The interminable wait for a Cyberpunk 2077 sequel continues, but at least we have Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 to fill the void. A collaboration between digital worldbuilders CD Projekt Red and acclaimed Japanese animation house Studio Trigger, this follow-up to 2022's inaugural season of anime features an entirely new cast of characters navigating the same unforgiving Corpo-ruled world. And though nothing here can quite top the impact of David's tragic arc in season 1, Edgerunners 2 is another nova Night City story.

Four years in the making, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 can't be dinged for a lack of ambition. Orbiting a quartet of interconnected protagonists, at times it can feel like multiple seasons of TV in one. The closest to a lead is D. (Nazeeh Tarsha) – a spiky-haired netrunner who's out for revenge on those responsible for the massacre of his nomad tribe. Early on, he meets Roman (Valeria Rodriguez), a young wannabe filmmaker who champions analogue photography over BDs, and knows a great subject when he sees one.

Then there's Talia (Kimoy Lee), a gravely ill young woman who has progressively replaced each failing body part with chrome, and is now more machine than human. Her story dovetails with that of Weak Kingsley (Clancy Brown), a former Edgerunner who went cyberpsycho and had all his upgrades stripped. King, as he's otherwise known, was once close with Talia's mother, Avida (Cesili Williams), and makes saving the self-destructive Talia his redemptive mission.

Perhaps most intriguing of all, there's Capri (Brittany Lauda) – a mysterious, impossibly powerful digital construct that anyone and everyone wants control over, including Kang Tao corpo Kiril Yang (Daniel Wu), who also happens to be Talia's father. Unlike season 1's speed-enhancing Sandevistan, Capri is more than mere MacGuffin; she is unpredictable, revels in chaos, and has a history waiting to be unearthed that will be of particular interest to 2077 players.

Doom and chooms

For the most part, this more ambitious structure works. While it sometimes lacks the propulsion and greater intimacy that comes with following a single central character's journey across 10 episodes, there is a more diverse variety of story threads being woven here. D.'s revenge mission closely mirrors the escalating stakes of season one, delivering on the requisite spectacle and sense of impending doom, but Roman, King and Talia all offer very different flavors. Talia's thread, in particular, is deeply somber and sad, as she reckons with her failing body after maxing out her cyberware capacity. Likewise, King, once a legend, but with nothing else to live for anymore, ties his fate to Talia's in a way that is tender and caring – a rare glimmer of hope and decency in a cruel world.

Roman is the least successful of the four and more of a storytelling device there to connect the other protagonists, rather than a memorable character in his own right. Though ostensibly a coming-of-age story for the young documentarian, who finds himself in way over his head as D.'s public rampage escalates, more often than not he's simply a witness to proceedings, rather than an active participant.

If there's a downside to this structure, it's that D. and Roman's story is siloed off from Talia and King's for much of the season, with fairly minimal overlap. But as their paths fully converge in the final episodes, the long wait is paid off. It would have been easy for all involved to re-run David's story, perhaps with a different outcome, but Edgerunners 2 deserves credit for not simply rehashing its predecessor's winning formula.

Chrome is where the heart is

Where Edgerunners excels, once again, is its sublime animation. Studio Trigger has outdone itself here; it's an even more impressive and creative rendering of CDPR's world than the first go-round. The ultra-stylized character designs are distinct and full of personality, action is eye-poppingly fluid and dynamic, while fans of the game will revel in its recreation of familiar locales from across Night City. You'll almost certainly want to pick up a controller and (re)visit them yourself after rolling credits (which is exactly what the team at Studio Trigger did).

Netflix and co. have shown impressive restraint keeping Capri out of trailers, as she's an aesthetically stunning creation. Visualized as a piece of neon pink and green abstract art born of The Net, Capri has no limitations, and Trigger doesn't hold back on the chaos that follows in her wake. Indeed, as the season progresses, the scale and spectacle are more reminiscent of Akira than even David's Cyberskeleton-aided rampage. Quite what a figure as powerful as Capri means for the future of this world is a fascinating question.

What you might still be wondering is whether Edgerunners 2 continues the story of Lucy or dearly departed David Martinez from the first season. That is best discovered by watching, but there are connections – some overt (and rather clumsy), others more ambiguous or thematic. But it's important to note that Edgerunners 2 embraces the anthology format, rather than positioning itself as a direct continuation of the first season, and as such you could comfortably watch Edgerunners 2 after skipping the first season or the game. Though why you'd want to is another matter.

Whether you're coming to it completely fresh, or as someone who was in on 2077 from day one (bugs and all), Edgerunners 2 is yet another victory lap following Cyberpunk's extraordinary redemption story. It can't quite top its predecessor and is unlikely to be quite as beloved as a result, but Edgerunners 2 proves there are still plenty of stories worth telling in Night City.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 releases on Netflix on October 20. Make sure you're there the moment the new episodes drop with our Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 release schedule. Or for more from Night City, check out our exclusive interview with showrunner Bartosz Sztybor.

The CEO of Silent Hill 2 Remake developer Bloober Team has spoken out on his commitment to physical games media as PlayStation pledges to cease disc production by 2028.

"If we are able to produce a [physical] retail version of our games, we would like to make them for as long as possible," Piotr Babieno tells GamesRadar+ in an interview. Joined by Tymon Smektala, Broken Mirror Games' new executive director and former Dying Light franchise director, the duo take a moment to appreciate the roots of their passion for games as the Bloober publishing subsidiary embarks on a journey to discover "the next Kojima" of horror.

"Both me and Piotr, we are from the era where being a gamer meant you are a collector of stuff," Smektala says, gesturing to the room behind him during the video call. "Like, if I could unblur my screen, you would see lots of stuff behind me and I have lots of stuff that's not even in the camera, so this is what gaming is to us. This is the gaming I know, and this is the gaming I expect. And as long as it will be possible, and as long as the big decision makers will allow us to have that, then of course I'll be into that."

The topic came up when asked about Onyx: The Dark Grip, an upcoming horror game developed by Bloober Team and published by its in-house horror subsidiary Broken Mirror Games. It'll be one of the first Switch 2-exclusive third-party horror games ever, and the very first to be built entirely for the console's handheld mode. In the age of DLSS-5 and the worrying encroachment of generative AI in game development, Babieno considers where consoles have left to go.

"We have reached a moment where you can't really do much more in that direction [of visual and auditory fidelity]. Like, okay, the game can have a slightly higher resolution and maybe better lighting and whatever, but will it make it a more engaging game? I don't think so."

Whether players even know or care about these minute changes to the lifelikeness of a game is a question unto itself. "If you even look at the stats, a majority of players are playing on hardware which is five, seven years old, if not older, so they don't even get to experience those high-level settings at all," Babieno muses. "But are they less interested in games because of that? I don't think so.

"I think, especially in the age of AI, it's actually quite interesting to start thinking about other senses." This is one of Onyx's core motivations in being a Switch 2 handheld-only game – it's "putting horror back in your hands" in a physical sense, says Babieno, using the device as a conduit for the game itself as part of the experience. "As humans, we have four other senses, and AI can deliver something for what you see, for what you hear, but why not touch? I think the physical element of gaming will always, always be there."

And what of physical games themselves – discs, cartridges, not just consoles? From a business standpoint, Babieno understands why publishers like Sony are going digital – "we do know how P&L works and that digital distribution is much easier, much cheaper, and will be more profitable for everyone," he says. But, echoing Smektala, there's another side to that coin.

"Collecting games also [made] an emotional connection between the game and me, between the studio which produced the game and me," Babieno says. "This little emotional touch is so important that, I think in some way, we would lose the opportunity of being closer with our fans [without it]. So, if we are able to produce a [physical] retail version of our games, we would like to make them for as long as possible."

Check out the other upcoming Switch 2 game while you wait for Broken Mirror's Onyx: The Dark Grip.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners creator Bartosz Sztybor has a sizzling hot take about his own work: season 1's finale, which crushed our hearts into a million tiny pieces, is a "happy ending" in his eyes.

"When people are talking about season one and the ending, the sadness, and that it is a 'bad ending' – For me, it is a happy ending," Sztybor says.

As a (painful) reminder, the first season of Edgerunners wraps up in brutal fashion: the vast majority of Maine's crew die, including Maine himself. Fan favorite Rebecca is dispatched by an unflinching Adam Smasher, before protagonist David – who had designs on visiting the moon with Lucy – bought just enough time for the remaining two crew members to flee, before being killed by Arasaka's heavy.

"I mean, in a way, because it could end so much worse," Sztybor explains, perhaps referring to previous comments regarding how an alternate David fate could have seen him become an unwitting tool for Asaka.

"Some of the characters, they are tragic personas. So it was impossible for them to have a different outcome. But in the end, it is somehow a happy ending."

While Night City was never going to be sunshine and roses, Sztybor also warns that, fundamentally, his outlook on the Cyberpunk location hasn't changed when plotting out the second season.

"I don't think my worldview changed significantly before writing season two," Sztybor states.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 2 revolves around an entirely new set of characters, including veteran edgerunner Weak Kingsley, nomad D., chrome-infused Talia, and Roman, a child who wants to film on the streets of Night City. Will they break us all over again too?

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 2 is released on October 20.

For more, check out the new anime coming your way for the rest of the year.

Resident Evil: The Movie The Game is a fan-made adaptation of Zach Cregger's most recent big screen flick, which itself adapts the iconic survival horror video game series. An adaptation of an adaptation, if you will.

Developer Julian Zamora (chicanogoth on Instagram) recently posted about their Resident Evil fan game "inspired by the new movie," showing off a recognizable scene from the film, this time in video game form.

An early scene from the movie sees Bryan (played by the ever charismatic Austin Abrams) seek refuge in a middle-of-nowhere barn, as he struggles with both a snowstorm and an infected killer dog. Zamora's gameplay clip recreates that scene, with the barn in the background and a dog chasing the player character, though it's clearly earlier days.

Like the classic PS1 Resident Evil games of yesteryear, Zamora's fan game also has fixed camera angles that carefully control what's in (and out) of view. The Movie The Game is currently being built on Godot, and Zamora says they're excited to share more progress very soon.

"I'm still not sure how to do those pre-rendered flat environments from the PS1 days sadly, so yeah, it's giving more [Resident Evil Code Veronica] and I like it," they explain.

Zach Cregger's latest reboot of the Resident Evil film franchise has been a massive box office draw, outgrossing his big horror hit from last year, Weapons. GamesRadar's Resident Evil movie review called it the "best video game movie full stop" and "a horror-comedy to match the best the genre has to offer." No wonder it's inspiring fan-made remakes.

Hideo Kojima reviews Zach Cregger's Resident Evil: "It reminded me how I felt when I played the first [game]"

Red Dead Redemption and Bully are some of Rockstar Games' most defining hits - outside of the juggernaut Grand Theft Auto series, of course - but those classics almost didn't happen, according to studio co-founder and former lead writer Dan Houser.

Speaking to IGN, the former Rockstar lead explains that all-new and original games have a much tougher time reaching the finish line than sequels.

"I think there were lots of moments where Red Dead nearly didn't happen. I think there were lots of moments when Bully nearly didn't happen, and lots of other moments when games that didn't happen could have," Houser says. "There are lots of happenstance moments, or one good build, or the game suddenly comes together, that save projects that are struggling."

Building any AAA game is a challenge in itself, but new franchises in particular "tend to struggle a lot, so it's almost more impressive when they get made than it is heartbreaking when they don't," Houser adds. 2010's Red Dead Redemption even faced a "lot of difficult periods" - though the cowboy classic made it through thanks to the "core people on the team [who] were really strong, held focus on what they were trying to do, and solved the problems."

Houser recalls that development on Red Dead Redemption was interesting because the team were discovering "what the problems were and figuring out solutions to slowly unpick what was interesting about an open-world cowboy game." In hindsight, what makes Red Dead interesting is "obvious," he says, "but in real-time you were left with nothing but holes you're slowly filling."

Rockstar's Bully never spawned a sequel, sadly. Though the same can't be said of the studio's western epic - Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of the best-selling games of all time. For now, the developer seems to be entirely focused on GTA 6.

Rockstar's figured out the perfect GTA 6 advertisement – a bunch of supercars from Vice City speeding along the streets of Miami

Video games set in a galaxy far, far away are arguably more interesting nowadays than they've been for years. But what's changed? Lucasfilm Games executive Douglas Reilly says the company is now less restrictive with the Star Wars franchise and teases more upcoming games that could surprise fans.

This year alone, we've received two pretty surprising Star Wars games. There's Star Wars: Zero Company, an excellent turn-based tactics game that force pushes the XCOM formula into an entirely different sci-fi world. Then there's Star Wars: Galactic Racer, an arcade racing game from some of the developers behind Burnout. Both courted rave reviews.

Speaking to The Game Business Show, Reilly says those collaborations came from being "more flexible about, like, who we're willing to take pitches from and good ideas can come from a lot of different places."

Disney infamously signed a 10-year deal with EA that granted the publisher exclusive rights to make Star Wars video games. That deal expired in 2023, leaving the door open for smaller studios.

"You don't have to necessarily be a top five publisher to make a great Star Wars game," Reilly adds. "We have a high quality bar and we want to make sure they're excellent experiences and that means typically you work with more experienced teams than, you know, new teams who have no track record of making great things."

From here, the exec says "we're exploring all kinds of things [with] large and small partners that I think are going to continue to surprise folks who are like, 'Oh, they're doing a thing with them. That might be interesting to see how that turns out.'"

Currently, we know EA's Respawn is in development on a third game in the Star Wars Jedi franchise. Quantic Dream is still apparently working on Star Wars Eclipse, though that project hit a big hurdle earlier this summer as developers planned to strike.

Upcoming Star Wars games: Every new Star Wars game announced so far

Xbox's Halo franchise is now under the Activision umbrella, but a new report has shed light on some of the projects that were in development before the major internal shakeup.

Developer Halo Studios was essentially gutted as part of Xbox's sweeping restructure last month - only a small team remains to handle support for ongoing Halo games, events and an upcoming novel. The layoffs came only weeks after the studio shipped Halo: Campaign Evolved, a campaign-only remake of the series' very first game.

A new report from well-connected YouTuber HiddenXperia (below) now claims the studio were once working on a multiplayer game that was part battle royale, part extraction shooter, citing anonymous sources who were caught up in the mass layoffs at Halo Studios.

The game reportedly started life as the mysterious Project Tatanka, a pure battle royale game that was in production sometime during and after Halo Infinite's development. Tatanka was apparently set on a huge playable space that stitched together multiple recognizable Halo multiplayer maps.

It's claimed that Project Tatanka soon turned into Project Ekur, said to have been an extraction shooter where multiple squads would drop down onto Zeta Halo before the map would shrink like in most battle royales. HiddenXperia's sources say players could control either a UNSC Spartan or a Banished Brute (for the first time ever), and fight both player-controlled squads or the computer-controlled Flood (Halo's zombie faction) who would infect parts of the map. The Flood outbreak would also serve as a narrative bridge connecting to an eventual Halo 7. Players could supposedly choose to work together at times to fight a huge map boss - think Gears of War: E-Day's Invasion events.

Sometime during Halo: Campaign Evolved's development, it's claimed the studio wanted to instead build a more traditional Halo multiplayer game in Unreal Engine, which led to that interesting extraction shooter idea to fall by the wayside. Even that project was eventually scrapped, according to the report, as more devs had to move over to help Campaign Evolved's troubled production.

