If life is but a dream, then The Blood of Dawnwalker's Home Sweet Home mission must be a nightmare. I stumble into it as a bit of an afterthought, having fought my way into the alchemist's tower while investigating the clay-baked gargoyles plaguing the city of Svartrau. But instead of leaving to show Marat the alchemist's notes, as per my next objective, I head up the spiral staircase and ascend further into the tower.

A short cutscene plays out when I reach the landing and interact with a closed door. The alchemist himself is just inside, Coen notes – should I head inside to confront him? Thinking it would be yet another boss fight, I choose to follow my curiosity. But, instead of a blistering encounter with a magical artificer, Coen steps through the door and right into his family home.

Family business

I put the controller down and give myself a long hard stare in the TV's reflection. From Max Payne to Night in the Woods and Mass Effect 3, dream or nightmare levels are the bane of my life in video games.

They are discombobulating by design, an intentional frustration that never fails to hit its mark. Some are repetitive walking sims. Others are combat or traversal puzzles with few, if any, auto-saves to cushion your mistakes (some might argue that a full-level reset makes for a seamless, uninterrupted experience; I heartily disagree). You need to learn the rules of the dreamworld and obey them for a time in order to escape its clutches. Unfortunately, this Blood of Dawnwalker mission involves elements of all this and more.

It starts off simple enough. Coen awakens to find his entire family at the breakfast table, waiting for him. He stutters something nonsensical about how none of this can be real (duh), but as his mother turns to ask what he'd like on his oladkas, Coen is momentarily stunned to hear her voice again.

By this stage in my Dawnwalker adventure, I've uncovered a little of father Pieter's backstory and have pieced together that his mother, Esme, suffered some kind of psychotic break many years before the events of the game. Coen never goes into detail about what happened to her or his late little brother, Alin, but it's all implied as a sore spot for him.

Monsters attack the homestead, sending Coen's family scattering in fear. He rushes out of the house, desperate to save them, and as I resume control following the cinematic, the first thing I do is check my inventory for the inevitable.

All of my high-level armor, my weapons, potions, powerful vampire abilities – all gone. In its place I have a common-quality sword that deals 40 damage per hit, zero equipped trinkets, and not even a pair of bog-standard bracers to keep me company. It's like that nightmare scenario about going to school totally naked, only so much worse.

This is enough to make the dream terrible already. But, when I speed off down the path (after looting all the consumables I can from nearby carts), I'm faced with the fight that makes me want to end it all. Five ghoulish specters are swarming Coen's mother. I'd make quick work of the lot in the real Vale Sangora, but here in dreamworld, it's a blistering fight that puts my direction block and parry skills to the test.

Each strike of my sword barely makes a dent in my spongy foes. In contrast, a lack of proper armor means just one of their attacks can take off a third of my health bar easily. I die maybe four times before giving in to my tried and true method for all timing-heavy combat in video games: I mute the TV.

When I finally declare victory over the spirits, having hushed their nerve-wracking wails, Esme rushes over to thank Coen. I have options here again: encourage her to get to the others and head to the church for safety, or dip an experimental toe further into the dream (very, very gingerly) and talk to Esme as if she is real.

I resist the urge. Much as I'm desperate to know more of Coen's family backstory, I don't want to get sucked into the dreamscape. So I forge on ahead, leaving a confused and sobbing Esme wondering why her eldest boy is being so dismissive.

I drop a quicksave (thank god) and head through some gates into a larger town square, lined with locked houses. Immediately I set off to gather up all the consumables in the vicinity – healing salves, an apple, an ironic clove of garlic – before Coen draws his sword again as wraiths start popping up all around me. I start hacking and slicing at the coming horde with gusto, and again, they barely take damage.

Wraiths hit incredibly quickly, so much so that I barely have time to react when the directional warning indicates a coming attack. So swarmed am I by the black-cloaked enemies that I don't see that one spirit is wreathed in red instead.

