of Dawnwalker saves between each game, preserving their world state and creating seamless continuity.

"When you have the last save, your choices will go with you," Tomaszkiewicz confirms of The Blood of Dawnwalker's finale, citing expertise with similar systems while directing The Witcher 3 at CD Projekt Red . "From the beginning, we were telling people that we're planning a saga, and right now, this is the proof that we are doing it."

Coen's journey already sounds fraught. Turned into a half-blood vampire after a marauding vampire clan besieges his 14th-century village, his supernatural powers only come out at night. By day, he channels rune-based magic and more traditional melee swordsmanship to fend off the vamps – despite being one of them himself.

As an immortal being, at least partially (those grey hairs glimpsed in the modern-day sneak peek suggest a slowed-down aging process), it makes sense that Coen's story might break temporal boundaries. But driving towards that future of an epic vampire saga, one spanning hundreds of years, is no mean feat. It requires writers like Piotr Kucharski to employ their own near-supernatural abilities: the gift of foresight, working not only from the ground up, but from the top back down again.

"It's challenging, there's no getting around this, but it's also so much fun," Kucharski shares. "Because we already know some bits of the story – we have this big structure, we know where we want to end it, and so on – it gives you [a] good cohesive starting point to talk about things.

"Having this cohesive structure when talking about ideas, we can [tell when an idea is cool] but will make it really difficult for us to work [from] in the future." This gives Rebel Wolves the confidence to scrap those moments for something more reliable and future-proof. "The structure we give ourselves is also something that really helps us, because you know you have something to build on, and it sometimes helps you to answer some questions really quickly."

Whether a specific number of games are planned is something the team can't comment on just yet.

The Blood of Dawnwalker "saga", as Tomaszkiewicz puts it, is "not necessarily" going to be a trilogy. "But obviously it cannot be too long, because creating these kinds of games takes time." Even a trilogy might take Rebel Wolves "eight years" from now to reach a prospective end – "if we're really fast" – so the focus is on creating a branching narrative with plenty of future-proofing.

For Kucharski, that starts with offering players choice and consequence. "To us the basic question was, does [each] choice have impact? And it doesn't have to be something, you know, long term," he says, using something like a "gut punch" as an example of a lower-stakes consequence for your actions. But we all know that revenge is a dish best served in the final act. "I love those moments when you make a choice, then you play for like three hours, and then you realize that there is a consequence in a different quest."

Tall tales

No matter where the road ahead takes The Blood of Dawnwalker, I can already hear the synovial pop of bones clicking into place as something remarkable takes shape.

"I have a lot of hopes that we will bring a new fresh feel to RPGs," director Tomaszkiewicz rounds off. Dawnwalker's narrative sandbox appeal is key in that, functioning in a "totally different" way to the likes of Baldur's Gate 3, but immersive combat is the second feather in Dawnwalker's cap. While he hopes players enjoy fighting as Coen, the focus is on grounding players in the world itself. "The meaning of immersion [is] that 'I'm there, I'm inside, I'm doing it, I need to pay attention, and I'm having fun.' Sometimes I'm just running and fighting because I like to do that.

"Those two things will show that there is still huge space for RPGs to evolve, and it's worth trying things – this action, inaction, and so on. It's also giving you this feeling of urgency in a good way that you believe in." With only 30 days and 30 nights to complete his task, each of Coen's actions could push the clock hands forward. "I believe that this difference between us and other RPGs is important, because I hope that we will be an inspiration for [developers], and before we finish the sequel, we also will be inspired by them."

The upcoming Fable game is binning the straight good and evil binary that's defined much of the series so far in favor of more complex regional reputations, meaning settlements will react to your excessive wealth or shrewdness or murderous tendencies – rather than the demonic horns and angelic halos of previous games.

Playground Games' choice to drop Lionhead's signature morality-based character morphing has been somewhat controversial in recent months, but associate game director Craig Littler gave GamesRadar+ (this website here) a rundown on the decision while showing off a behind-the-scenes demo.

Littler told us the reputation system "goes so much further than good versus evil" and lets players "build a complex, nuanced identity" that'll split the opinions of each NPC in Albion. "They all have a slightly different take on who I am and what I mean to them."

A recently-released chunk of gameplay (below) shows off some examples. One villager is smitten with the demo's hero for material reasons: he's a home owner and an entrepreneur (a real power fantasy in this economy). But another humble denizen in that same exact village detests the hero because of her perceptions about wealth and snobbery, bumping up her wares by 80% in protest.