Veteran Halo lead has suggestions for how Activision could actually make "the greatest Halo game ever," and they include hiring "Bungie, Halo Studios, and other laid-off folks"

Cleverly, Invisible Inc is a balance of contrasts, a yin-yang structure of opposing forces that combine in harmony. As a turn-based strategy game, it wants you to take as long as you need to make your decisions, yet also demands precision timing. It wants to retain an element of risk in every act, but removes the genre's characteristic percentages and dice rolls. It wants you to have all the info you need to make your next move, while ensuring every mission is an unknowable challenge. It wants Roguelike replayability, without the brevity or abruptness of most Roguelike campaigns.

The foundation for all this is a focus on stealth. Invisible, a hi-tech private espionage outfit in the late 21st century, finds itself hunted by a group of powerful companies. You control its remaining agents as they infiltrate a series of corporate facilities to acquire info, money, and equipment. Keep surviving and gathering resources long enough, and you get a chance to enter the enemy's HQ and take their systems offline. Until then, you spend your time sneaking around offices, labs, and bank vaults, avoiding guard patrols and hacking security systems to meet various objectives.

The first contrast is between the familiar and the new. You start with two characters (you can rescue further operatives along the way) whose movements around grid-based locations are governed by AP, or action points. Following basic stealth protocols, you stay in cover, look ahead before you advance, and only engage guards as a last resort. But there's already another crucial resource to consider: power. You won't get far unless you remotely disable security cameras, drones, and laser grids, or access locked workstations and safes. And you can't do that if you don't maintain your power supply by activating replenishment programs or leeching from on-site terminals.

When it comes to the rules and flow of play, Invisible Inc revolves around simultaneous extremes of transparency and opacity, or information that is either remarkably abundant or completely absent. First there's what you don't know. When you start one of the procedurally generated missions, the facility's layout is a mystery. You teleport into an empty square room with one or more doors; beyond that, somewhere there's your main objective, and somewhere there's the exit. Guards could be anywhere, either about to walk in on you or patrolling deeper into the complex. You'll have to figure it all out as you move.

As for what you do know, the rule is that once you can see something, intel on it is instant and comprehensive. This is a carryover from Klei Entertainment's previous game, Mark of the Ninja, where line of sight immediately clarifies the status of objects and enemies. Here, in a turn-based world, the concept goes a step further. If a guard is visible, you can read about any armor or special abilities he has, and perceive his exact cone of vision. Use an action point, and you can even check the path of his next move. With this knowledge, your fragile but resourceful characters can assume control. Walk through a guard's peripheral vision on your way to cover, for example, and his attention will turn to that spot, giving you a window to sneak up and rifle through his pockets or escape unseen.

The simple and predictable nature of the AI is part of the game's drive to eliminate ambiguity. Even combat, when it does occur, is strictly binary. Either you have a weapon that can knock out or kill a particular guard, or you don't, and if you attack, the result is guaranteed. You never have to second-guess what the enemy will do and you never have to think about probabilities. You merely have to choose from the many possibilities laid out in front of you. Surprises only occur when you blunder forward blindly, or fail to consider what you've been told.

The bells are ringing

This absolute transparency, coupled with the contemplative nature of turn-based play, suggests cool, methodical advancement. But again that's only the half of it. The other half is urgency, pressure and panic, and it mostly comes from a single cause: the alarm level. The big twist in Invisible Inc is that while you arrive in each facility undetected, the enemy security network becomes more alert to your presence after every turn, and introduces new threats at certain thresholds – extra cameras, increased firewalls, more guards. Also, any time you get spotted, hack a booby-trapped system or use lethal force, the level jumps up even more. The longer you hang around and the more mistakes you make, the harder it is to get anything done.

The most precious commodity thus isn't AP or power, but turns themselves. While you don't have to worry whether or not an action will succeed, you must consider its efficiency. Any decision can have a vital fallout in terms of time that will alter how the mission unfolds. Do you split your team up to cover more ground, or keep them together to gang up on threats? Do you spend valuable turns sneaking around a guard, or knock him out? If you knock him out, do you drag him with you and keep him pinned down, or rush on knowing he'll soon recover and start searching for you? Do you use a large chunk of power to neutralise a camera instantly, or conserve some and do it more gradually? Do you hack a safe or facility map protected by a daemon program that could disrupt your own systems? In each case, your worst enemy might be indecisiveness, but you can't afford to be inflexible either, as conditions are in constant flux.

Choosing when to do something often becomes as important as choosing what to do, especially towards the end of a mission. The only essential requirement to keep the game alive is to reach the exit with at least one character, but if you're going to survive long-term and prepare sufficiently for the challenging endgame, it's best to get everyone out, complete your objective, and steal plenty of loot. The temptation, then, is always to look in every room and empty every safe, risking staying longer than necessary to extract maximum gains from each mission. But as firewalls increase and the guards close in, there's a point where it's smarter to cut and run.

Perhaps you have an agent crouched in a dead end, far from the exit, waiting to loot a well-protected safe. You need your power to recharge a little more to hack the lock, yet every turn you stay put the facility bolsters its defences, and your escape route becomes increasingly deadly. Maybe the rest of your squad is already at the exit, caught between hanging around to help the straggler or getting out now. Having come this far, is it worth another couple of turns to open that safe, or will it ruin everything? Few games make doing nothing feel so daring.

Crucially, the balance in Invisible Inc between stasis and timing, knowledge and ignorance, predictability and risk, is so fine that almost every mission escalates with the suspense of a good heist movie. They all play out differently, due to the random layouts. A large room with a concentration of intersecting patrols is a different proposition to a series of small rooms with stationary guards, for example. Or simple factors such as the position of the exit in relation to the main objective can dramatically change the route you have to navigate. But since you'll try to extract maximum resources regardless, you consistently push to the limit, and invariably end up running for the exit with half-a-dozen enemies homing in on your position.

These hair's-breadth victories reflect the game's final congruent dualism: the combination of Roguelike structure with the feel of a conventional one-and-done adventure. By default it teaches you how to play through its Beginner difficulty, and you could easily finish the six-hour campaign on your first attempt. Klei's gamble is that you'll want to repeat the process again and again, each time ratcheting up the challenge and going deeper into the tactical intricacies. As you do, you'll unlock different starting characters and hacking programs, each of which brings its own unique opportunities and challenges. You won't see anything drastically different in the missions themselves (although a substantial DLC package does change things up), but experimenting with different parameters keeps the experience endlessly fresh.

The game's use of permadeath is also carefully tempered, even when you get to the highly taxing Expert and Expert Plus difficulty levels. Being spotted is a problem, but there's usually a way out. And because you have multiple agents at your disposal, losing one isn't the end of the world. If a character is taken down, you may be able to resuscitate them or drag them to the exit, once the coast clears. Or, if all else fails, there's a limited-use rewind feature that enables you to take whole turns again. Sometimes you lose everyone nonetheless, and it can be hard to take when you're close to the end of a run, but at least permadeath isn't sudden death. You always have time to weigh up your options, experiment with the game's systems, and fashion last-ditch plans.

When you do succeed, perhaps inevitably it's a matter of walking a tightrope between opposites – action and inaction, attack and defence, spending and saving, safety and risk. Every decision is potentially important, and victory is rarely so emphatic that it couldn't have turned to defeat. Somehow this feels like a reflection of the game's design. Invisible Inc never asks anything of you that it hasn't already done itself.

This Invisible Inc article was first published in issue 354 of Edge Magazine. To get more like this delivered straight to your doorstep (or digital device) consider subscribing to Edge.

After 13 years on Dying Light, Tymon Smektala is keen to spot the freshest talent in horror as Broken Mirror Games' new executive director – perhaps even "the next Kojima", he says.

"I will feel satisfied and I will feel fulfilled when we will actually find a creator like that," Smektala tells GamesRadar+ in an interview, joined by Piotr Babieno, Bloober Team CEO. "I can easily imagine that we will find a creator that – a game creator working on a smaller project, but we would see the strength of the vision there, and with our help, this developer would get bigger, would get better, would get access to our DNA as well, because we have lots of expertise in making horror games. This creator could become the next Kojima, even. Like, why not?"

Those might sound like big words, but Smektala's done it before. He served as franchise director for three of his 13 years working on Dying Light at developer Techland, where the series rose to the ranks of the best zombie games of all time due to its pioneering of day/night time cycles that posed new challenges to open-world survival horror. Plus, the Bloober Team publishing subsidiary is already hard at work on a number of upcoming horror games.

From Saw: Genesis' more involved approach to the asymmetrical multiplayer to Switch 2-exclusive Onyx's focus on "putting fear back into your hands" (in a literal sense), Smektala is excited to continue the search for novel approaches to the big, bad world of horror.

"What we are trying to do is get the next Obsession, the next Backrooms, the next Weapons," he says, citing some of the biggest horror movies of the year – including one dreamed up by a content creator – that offer "A new take on horror, something that adds to the genre and is unique. That's kind of the top-level ambition: to find the next creators of horror gaming that can complete and add to what we are bringing to the table as Broken Mirror."

"It's not just pure entertainment, and it's not just about uniqueness. It's about something behind it all," says Babieno. "The best horrors are, in some way, answering the questions which are arising in society because we are afraid about something. That's why I believe that there are a lot of content creators who are able to touch [upon] horror from different perspectives, and we would like to be there."

Broken Mirror's Onyx: The Dark Grip is an upcoming Switch 2 game that was made for the handheld experience, and there's many more Nintendo-exclusives besides...

The developers behind Castlevania: Belmont's Curse know their characters are hot, they've seen your thirsty fan art, and they agree - there should be some kind of award honoring the sexiest dad in games.

When asked if he's seen the "horny" fan art that's already been inspired by their newest game - in an interview with Fall Damage - lead designer Sandro Bordier acknowledges that "it has started, it has started already - like, man, have we seen some things."

Developer Evil Empire isn't totally surprised by the lewd drawings people have already made because, well, the developers aren't blind to how their characters look.

"Yes, like we know some characters are hot. It's a choice, actually. Like it's a vibe. We're pretty proud of it. Honestly, like, we were super happy with all the fan reactions regarding the characters that were revealed. Like we really put a lot of love from the team to design them in a way that would please fans," Bordier adds.

The devs are supposedly "super happy" with the waves of horny fan art of and the general non-horny response to many of the game's characters. Reactions to returning face Trevor Belmont have been particularly heated, however.

"Like Trevor especially, we didn't realise that it would be so well received," marketing director Bérenger Dupre adds. "There should be a Game Awards for hot dads." It might be too late for Hades (from Hades) or Kranky Kong (from Donkey Kong) or Marcus Fenix (from Gears of War), but it's never too late to right a wrong.

"It's always fun to see the fan art because we know how important and dear these characters are to the fans. And we are trying to make some new, fresh stories with them, so it's always quite stressful, and for now the reception is very, very emotional," Dupre adds.

GamesRadar's Castlevania: Belmont's Curse review was almost as excited as some of those fan artists: "With enigmatic puzzles, gothic atmosphere, a dramatic anime-esque storyline, and well-paced action, this is a hugely compelling Metroidvania and a triumphant return for the iconic franchise."

Castlevania: Belmont's Curse Metacritic score is only behind the beloved GBA trilogy, Dawn of Sorrow, and Symphony of the Night as the series' best

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners animation team Studio Trigger went through Night City with a "virtual camera" in Cyberpunk 2077 to find "great spots to fit into the story" for season 2.

"That's the great thing about Studio Trigger. They're huge fans of the game," Edgerunners showrunner and creator Bartosz Sztybor explains to GamesRadar+ on how certain Night City locales are chosen to crop up on-screen.

Sztybor admits, "They know the city much better than I do," adding that he never mentions specific place names in his script – because he knows Studio Trigger will put in the hard yards by replicating season 2's camera-wielding newcomer Roman on the streets of Night City.

"[Director] Kai Ikarashi, I guess he behaved like Roman. So with this virtual camera, he was going through Night City in the game and looking for the great spots that would fit into the story. So what is funny is [that] I don't put places in the script because we know that Studio Trigger will find something perfect."

The first season saw the likes of Afterlife, Tom's Diner, and Megabuilding H4 all brought to life on Netflix, but season 2 promises to go beyond that, with players likely able to point out exact street corners and precise storefronts from the dystopian Night City.

After a recent replay of Cyberpunk 2077, I feel like I never want to leave Night City (a one-way trip to the moon aside). So, we'll be able to live out our Night City delights with a new set of chooms – Weak Kingsley, Roman, Talia, and D. – in Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 2 very soon.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 2 hits Netflix on October 20.

Need something new to watch before then? We have a preem guide on the best anime on Netflix for you to scroll through.

Marvel Rivals has long suffered with bad actors throwing around hate speech in online matches, but in an effort to clean up the hero shooter, developer NetEase is now promising "significantly harsher penalties" for severe or repeat offenders.

Like many competitive multiplayer games, unfortunately, Marvel Rivals has a problem with toxic speech being used more frequently than one would expect. In a recent online post, NetEase says it's doubling down on moderating the game.

"A positive communication environment is a vital component of any team-based competitive experience," the studio tweets. "We have always prioritized speech moderation in-game, and we continue to pay close attention to your feedback regarding toxic behavior. Whether through text or voice chat, behaviors such as insults, malicious harassment, discrimination, and hate speech not only hurt other players but also destroy normal in-game communication and the overall match experience."

NetEase says it has now "further escalated our penalties for speech violations" and sanctions will differ depending on the "nature, severity and historical record of the violation." The developer will also dish out "significantly harsher penalties against players involved in severe offenses or repeated violations."

"We respect the right of our players to express differing opinions, but normal communication and discussion should never become an excuse for malicious attacks, discrimination, or the harassment of others. Our stance on moderating toxic speech is clear and resolute. We will absolutely not treat these behaviors as acceptable simply because they are unfortunately common in competitive gaming," it adds. Hear, hear.

The Marvel Rivals developer isn't stopping here, either - it calls speech moderation an "ongoing, long-term commitment" and will "continually refine our systems" to spot and penalize toxic behavior in the future.

Many in the Marvel Rivals subreddit agreed that toxic speech had seeped too deep into the game. "I haven't played in weeks," one person writes. "The game has its fun and its problems, but what really put me off was not being able to actually use chat without players letting off their in real-life racial frustrations on other players in a Disney Marvel game."

Not everyone is confident in NetEase's ability to identify actual toxic behavior, though. Some players report that the game sometimes incorrectly flags most swear words - even ones used in compliments - as offences.

"If they have a human review toxicity instead of an AI that would be far better," another player writes.

Marvel Rivals devs try not to spoil Avengers Doomsday ahead of MCU event: "We are doing everything we can to prevent any leaks"

Rockstar Games' co-founder and former lead writer Dan Houser doesn't think his writing in GTA: Vice City was the best, but he reckons acting legend Ray Liotta is what really made the classic game's script shine.

Grand Theft Auto is no stranger to celebrity talent nowadays - just take a look at GTA 6's star-studded soundtrack - but Ray Liotta playing the main protagonist of GTA: Vice City was a big deal more than two decades ago.

In an interview with IGN, Houser was asked about what it was like working with the iconic Something Wild and Goodfellas actor, who gave a voice to Tommy Vercetti. "My writing's awful, and he [Ray Liotta] made it sound good [in Vice City]," Houser says.