It's familiar. I put two and two together just as I die for the sixth time: just like when I fight wraiths at haunting sites in the "real" game, I need to target and defeat that red spirit first otherwise it will draw health from the others and keep spawning new lackeys.

I reload my quicksave and get right into the fray again, this time bearing in mind the above info (enemy variety isn't that broad in Dawnwalker). I rescue my siblings, again forgo the white dialogue choices indicating exploratory conversation, and head up to the church to confront my father. And, shock horror, a gargoyle – which is much easier to fight, considering I am a parrying pro and this is one enemy instead of a dozen.

Home to roost

I've done it, I think. I've completed the dream and rescued my family, so heading into the church to join them will surely wake Coen from the dream! Except, it does not. I enter the church and am right back where I started at Coen's family home. The dream has looped – but a fleeting image of a well in the village square flashes across the screen, and I make a mental note to check it out later.

When I re-enter the breakfast room and the family greets me, I experiment here with a little backstory text. I have all the time in the world, it seems, and if I have to go through all that again, at least I can do it with more narrative depth.

Here is where the root of Coen's savior complex is slowly uncovered. He tells his mother how he's missed her, but also how he hates her for abandoning the family by retreating into her own mind. He mentions his brother, briefly – has she never forgiven Coen for what happened to… Alin, was it? Nevermind. The monsters descend and it's time to charge back through the dream, and this time, I do a pretty decent job. I need to get to that well, and no ghoul or wraith can stop me.

After clearing the wraiths from the town square, Coen mentions the well. I run over and interact with it, only to be faced with his reflection.

It's angry. Coen chides himself – he's a coward, unable to come to terms with what happened to his little brother nor forgive himself for the role he played in his death. Only by screaming his brother's name – Alin! Alin! Alin! – does the dream start to crack at its seams.

If I'd ignored the well I would have stayed stuck in the nightmare's loop, resulting in one of the secret and most depressing Blood of Dawnwalker endings, but I am more than happy to be rid of this place. My vampire powers are back, and I'm able to shadowstep up the icy cliff in front of me and make my way through a maze of memories.

Rebel Wolves does a beautiful job of telling rather than showing the shame and guilt Coen carries with him. He blames himself for the accident that took Alin's life when they were both mere children playing on a frozen lake. Alin was there one moment and gone the next. But he cannot square away the feeling that he could have done something – until Alin himself appears before him.

He tells his brother to forgive himself; that the worst thing he has done is not visit Alin at the site of his death. He's been waiting for him for years, after all. Coen breaks down as Alin hugs his big brother before sinking to his knees, clutching Alin close. Alin tells him goodbye one last time and, with a shove, sends Coen tumbling out of the dream and back into consciousness.

I did not expect such a painful dream sequence to result in an equally painful narrative revelation. The pressure I was under as Coen, fighting through Hell to save his family with barely anything to his name, is the same pressure he had taken upon himself when Alin died.

Home Sweet Home turned out to be one of the most poetic examples of narrative and level design confluence I've ever experienced. It's also completely optional. After waking up and killing the alchemist, I check my mission log to find that it was actually one of long-dead boyaress Xanthe's branching side quests (she was the first of Brencis' lieutenants I killed in the game). I'll bear that in mind for next time. As touched as I was by Coen's redemption after years of emotional torment, Home Sweet Home is still the best Blood of Dawnwalker mission I will not be hastening back to in an inevitable replay. I've had enough nightmares for days, thanks Rebel Wolves.

Is The Blood of Dawnwalker one of the best RPGs of all-time? Watch this space...

Project Zeta has a lot stacked against it. The MOBA genre is not exactly one that's wanting for competition, with many well-established competitors already throwing hands in the arena that Korean developer Nirvanana seeks to enter. Your average League of Legends or DOTA player isn't usually one to venture too far out of their comfort zones, and to the uninitiated, the genre as a whole has a huge barrier to entry that wouldn't necessarily attract new players.