"Every action in Fable builds a local reputation, and eventually you'll be known for the reputations you build, and everybody will judge you on their own moral view, often directly. And that's at the heart of our modern, nuanced take on morality. It goes so much further than good versus evil, it's subjective and multifaceted. One person's good is another person's evil. Even being merciful will divide a few of you," Littler adds.

Lionhead's Fable trilogy had a much stricter view on your actions. Want to fart in a villager's face or refuse to show mercy to a bandit? You grow horns. This Fable game instead acknowledges that not everyone will feel the same way about your actions. Some people won't think passing gas around strangers is grounds to be called evil. Some people will call that an average day in the London Underground.

"Really, our game is all about morality being subjective, so the benefits are kind of in the eye of the beholder and the eye of the NPCs," Littler continues.

Earlier in the year, Playground Games founder Ralph Fulton told us the game's take on your actions is "representative of how morality exists in the world that we live in today."

While longtime fans will continue to be split on the change long after the game's release, I'm interested to see how this shakes out when Fable comes out next February, since morality in RPGs has rarely existed on a linear bar since the 2000s – your Mass Effects, Star Wars: KOTORs, etc. Everything from The Witcher 3 to Disco Elysium have since reacted to your decisions in ways that didn't put a "good" or "bad" stamp on you, as much as I'll miss growing horns for becoming a greedy landlord.

Fable's first expansion will be Order of the Hero, and it's included in the RPG's $100 Premium Edition.

Toys for Bob developers have explained why they returned to Spyro instead of tackling a certain other Microsoft platformer series.

Speaking to GamesRadar+, Lou Studdert, associate creative director on Spyro: A Realm Beyond, and Paul Yan, studio head at Toys for Bob, were asked why the studio chose to return to the Spyro series for its collaboration with Microsoft. While the team has worked on the franchise before, many wondered if the previously announced collab would be a new Banjo-Kazooie or any other game franchise Microsoft owns (including Crash Bandicoot, which Toys for Bob led development of for its last two games).

"Honestly, Spyro has kind of a deep place in our studio's heart," Studdert explains, referencing work on the Skylanders franchise, as well as the Spyro Reignited Trilogy. He adds, "We've always admired that kind of small but mighty underdog story of the character that's taking on these overwhelming odds, you know, we see ourselves in that a little bit, and honestly, it just was a no-brainer."

Studdert adds that "since we made Reignited, we have had the hope to take him further," and that "we always wanted to return to the world of Spyro, to bring that character forward, and so time was right, and we left it to chance."

Meanwhile, Yan notes that the studio was a bit more confident with the idea of taking on Spyro. "Going independent was taking on massive, massive risk, right? It's taking a bet on ourselves," he says, adding: "We knew coming out of Reignited – that title sold over 11 million copies, so there's an audience that woke up to show up for that series."

"Every year, every gaming event we hear the fanbase show up, like, 'when is there going to be a new Spyro title?' even before we had even pitched this," Yan explains. This in turn helped the studio in pitching the new title. "When we came up to Xbox and said, listen, here's our plan, we said, 'look, there's a community, it's loud and consistent, they know what they want, you're here to make this game, what else do you need, let's get this thing going."

Yan adds, "I'll say that we love Spyro, love Banjo, love all these types of titles," while shouting out the recent resurgence of platformer icons through Rayman Legends Retold and Astro Bot. "We've been doing this all along. It's not a new thing that we're shifting to, but we want to carry that type of experience into the world." He explains: "We think that the world needs these types of experiences, and we want to make them."

Spyro: A Realm Beyond devs "hope that this is the first of many" new games in the series: "We want Spyro to live on for a long time."

The first delay from the absolute bloodbath that is September 2026 has happened, with first-person soulslike Valor Mortis being pushed back 19 days.

If you have been paying attention to the upcoming 2026's game releases schedule you'll have no doubt noticed that September is an absolute battle royale of titles. Since GTA 6 is pegged to come out in November everyone is keen to avoid its inevitably massive launch, and as such November currently has six other games announced. But as a result, September and October are bursting with releases, but September 24 specifically is the biggest drop zone – the tilted towers of 2026, if you will.

Control Resonant, Valor Mortis, Harvest Moon: Echoes of Teradea, Hot Wheels Infinite Rush, Dragon Quest 11 S: Echoes of an Elusive Age – Definitive Edition Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, and Silent Hill: Townfall were all set to release on one day, and then a day later we have Onimusha: Way of the Sword. However, we have our first game to move out the way in this massive game of chicken.

Speaking to Game File, Blake Rochkind, head of publisher Lyrical Games reveals Valor Mortis will now be launching on October 13. The game's September 24th release was announced during Sunday's Xbox Showcase, but Rochkind says that by the time that trailer aired, the studio knew it was no longer the release date.