"All good actors do that. The actor finds things that are not on the page. Acting is an unusual art form, but it is an art form. And when you see someone who's good at it, they're much better than someone who's just ok at it. When they're ok, they get what's in my head, on the character side. The best actors go a whole level above that, and he definitely did that," he adds.

Houser also describes how the seemingly random collaboration came about. Rockstar supposedly called Liotta's agent and offered "a chunk of money" for about four days worth of work. "We met him for dinner the night before and then did two days with them in New York," Houser explains. A couple of months later, Houser returned to LA closer to the game's full release to record more lines with him. "The first day he turned up and didn't seem into it, and the next day he came in and did about five hours and completely finished everything."

"He was fantastic at doing it," Houser continues. "I mean he brought a level of authenticity to Tommy that I think we'd have struggled with anyone else to find."

Rockstar wins without doing anything as Cyberleek retreats after meme coin crashes – GTA 6 leaker says "the leeks stop here" as if the game's not out in a month

Broken Mirror Games is barely a year old, but the Bloober Team publishing division has already managed the once unthinkable. Onyx: The Dark Grip is set to be one of the first Nintendo-exclusive horror games in over a decade, proving that the Nintendo Switch 2 really is a console for all - even us horror hounds.

Sitting down with Bloober Team CEO Piotr Babieno and Broken Mirror's new executive director Tymon Smektała, I have just one question. How on Earth did they pull off getting a game like this past Nintendo?

Through the fog

Smektała might be new to Broken Mirror, but after 13 years at Techland and having gotten to know him well over his last three as Dying Light franchise director, take it from me: the guy really knows, loves, lives, and breathes his horror. Which means he's keenly aware that Onyx: The Dark Grip being a Switch 2-exclusive, handheld-only experience is a very, very big deal.

"Nintendo doesn't work with just anyone," Smektała says. "Generally, Japanese companies are companies that you have to build trust with, and you have to prove that you are worthy of that trust. The fact that we have managed to convince Nintendo to to support a game like this – to feature it in a Nintendo Direct and allow us to make that game for Nintendo Switch as an exclusive – speaks of the fact that Bloober Team is being noticed and realized and validated as the people to go to when it comes to horror."

He's right on the money. Few studios have pulled off a reputational 180 as well as Bloober Team. The studio had been around for years, but Silent Hill 2 Remake was the catalyst for that success. The gorgeously faithful yet beautifully modernized survival horror was met with staggering praise, impressing even those who balked when Konami first revealed the Polish studio's involvement, to become one of the most important remakes in the genre to-date. For all the studio's slip ups in the past, the proof was there on-screen: Konami was right to trust Bloober Team, and now, so do we all.

But Konami's seal of approval seemed to extend beyond the publisher, bleeding into the Japanese market itself. Onyx: The Dark Grip is to be one of the first third-party Nintendo-exclusive horror games since 2014, hot on the heels of this month's asymmetrical co-op Beyond the Dark: Nightwatch.

Developed by Bloober Team, published in-house by Broken Mirror, and built entirely for the Switch 2's handheld mode, stunning 2.5D psych-horror Onyx casts the player as both a God and the person possessed by it. "The reason we are doing this for Nintendo is because I'm a Nintendo fan," Babieno grins, "so I'm making my dreams come true in some way."

But Sincere as Babieno is about his love for Nintendo systems, I suspect there's more to the deal than that. Smektała reaffirms my hunch when I ask about which horror niches the pair would like to see make a resurgence. Another Broken Mirror-published game, Saw: Genesis, fulfils one of them – social horror in the vein of Repo and Lethal Company, harnessing "the power of technology, the power of online, the power of connecting people" to deliver "a game experience that will try to play with social interactions." The other element is the interactive experience of a game itself.

"I think it would be very very interesting to find ways to trick the player, make him doubt what he's seeing on screen, make him doubt how he interacts with the device as we do with Onyx: The Dark Grip," says Smektała. "Kind of by accident, the games that we have already announced [at Broken Mirror Games] are doing that already."

Feel the fear

Onyx: The Dark Grip is Broken Mirror's chance to "put horror literally back into players' hands", according to Babieno, reinforcing how integral the hardware itself is to the experience. "I think that breaking the fourth wall is very important because new hardware, new opportunities, are giving us something we didn't have before."

With stricter ratings boards in Japan compared to those in the West and an image built around fun for all ages, Nintendo's relationship with horror games is infamously complicated. There has not been a true third-party Nintendo-exclusive horror game since 2014's Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water on the Wii U (until it got remastered onto other platforms). Getting an upcoming horror game like Onyx, even one built so intrinsically around Nintendo hardware, is monumental to say the least.

"It wasn't easy for Nintendo to deal with horror," admits Babieno. But the family friendliness ascribed to Nintendo consoles has, historically, had some wiggle room. "Eternal Darkness and Resident Evil 4 were very important to me," Babieno reflects on how instrumental Nintendo consoles have been to horror in the past.

"I would like to bring those amazing times of GameCube back, but in a new way – and I believe that Nintendo fans always like to play something exclusive to them."

Western developer, Eastern sensibilities

But did Bloober Team's success with Konami have a role to play here, too? "Definitely," agrees Babieno, and it's all to do with how Bloober conducts itself as a business.

"For us, it was never a one-shot. It was never that we would like to create a game, and that's it. It's [about] the long run, and so we would like to build not just the next successful title, but a successful and very stable company."

Putting stability and reliability above one-and-done projects speaks to a business mindset that Babieno describes as more of "a Japanese approach than a Western approach," an alignment of values in terms of how Bloober Team grows and sustains its business not around the bottom line, but around a healthy, robust image. Beliefs that Bloober, and Broken Mirror, in turn, share with Japanese companies like Nintendo and Konami.

"We are a publicly traded company, so business is very important," he says. "But I think that even more important is to keep knowledge inside of the company. If we would like to build the company for decades, not just for the next few years, we need to build the DNA of the company and the team.

"So we always are making decisions by thinking, 'okay, are we able to do this without cutting staff in the future?' Because if we need to cut anyone, maybe it doesn't make sense. Maybe we are able to do this in a different way. Maybe we don't need to make this particular title. It's always the question of how it will impact the whole team."

As Smektała and Babieno join forces to chart the future of Bloober and Broken Mirror, the pair exude a comforting confidence. It extends to protecting not only their image and those of the companies they work with, but the people involved in creating the games themselves. "We are not just responsible for those 200, almost 270 people inside of the company, but also their families," says Babieno.

"And I really like what Satoru Iwata said years ago: that if we let go 5% of our team, 95% will live with the fear that it could happen to them in the future. So we are never thinking about how to make our financial parameters a little bit better, but how to create a better future. I think that this is much more important."

Check out all the other upcoming Switch 2 games you need to keep an eye on in 2026 and beyond

According to a now-deleted listing on the Xbox Store, a remaster of 2004's Shrek 2: The Game is coming to modern platforms soon. Frequent remaster maestros Aspyr are behind this one, but now there's only really one question left: is it actually as ogrewhelmingly good as I remember?

Shrek 2: The Game originally swamped out on the PS2, Xbox, and GameCube, mixing beat 'em up action with some light puzzles, mini-games and button-prompt QTEs entirely playable in co-op. You could also control more than just our beloved, layered hero - Fiona, Donkey, Puss, and a bunch of other fairytale creatures were in the roster, too.

The deleted store page and leaked trailer suggest much of the shrektacular original remains intact, only this time there'll be support for 4K resolutions, improved textures, and enhanced UI. A new Photo Mode and Cheat Mode also seem to be part of the package.

No release date or pricing details for Shrek 2 Remastered yet, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it launch on PC, PS5 and Nintendo consoles alongside the Xbox version.

Developer Aspyr has done a good job of bringing back several old-school fan favorites that you might have forgotten about for years, but were still happy to see return regardless. Most recently, the studio remastered The Lord of the Rings: War in the North and numerous games in a galaxy far, far away - Star Wars: KOTOR, Bounty Hunter, The Force Unleashed, etc.

Shrek 2 was a fun little romp, especially with a few pals or siblings eager to make a mess in the swamp, if my dusty memories from two decades ago are to be trusted. GamesRadar's Shrek 2: The Game review from back in the day doesn't inspire much hope, saying it "only really has any merit in so far as it isn't quite as bad as some other games." Here's hoping the friendly AI aren't as useless as they were 22 years ago.

Dreamworks' juggernaut film franchise is preparing to make a big comeback soon, with or without this remaster. Shrek 5 belly flops into theatres next summer and marks the series' first big screen feature in 16 years. All four previously released films have grossed over $3 billion worldwide altogether, unadjusted for inflation.

Everyone is saying the same thing about the new Shrek 5 teaser – why does Fiona look like that?

I feel at odds with myself over the Warhammer Age of Sigmar Khazalite Holds army. This new duardin faction brings us back to classic fantasy dwarves in all their grudge-holding glory, and on the one hand, they look incredible. Actually, they feel like the best versions of that trope rolled into one heavily-armored force. But on the other, they seem safer and more familiar than the outrageously creative designs this game is known for.

Don't take that as an insult worthy of putting in your own book of grudges; I adore these models. Going hands-on with the new Army Set made me fall in love with the faction in a way I haven't since last year's Helsmiths of Hashut, and I cannot wait to paint and take them for a test-drive in battle. If anything, they only strengthen my opinion that Warhammer Age of Sigmar produces some of the company's best models – period. However, when you're used to steampunk sky pirate dwarves and underwater elves without any eyes who ride sea monsters into battle, the Khazalite Holds feel somewhat… well, pedestrian.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, of course. These may well be my favorite 'classic' dwarf models in any game. They manage to capture the species' stocky, redoubtable nature in a dynamic way, with an original armor design that still pays homage to all that's come before. (To my eye, they feel like a cross between Old World dwarves and the Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game Dwarf Warriors.) The robotic Gholems of Gazul and cannon are equally evocative, playing on the "genius smiths" trope with drop-dead gorgeous miniatures that you can tell from the off are going to look fantastic if you dedicate some time to them. The cannon is actually something of a mini diorama, which I really enjoyed constructing and will be a centerpiece for any force.

Still, that niggle remains. The fact that this brand-new faction has absorbed the previously-separate Fyreslayer duardin army concerns me as well; I admit that they go nicely together and most of the old units still appear to be available, but it makes me worry the Kharadron Overlords are next (within the lore, this is called out as an end-goal for every dwarf force to be united under one banner). More specifically, I'm concerned we're marching toward a very traditional dwarf faction for next edition rather than the wonderfully bizarre options we have now. Something will surely have to get cut if all three are rolled into one army, after all.

I can't complain about the rules for this new force, though. I always appreciate factions that tie lore so neatly into mechanics, like the Ogor Mawtribes that won me over with how gross their gameplay is. For the Khazalite Holds, that's grudges. They get supremely pissy if you take down their kin, mix up their coffee order, or insult their favorite football team, so losing troops paradoxically makes them more powerful. They're incredibly good at holding objectives as well, which makes sense for stubborn so-and-sos who don't know when to quit.

Enemies should beware both those war engines – the cannon and Gholems – too. The Oathkeeper Cannon offers a variety of rune effects to choose from that debuff opponents on a 3+ each turn in the full game and smaller Spearhead matches, while the Gholems will make short work of most infantry units regardless of which system they fight in.

That could apply to the entire Khazalite Holds army, to be honest; it looks to be a very reliable, sturdy battalion. They're slow-moving but indomitable, like an avalanche steadily and surely obliterating all in its path. I'm really looking forward to testing their mettle on the tabletop, and I love what I've seen so far… but a part of me wishes they were just a little weirder.

Want a kickass table of 40K terrain with minimum effort? After a few hours with the new Warhammer 40,000 pre-painted scenery, I'm already convinced it's an essential purchase.

• See the latest offers on Warhammer Age of Sigmar at Amazon

Whoever came up with pre-painted Warhammer terrain, take a bow; you're a goddamn hero.

After going hands on with the set, I think it's going to make a lot of gamers very happy. Yes, it looks amazing… but the time it'll save you is so much more valuable, and this is one hell of a time-consuming hobby. No matter whether you're putting together a 10-man Kill Team or forging an entire Warhammer 40K army from scratch, it's a marathon. While I think most of us would love to create a battlefield with the same level of care, there are only so many hours in a day – and scenery often seems to hit the bottom of our collective to-do list as a result. Warhammer 40,000 Battlefields: Armageddon is designed to bypass all that by providing fully painted terrain out of the box, and the result is impressive.

The idea here is simple; speedrun a full Warhammer 40K board with as little effort as possible. To that end, Warhammer 40,000 Battlefields: Armageddon pieces arrive painted on the sprue, so all you need to do is clip them out and slot them together (they don't even require glue). Don't get me wrong, I think Warhammer's claim that you can create a battlefield in minutes is generous. There's a lot crammed in this box, so constructing it all will take an hour or two at best. However, that's a fraction of what it'd take to make and paint everything by hand.

Plus, it'll look good straight from the box. While I can see some being put off by the grainy style (an unavoidable side-effect of UV printing, where paint is sprayed on and dried instantly using ultra-violet light), I think that actually works with 40K's grungy aesthetic. There's a literal grittiness to this scenery.

It's fairly low-key too. It fits the grim darkness of the far future without drawing too much attention to itself. Your models are likely to pop against this backdrop, which is only right; they're the real stars of the show.

Crucially, it's more accurate than I'd expected. While some less-noticeable details get lost, the things your eyes are drawn to look fantastic. There's a precision and neatness here that I don't think many of us would manage without dedicating hours to the cause.

Is it perfect? No. My biggest issue stems from the sprue connectors. You have to clip them off, and that obviously leaves a nubbin of gray plastic behind. But even then, many of those connections are hidden on the finished product (with the exception of rounded pieces), and the grungy nature of this terrain obscures them unless you look up close.

Listen, I enjoy cobbling together battlefields. Hand-crafting boards out of foam or 3D-printed materials and painting it all up is my jam, but even I get worn down painting the fiddly details of yet another ruined building. Warhammer 40,000 Battlefields: Armageddon lets you bypass all that effort and get a good-looking table ready with the minimum of effort.

I'll be very interested to see where the idea goes next; it's got so much potential. A pre-painted Kill Team or Age of Sigmar board? Yes please.

Speaking of Age of Sigmar, the Khazalite Holds army makes the old feel new again... but is that a good thing?

• See today's best Warhammer 40K deals at Amazon

At a time when it seems like everyone everywhere is either excited or afraid by how much AI is going to shake up all sorts of industries, it's refreshing when you hear someone say, essentially, 'eh,' but that seems to be the sentiment being expressed by Konami president Hideki Hayakawa in the company's latest earnings report.

The financial report, as spotted by Dengeki and translated by Automaton, details Konami's current approach to the rapid proliferation of AI and its thinking on the technology's potential impact on the gaming industry as a whole. The general consensus right now, which seems to be as fluid as the weather, is that AI as a tool to drastically increase efficiency is a near inevitability, but the increase of actual AI-generated game content including art and voice lines, not to mention the AI-assisted vibe-coding boom that has Microsoft's tail wagging, has the industry wondering if a line will ever be drawn. For Hayakawa and Konami, there may be no need.

Per Automaton's translation, Hayakama said in Konami's earnings report that AI probably "won't bring a significant change" to the game market. Answering specifically to questions about how AI might lower the barrier to entry for aspiring game developers, Hayakama dismissed that, too.