But that hasn't shaken Nirvanana's ambitions for Project Zeta. Sitting down with executive producer Namseok Kim to try the game at Gamescom 2026, I'm told that Project Zeta isn't just a MOBA in the strictest sense. Rather, Nirvanana has crafted a MOBA-battle royale hybrid, with elements of hero shooter thrown in for good measure.

Chaos reigns

In Project Zeta, gameplay revolves around battling multiple four-player teams across a map, completing objectives on the road to victory. While the core bones do seem all too familiar for any fan of the best shooters, Project Zeta seems to be more about the journey than the destination.

Nirvanana is laser-focused on player satisfaction, whether or not you win the game, as well as moment-to-moment gameplay and, most importantly, kills. I'm shown footage of Twitch streamers celebrating with glee as they mow down the opposition, only to be blindsided by another team and forced to try again. The satisfaction of the pure chaos overshadowed the disappointment of defeat, as they charged back in to rejoin the fray.

These large multi-team skirmishes are the foundation that Project Zeta is built upon, and Kim reflects on seeing this gameplay pillar in action. "A large number of players were gathered together, [and] kills would just erupt – 11 kills, 12 kills at a time," he says. This differs from the highest multi-kill available in a traditional MOBA, the five-kill pentakill. "When I saw that, I felt an enormous thrill myself, and I thought, 'this is the future of some new form of MOBA game'."

But reaching this point hasn't been easy. During multiple public game tests, Nirvanana learned many lessons and iterated upon Project ZETA's gameplay. The practice continues even now – "we keep meeting players, hearing their feedback, and taking plenty of heat," says Kim

"We reworked every character, and we changed the terrain once more: [..] We changed the map itself as well. And because players said they wanted to know intuitively where they are at any given moment, we changed the concept and narrative of each area of the map."

Hopefully, this approach of listening to players and crafting a game around their wants will pay off for Nirvanana. The gaming community can be a fickle bunch, and sometimes only the loudest voice prevails. But with each iteration, it seems the game has come closer to achieving Nirvanana's goals.

Witnessing players successfully rack up these gargantuan multi-kills marked an important moment for Kim. "That's when every puzzle piece clicked into place at once – combat, controls, heroes, systems, UI, UX, all of it," especially when players pulled off "a deca-kill – ten kills. [It's] the joy of development, I suppose; I felt it very intensely."

Global playtests are now open for sign-ups on Steam if you want to be a part of Nirvanana's iterative process and, maybe, rack up some deca-kills of your own.

Without getting too misty-eyed, a "physical game" used to be easy to define. You bought a box and the game was sitting inside on a disc or cartridge.

Fast-forward to today and things are more complicated. The box might hold a download code or a Game-Key Card that still needs software from a server, while some expensive collector’s editions don’t even include a physical copy at all. So, with Sony steering full-steam toward Playstation's digital-only future, what exactly are we going to mean by a "physical game" in 2030?

To find out, I spoke to Perry Gresham, head of data at MIDiA Research, and James McWhirter, senior analyst at Omdia. Their answers suggest the physical box isn’t necessarily going anywhere – but what it contains, and what owning it gives you, may change dramatically.

Physical demand could outlive the disc

It’s easy to look at the growing share of digital game sales and assume the physical market is heading towards zero. Gresham thinks the picture is more complicated.

"[The] decline in consumer demand is somewhat overstated by the headline digital vs physical figures reported in financial statements," he says. "It’s important to be careful about what’s actually being measured – there are factors that distort the picture. PC and mobile games are almost entirely digital-only, a lot of games now aren’t seeing a physical release, and importantly, stats reported often include in-game spending within the ‘digital’ part."

Gresham also notes that discounted older games still count as digital unit sales, while second-hand physical sales aren’t captured in publisher financials.

There’s still plenty of appetite for something tangible, too. Recent YouGov research found 51% of US console gamers generally preferred discs or cartridges, with permanent ownership the most commonly cited reason among physical buyers.