"When we picked September 24th, it looked like a very, very clear date," Rochkind explains, but "very quickly it became not such a clear date." When the date was first set in place "this was before Sony State of Play, before Xbox Showcase, before Nintendo Direct, before Summer Games Fest."

However, as soon as State of Play – the first major show of Summer Game Fest season – aired, it became clear that a delay had to happen, as Rochkind explains, "As soon as Control [Resonant] announced September 24th, we knew we were moving the date." He adds, "Candidly, I think Control looks like it might be a Game of the Year contender"

That same showcase would also reveal Silent Hill: Townfall and Onimusha: Way of the Sword's dates. And while the team had "saw rumours" of Onimusha's date, Rochkind says "I think maybe if there was a world where if it was just Onimusha, maybe we wouldn’t be moving the date"

And while Rochkind doesn't want to "act like we're super-duper scrappy," following the success of the Ghostrunner games, "I said to the team today that I have every faith that Valor Mortis, if given the right space to breathe, will be your hit game, relative to what we need."

"We aren't trying to make a game for everyone": Dev knows its first-person Soulslike is weird, says it's "much closer to Dark Souls" but "we love Dishonored and it has definitely influenced us"

One of the lead developers on Final Fantasy Resonance says we're getting the throwback JRPG because the now-decreased mobile game it's based on is "too good to become unplayable."

Following Final Fantasy Resonance's big reveal, producer Keisuke Nakashima has been doing the media rounds to share more details about the upcoming JRPG. What I've found most interesting is how it's all come about.

Nakashima explains that the game proposal was first shared at the end of 2020, and the pitch was quite simple. Final Fantasy Brave Exvius – a game he previously worked on – wasn't getting the respect it deserved.

"There are a couple of reasons why I decided to create Final Fantasy Resonance," he tells Automaton. "I've previously worked on FFBE as an assistant producer, and I wanted to show all the things that make the game so great to an even wider audience.

"FFBE is packed with entertaining features from each of the numbered entries in the main Final Fantasy series. Airships and Chocobos appear, and there are secret treasure chests lying in the hidden parts of dungeons – it's filled with stuff that screams 'Final Fantasy.'

"I thought it would be a shame for such a wonderful game to become unplayable via mobile, and that's one of the reasons I decided to create Final Fantasy Resonance for consoles."

What's interesting to me is that his desire has only become more relevant with time. It was just last year that Square Enix ended service for Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, so it's no longer just the case that you only play it on mobile – you can't play it at all.

Regardless, people's hesitancy to try Final Fantasy Brave Exvius has clearly stuck with Nakashima to this day.

"Back when we initially released FFBE, we got a lot of feedback from users saying that they want to play the game as a console title," he says. "Of course, we were confident about expanding FFBE as a mobile app.

"However, there were a lot of people who told us that they wouldn't play the game simply because it wasn't available on console. I was so frustrated about it. Or maybe I should say, I felt like it was such a shame that they wouldn't give it a try. It's such a fun game, but they didn't even want to have a go at it just because it was a mobile app."

While things have, perhaps, not played out as Nakashima might have expected, it appears he's going to get his wish. Final Fantasy Resonance is due to release later this year, and for many, it will show off what FF Brave Exvius no longer can.

To be fair, it makes for an alluring package. Fans have been crying out for an old-school, turn-based JRPG in the Final Fantasy series that looks more like Octopath Traveler than the current trends of AAA RPGs. It makes for a fitting bonus, though, that Final Fantasy Resonance might also preserve an experience that others can no longer enjoy.

In a big win for JRPG sickos, Square Enix confirms Final Fantasy Resonance is being made by the team behind Octopath Traveler and more, if the HD-2D art style didn't already give it away.

Maverick Games is confident that Clutch can cut through the noise. When Forza Horizon 5 director Mike Brown exited Playground Games with a cadre of the studio's senior leadership team in 2022, the intention was to create a different type of open-world racing game. Now, little over three years of development time later, and with Maverick having been the victim of publisher Amazon Game Studios' shifting priorities, the newly independent team is finally ready to reveal its work to the world.

Clutch makes an excellent first impression. Maverick is walking a fine line between professional circuit racing and race-and-chase cinematic storytelling, where escalating pursuits and blistering getaway missions push you out into a lush open-world composite of the French Riviera. The presentation is absolutely sublime, built in a heavily modified version of Unreal Engine 5; Clutch can deliver the immersive visual fidelity and expansive soundscapes that came to define the Playground and Turn 10 Forza games, so that Maverick has been able to capture this feel after starting over from scratch is certainly impressive.