"Entry barriers have already been lowered by the advancements of generic game engines and the spread of UGC (user generated content)," he said, adding, "Even if AI use does lead to improvements in production efficiency, I believe that the most important factors in producing entertaining and innovative video games are people and creators."

I'm not sure how to read this one. On one hand, there's no denying the metaphorical breath of fresh air that it is seeing such a prominent industry figure downplay AI's influence, but on the other, is it strictly a good thing if one of the few potential upsides – meaning increased efficiency – to an otherwise terrifying technological advancement is straight-up bunk? As ever, there's an inherent fogginess to second-hand translated quotes, and of course most gaming execs are far more bullish on AI in game dev, but it seems Konami isn't buying the hype at the moment.

Why so many game developers don't want to use generative AI

What is Steam? Well, sure, the obvious answer is that it's an online store where you can buy and download digital games, but that doesn't explain why players are so thoroughly devoted to it above other platforms like the Epic Games Store. Apparently, Gabe Newell has a much broader vision for the platform. Steam is, really, an MMO.

That's according to former Valve writer Chet Faliszek, speaking in a YouTube video about Epic's latest updates to its own platform. Faliszek doesn't really see a clear "North Star" when it comes to the design of the Epic Game Store, and he believes that's a big part of what's holding the platform back.

"So what is Valve's North Star with Steam?" he asks. "Gabe's talked about this a bunch. It's an MMO. It's that simple. Think about Steam. There's a whole bunch of places for you to express yourself inside of there, and you can do that by leveling up. You level up your account. You get things for playing games."

Trading cards, profile page decorations, and the like are all tools for self-expression. "There's all of these elements that let you express who you are as a person as well as then MMO-ing the entire experience and leveling up," he says. "Then you have things that you can give to other people, and awards, and all of that."

Faliszek admits that Valve's community moderation leaves something to be desired, and "there's valid things that Steam should be doing to help monitor and control some of what's happening there." But those community features "give the player a place in that world," he argues.

"They give the player actual agency and import and power inside of that ecosystem, much like if you were playing an MMO and you're fighting monsters and you're pulling from dungeons or whatever. You can do all of that, but inside the game experience. So players aren't just consuming, they're also expressing themselves, but in very passive ways."

Meanwhile, Epic is happy to give users tools for self expression, but those come in the form of UEFN and broader Unreal Engine tools, which Faliszek argues require a level of effort that the vast majority of players will simply never engage with. Certainly, there's nothing on Epic to compare with the quick dopamine hit of selling a trading card for three cents on the Steam marketplace.

Faliszek was also very much not impressed by Epic boss Tim Sweeney's latest dig at Gabe Newell, or the company's bulletproof plan to outdo steam by vibe coding its launcher. These sorts of things, he argues, do nothing to sell the platform to players, nor does the promise of faster loading times when the platform has hardly any features to load in the first place. After all, it's not like long load times ever dissuaded an MMO fan from logging on.

These are the best Steam games you can play today.

Diablo 4's deeply nostalgic season 15 is loaded with all sorts of neat references to the series' history, including a whole quest recreating OG Diablo's critical path and an entire armor set themed around the notoriously elusive cow level first introduced in Diablo 2. Players were pretty quick to find out how to get all of the pieces of the Bovine armor set except one: the gloves, or the Foreshanks, sending the community into a weeks-long treasure hunt that, until now, has come up empty. As it turns out, the Bovine Foreshanks simply hadn't been added into the game until now. See, there's a cow you have to pet to get the gloves, and that cow didn't exist until patch 3.2.3 went live this week.

As reported by Icy Veins and independently verified by me, the newest version of Diablo 4 adds a cow that spawns in Old Tristram behind the Cathedral. All you have to do is pet the cow and it'll drop the Foreshanks of the Bovine. It's really as simple as that. Diablo 4 players have been tearing apart season 15 looking for the missing piece of the cow armor set for weeks, and Blizzard just casually snuck it into a patch with no mention of it in the patch notes. That's, uh, that's gotta sting a little.

On the bright side, Diablo 4's tireless loot chasers can finally acquire the full set, with this handy guide from Auscraft detailing exactly where to track down each piece. Now, depending on how you like to transmog your Diablo 4 character, you might find the Bovine set utterly repulsive or extremely cool. Personally, I'm a huge fan. It's disgusting, and I don't know how else Blizzard could've paid tribute to such a beloved part of Diablo history other than going full camp and making the armor look like an actual live cow grazing the fields of Old Tristram. I'll let you be the judge:

One of Diablo 2's most coveted items surprise-drops in Diablo 4, and it's just as overpowered as it was 25 years ago

After he prematurely broke the news at NYCC, Nicolas Cage is officially set to star alongside Antonio Banderas in True Detective season 5.

Per The Hollywood Reporter, Cage will play Henry Logan, with Banderas as Rai Garcia. Plot details are being kept under wraps for now, though we know that it's set in Jamaica Bay, New York, and that True Detective: Night Country showrunner Issa Lopez will return as showrunner... and that the new season will share some connective tissue with season 4.

“There's going to be some important connections between everything that happens in Ennis, Alaska, and the characters in Ennis, Alaska, and what happens in the new [season]," Lopez previously told the New York Post. The filmmaker entered an overall deal with HBO after the success of Night Country, which starred Jodi Foster, Kali Reis, Finn Bennett, and John Hawkes.

Cage broke the news to a packed audience at New York Comic Con, dishing on the cancellation of Prime Video series Spider-Noir. Despite the cancellation, he told the crowd, another season of television was on the horizon.

"I think I might do a season of True Detective," Cage announced to massive cheers and applause. "That’s okay that I’m the first to announce that, right?"

True Detective season 5, which will no doubt get its own cool name, is set to start filming in 2027. This means we could expect a late 2028 or early 2029 release date. For more, check out our list of the best shows on HBO Max.

I can't help but feel Nintendo is being a little too faithful with its upcoming The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake. I know I'm pretty isolated in that opinion, but with new info coming out of recent hands-on previews of the game, I've suddenly got reason to believe that Nintendo is looking out for my tastes, too.

The Ocarina of Time remake will feature some new side quests, as demonstrated by longtime Zelda YouTube Zeltik. In Hyrule Castle Town, the guy at the potion shop will now be freaking out about a lurking bug when you first meet him, handing over an empty bottle for Link to catch it. Fulfill his request, and he'll let you keep the bottle and offer to fill it up with a healing red potion.

This certainly isn't the kind of multi-stage side quest that you'd expect to have in a modern action-adventure game – and certainly, it doesn't seem that there's a journal or anything where you can track side missions – but it does suggest that Nintendo has designs on offering some things to do that'll be fresh even for those of us who've played through Ocarina of Time a dozen times over.

There's also a new, harder version of the target shooting game where you have much less time to hit the targets, suggesting that we can expect some new challenge levels in the minigames, too. Zeltik's video also goes into depth on some minor, but meaningful, tweaks to the layout of the Forest Temple, suggesting that we won't be sleepwalking through the old dungeons, either.

I was ten years old when I first played Ocarina of Time on N64, and it set me on a path to loving video games so much that they'd eventually become my job. I should be the perfect audience for the remake, but I've honestly been a little disappointed with how safe Nintendo seemed to be playing it.

I know, I know, you can't mess too much with a stone-cold classic, but I already know Ocarina of Time forward and backward, and I'm afraid trundling through a remake offering little more than prettier graphics would ultimately feel a little empty. Offering a few little surprises around the edges, though? That suddenly makes the prospect of revisiting Hyrule a lot more exciting.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time's Hyrule feels more alive than ever thanks to clever expansion and a dose of Breath of the Wild vibes.

What should an Arc Raiders TV series or movie look like? Following the slightly opaque announcement of adaptations in the works at external partner Chernin Entertainment, executive producer Aleksander Grøndal of Arc Raiders studio Embark suggests there's interest in something a little more character-driven, whereas the game is mostly about absorbing the world around you.

I spoke to Grøndal briefly about the ambitions around the adaptations of Embark's IP, which will also include The Finals, its previous, more competitive shooter. Arc Raiders is pretty hands-off with its narrative, mostly sprinkling in details through thin quests, short cutscenes, and cinematic trailers, but while letting players write their own stories and speculate about the world. That works for an interactive game, but a series or film may need something clearer to carry the story.

"I think you're absolutely right," Grøndal responds. "We feel like we have created a world that's fertile ground to tell all kinds of different stories. I think it's really interesting to try to explore that, what that would mean, and see what comes out of it. I'm pretty excited. Of course, we all have to see what the concepts are for that. But I'm excited to see how far we can take that."

Embark has its hands full and isn't a TV or film crew in the first place, but even with Chernin Entertainment taking the reins, the creators of Arc Raiders will naturally be involved.

"Of course, we will be involved in some capacity," Grøndal says. "It's important for us to find a partner that we really can trust, and that understands what Arc Raiders is and what we're trying to do, and can capture the essence of what makes this brand interesting and special. And we believe we found that in Chernin. So we will have to let the craftsmen do what they're best at, and we will come with our input in terms of how we maintain the brand perspective over time, and make sure that we kind of feel like it's coherent with our vision for where we want to take Arc Raiders over time."

Arc Raiders is known as a story generator where players fight over resources, backstab each other, and – surprisingly frequently – form temporary alliances without hesitation. But it's about the last vestiges of humanity working to survive long enough to understand and repel a machine threat that has effectively taken over the surface of Earth in the late 22nd century.

There's a retrofuturist veneer to the world that I think fans of the Fallout TV series could vibe with, and the looming mystery of the titular Arc's origins – which will seemingly be addressed in-game fairly soon – gives the somewhat Gray Goo Scenario premise a nice little hook. Which is to say: in a world where the Fallout show is remarkably good, I could actually see Arc Raiders working pretty well on the big screen if Chernin can anchor it in characters who are more compelling than the purpose-before-personality cast of the game.

Arc Raiders devs had the same debates players are currently having over PvE mode, but the "dad gamers" pushed them to try it anyway.

DayZ creator Dean Hall reckons "our industry is rotting from its core, outwards in every direction, and it has been for some time," and that rot has only been accelerated by the rise of AI agent-led development, reverse-engineering, and recompilation. "These have pushed things over the edge," he says, so he and studio RocketWerkz have prepared and shared a new, open source game engine alternative meant to help developers "break free of Unity" and mainstream offerings like Unreal Engine as providers like Epic Games dive headfirst into AI.

In a lengthy post to the gamedev subreddit, Hall explains the origins and intent of "Brutal," a free C# (C Sharp) framework that is technically not a game engine – a collection of software and tools used to make games – but can be used to make games or applied as a base to build custom game engines.

RocketWerkz's upcoming game Kitten Space Agency uses Brutal directly, and Hall says mega-hit colony sim RimWorld had its entire engine reworked by developer Ludeon Studios and creator Tynan Sylvester using this framework as a foundation.

Just this week, Ludeon Studios announced its transition to the Waylith Engine, "our own in-house engine built by Ludeon Studios. The game looks and plays exactly the same, but in our tests performance is improved by 2-4x." This new build of RimWorld is already available to players via a beta branch in Steam, and purportedly doesn't break mods.

"RimWorld isn’t the only game on Waylith," the studio adds. "We’re working on something new! It may be a little while before we can share more details, but we couldn’t resist telling you."

Hall says "their team amazingly extracted the last bits of Unity out of RimWorld to create their Waylith engine," and highlights RimWorld as proof of progress. "An established studio with a very specific set of problems can take the framework and build an engine designed around their own game, instead of spending years building the underlying foundations," he observes.

What's more, the creator of Kerbal Space Program, Felipe Falanghe, says he's used Brutal to make his next game. "I had left KSP with no rights to it 8 years prior, and had to battle uphill to do a job that was feeling more and more untenable," Falanghe says in a reply to Hall's post. Thanks to Brutal and a fresh crash-course in game development, he says his project is "very very close to being showable."

Hall is very clear about a few things. Firstly, this project wasn't just his baby; loads of people at RocketWerkz built this thing, and he says collaborators like Falanghe were invaluable. Additionally, after years in development, "we also have new people joining us from some of the world's largest game companies, bringing their experience to this effort."

Secondly, this is not a "tool that everyone should use to make a game," even if it might be dreamy for the right people and project.

Falanghe described Brutal this way: using it is like "sitting on a bar stool while everyone else using engines like Godot was sitting on comfortable couches." I'm interpreting this to mean: it might not be as big or comfy as traditional game engines, but it might be just what you need. Hall later clarified that he thinks Godot, the game engine used by Slay the Spire 2, is a great bit of tech. Rather, he pushes his crosshairs toward Unity, Unreal Engine, and Epic CEO Tim Sweeney.

"I have watched Unity and Unreal consistently fail to be accountable to developers," Hall writes. "And I think this problem could get much worse as agentic workflows begin undermining the competitive advantages that have protected established software companies.

"My concern is that as those advantages erode, the companies involved will increasingly look to extract more revenue from developers who feel they cannot switch. Whether through royalties, subscriptions, or more restrictive licensing."

We've already seen this play out in an incident also cited by Falanghe as a warning sign to developers: Unity infamously adding enormous install fees in 2023 before being bullied out of this decision.

Hall recalls listening to Sweeney at the GDC 2025 Tencent Summit talk. He asked the CEO "whether he thought Unreal was accountable to developers, particularly around performance and stability." He says Sweeney responded by emphasizing "making more demos and putting them on social media to counter people describing games as 'Unreal slop.'"

"I was not satisfied with his answer, and I continue to believe Unreal is not accountable enough to developers," Hall continues. "Particularly when it can take a 5% royalty on game revenue above its licensing threshold. I don't think developers should have to simply accept that relationship without questioning it."

Hall skewers Epic for chasing trends rather than focusing on its product or audience. "The metaverse one year, AI the next," he says. You can imagine Hall's response to Epic Games proudly announcing that it "vibe coded" its new storefront because "programming is hard."

Hall argues "you are only as independent as your tools are," so a framework like Brutal is "how we fight back."

"You can use BRUTAL for free, including in commercial games," he clarifies. "There are no royalties and we don't want a percentage of your game's revenue." All that's required to use the open-source project is proper attribution: include the copyright notice in credits, show the Brutal logo on startup, and include the Brutal notice in project files. "If you don't want to do that, we can arrange a separate commercial licence," Hall says.

There are a lot of layers to this onion. The key takeaway is that some of the most celebrated and technically skilled developers of our time – as Hall notes, Kerbal Space Program is so robust that it is referenced by actual "scientists and astronauts" – have come together to agree that the tides of the games industry are indeed changing, but rather than following companies like Unity into the AI mines, you can just make things yourself instead.

"This technology is a small step towards changing the balance of power," Hall adds. "If the tools are public, if you have the source code, and if you're free to build your own systems on top of them, you have options. And if one day we stop being accountable to developers ourselves, they should have the ability to fork the framework and go their own way. That's important to me."

"Little Tim is so obsessed with Gabe" – Ex-Valve dev not impressed by Epic's updated Steam rival or Tim Sweeney's latest dig at Gabe Newell.

The DCU's next movie, Clayface, is almost upon us, and DC co-CEO James Gunn has released a list of body horror movies to get us in the mood for everyone's favorite goopy supervillain.