Gresham expects the physical market decline to moderate as we approach 2030, in part because many of the people still buying physical games actively care about ownership, resale, or collecting. If publishers force that audience towards digital, some may simply stop buying instead. “There’s a risk of shrinking the pie if those physical buyers don’t shift over,” he says.

If that decline does flatten, the pressure may increasingly come from the supply side: companies could stop making discs and cartridges before players stop wanting to buy them. PlayStation is already moving in that direction, with Sony planning to end disc production in 2028.

Why publishers want the game off the disc

Changing buying habits are only part of the appeal for publishers – there are some very practical reasons to get the game itself off the disc or cartridge.

On Nintendo platforms, physical remains a major route to market. Omdia estimates that just under 40% of full-game purchases in 2026 will be physical. But McWhirter says the cost of Switch 2 Game Cards is significant, with Game-Key Cards offering publishers a cheaper alternative.

"The cheaper per-unit cost of Game Key-Cards allows publishers like Square Enix and Ubisoft to launch at lower price points while also giving them the flexibility to discount post-launch and avoid ‘Switch tax’ and code-in-box reprints," he says.

McWhirter notes that Nintendo has wrestled with cartridge cost and supply before, citing the Famicom Disk System and Nintendo 64DD as earlier attempts to find alternatives.

Physical manufacturing creates an earlier deadline, too. On PlayStation and Xbox, McWhirter says download-dependent releases can give developers more time to finish a game before it has to be locked down for manufacture. "This is more important for games aiming to launch during periods where release dates are less flexible, like the holiday season," he says.

The disc also sits awkwardly with platform strategies that increasingly stretch beyond the living-room console. PlayStation and Xbox are looking towards PCs, handhelds, and cloud streaming to reach players on more devices.

McWhirter puts it plainly: “Discs are likely seen as an impediment,” while digital purchases can potentially follow players across consoles, PCs, handhelds, and cloud streaming.

What does physical ownership actually mean?

Once the game itself no longer has to live on the disc or cartridge, the physical object has a different job.

Switch 2 Game-Key Cards are a good example: they contain no game data, but the card still behaves much like a traditional physical copy once the software has been downloaded. "Game-Key Cards are not single-use codes and allow for lending and resale," McWhirter says. "They also do not require a Nintendo eShop account."

Gresham thinks that idea could eventually move beyond familiar game media altogether, with a physical token representing the purchase – potentially something as simple as a flash drive.

A code in a box works very differently. Redeem one of those and the game becomes tied to your digital account, leaving the physical package with no transferable copy to lend or sell. In practical terms, a Game-Key Card with no game stored on it can preserve more of the freedoms associated with physical ownership than a lavish collector’s edition containing a download code.

The weak spot is the download itself. A fresh Game-Key Card installation still depends on the game data being available online, although McWhirter notes that data can also be transferred locally between Switch 2 handsets.

Gresham thinks the same questions will increasingly matter for digital purchases too: "For consumers, the merit of any digital solution will come down to what rights come associated with their purchase.

"Can access be revoked, and does it depend on platform servers? Can the game be played offline? Can I transfer or resell it? Will access be available in 20+ years?"

Nintendo’s Virtual Game Card system already shows one possible direction, bringing some physical-style lending to digital purchases. Gresham points to PC as a contrast, where competition between storefronts helped encourage less restrictive approaches to digital licensing; console platforms already have integrated digital ecosystems, leaving them with far less incentive to offer the same freedoms.

Why the box survives

Even if the disc disappears, there are still good reasons to keep something on the shelf. Boxed games remain useful for gifting and retail, while the packaging itself can carry value for players who want something tangible from a favourite release. Case in point: I still have my GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 boxes on display.

Sony has already said that new PlayStation games will continue to be sold through retailers after disc production ends in January 2028, albeit in digital formats. McWhirter expects that to mean packaged code-in-a-box releases.