Forza comparisons are inevitable given the origins of the studio, but I get the sense that Clutch is trying to fill the void in the market left by the absence of new Need for Speed games. I got some Hot Pursuit and Most Wanted vibes as police presence ramped up in high-speed chases around the open-world, and the focus on single-player storytelling certainly echoes the Ghost Games era of NFS, from the 2015 reboot through Payback, Heat, and Unbound. I should note that Clutch will contain multiplayer elements and shared-sandbox elements, although Maverick isn't quite ready to get into all that just yet.

When I sit down with the studio at Summer Game Fest, the intention is to introduce the siblings at the heart of the story and highlight the way Clutch can shift its action between different styles. You'll hit the RK1 (a proving ground tournament for the world's top drivers) in slick circuit races, driving for social currency with the underground car community dubbed the Midnight Collective, and get involved in more considered storytelling as one of the two protagonists becomes indebted to a criminal element.

Maverick let me get hands-on with Clutch once this was all said and done, where I was able to take a vehicle out around a track for a couple of laps. It wasn't clear what sort of assists and settings the team had activated, but I can say that this is absolutely within the 'SimCade' genre of racing games – more forgiving than Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport, less arcadey than Burnout, and absolutely in that NFS and Horizon sphere of influence. The driving model is impressive, challenging without being overbearing. I'm certainly keen to play more of it and see how vehicles handle once I'm able to play around with the impressive suite of customization options available.

My concern with Maverick right now is that I think this new IP is trying to do too much too quickly. It's unclear how the game will blend its cinematic storytelling ambitions within a widely scoped open-world, a massive challenge but one I'm keen to see more of in the future. At certain moments (such as key story beats and car meets) you're able to get out of your car and slowly walk around, with one example having you investigate a sprawling mansion for a way to gain access to a supercar to steal. One chase sequence had such a glacial sense of speed that I wouldn't have known we were moving beyond 30mph if the speedometer wasn't saying otherwise.

That aforementioned supercar has a harpoon gadget bolted onto the underside of its chassis, introducing a mechanic which seems wholly unnecessary. While it can't be used in RK1 tournament races, open-world pursuits with cops and robbers will let you utilize harpoon swing points to make sharp turns around corners. "If you come across a tagged harpoon swing point, you're able to connect to it, but you still have to press that button again to detach from it – there's a skill check there, so if you stay connected for too long you're probably going to crash the car," says Brown. It's a neat idea, but I'm not sure it's all that necessary when the handbrake is right there.

And then there's the Midnight Collective races, which are run by a famous in-universe podcaster. This is where Clutch lost me. The game is set in the modern day, and is exceptionally online. In an instant, you aren't driving for pole position, but for likes. "Hey chat…" is a common refrain in this arena, as valuable real estate of the screen is consumed by an in-universe sprawl of text as viewers of the live stream comment on the race in real time. Eventually, requests start flooding in – donations of in-game credits offered for pulling off near-misses and other stunts. It's a little bleak.

Clutch is a really interesting addition to the racing genre, and there's a lot to like about what Maverick is putting out into the world. This is a confident first showing, but still I have a lingering fear that it's trying to get off the line too fast. With a long stretch of road to go ahead of the Spring 2027 release window, I do hope that some of my concerns will be allayed as more is shown to the world.

I previously reported that Clutch wouldn't allow you to change your route when you're completing a story mission in the open-world. Maverick reached out to clarify that this constraint is only applicable in the prologue of the game, but that it is an otherwise open-world experience. This preview has been updated to reflect that.

Clutch is set to launch on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X in 2027. Check out all the other upcoming games for 2026 and beyond while you wait.

Some people become experts in wine – instead, I tip my top hat and consider myself a connoisseur of asymmetrical multiplayer horror games. As an expert, I must warn you the fields that allow genre superstar Dead by Daylight and more recent breakthrough The Outlast Trials to flourish are brittle and unloving – competitors The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Friday the 13th: The Game, and Evil Dead: The Game were all discontinued or removed from sale in just 2025. But publisher Bloober Team knows this, and it seems to have prepared its upcoming Saw: Genesis multiplayer for a difficult winter.

"[Most of the games] you mentioned are dead, so, I think there's space," jokes representatives from co-developer Anshar Studios when I ask them at Summer Game Fest 2026 if they're nervous to enter a genre where ambitious new titles seem destined to be gobbled by Dead by Daylight the way Saturn gargles his son. They continue honestly: "We know this is the genre that kind of wasted big studios as well. But it's also a different approach we have. [...] We have this experimental attitude."