Gunn took to Threads to share the list after a fan asked what they should watch, if anything, to prepare for a fleshy, goopy nightmare of a horror movie like Clayface. The list leans David Cronenberg-heavy, with Shivers, The Brood, The Fly, and Videodrome all making the list. However, Gunn also included Invasion of the Body Snatchers, John Carpenter's The Thing, Guillermo del Toro's Cronos, and his own body horror, 2006's Slither. You can check out the rest of the list below.

Gunn has also stated that Clayface is a straight-up horror movie, rather than a horror-superhero hybrid (such as Blade or The Crow). The movie follows Hollywood actor Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries), who makes the mistake of getting with a mobster's girlfriend. After they cut up his face, effectively ending his career, he decides to undergo an experimental treatment at the hands of trusted doctor Caitlin Bates (Naomi Ackie). Needless to say... he doesn't exactly get the results he was hoping for.

James Watkins (Eden Lake) directs from a screenplay penned by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini. David Dencik, Max Minghella, and Eddie Marsan also star.

Clayface releases in theaters October 23. For more, check out our guides to all the upcoming DC movies and shows and our breakdown of how to watch the DC movies in order.

There's a decent chance you've never noticed it, but most of Rockstar's titles – including the likes of Grand Theft Auto 4 and 5 and the Red Dead Redemption games – have a subtle but persistent graphical bug. Based on the early trailers and gameplay footage, it looked like GTA 6 would be no exception, but the game's most recent trailer shows no evidence of the issue at all.

The problem? Animation stutter. Both character animations and camera movements are sometimes unevenly paced, leading to a herky-jerky effect that can give these games an unintentional appearance of stop motion. If you notice it, it might seem like the game is dropping frames, but the real problem seems to be tied to the underlying RAGE engine that's been powering Rockstar's games since the GTA 4 days.

According to Digital Foundry, this issue has also been present in every GTA 6 trailer released up until this point, including the extended gameplay look. Except, that is, for the recently released launch trailer, which is completely clear of any apparent animation stutter. That's despite the fact that it uses extensive panning camera shots, where the stutter is typically most obvious.

It's possible that this trailer simply featured a curated selection of scenes without the animation stutter, but given that Rockstar made no effort to hide this issue in previous previews, that seems unlikely. The devs have, after all, made clear that they're still tweaking things up until the very last minute.

Could the stutter finally be fixed after decades of it plaguing the developer's games? I guess we'll find out in one month's time.

Still figuring out where to pre-order GTA 6? You know where to click.

PlayStation's decision to end disc production for games in 2028 has unsurprisingly led to a massive amount of backlash, largely due to the implications an all-digital future holds for entitlements and actual ownership of a library of games. There have been notable voices in the industry expressing support, or at least trying to explain Sony's stance amid ongoing component shortages and related hardware price pressures, and you can key PlayStation architect Ken Kutaragi among them.

Kutaragi tells VGC at the Game Republic New Horizons event that he understands the pushback to Sony's decision, but ultimately sees it as a necessary step to navigate difficult economic headwinds.

"I understand that physical discs have become a metaphor for 'owning' games. I really understand that mentality," he says. "But nobody thinks [physical media] is necessary for a networked device like a smartphone, for example, because people feel that they will keep their content. So it’s a mentality.

"I really understand [why some people are upset], but I don’t think it’s economically reasonable. Maybe it’s a mentality issue."

There's no doubt Sony and every other hardware manufacturer in business right now is under intense pressure to keep prices as low as possible despite an unprecedented economy squeezed by AI data centers and US tariffs, but many PlayStation users see the availability of physical discs as non-negotiable, leaving Sony and others in a real predicament going into the next console generation.

Kutaragi has no direct insights into Sony's plans as he left the company in 2007, but he says he has an idea of the company's thinking in terms of hardware going forward.

"I'm not the CEO at PlayStation anymore, but we still have some common [viewpoints]. Right now, Sony Interactive Entertainment has many people who have come from outside, like from Gaikai or streaming companies," says Kutaragi.

"So it’s understandable that by utilizing network connectivity [they may see] PlayStation as not just a game console, but also a content terminal. Maybe that’s how those people are thinking. But this has caused some friction with game enthusiasts."

I'd say "some friction" is an understatement, but it remains to be seen how Sony responds to what's become a public relations fire for the company. Some experts have suggested it's possible the conversation is evolving within Sony, but so far the company hasn't announced any plan to reverse course, nor has it shared additional details or assurances on how digital games will be handled going forward.

Fans might not "pull out $1,000" for PS6 and Project Helix if all they can offer is marginal improvements, says ex-PlayStation boss

Street Fighter star Cody Rhodes has seemingly (or accidentally) dropped another hint that he's involved with one of Marvel's X-Men projects.

“I nerd out… I’m an X-Men, I nerd out about that…" Rhodes told Nerdist, in response to what things he "nerds out about." This could be a simple slip-up, of course, and it's possible that Rhodes meant to say, "I'm into X-Men." However, there have already been a few instances of Rhodes mentioning, or refusing to mention, X-Men specifically... so naturally, the rumor mill is up and running.

Back in August, Rhodes visited Marvel Studios, then later used the X-Men '97 theme music on his Instagram story. On a recent episode of Andrew Schulz's podcast, Schulz, whom Rhodes stars alongside in the recently released Street Fighter movie, asked him what team Rogue is part of... and he quickly changed the subject.

Of course, this could all mean absolutely nothing, but it hasn't stopped other sites from picking it up, nor has it stopped fans from running absolutely wild with it. My feeling is that he may be voicing a character in X-Men '97 season 3, rather than flat-out starring in the upcoming live-action movie, though he's been a popular fan-cast for Colossus. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

X-Men '97 season 3 is due out sometime in 2027. Marvel's live-action X-Men movie hits theaters on May 5, 2028. For more, check out our list of all the upcoming Marvel movies and shows on the way in 2026 and beyond.

A planned demo for Russian roulette-inspired game Drunken Goddess Reflux, now the 65th most-wishlisted game on Steam according to SteamDB, has been canceled in large part because the developers fear someone using AI will steal their ideas and rush out a copycat.

In a Steam post, co-developer and publisher Alliance Arts, already known for anime girlfailure hit Needy Streamer Overload, confirms that the October 19 demo release will be replaced by a closed playtest with stricter rules.

Concerns around AI theft weren't the only factor in this decision, Alliance Arts says. "We had planned to release the demo publicly with certain restrictions on posting and streaming gameplay videos, but concluded that we are not currently in a position to properly handle and manage those restrictions," the studio adds.

However, the studio's inability to control how its game spreads online feeds right into its worries around AI. "We are concerned that, based on the content of the demo, works imitating or replicating this game's presentation and gameplay could be quickly produced using AI or other tools and released ahead of the game's launch," Alliance Arts says.

This decision comes amid an explosion of AI-fueled game reverse-engineering and recomps, notably following the release of Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5.

Instead of this demo, the studio will "hold online play sessions in a closed environment, open to those who have reviewed and agreed in advance to the participation requirements and the rules on posting and streaming gameplay videos."

Easy access to AI tools has enabled a rise in fast-follow games looking to cash in on somebody else's idea. Ripoffs are not new to games, but the speed at which vulture devs can turn them around has increased considerably thanks to AI.

Steam breakout Meccha Chameleon was quickly copied by an AI-aided game, and copycat culture has also seen popular unreleased games like Family Time copied point-for-point on Steam.

I keep up with a lot of game devs and dev communities, and I'm seeing more and more concerns in this vein. Heck, indie veteran Lucas Pope, known for Papers, Please and Return of the Obra Dinn, won't even talk about his next game because that risks it "getting slurped up by AI or people are gonna copy it."

Rather than Papers, Please, Drunken Goddess Reflux reminds me a bit of Buckshot Roulette. At a bar in Hell, sitting opposite an anime demon girl "who'd kill for you–or kill you," you down shot after shot hoping to drink the demon under the table. "Survive the night, and savor seven flavors of ruin," the game's Steam page entreats.

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

Wu-Tang Clan's C.R.E.A.M. is playing as you wander through the streets of Seoul. People are going about their day, the convenience stores are stocked, and the city feels alive. Then North Korean forces attack, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 gets down to business.

It's the start to a campaign that feels authentic in the way that few franchises really manage to pull off. Call of Duty is one of them, when it's on form, and I'm happy to report that Modern Warfare 4 is one of The Good Ones: it looks superb, moves at a relentless pace, and manages to bring years worth of Modern Warfare storytelling to a satisfying conclusion.

Taking to Task Force

Right now, we're only allowed to give you our thoughts on the game's campaign, and the primary way I'd describe that campaign is that it's confident. This opening level with its everyday Seoul life reminds me of the portrayal of small town America seen in 2009's Modern Warfare 2. There's a real sense of place even if in classic Call of Duty fashion it's still incongruous, letting you stroll around the convenience store swinging haymakers at the crisps as everyone chatters around you.

That confidence extends to its narrative. Somehow, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 manages to take almost a decade of storylines and characters and tie it into a consistent ending to the narrative arc set out in 2019's Modern Warfare – when special forces soldiers are free to draw the line, who's to decide what's right or wrong?

It manages to do this while simultaneously cleaning the decks of most of the lingering threads from the disappointing Modern Warfare 3 (which we called "underwhelming" in our Modern Warfare 3 review). A lot of this is achieved by killing off a whole bunch of beloved characters, often brutally and without warning. Several times after a shocking death the camera lingers on dead characters to show you they're really dead and won't be returning in some of the post-launch content or a much maligned sequel Infinity Ward isn't responsible for.

Filling the void left by these deaths are a heap of new characters that I quickly gel with. Big bad Mads Mikkelsen is a lot of fun, but the standout is Lanny Joon as Ko who gives a stellar performance. Elsewhere, I squeak with delight when I recognize the voice of Luke Tennie from Apple TV's Shrinking. Most of these characters are lightly sketched out, but you're moving at such a quick pace you won't notice. Exposition is delivered breathlessly as you push from firefight to firefight, whispered in the quiet moments as you scurry around hoovering up ammo and armor plates from vanquished foes.

It's one of the most morally challenging Call of Duty campaigns in recent years, as the game pushes you gleefully to do things that don't fit with the usually narrow worldview of the series. One level has you playing as a North Korean soldier terrorizing a small village as you look for a dissident. How brutal you want to be is up to you but it's an unflinching level, let down slightly by the fact you're scuffling around the place looking for collectibles.

Price to see you

John Price, now on the run after assassinating General Shepherd in Modern Warfare 3, has grown a full beard instead of his ridiculous moustache and has to reckon with his own morality. There a few tough moments here: beating someone to death in an alleyway, facing off against "good guys" during fights through the Parisian streets, and even shooting-to-kill at former squadmates. After years of Price being the most recognizable good guy in the Call of Duty series, he's kind of a dick here, but trying to square that is part of the point.

Modern Warfare 4 has made me struggle with my own morality too, because I really wish it would relax its stance against civilian casualties. It's not a late heel turn for me, but the fact that innocents are in the middle of most of the gunfights and just clipping one results in an instant game over while enemies are unbothered has my ghillies in a twist. Have you ever tried to fire an assault rifle in fully automatic while hanging from the passenger seat of a speeding car without hitting civilians? I have, and it's pretty difficult.

These moments are rare frustrations in Modern Warfare 4's campaign, which is otherwise packed full of some of the series' most bombastic sequences to date. Several of the game's most impressive moments come early, with one highlight seeing you stalk a target through a club before you end up having to blast your way out.

One bouncer strolls towards you with the confident arms reloading motion Henry Cavill uses in Mission: Impossible – Fallout, and it feels like a smart nod. Minutes later you'll move into some rooms full of floor to ceiling screens that would feel silly in a real club but are perfect if you want to put people into a shootout from John Wick 2. It feels less like wholesale cribbing and more like the team at Infinity Ward spend a lot of time inspired by action cinema.

The highlight for a lot of players will be Stranded. The mission is an expansive playground that has you dropping in with nothing but a pistol and slowly gathering gear as you roll around the North Korean countryside. You can skip this if you want and just fast travel to the different objectives but you really, really shouldn't. You explore points of interest on foot and slowly gather yourself an arsenal, before attacking the objectives as you wish.

This is followed up by an amphibious assault on Seoul that feels like a full circle moment for Call of Duty, looking back to its D-Day origins. It works as a fantasy. Call of Duty's campaigns have always been at their best when you're pushing against something impossibly well-defended, whether that's the beaches of Normandy or the cityscape of Seoul. Unfortunately, the execution here is a little shaky and emblematic of some of Modern Warfare 4's biggest problems: if you stray too far from your commander, you're instantly killed with a tooltip popping up to tell you to follow your squad leader to exit the beach safely.

After the freeform exploration of Stranded, being strapped back into the rollercoaster ride feels almost forceful, and it's clear Infinity Ward would rather you take it slow and watch everything they've planned than let you actually play the thing.

It's something that happens again and again. The campaign is absolutely rigid in terms of following objectives. On one mission, staggering around after a plane crash with near-zero visibility, I get a game over for abandoning my team while I'm rotating on the spot trying to find them. One time I vault over a low fence to get out of incoming fire and am told to get back to the mission area. By the time my health regenerated I was looking at a game over screen again.

It's a shame, as, when Modern Warfare 4's missions hit, I'm reminded why the series' campaigns remain so important in a genre increasingly measured by online success and hours streamed. It might still be junk food – even if this is a higher quality than limp-burger-like Black Ops 7 or Modern Warfare 3's attempts – but there are glimpses here of how Infinity Ward's modern approach to a military thriller can still push further. If only they'd let me off the leash a little.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is being reviewed on PC, with a code provided by the publisher.

Answer the call by checking out our best Call of Duty games and best FPS games rankings for more to play next!

It's that time of year again - the new Call of Duty is imminent. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 arrives in exactly one week, and in chatting to one of the key developers, we learned about the cinematic influences for this installment, which include a certain thriller by the director of the newest Dune movies.

When asked about his touchstones for the tone and feel of Modern Warfare 4, Jeff Negus, the game's narrative director, immediately points to one film. "Sicario is one that I'm always checking against," he explains to GamesRadar+.

"I go, one, would Sicario do this? And two, how would they, if they did?" he adds. "That's because it's such a present, visceral, grounded experience, one where the morality is gray and where you're trying to figure out like, man, am I doing the right thing? Let alone, is there the right thing here?"

Sicario definitely lives in a world without any easy answers. Directed by Denis Villeneuve, it's about an FBI task force's efforts to take down a brutal leader of the Mexican cartel, and the story covers America's part in the web of organized crime and trade of illicit substances across both the US and Mexico.

If you haven't watched it, I highly recommend you do. Modern Warfare 4's story concerns South Korea defending itself against encroaching forces from North Korea. Different context, but there's plenty of room to explore similar themes of geopolitical agendas, government interference, and simply what the best solution is in a terrible situation.

Negus names Black Hawk Down and Zero Dark Thirty as examples of "more military" type pictures that the team at Infinity Ward are drawing on. "John Wick has some obvious presence in this one too," he reveals. "The biggest trick wasn't necessarily to find a reference; it was to try to make those reference references feel cohesive, like they're all part of the same story."

You can verify the studio's efforts yourself come October 23. A good amount of time to watch all the features mentioned.

The next Call of Duty will be another brand new sub-franchise like Vanguard 5 years ago, Activision confirms

There are several ways generative AI continues to slink its way around the industry, bringing furious debate wherever it's spotted. Masahiro Sakurai, the legendary developer who created the Kirby and Super Smash Bros series, has weighed in on his concerns regarding the tech and what he sees as the vulnerable areas.