Saw inspiring

To this point, Saw: Genesis currently has a waitlist for its closed alpha playtest, which already has a "huge amount of subscribers" a Bloober representative won't elaborate on when I poke him about it. But he says it's an overwhelming number, and Anshar plus Broken Mirror – Bloober's new splinter studio dedicated to psychological and survival horror games – seem to be proud of it. When they demonstrate hands-off gameplay, I decide they have plenty of reasons to be.

Since the Saw: Genesis footage I'm shown is so early, my main conclusion is that this is a smart game. It borrows aspects of Dead by Daylight and The Outlast Trials to its own advantage.

Of course, there are also plenty of clear parallels to the 10 Saw movies I know better than my own heart. I realize this while gleefully kicking my Mary Janes – some traps' death scenes seem to induce the disorienting, distinctly 2000s music video fast cuts the Saw franchise is infamous for.

Unlike the movies, Saw: Genesis forgoes the straightforward explanation that Jigsaw, who's really the sadistic brain cancer patient John Kramer, does things like kidnapping suicidal people and greasing them up with lighter fluid while making them hold a lit match in a room dusted in broken glass because there's something wrong with him.

Instead, Saw: Genesis makes a historical analysis of misguided evil and brings us to World War 1. There, Jigsaw's forefather the Judge is habitually forcing three Accused into seemingly unconquerable situations involving clamps, barbed wire, and even the infamous reverse bear trap from the movies, which separates your jaw from the rest of your body like you're an easy-to-peel orange.

Bloober compares Saw: Genesis' premise and gameplay to something like Saw 2, the 2005 movie where a group of idiots are meant to work together to survive the nerve gas Jigsaw is pumping into their blood. But I also see clever call backs to The Outlast Trials. That game, one of the only asymmetrical horror games to withstand Dead by Daylight, is based on the premise that an evil corporation is conducting debauched Cold War experiments on unwitting, unwilling volunteers.

The similarly, delightfully ahistorical Saw: Genesis borrows The Outlast Trials' vintage touches, and its roster of Accused characters are carefully designed with gothic horror in mind – the "songbird" character wears a glittering dropwaist dress with a 1920s flapper's fluffy feather in her hair, while an apparent young veteran's face is uneven with long, white scars – horrible cat whiskers. They pucker and stretch as he screams.

Meanwhile, the Judge reminds me of Dead by Daylight's inaugural killer, the Trapper. Both are like deranged animal control employees, armed with rusty bear traps; in the case of the Judge, players will also have to strategize how to manipulate the level they've dropped their Accused into and plan routes and tricks to efficiently encourage them to scoop their eyeballs out with a spoon.

Though, in a unique twist from its competitors, Saw: Genesis makes its Judge – whose jaw seems to have been blasted off during the war, poor thing – physically vulnerable, and players can stab him to Hell if they plan correctly. I also notice and appreciate in my preview evidence of the game's originality while contributing to the ridiculous Saw canon; it seems to feature a girl version of the beloved Billy the Puppet, the ghost-white mascot on a tricycle who flaps its wooden lips on behalf of its master Jigsaw. Girl Billy is similarly black-eyed and menacing, and I think the image of her and her greasy, long hair is a perfect addition to a franchise that eschews subtlety for blood smears, leg stumps, and squeaky, creepy tricycles.

In noting this during my Saw: Genesis preview, I'm also made to consider the essence of Saw – why do I love it so much, and why do I think this game does it justice? Once I go digging for it, the answer surprises me in its simplicity: excess. The Saw movies – and if this early look at Summer Game Fest is a good indicator, then the game, too – makes pain seem ubiquitous, inevitable, and powerful. It helps me process my smaller, more quiet pains; like, at least I don't need to slice bacon bits of my stomach fat to appease a crazed old man's vision of salvation.

And, though the Saw movies' vision of redemption is completely clueless, at least Jigsaw thinks it's possible. I appreciate the idea that any tragedy is surmountable. And if Saw: Genesis lets me achieve that ideal from the comfort of my TV room, where I can eat a nice chocolate chip cookie instead of being submerged in nerve gas, then, even better.

Check out our best horror games list... if you dare!

The vibes in Stranger Than Heaven are immaculate. Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio is known for building worlds with an exceptional sense of time and place, with the Like a Dragon, Lost Judgment, and Yakuza franchises being as beloved for the virtual tourism they enable as much as the kinetic combat and wild distractions that they present. So what then of Stranger Than Heaven, as it attempts to walk this fine line between being a new IP or sorts and an origin story for the founding of the Tojo Clan?

Stranger Than Heaven is certainly the sort of world you'll want to spend time in, that much is certain after I spend an hour bouncing between combat encounters in a work-in-progress demonstration. The action-adventure separates itself from prior RGG Studio titles by splitting its action across five distinct eras: Kokura, Fukuoka in 1915; Kure, Hiroshima in 1929; Minami, Osaka in 1943; Atami, Shizuoka in 1951; and Shinjuku, Tokyo in 1965. The way Stranger than Heaven lets you see Japan shift and evolve over time is astounding, each era with its own distinct visual design and soundscape.

The creative decision to let you follow a single character, Tojo Clan founder Makoto Daito, across a period of 50 years is exceptionally ambitious, and undoubtedly a key reason to dive into this adventure – regardless of whether you're familiar with the deep lore which binds the studio's other franchises, or coming in fresh because of the slickly produced trailers or all-star cast. Either way, there's a growing sense of scale to the world you inhabit as you progress across the years, and I'm certainly impressed by the fidelity and attention to detail RGG is pushing for here.

Stranger Than Heaven is the first new game from the studio (so, excluding Director's Cuts like Yakuza 0 or remakes like Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties) to take a new-gen console focus, and the decision to leave the PS4 and Xbox One behind is clearly paying off. The game isn't set to launch until January 15, 2027, but early signs point to Stranger Than Heaven being the most immersive, lived-in world that the studio has created in years… but that doesn't mean it isn't without its problems.

The reason I'm keen to highlight that release date is because it's worth noting that RGG Studio still has over six months to refine its systems and mechanics, and apply layers of polish. Time which will be needed to get its battle system into fighting shape. For context, RGG Studio largely moved away from the fluid, somewhat slapstick real-time combat system which defined the best Yakuza games in favor of a punchier turn-based offering starting with 2020's Yakuza: Like a Dragon – a bold creative decision which I don't think the studio gets enough credit for implementing.

Stranger Than Heaven sees RGG return to real-time brawling, only this time with an ambitious flourish: Makoto's left and right sides can be controlled independently, giving you the capacity to perform punches, kicks, throws, and combos by using buttons which map to corresponding limbs on either side of his body. It's a neat idea, but I'm not totally sold on the execution. I found the entire thing to be a little staid and static, complicated further by a floating camera which seems hell-bent on losing track of the action or getting caught in elements of the environment – particularly troublesome, given how challenging encounters can prove to be when balancing multiple enemies at once.

I spoke with Masayoshi Yokoyama, RGG studio head and the executive director of Stranger Than Heaven, to get a better sense of what he wants this novel combat system to capture. "We want to tell the story of Daito through our combat system. When the game starts, Makoto is quite young and he's not a great fighter – this story takes you through 50 years of his life – in the same way that when the player starts the game, they won't be that skillful with the systems either. So we're hoping that by playing this character throughout the ages, the player themselves will grow alongside the character."

"Compared to other games that we have made in the past, a lot of them are something that anyone can play and eventually get to the end without too much trouble," Yokoyama continues. "But we wanted Stranger Than Heaven to be more gritty, and for you to feel that sense of growth as you both become better fighters over time. We also wanted the left-right, left-right style of the battle system to be something that feels more realistic."

From a role-play perspective, I'm with Yokoyama on that one. The battle system certainly is more realistic than anything we've seen from the Like a Dragon/Yakuza games. Stranger Than Heaven is more grounded and gritty, particularly with the way it handles attack combinations between enemy heads and elements of the environment, and the use of various melee weapons to help give you an edge.

But, having played through three separate encounters in three different ages, I never really got the sense that Makoto's fighting style or abilities had grown over time. I'm keen to see whether this changes by the time Stranger Than Heaven lands next year, as it's clear that there's something pretty special in here – but first impressions are of a system that's more button-bash than kinesthetic brawler.

The subtitle of Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis implies a lot beyond the scope of Lara Croft's quest to find the lost city. The developers at Crystal Dynamics and Flying Wild Hog have, themselves, had to reckon with the legacy of one of the most iconic characters and franchises in video games. After playing the game for myself and speaking with some of those devs at Summer Game Fest, I'm fully on board for their interpretation of this classic adventure – even as I'm equally certain that Legacy of Atlantis really needed its delay into 2027.

Legacy of Atlantis serves as a bridge between two different versions of the Tomb Raider franchise. On one end, you have the puzzle- and exploration-focused original series, and on the other you have the more cinematic, action-heavy survivor trilogy. This new game remakes Lara's original adventure, yes, but closes the distance between the two visions of the franchise – and is built as a jumping-on point for entirely new players.