He did this in a chat with the Japanese outlet Denfaminico Gamer, which has since been machine-translated by Google, DeepL, and so on. After spending decades making games, he considers the current problems to be quite layered. For a start, he points out that originality doesn't tend to sell like it used to. It's harder to stand out, and harder still to get people on board.

Thus, it can be more tempting to fall back on established genres and ideas, which is where, to him, AI becomes insidious. The technology only ever draws on what's come before. It can't create something new, but if your game uses mechanics that are well-trodden, then you're a prime target for a gen-AI lookalike.

He points towards Librarian, released this past April, as a prime example - you simply tidy up an old library. That kind of simplicity is ripe for AI because the base elements are easy to comprehend and retool.

This is becoming an increasingly large problem. Before now, you had asset flips and reskins that let devs copy trendy games for a quick buck, and AI and vibe-coding have only exacerbated the practice. Increasing numbers of studios are finding their greatest competition is bandwagon jumpers.

Sakurai doesn't differentiate between indie and larger studios in his observations, and the one saving grace is, he believes most of these projects will die in obscurity. That's a barrier devs have contended with on Steam in particular for many, many moons. It's hard to breakout when you're one of dozens of new releases on any given day.

There aren't any easy solutions, except to be wary and keep your money and attention for human-made games. Who knows, you might even find the next Kirby lying in wait.

Hideo Kojima might have broken up with PlayStation over Metal Gear successor Physint, but that's not stopping him from posting cryptic photos of the Sony offices

The CRKD Nitro Deck 2 has been a long time coming.

Quite literally, in fact. CRKD originally announced the accessory in December 2025, almost a year ago. Since then, the follow-up to the original Nitro Deck has experienced delay after delay, but the wait has been worth it. Just like the OG, the Switch 2 controller transforms the handheld into a more comfortable and adaptable device, equipping it with ergonomic grips, adjustable capacitor thumbsticks, and more, and the upgrades are so palpable that it makes me wish they were there by default.

That would mean putting up with the loud and intrusive rumble and having to source a new case, though, as the Deck 2's bulky size makes it incompatible with everything I've thrown its way. Yet it's a small price to pay to make Nintendo's current-gen console feel truly premium.

Design

It's difficult to look at the Nitro Deck 2 and not think "Steam Deck" but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I'm pretty privy to the look and feel of Valve's pixel-pusher, and anything that emulates its appeal is a win in my book.

They aren't twins, and I believe the familiarities are accidental as the extra length of the Nitro Deck 2 is likely to accommodate the new handheld's larger 7.9-inch screen more than anything else. Yet, I'm definitely more of a fan of the Deck 2's elongated shape, and the fact that its "Black Edition" has a retro-inspired translucent chassis by default.

There's no plain Jane where this new and improved model is concerned. The controller's transparent 'Smoke Black Edition' exists instead of a simple black alternative, and there's also a PAL Grey and White model available too. That retro-fueled GameCube-inspired look of the original doesn't exist, but I suspect that'll change in the future. The Switch 2 actually allows you to play GameCube games via the Nintendo Switch Online library, unlike the original handheld, so it would be a missed opportunity to not see a purple-blue Nitro Deck this time around.

Features

Speaking of which, the Nitro Deck 2 possesses a lot of similarities to its previous generation. It's a controller that's designed to transform your handheld into something more adept and ergonomic, but there's a bit more freedom this time around. Instead of having to deal with the finicky process of carefully sliding your Switch into the device, you simply need to pull each grip to the side. This allows the Deck 2 to extend, allowing you to place the Switch 2 inside. A locking mechanism on the back can then be turned and tightened to keep it in place and prevent it from slipping out.

The new mechanism sits on top of a kickstand, which remains a single column as it did on the original version. The two sets of mappable back peddles also remain unchanged, as does the CRKD logo that's equipped with RFID technology for easy connectivity to the accompanying app - a neat feature which I appreciated as someone who hates dealing with long-winded serial numbers.

The Nitro Deck 2 is naturally also flush with new buttons to match the Switch 2. On the left side of the pad, you have the thumbstick and the circular D-pad underneath. Rather than keeping the capture button as is, CRKD has combined it with the minus button at the top right-hand side. Pressing the upper half will activate the minus options, while the bottom will allow you to take screenshots and game clips as normal.

A Syncing button now takes the place of where you'd traditionally find the capture button on a left Switch 2 Joy-Con. Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the device, the layout is vastly similar. The plus button has also been split into two - with the upper half triggering the plus functionality as normal and the bottom being a program button. The latter is assigned to GameChat by default, but that's likely to make up for the lack of a dedicated 'C' GameChat button. Something I'm entirely okay with, as I never use it.

Below this you'll find the right thumbstick and a CRKD light-up Home button. The CRKD CaptiStick-branded Capacitor Sticks are powered by capacitor sensors, which the brand insists can provide "drift-free precision," but that's not all they bring to the Deck 2. Both are surrounded by dials, which can be turned at any moment to adjust resistance. Being able to tighten or loosen stick tension at a whim is extremely handy if you're wanting pinpoint accuracy for platformers or kart racers, and it's a nice inclusion for the upgraded gamepad.

Additionally, you've also got a set of three trigger buttons on either side of the controller. The D-pad is interchangeable with additional pads sold separately by CRKD, but most interestingly enough, the accessory can be used as a Pro-style controller. CRKD ships a plastic rectangular slab, which can be placed in the center instead of a Switch 2 display. While that means having to adjust your comfort to using a handheld-sized pad for docked gaming, it does give the new Deck 2 more appeal, though I'm still not 100% confirmed that it provides enough to warrant its $99.99 / £89.99 price point. But more on that later.

Performance

When I first attached the Nitro Deck 2 to my handheld and sent my Joy-Cons to the side table storage of my living room, where gaming accessories go to collect dust and rot, I immediately knew I had to lower the rumble. By default, it is set to max, and is so loud that it made for some very awkward gaming-in-bed moments. Having to constantly explain that you are, in fact, playing Fire Emblem and not doing anything notorious to your partner does not make for a good time. It's so loud, in fact, that it even managed to continually wake up my cat on a night-to-night basis.

You see, with Fortune's Weave, the game sets off the handheld's HD rumble whenever you are within the radius of enemies during battles. This happens a lot as you are constantly dealing with swarms of soldiers or evil possessed skeletons on any given map, but the motors of the controller don't quite have the nuance of the console's rumbling ways. They get loud and a bit grating on the ears, but you can at least adjust them through a combination of buttons (holding L + the plus button for three seconds), and toggle both the left and right rumbles separately. Thanks for that, CRKD.

Toggling the motors down to their lowest setting made my time with the Deck 2 far less awkward, and fortunately, it is one of the very few grievances I have with the accessory overall. My entire journey with the device is only really inhibited by some minor nitpicks, like the fact that it's too big to fit into my favorite Switch 2 cases, which means I'll likely have to pick up the brand's $39.99 / £34.99 (via CRKD) hardshell carrying case, or the tightening mechanism sometimes sounds like it's breaking each time you turn it. Otherwise, this made using the Switch 2 feel truly next-gen.

Using the Nitro Deck 2 feels very similar to using my OLED Steam Deck, but that's a positive for me. I absolutely despise the awkward flat backs of the Joy-Con controllers, so having two ergonomic grips to wrap my hands around feels more comfortable and natural. However, one of my personal favorite features was not the comfort but the inclusion of a U-shaped adapter.

I'm not a fan of Bluetooth, especially when it comes to controllers. While using the GameSir G8+ I feel like I'm constantly having to spend more hours dealing with connection issues than actual gaming. The wired link between the Nitro Deck 2 and the Switch 2 meant that tedium was a non-issue.

It's also handy for knowing how to align the 7.9-inch display into the device. As the Deck 2 wraps around the console, it was confusing at first to know whether or not I had it hooked up properly. There's no satisfying click or feeling involved whatsoever. The adapter requires the Type-C ports of both the handheld and the device to be stacked on top of one another, and connecting the two made the entire device feel more secure.

What I didn't like the feeling of all that much was using it in docked mode. Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that CRKD chose to give the option of using the Nitro Deck 2 as a typical controller, especially as it makes the price feel more justifiable. Yet, it feels like you're basically using a Steam Deck-sized device as a gamepad, and that is not comfortable on your wrists for Mario Kart World, Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave, or any game out there. In a pinch, I can absolutely see it coming in handy, but it should not make someone's decision to purchase the Nitro Deck 2.

Should you buy the CRKD Nitro Deck 2 controller?

The CRKD Nitro Deck 2 is cool, but I'm not so sure it's $99.99 / £89.99 cool.

That feels like a lot to pay for a controller of its type when you factor in the $49.99 / £39.99 MSRP of the original, and the fact that many of you looking for new Switch 2 accessories may have just had to cope with the console's newly increased price.

If you have the funds where $100 doesn't feel like a lot, and you play your Switch 2 day in and day out, then it'll absolutely improve your handheld mode experience. Going back to the default Joy-Con controller layout after using the Nitro Deck 2 for weeks feels like a huge step down, and the comfy curvature of the pad's form factor makes diving into just about any game feel magnificent. When I dreamed up the Switch 2 in my head way before its first unveiling, this is more what I had in mind.

But no matter how next-gen it feels, its price and some minor grievances (that rumble really had an effect on me) prevent me from giving it a full five-star rating. Should it ever trickle down to an MSRP more in line with the original, then it should absolutely be part of your setup, and I hope that happens once the holiday sales kick off later this year. Though in the meantime, I'd only fully recommend this to those with the budget to spare. Or at least to those who truly hate the cramp-inducing flat backs of the Switch 2 Joy-Cons.

How I tested the CRKD Nitro Deck 2 controller

To put the new Nitro Deck 2 through it paces I swapped out my dusty old Joy-Cons and attached to my console for a little over two weeks. Whether I was connected over Bluetooth or via the accompanying adapter, I played everything on the new CRKD accessory, from Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave, Mario Kart World, Pokemon Pokopia, and even Nintendo Switch Online titles like Star Fox Adventures and Super Mario Sunshine via the GameCube library. I also used the Nitro Deck 2 as a Pro Controller in docked mode to see how it matched up to my wireless controllers of choice.

For more on how we test controllers, check out the GamesRadar+ hardware policy.

Creating the ultimate Switch 2 setup? Check out our guides to the best Nintendo Switch headsets, the best Nintendo Switch 2 cases, and the best Nintendo Switch 2 microSD Express Cards while you're here.

Now that GTA 6 is a mere month away, Rockstar Games is upping its marketing to maximum velocity – which, of course, means driving around in Grand Theft Auto-inspired cars around Miami (in other words, Vice City).

Yes, you read that right. Folks in Florida have caught wind of some, erm, very obviously GTA-coded supercars. They're hard to miss, honestly, considering their colors. Just have a look over at Reddit, where you'll find an amusing clip of them all at a gas station in Miami, you know, just casually fillin' up the tank.

There's a Manana, Buccaneer, Tempesta, Cheetah, Coquette D10, and Emerus, as the fan behind the video posts.

And, just in case you're worried that it's generative AI, folks point out this isn't the only clip showcasing the colorful vehicles taking over the streets of Miami.

A separate thread confirms as much, with the cars seen driving around Florida, led by a Vice City Police Department car. It's entertaining to just sit back and which, if I do say so myself – especially with all the "normal" non-GTA 6 traffic proceeding around them as normal.

This might just be the most unique form of advertising Rockstar has employed yet… even when you pit it against all the wild "hints" fans spent months – no, years – theorizing about.

There's just something about seeing all the fleshed out, patterned GTA 6 cars cruisin' around real-life Vice City that you can't beat, I suppose, and I'm clearly not alone in thinking so. The replies see fans having fun with the whole thing, as they should.

One reads, "Man, they just handed their marketing director a blank cheque and told them to have fun, didn't they?" Another jests, "Is this the multimillion dollar advertisement campaign?" Further down, somebody simply declares, "Man, this is so sick."

So, there you have it. If you're a game developer hoping to advertise your next big title, just send out a bunch of fancy (extremely expensive) cars, I guess.

Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake doesn't even rate against GTA 6 and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4 as the "biggest games of the year," Activision exec says

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 (2026) will not be on Xbox Game Pass at launch, which may came as a point of frustration to those COD fans who were hoping that the company's involvement with Microsoft would mean a day-one Game Pass availability. However, that doesn't mean that it's not coming at some point in the future, as I'll lay out the details below.

When will Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 be on Xbox Game Pass?

According to an official press release from the development team, Modern Warfare 4 is not going to be available on Xbox Game Pass until "Holiday 2027," roughly one year after its initial launch and release.

Further details about exactly when in the year that will be are currently not available, but either way players can expect a long wait if they're dependant on Game Pass and don't want to purchase a copy for themselves. MW4 will still be available to buy on Xbox from its initial launch date of October 23, 2026, but not on the Game Pass subscription service.

If you want an alternative until then, there are still a multitude of Call of Duty games currently available on Xbox Game Pass to download as part of the service, going all the way back to Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War from 2020.

Alternatively, if you're less brand-loyal and just want to find an online military shooter to experience with friends, Battlefield 6 is also available for free on Game Pass.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

A month and a half after the release of The Blood of Dawnwalker, developer Rebel Wolves is cooking up a major selection of improvements to its vampire RPG. Update 1.1 will soon arrive with a long-awaited respec option, alongside animal petting, an easier difficulty mode, and well over a thousand additional upgrades.

The respecs certainly seem like the biggest addition. "Free your mind with the Draught of Mind Rebirth," the devs explain in truncated patch notes shared on Reddit. "Forget all your Swordmastery, Witchcraft, and Vampirism abilities, and use the time you spent learning them to master a different set of abilities."

In its original form, The Blood of Dawnwalker offered no respec option at all – a pretty harsh limitation in a game where your resources are already tightly constrained thanks to the time mechanic. Unofficial mods quickly appeared to offer respecs, but they were only useful to players on PC.

Rebel Wolves is also finally committing to the Can You Pet the Dog? crowd, and they're apparently doing it in style with a whole minigame built on the RPG's combat mechanics. "What happens when you merge a directional combat system with an ability to pet dogs and cats? Directional. Animal. Petting." I don't know exactly how that'll work, but it sounds adorable.

The other major new gameplay feature is an additional difficulty mode. The current "story" mode will be renamed "forgiving," and "story" will now get you into an even easier mode with an "additional combat assist."

All this launches as part of update 1.1, which is set to land sometime "next week." The rest of the updates come in the form of more general "improvements" to combat, traversal, and the camera, as well as new subtitle and frame-generation options. The patch also includes "over 1,100 other improvements and fixes," so if you're still exploring Vale Sangora, the experience is about to get much smoother.

"I'm surprised there's any backlash": Baldur's Gate 3 lead doesn't see why The Blood of Dawnwalker's time feature is so controversial, says it's "perfectly interwoven."

From special editions to new handhelds, Xbox has seen a number of new gadgets and gizmos heading its way in 2026. As the holiday season approaches, then, anyone with a Microsoft fan in their life will be looking to snap up some of the console's top accessories.

The best Xbox gifts in 2026 are split straight down the middle. On the one hand you can go down the more expensive techy route; upgrade their headset, hand them a special edition controller, or even haul in a whole new 4K panel for them to enjoy games on.