The Tomb Raider legend

It's both an "incredible honor" and a "crushing responsibility" to be revisiting this story, experience director Jeff Adams says with a laugh. "We've been working hard to make sure that we're delivering something that feels faithful to fans who may have experienced this adventure in the past, but we're also really excited for a lot of new players who maybe have never played Tomb Raider before to get a chance to see stuff that they might find really enjoyable."

While at Summer Game Fest, I play Legacy of Atlantis's take on The Lost Valley. That's one of the original game's most memorable levels, where you need to collect a series of cogs to unlock an ancient mechanism to move forward, and then you fight a bunch of dinosaurs. That basic outline is the same now as it was then, but only in the broad strokes – the entire level layout and flow is completely different, but that original spirit is still in place.

In contrast to the survivor trilogy, Legacy of Atlantis seems to be much truer to the puzzle-heavy spirit of the original – something I've very much missed from the series. There are multiple paths to explore, room in which to get a little lost, and a fair few collectables to uncover. Lara's equipped with a scanner that'll give you some hints toward interactable objects, but you are encouraged to actually figure things out for yourself.

"I think we tend to learn a lot from every Tomb Raider that we make," game director Raul Siqueira explains. "Obviously, the survivor trilogy was way more focused on the action component of it. There was a lot more combat than previous games. But fundamentally we believe that the core of a good Tomb Raider game is the balance between puzzles, combat, and traversal."

That's why Legacy of Atlantis hearkens back to what the devs refer to as the "cerebral" pace of the original, but they have worked to make the combat feel like more than an afterthought. "We knew that we didn't want to put too much emphasis on it," Siqueira explains. "At the same time we wanted combat to have depth."

When you're beset by velociraptors, you'll need to dodge out of the way of their attacks with well-timed acrobatic rolls as you rain dual pistol fire on them. That sounds basic, but it feels very good, and the way Lara can leap out of the way of attacks has a similar pace to the jumps you would've been making in the original game. Just, you know, with a little more precision and a lot less flailing. Well-timed dodges let you build up a focus meter which you can expend to get a bit of bullet time and take down enemies quickly.

So what's that delay-worthy problem? The controls. Where the OG Tomb Raider relied on very precise, very rigid movement, this is a post-Uncharted adventure game, just like the survivor trilogy, where you magnetize to ledges and have pretty generous leeway to make your jumps. Until, that is, I find myself awkwardly shimmying back and forth trying to find the precise spot where I can grab the next handhold, or fall imperceptibly out of position of a grappling point, or get stuck in the ground, or touch a wall during an escape from a T-Rex and get jump-scared by an instant death as Lara is swallowed up.

There's plenty of time for these issues to be fixed before launch, but they were pervasive enough to really tamp down on my enjoyment of the demo. Legacy of Atlantis is stunningly gorgeous, but the majesty of its visual presentation quickly fades when you're confronted by – and I apologize for the word I'm about to use – this amount of jank.

Many individual aspects of Legacy of Atlantis are thoroughly impressive – the visual design, the emphasis on puzzles, and the expanded combat system – which is why I'm praying that the basic playability problems can be polished out by launch. There's an excellent foundation here, and I really want this version of Lara's legacy to stand strong.

Here's hoping Legacy of Atlantis can join the ranks of the best Tomb Raider games.

Square Enix has confirmed that Final Fantasy Resonance is being made by Team Asano, which is rather excellent news if you enjoy the likes of Octopath Traveler, Bravely Default, and the latest Dragon Quest HD-2D remakes of games one to three.

Following the new Final Fantasy game's big reveal at the latest Nintendo Direct – you can see everything announced at said Nintendo Direct here – Square Enix kicked off a good ol' livestream to share more about the upcoming game.

While Final Fantasy Resonance's HD-2D art style might have been a giveaway, Square Enix confirms that the game is indeed being made by Team Asano. In fact, Tomoya Asano is serving as an executive producer on this one.

Also spotted by the ever-reliable Genki on Twitter, Final Fantasy Resonance producer Keisuke Nakashima says it'll take you 30-40 hours to complete the JRPG, though completionists can expect to spend up to 80 hours on this one. We've also got a glimpse of the open-world map, Chocobo riding, and flying an airship.

While it's only been a few days since the reveal, some excitement for Final Fantasy Resonance has been sticking around GamesRadar+ towers. My colleague Austin called the JRPG "the one Final Fantasy game I've wanted for eight years," and I think the news that Team Asano is behind this one only adds to that.

Essentially, there are plenty of Final Fantasy fans – me, hello – who have been calling out for an old-school, turn-based JRPG that hits the nostalgia vibes like some of the games that Team Asano has put together. Look at Octopath Traveler or any of the recent Dragon Quest HD-2D remakes, and you'll see what I mean – turn-based combat when real-time has become the go-to, graphics that are familiar yet refreshed, and so on.

Final Fantasy Resonance has made a good start, then, and I'm interested to see what's to come. October 22 can't come soon enough.

Final Fantasy Resonance fans want the true stars of Brave Exvius, not just JRPG icons like Cloud and Tidus: "Bring my girl Ariana Grande back."

Today marks exactly eight years since Bethesda revealed the Elder Scrolls 6 teaser from 2018, and all this time later, we've seen virtually nothing else from the project. Bethesda and Xbox's silence on the long, long, long-awaited follow-up to Skyrim is remarkable, but Xbox chief content officer Matt Booty has broken his silence with the tiniest of updates on one of the biggest games on the release date calendar.

BGS executive producer and game director Todd Howard has gone on the record to say Elder Scrolls 6 was announced too early, which seems like a bit of an understatement as we approach 10 years from that infamously vague teaser, but Booty tells Variety that the decision to reveal such a massively anticipated project is one of the trickier parts of his job.

"I would say one of the more challenging balancing acts of someone in a job like mine is balancing that you want to go show the world all the cool stuff you're working on, and you want to get them excited early, but we also know that we want to wait till the right moment," says Booty. "And when you decide to show it, you want it to be the best you've got. And also that when you show the game, you're also giving them a promise of, hey, it's coming soon."

Booty seems to be directly acknowledging the aforementioned premature reveal of The Elder Scrolls 6 here. With every day that passes without a significant update on the game, the big green elephant in the room at Xbox gradually swells, as does frustration from the RPG community who's been waiting almost a decade. That said, Booty assures that what he's seen from gameplay footage will be worth the wait.

"I can tell you, having visited Bethesda and sat with Todd and seen 'Elder Scrolls' playing, it looks amazing, and it's coming along well," he says. "And we'll make sure to announce it and really reveal it at the right time."

"The majority of this building is working on The Elder Scrolls 6": Todd Howard says Bethesda's full focus is on the RPG it announced in 2018, and "it's so different than Starfield, so different than Fallout"

Spyro: A Realm Reborn studio Toys for Bob, which created the Skylanders series and later served as co-developer on Call of Duty under Xbox, went independent from Microsoft to focus on projects it's passionate about, says studio head Paul Yan.

Microsoft acquired longtime Toys for Bob parent company Activision Blizzard in a historic $69 billion deal in 2023, officially bringing the Skylanders developer under Xbox's umbrella. After years of supporting Call of Duty development under Activision, and later under Xbox, Toys for Bob struck a deal with Microsoft to go independent in 2024. Several weeks later, it said it reached an agreement with Xbox to publish its next game, and as recently as this month that game was revealed to be a new Spyro game.

With all of that context in mind, Toys for Bob's big plan seems to have finally come into view: go independent, get back to work on the games it's best known for, and still have the financial backing of Xbox. At least, that's how Yan makes it sound in an interview with GamesRadar+ for Summer Game Fest 2026.

"During this timeline, Covid hit and the world turned upside down – there were many, many changes that happened. One of the changes at the company was that there was a corporate mandate to support the large blockbuster IPs – Warzone, Modern Warfare, Overwatch 2, just to name a few," Yan explains.

"So, Toys for Bob actually shifted into a support structure in order to support those teams, those initiatives, those games, those updates, those features, and we learned a ton. We spread out into territories that we weren't familiar with, or at least hadn't spent a ton of time with. We learned a lot."

Ultimately, Yan says the team at Toys for Bob remains "very proud" of the work it did under Activision and Xbox, "but also, if we're honest with ourselves, we were just straying too far off from the types of games that we're passionate about – the types of games that we're known for. So we knew in the back of our mind, in that period, we wanted to get back to this somehow."

Yan adds that Toys for Bob was afforded plenty of time to "soul search" during Microsoft's long, complicated, legally messy acquisition of Activision Blizzard in 2023. At some point, the studio decided it wanted to get back to series like Spyro and Crash Bandicoot, which it had previously been given control of under Activision, and that's when it approached Microsoft with "a really bold plan."

"What we asked for, is that the Toys for Bob would buy back our independence and take back creative control of the kinds of projects that we can focus on, the financial control, the organizational control, and spin off as a separate company, in order to get back to the games we were known for, and also to preserve the tight-knit team, and all the long tenure that we've built up over the years," says Yan.

Now that that's all sorted out and everyone's happy, Toys for Bob is working on Spyro: A Realm Reborn with a spring 2027 release window on Xbox Series X/S, PS5, Switch 2, and PC.

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