On the other, we've got major Xbox releases coming out of our ears at the moment, from Gears of War to Halo, not to mention the GTA 6 of it all. That doesn't just mean games, though, it means figures, accessory tie-ins, and art books fit for any holiday celebration.

We've got both bases covered here. You'll find the best Xbox Series X accessories we've tested so far just below, with further recommendations from the last 12 months and beyond split by price just underneath that. Whether you're stuffing stockings with $15 goodies or going all out upgrading a loved one's setup, these are the best Xbox gifts 2026 has to offer.

Best Xbox gifts 2026

Best Xbox gifts under $50

Best Xbox gifts under $100

Looking for more? We're also rounding up all the best Xbox Series X controllers and the best Xbox Series X headsets on the market.

Family Time, an upcoming game about raising thousands of children with your wolf girl wife, was recently listed on Steam after the Itch.io release of a demo version of the game became the obsession of some corners of the internet. On October 6, it was the 66th most-wishlisted game on Steam. As of October 16, it's ranked 46 on the wishlist charts and is still rising rapidly, according to SteamDB. This virality has now earned Family Time a Steam marketplace classic: a near one-to-one ripoff with the exact same name.

Family Time (the genuine article) is the latest release from developer sgthale. The short Steam blurb for the game will tell you most of what you need to hear: "Build a family of thousands of wolf children with your own wolf partner!" So far, it's getting a lot of mileage out of animal ears and a central gag which I'd describe as competitive childcare.

A ravenous "Wolf Mama" is almost constantly adding children to your family, which is good, since you can command them to help hunt animals or build shelters. However, if you fail to adequately take care of potentially thousands of little wolf kids, you'll lose the game. It seems like a balancing act of resources, which can loosely be described as a casual colony sim, though judging from the response online, much of it is also an excuse to hear little anime wolf children say "mama" and request "uppies."

Let us now turn our attention to Family Time by developer Hilly Games. Sgthale says this ripoff has already received a DMCA notice, and even looking past the name, it's not hard to see why. The copycat's Steam description reads: "You and your friends crash your car and find yourselves in the wilderness with a fox mama. Raise a family of thousands of fox children with her, and teach them how to farm, build, hunt, and more! 1-4 player experience." Even its Steam page layout is ripped off.

Hilly Games seems to have hatched a plan to combine the power of co-op with the virality of Family Time to generate infinite money, hiding behind the bulletproof shield of, 'Nuh-uh, it's a fox.' So far, it has only earned scathing criticism. Its Steam discussions page is almost nothing but threads exclaiming "blatant plagiarism" or "hey bro, let me copy your homework."

In a statement to GamesRadar+, sgthale clarifies, "It is an infringement of expression since they copied banner, description, layout but people are free to make family genre games (happy to pioneer a new era of it). DMCA was already sent but my god is Steam slow. Last update was a few days ago with Steam asking if I’d like to remove the copycat from the Steam page. I said yes and I’m still waiting for a follow up."

Amid a boom in AI-powered ripoffs and recomps, more and more game developers, particularly indies with little to no legal footing or funding, have become wary of having their games copied wholesale, to the point that some devs advise withholding details to make them harder to steal.

Last month, self-explanatory game Needle In A Haystack Simulator had to machete its way through a jungle of copycats that quickly flooded Steam like ants swarming a dropped sandwich. Needle In A Haystack Simulator creator Studio Bitdot apologized for the absolute state of the slop pouring in after their silly little game received more attention than expected.

The copycat Family Time doesn't disclose any sort of AI use on Steam, but the genuine game actually does. "AI is used for creating concept art, prototype textures, and quick mesh tests that are eventually replaced with real artist graphic designs and hand-tailored models," says sgthale.

Sgthale's previous Steam release, the chatbot sandbox game MyRobot, attracted some criticism for its "optional AI features," though the dev insists "you can host your own AI models for complete privacy. Alternatively you can use our online AI services or mix and match!" The developer's Patreon, which brings in over $49,000 a month, offers "AI tokens" for MyRobot at two membership tiers.

Why so many game developers don't want to use generative AI.

As CD Projekt Red continues to grow with projects like The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2 in the works, some industry veterans are worrying that it's all becoming a bit too ambitious to make sense financially in the long run.

Mark Darrah, BioWare veteran who was co-director of Dragon Age: Origins and executive producer of Anthem, shares those concerns as part of an interview in the Summer Eternal Anthology (as reported by Rock Paper Shotgun recently).

He first discusses the likes of GTA 6 and how its sheer size has affected the video game industry, with developers and publishers falling into the trap of hoping to make the next Grand Theft Auto.

Should some move away from that dream, the future could be brighter. "If that all goes away, then you'll get a bunch of room to make it work with titles that need to sell 3-4 million units," as Darrah says. Think Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. "That's much more attractive."

And, why wouldn't it be? "I don't want to be working on something like GTA, where if this thing doesn't sell 50 million units, it's going to lose money," after all. "That's insane."

He worries about CD Projekt Red in particular, in this context. Darrah feels the studio is now part of that huge GTA-like game space.

"Their games now need to sell 15, 20 million units to make money," the former dev says. "That's a really dangerous place to be." I suppose he's not wrong there, either. It's never easy to make that much back, even with an IP as big as The Witcher. Plus, it's not a situation one would want to be in, regardless.

I'm not too concerned about CD Projekt Red's success myself, but it does make you wonder.

Heck, the company is currently working on a downright plethora of new games, from The Witcher 4 to Cyberpunk 2 to the ever-mysterious Project Hadar, which has just now moved on from its world-building phase to some prototype testing. There are loads of upcoming CD Projekt Red games, put simply, that much is for certain.

The Witcher 4 dev is "still predominantly using people" over AI in development, says CEO, but "everybody has to make those judgments on their own"

Xbox X25 pre-orders went live right at the end of the summer and crashed out pretty quickly. While the translucent green console (at no less than $899.99) remains incredibly difficult to get your hands on - this is a numbered limited edition release so it's going to be competitive - the Xbox X25 controller is a little easier to come by these days.

That's because both Best Buy, Walmart, GameStop, and Xbox all currently have the throwback gamepad in stock and ready to pre-order this weekend. The $79.99 Anniversary controller ($79 if you opt for Walmart), is up for grabs now, with shipping at both stores set in time for October 20.

The Xbox X25 controller takes us all the way back to the golden age of gaming with a translucent green design and those full-color face buttons. It's not a new gamepad by any means, this is the same Xbox Wireless Controller Microsoft bundles in with every console and uses for all its special edition releases. However, collectors, OG Xbox Stans, and fans of that '90s tech aesthetic are still going to be keen to get this one on the shelves.

I'm not surprised the X25 controller is back in business. When stock originally ran dry back in August, I was more than optimistic that we'd see these green grips back in action before long. While the console itself is a far more limited release (nothing sounds the reseller alarms like numbered devices), the controller is pretty widely coded as a 'special edition' across retailers. That gives Microsoft far more license for another manufacturing round should demand outweigh supply.

We could still see more Xbox X25 consoles landing on the shelves in the lead up to next week's launch. As some payments inevitably bounce and early pre-order wizards get cold feet, retailers will often list new stock of hard-to-find devices in the days leading up the main event. We're at the stage now where many successful order holders are reporting that payment is being taken, so we could see more consoles back in action over the weekend.

Still, most of us aren't too happy shelling out $900 for a limited edition console - and that's where the X25 controller comes in. Personally, this is a much bigger chase. It's a neat little nod to gaming history and it's a vibe all by itself. I don't need to drop a grand to remember how Xbox used to be in the good old days, but a fresh gamepad certainly carries its own charm.

• See all Xbox at Amazon

We're also rounding up all the best Xbox Series X accessories on the market, including the best Xbox Series X controllers and the best Xbox Series X headsets available now.

While we still know little about Persona 6, some former leads on the series have given us an idea of where it should go, discussing the soul of the series at large during a recent roundtable discussion.

Appearing at games culture and arts festival The Tenth Mosaic, Persona 3, 4, and 5 director Katsura Hashino, character designer Shigenori Soejima, and composer Shoji Meguro reflect on what makes a Persona game a Persona game.

While you might think of high school drama with a touch of the supernatural, Hashino, as per Automaton, would say "chaos," as he makes an effort not to be too selective about what he leans on to depict adolescence.

Adding to this, Soejima says that "changing to reflect the times" is another important part of the beloved JRPG series, particularly in its settings and storylines. That's because it's important to avoid stagnation, and ultimately, Atlus wants each Persona game to resonate with contemporary audiences, which it partly achieves by drawing on modern society and culture. And then, you know, slappin' some Persona on it.

As for what an RPG should be in the modern era, Hashino says it's important to make an impact to stand out from the wide array of media we have available today.

Developers need to ensure the experience doesn't "end up being something fleeting" that could easily be replaced by watching TV. Rather, it's important for fans to have "something to draw on as they go on to live their lives."

Hashino rounds things off by saying his team has yet to fully realize the vision, though is inspired to pursue just that in future works. Of course, this won't be in Persona 6. As has been reported previously, Hashino is now heading up a different team within Atlus, most recently releasing Metaphor: ReFantazio.

Still, the tenets of Persona he offers give us at least some insight into what the next installment could look like. Whether or not the current Persona team abides by those tenets, however, remains to be seen. All in good time.

Persona 6 producer doesn't want "to make games for the global market," only something "we ourselves genuinely find exciting."

Once again, the GamesRadar+ RPG Club demands blood as we set out to explore standout missions in The Witcher 3 Remastered. Which perhaps makes it all the more appropriate that, when asked to write about my favorite mission in The Witcher 3, my mind immediately went to classically-eccentric side quest "The Oxenfurt Drunk".

Well, actually my first thought went to The Bloody Baron storyline, but everybody writes about the Bloody Baron, and how much is there really left to say about it at this point? But there's a small side quest I love almost as much, partly because it does so much to make me realize the thing I want to see most in Witcher 4.

Quest Log

Shots, shots, crossbow shots!

An optional Witcher Contract found and set in the titular town, The Oxenfurt Drunk has Geralt find the killer behind multiple victims drained of all their blood - gee, I wonder what esoteric horror could be behind this! The twist is he discovers in the wake of a bit of corpse-prodding autopsy that every victim was well over the limit to drive and horse and cart, leading to the realization that this particular vampire has a penchant for blood with a high alcohol content. I won't make the Bloody Mary joke if you don't.

Twenty minutes later, Geralt is drunkenly staggering around crime scenes with a dozen vodkas inside him, trying to lure out the Ripper-Tippler with a series of bawdy tavern songs and a coquettishly exposed neckline. It feels like the kind of atrociously bad idea that a D&D party would come up with, and I mean that as an honest compliment.

So yeah, it's a fun little quest – the Contracts are reliably the best part of Witcher 3, to my mind – but it also shows the one place where I think the game had so much more room to flex. Namely, in all the investigation and intelligence that makes Geralt far more than some burly hired goon.

Research and Bedevilment

If Witcher 4 is going to shake up any part of the formula – or even introduce an optional difficulty mode – as we wave in Ciri as the new hero, my greatest wish would be for something that really gamifies the intellectual side of monster hunting.

As it goes now, the usual pattern is that Geralt finds some yellow glowing tracks and follows them until there's a tuft of fur, a mangled corpse, or a Resident Evil-style lab note. Then he stares at the clues before telling the audience he's deduced that the monster is a Lesser Striped Whifflepog or whatever, at which point the Pokedex entry for the Whifflepog appears in the Bestiary as if summoned by voice command, telling you exactly what tinctures, oils and spells are needed to kick its head in most effectively.

And that's all genuinely fine, but a bit uninvolving, especially for a sequence of events that happens so frequently across the game. Speaking as somebody who loves investigative detective games and piecing clues together, I'd much rather have deduced all these things myself, allowing for the thrill of getting it right, and the potential fear of getting it wrong. Rather than tell me what I'm about to fight, give me the full bestiary from the start, some giant old tome I can flick through between fights or even fill out myself with additional player-written notes, an ever-evolving monster hunter's journal.

Then, when I find the crime scene, I can examine the clues around me and make some educated decisions, without Geralt just blurting the answer like a God of War NPC. Hmm, a nighttime attacker, a city dweller, medium-sized claws, a blood drinker… To the indexed glossary, batman! Now the Bestiary can tell me what's needed to kill a Katakan Vampire, assuming that's actually what it is and I haven't pulled the wrong conclusion from the data.

And at the same time, the unique alcoholism of this particular vamp is something I can consider accordingly as an additional element that wouldn't be in the book, but can be folded into my strategies nonetheless. Maybe I could work out the strategy to wander drunkenly around the town instead of Geralt, or perhaps lace a wine bottle with blood and leave it out in plain view, ideally under a big anvil hanging by a tenuous string.

Perhaps I'm expecting too much, but Baldur's Gate 3 really opened the door for this kind of immersive gameplay, and I don't get the sense that the creators of Cyberpunk 2077 seem very workshy.

The Monster Manual

To me, this deductive skillset is the very thing that makes Geralt a witcher, far more than any silver sword or toxin immunity. It's the space where an off-the-peg burly warrior brute becomes something more, an educated hunter who knows how to exploit weaknesses and analyze nuanced information. And with Ciri being new to The Path in The Witcher 4, her having less experience would facilitate a more involved, methodical research process. Geralt materializes in the series with most of this knowledge memorized, but Ciri is still using reference material.

Witcher 3 was always great at showing off Geralt's intellect, but clearly wasn't comfortable about the idea of gamifying it too hard, perhaps for fear of alienating or confusing the audience. And yes, it is arguably a lot to ask from them. But in a post-Elden Ring world, I don't think people are fearful of having to read between lines or make deductions, and even if not, there'll be a billion online guides to hand if it's all proving too perplexing. So if another Oxenfurt Drunk shows up in Witcher 4, I'll be excited to make that revelation myself – even if I show up prepared to fight half a dozen goblins instead.

Any franchise that lasts a number of years always winds up with a few unrealized projects, whether from partnerships that fell through or ideas that simply just didn't come together. Assassin's Creed has a bunch of them, and details and footage of another one have emerged.

This particular game was called Assassin's Creed Destiny, and it was part of a collaboration between Ubisoft and Chinese conglomerate Tencent. You might be aware these industry giants are currently working on Assassin's Creed Jade, a mobile game first announced back in 2022.

They had a couple of other potential releases on the docket as well, and one of them was remarkably similar to Jade. In fact, according to details gleaned by MP1st, Assassin's Creed Destiny was also set in China, and during the same period, taking place around 206 BCE, nine years after the events of Jade.

It would've been a full, triple-A game on modern hardware, marking a grand return to Chinese history after Assassin's Creed Chronicles way back in 2015. Jade is still fulfilling that promise, but on a different scale. Destiny was being handled by TiMi group, and we now have a smattering of images and clips demonstrating what could've been.

This definitely looks like a full-on Assassin's Creed game. You've the player character skulking around a palace during the Qin Empire. Your mission is to prevent an invading army from stealing some form of treasure. Doing so gets bloodier and messier than anyone would like, but you spend the majority of your time in the shadows, taking out soldiers and other enemies.

It looks intriguing - the architectural layouts offer plenty of exploration and the swords and spears make combat feel weighty. There's a spinning blade, somewhat like an umbrella, that seems like it would've been very entertaining.

Destiny was only canceled last year, a casualty of restructuring at TiMi. It's unknown how far along the game ultimately was, or if any of its ideas live on in Jade. There's no release window for the mobile game yet, but at least we can now look at what could've been.

Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake doesn't even rate against GTA 6 and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4 as the "biggest games of the year," Activision exec says

Street Fighter fans are weighing in on the new live-action movie, and much like the film's Rotten Tomatoes score... the reviews are mixed at best.

The film, directed by Kitato Sakurai, initially debuted to a low score on Rotten Tomatoes, but has since climbed to 45%. The audience score is a much higher 82% (which tends to be the case for live-action video game adaptations). Street Fighter focuses on Ryu (Andrew Koji) and Ken (Noah Centineo) as they enter the World Warrior Tournament at the insistence of a vengeful Chun-Li (Callina Liang).

Some fans of the video game franchise, namely the ones over on the r/StreetFighter subreddit, loved it, while others left feeling neutral or unimpressed. Don't worry, we won't include any spoiler-y reactions (so you'll just have to go see it yourself).

"Movie left me more confused than excited really," one fan wrote. "No seriously, you don't just end a movie like that, an ACTION movie no less."

"I’m with you on the ending. I was like, you’re serious? It tried so hard to bait a sequel it actually stepped on the finale," someone else said.

"I genuinely enjoyed the movie; I think it did far more good than bad," said another.

"As a video game movie though, ehhhhhh you could do a lot worse," another fan concluded.

Some fans seemed to have especially mixed reviews on David Dastmalchian's portrayal of supervillain M. Bison, with some comments saying that the actor "had the chops for it" but was ultimately failed by a "bad script."

For more on the movie, check out our Street Fighter movie review and our Street Fighter movie ending explained.

Street Fighter is in theaters now. For more, check out our list of upcoming video game movies and our ranking of the best video game movies.

With Ghost Driver codes, you add some extra cash to your bank balance, which is essential whether you're buying your first car or upgrading to a faster model. If you want to hit your daily quests and level up fast, you need the fastest car you can buy, so the more funds the better.

Luckily, there are frequent Ghost Driver codes that pay out free cash - and lots of it. With some of the rarest cars in this Roblox racing game costing in the millions, even with these free codes it could take a while to save up, so you'll need to carefully consider whether to spend or save, but whichever you choose, don't miss any of the promos below.

If you're after some more general avatar rewards to use in all of your experiences, then we've got the current Roblox promo codes covered too.

All Ghost Driver codes

These are the Ghost Driver codes you can redeem right now:

• hustleup - 20,000x Cash
• froppilive - 30,000x Cash
• Thanksfor480k - 20,000x Cash

There's tens of thousands in free cash to be had by redeeming the latest Ghost Driver codes, so make sure you don't miss out, as redeeming promos as they arrive could make the difference between your current clapped out motor and the speedy sports car of your dreams.

How to redeem Ghost Driver codes

To redeem Ghost Driver codes, first click on the Shop button on the left-hand side of the screen. Select the Rewards tab from the top of the Store menu, then enter a code into the box. Finally, click Redeem and see your cash flood in.

Expired Ghost Driver codes

• SALEEN
• THANKSFOR1MIL
• THANKSFOR350K
• THANKSFOR250K
• SORRYFORLATE

Ghost Driver codes expire quickly, so you should redeem current codes as soon as they appear if you don't want to miss out. Check back here regularly, as I'll be looking for new codes daily.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Beast of Reincarnation hasn't been around for long, having only just launched in August – but Pokemon developer Game Freak is already seemingly pulling the plug on the action RPG.

The studio announces as much in a new post over on X (as translated via the built-in tool, DeepL, and Google), first thanking players for engaging with Beast of Reincarnation. The devs then explain that their post-launch update cycle is "coming to a close" following their next planned patch on October 19.

After that, there won't be any more "frequent" updates or major patches, sadly – although fans can still share any pressing feedback.

In other words, Game Freak is closing the book on Beast of Reincarnation after only two months, it seems. I can't say I'm too surprised, unfortunately, however, considering the action RPG's shaky launch.

Heck, the game's director himself publicly apologized for it, saying he was "truly sorry" that the game hasn't "provided a sufficiently enjoyable experience" for fans. The statement came after it racked up "Mixed" reviews from critics and players alike.

Folks were dubbing Beast of Reincarnation a "bad and laughable" new IP from Game Freak, slating its awkward combat and story pacing – features the devs actually went on to promise they'd remedy.

While they did drop various updates, with the most recent having addressed some of the biggest pain points cited in reviews, the game's rating never really significantly went up. A quick look over at its Steam page tells me as much.

It sits with "Mixed" reviews over there, boasting just a "Mostly Positive" rating if you sort by more recent feedback… which, yeah, isn't great.

That's not to say that has anything to do with Game Freak's decision here, though. The studio doesn't actually give any reason as to why it's wrapping up work on its action RPG, even if it stands as one of the new games that's only launched this year.

There's no telling unless the devs speak on it, I suppose.

Here's why we think Beast of Reincarnation is a Pokémon-inspired soulslike without the cruelty of Dark Souls – and it's better for it, if you're interested.

Pre-MCU, if you polled most fans on the best superhero movies, there's a reasonable chance that X2 would be in the top 3. The 2003 sequel is a seismic step up from its predecessor, fully delivering on the promise of Marvel's mutants on screen with a true ensemble comic book movie that blurs the lines between its heroes and villains. And it could prove the perfect model for integrating Doctor Doom alongside the Avengers in Avengers: Doomsday.

X2, for the uninitiated or those in need of a refresher, is the follow-up to 2000's messy, but undeniably important, X-Men. Following an attack on the White House by acrobatic teleporter Nightcrawler – a sequence that still thrills to this day – tensions between mutantkind and the rest of the world are at an all-time high. Enter Colonel William Stryker (Brian Cox), a military scientist who has a history with Wolverine, and leads an attack on Xavier's mansion, kidnapping Professor X and Cyclops.

Stryker, it turns out, has a plan to kill every living mutant using his telepathic son, Jason, and his own version of Cerebro. With a shared enemy to take care of, the X-Men forge an alliance of necessity with Magneto and the Brotherhood of Mutants, teaming up to infiltrate Stryker's arctic Akali Lake base. Expertly juggling its large ensemble, it also manages to lay some tantalizing groundwork for the Dark Phoenix Saga – a story the X-Men movies would go on to squander on two separate occasions.

New mutants

23 years later, X2 still impresses. Without access to anything-goes VFX tools and the gargantuan budget levels of modern-day superhero tentpoles, it's a far more intimate and personal comic book blockbuster than anything you'll see nowadays, where world/universe-ending stakes are the norm. But this works in its favor; there's a lot of rich character work and knotty drama here among the memorable spectacle.

Nightcrawler alone remains one of the coolest comic book characters ever brought to the screen, his powerset perfectly suited to dazzling in live action. The attack on Xavier's mansion allows Wolverine to let rip in supremely satisfying fashion, followed by a brutal showdown with Lady Deathstrike that betters any of the awkward adamantium-clawed action in Deadpool & Wolverine. And Magneto's ingenious escape from his plastic prison is a spectacularly well-staged sequence that's better for its simplicity.

Before Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame proved that the MCU could deftly juggle two dozen main characters in a single movie – albeit with 18 films worth of setup – X2 set the standard for ensemble superhero storytelling. Surprisingly few characters feel shortchanged here (Rogue among them, in part a consequence of her central role in the first movie), with around half a dozen interconnected story threads dovetailing at Alkali Lake. Even the film's Dark Phoenix sequel tease doesn't feel egregious, because you've had such a full meal up to that point already.

Universes collide

So why is X2 on Marvel's essential (re)watchlist ahead of Avengers: Doomsday? The simple answer is that the OG X-Men are set to play a crucial part in proceedings. Notably, Alan Cumming's Nightcrawler – who didn't appear in the first X-Men – is also set to return in Doomsday, alongside OG mutants Professor X, Magneto, Mystique, Cyclops, and Beast.

But I'd argue there's much Doomsday could draw from X2. Without as much of a build-up this time, Doomsday needs to establish its stakes and new threat, Doctor Doom, far quicker than the last Avengers-level mega-event, something X2 excels at. Likewise, X2 is a masterclass in establishing a villain with human motivations and deep connections to existing heroes – something Marvel will need to replicate with Doom if he's to work.

The use of Magneto in X2 could also prove something of template for Doom. In X2, Magneto eventually teams up with the X-Men to take down Stryker, as he's a threat to all mutantkind. The enemy of my enemy proverb literalized. Doom, in all likelihood, will need to spend a significant chunk of Doomsday working alongside the Avengers in an effort to stop the incursions threatening the multiverse, before being revealed as the one orchestrating the chaos.

Either way, as a still-superlative example of ensemble superhero storytelling, there's much Avengers: Doomsday could learn from X2, and plenty to recommend about the movie, even after 18 years of the MCU. And perhaps one day, following a pair of infamous misfires, Marvel's own fresh-faced X-Men lineup will finally make good on the promise of Jean Grey's Dark Phoenix.

X-Men 2 is available to stream now on Disney Plus, ahead of the release of Avengers: Doomsday on December 18.

Look ahead with our list of upcoming Marvel movies and check out how to watch the Marvel movies in order ahead of your next rewatch. See you next week as we revisit Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

As well as exploring Pamela Voorhees ' backstory before she became the killer we met in the first Friday the 13th movie, the new prequel series Crystal Lake changes Jason's origin story. However, creator Brad Caleb Kane says he didn't see an issue in doing this as the horror franchise messes with canon all of the time.

"I mean, the canon itself is pretty inconsistent and pretty wonky, and there was no real origin set in stone," says Kane to GamesRadar+. There were sort of certain things said in the movies, and then in the novelization for part two, they talk about Jason's interiority, and they talk about him crawling out of the lake, and surviving in the woods off of this and that. But when you marry it with the actual time period of the movies, it doesn't quite match up."

The writer-director adds: "So it felt like you could mash it around a little bit. It felt malleable, and it felt like fresh snow that we could play with and have some invention there. Nothing is consistent in the canon anyway, so why not go back and play with it at all?"

Starring Linda Cardellini as Pamela Voorhees, Crystal Lake follows the single mother living in a small town with her young, sickly son Jason. The show allows us to see Pam's descent into madness, but it also offers a deeper dive into the mother-son duo's dark past. In the penultimate episode, we go back to the late '50s in the midst of the Nuclear Arms Race. After a near miscarriage, Pam's husband takes her to a specialist facility known as Bellflower, where they run experimental trials on her fetus as part of 'Project Argonaut.'

Some years after Jason is born, Pam realizes that the company she has become embroiled in is actually experimenting on her young son, trying to turn him into a mutant being who can withstand anything, including nuclear bombs. The treatments are the reason for Jason's physical deformity and health issues. After finding out that her son is a military weapon, Pam saves Jason from the facility, and they run away to Crystal Lake, where they attempt to live a normal life. Well, that is until two men from Bellflower show up at her door, and we know how that went.

The series drastically changes Jason's origin story. In the movies, Jason's physical deformity is caused by hydrocephalus, a very real medical condition caused by a buildup of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain. However, Jason's superhuman strength is never really explained. In some movies, Jason's strength is put down to him living in the woods for so long, and in later sequels, the villain gained supernatural abilities. But Crystal Lake offers an explanation for Jason's differences. He was quite literally made in a lab, like Frankenstein.

Crystal Lake is out now on Peacock in the US, and on Sky and NOW in the UK from October 19. For more, check out our Crystal Lake review and our Crystal Lake ending explained, and keep up with new TV shows on the way.

See those Platinum Points you've been collecting on your Nintendo Switch 2? Those can be spent on far more than monthly icons. The official Nintendo UK online store is still running a rewards program where you can exchange all those digital shiny coins for something physical instead, and I'd recommend you pick up the new Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave Acrylic Magnet Set.

By spending 500 points (via Nintendo) you'll receive a set of four magnetic replicas of the Ribeira Winds, Megaria's Beacon, House Lamine and, my personal favorite, the Rose Tempest banner. They're not the most elaborate rewards you can grab right now, but with Fire Emblem merch being such a rarity, I'd recommend you pick these up while there's any stock left. Points aside, they're essentially neat little freebies for your fridge.

Fire Emblem merch is not easy to get ahold of in 2026. Even though Fortune's Weave is new on the scene, there isn't a huge selection out there for fans, or at least, a huge affordable selection. The older amiibo still exist, starting from £12.99 at Nintendo, so at least that's something. But outside of those old NFC collectibles and a small selection of Good Smile Company Pop-up Parade figures, everything else requires a hefty amount of cash, particularly if you're looking at getting representation of anyone outside of Three Houses.

That's why I highly recommend you use your points to claim this set of magnets. Not only are they free, but they're some of the only Fortune's Weave merch available in the UK right now. If you're as obsessed with the new game as I am, that makes it worth it for that fact alone. They also happen to look far better in person, which I can attest to, as I have them in my possession, and I'm glad I used 800 of my precious points to claim them.

Being just small pieces of acrylic with imagery of Cai, Theodora, Dietrich, and Leda's clan banners stuck on top, I suspected they'd be a bit lackluster. However, the art is pretty vibrant, and they look the part when placed on my Switch 2 gaming shelf, amongst the rest of my hastily claimed Nintendo Reward goodies. I'd much rather have a 1/7 scale figure of Fortuna sitting there, but these still make do.

US friends - I recommend checking what's available at Nintendo US today. While I can't see the Fortune's Weave magnets, I recommend spending your points on this neat Legend of Zelda Metal Display or the Virtual Boy Glasses Case, merch I wish we had on this side of the rewards pond.

View all My Nintendo Rewards at Nintendo UK

Looking for more Nintendo goodies? Check out the best Lego sets and our best Switch 2 gift guide.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 2 is in "constant dialogue" with season 1 according to creator Bartosz Sztybor, despite featuring an entirely new cast of characters – and it all stems from a what-if moment revolving around David Martinez.

"I remember while writing season 1, I had a thought: 'What if David made it? What if he didn't die?' He will become this celebrity Edgerunner in a few years," Sztybor tells GamesRadar+.

"But then I thought, okay, he's a flawed character and tragic persona – it wouldn't end well for him. That's why the character of Weak is in Edgerunners season 2… I wanted to create something that will be in constant dialogue with Edgerunners season 1."

In Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 2, Weak Kingsley (voiced in the English dub by Clancy Brown) is described as "a veteran edgerunner" once at the top of his game. Now, though, he "lives in the shadow of his former glory."

That theme of Night City's major players overshooting their sell-by date is something that courses through the veins of the new season.

"In Edgerunners season 1, it's zero to hero. In Edgerunners season 2, it's hero to zero," Sztybor says. "Those were the core ideas for season 2. To connect that with the aftermath of season 1 was also an important thought."

Yet, Edgerunners season 2 was never going to be a direct sequel to the story of David and his crew's dramatic showdown with the corpos at Arasaka in the first season.

"We started brainstorming with Studio Trigger, and then we found other characters and other things to put in this season… [For season 2, I thought] Night City is a place full of stories and I want to tell more."

CD Projekt also confirmed that David's story wouldn't continue. "David is dead. But Night City lives on," was the word from its official blog, alongside a brief logline: "In a city that thrives in the spotlight of violence, one question remains: when the world is blinded by spectacle, what extremes do you have to go to make your story matter?"

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 2 is released on Netflix on October 20.

While you wait, add our picks for the best anime to your watchlist.