Whether a download code can simply take the disc’s place is less certain. McWhirter points out that code-in-a-box releases on Switch have generally worked better later in a game’s life, when publishers want a cheaper reprint without committing to another run of cartridges. "And because code-in-a-box is rarely associated with day-and-date releases, they tend to end up in supermarkets at discount prices," he says.

GTA 6 could prove that model can work at launch, although few games can count on anything like its level of demand – or, at the time of writing, level of leaks.

At the other end of the market, physical games may become more elaborate. Gresham sees a parallel with music, where streaming handles most everyday listening while vinyl and other physical formats cater to fans who want to collect.

"There’s a very good chance that physical games become increasingly collector-focused," he says. Gresham argues that digital deluxe editions generally struggle to command the same premium because they lack the perceived scarcity and tangibility of a physical collector’s edition.

McWhirter also points to specialist publishers already producing physical versions of digital games in the low thousands, often selling them at a premium through Amazon or direct. As mainstream volumes fall, that model could become increasingly important – leaving the traditional boxed disc squeezed between cheap digital access and physical editions made specifically for people who really want them.

By 2030, that could leave mass-market retail selling boxes that mainly deliver digital access, while genuinely physical releases increasingly cater to enthusiasts willing to pay for them.

So what is a "physical game" in 2030?

By the end of the decade, "physical" may tell us surprisingly little about where a game lives; the box could contain the actual software or unlock a download. For some, it might simply give you something tangible to put on a shelf.

Can you lend it, resell it, play it offline, or still access it years later? A Game-Key Card and a code-in-a-box might look equally physical at the checkout, but they can leave the buyer with very different rights once they get home.

Perhaps the better question in 2030 won’t be whether a game is physical, but what the thing you’ve bought actually lets you do.

More from Saturday Read: "It really is accepting of everybody": How Games Done Quick uses community to make a difference.

Whenever I play Overwatch with my friends and actually contribute to our success, I'm treated like a child who's 'helping' his parents put away groceries and manages to put the cheese in the right fridge drawer for a change. In short, I suck.

Even when I'm in the zone as my main man, Reinhardt, I'm not sure I've ever gotten MVP in the hundreds of matches I've played over the years. It was to my great surprise, then, that I found myself dominating as new support hero Doctrine over the weekend at BlizzCon 2026.

Don't get me wrong; I still didn't get MVP in the handful of matches I played. But I was surprisingly competent for someone who A) sucks, and B) had never played Doctrine before. Even without much time to get a good handle on the hero's moves, Doctrine's primary ranged attack, speed, and healing speed-buffing drones were so intuitive that my Quick Play performance made me feel like I wasn't being carried for once.

Unfortunately, I have a hunch that I didn't suddenly 'git gud', synchronizing with Doctrine's life energy as a lover of all things vampire myself. No, my impression after a few surprisingly great rounds as Doctrine is that a big, fat, bloodsucking nerf is probably waiting around the corner to take the wind right out of my sails.

Jack of all trades

What surprised me the most about Doctrine is just how incredibly well-balanced he is. With great mobility bolstered by straight-up flight via Infuse, solid DPS for a support, flexible engagement range, and an Ultimate with a nasty HP debuff and simultaneous team heal, it's hard to identify a major vulnerability in the vamp's toolkit.

I foresee his Deliverance Ultimate specifically becoming a real problem as players familiarize themselves with his abilities. It's probably going to be one of the main targets of the hero's inevitable first balance update. Meanwhile, Infuse changing the character's rush and drone abilities makes Doctrine a tough hero to predict and counter. With a perk that dramatically reduces Infuse's damage and healing cooldowns, that unpredictability becomes, well, even more unpredictable.

I brought up Doctrine's versatility in a conversation with Overwatch game director Aaron Keller. He pointed out the new hero's high aim skill floor as a potential downside, while ultimately agreeing with me about "flexibility."

"You need to have pretty high aim right there," Keller says. "He also has a pretty decent amount of mobility as well. He can get in, get out, get to high ground if he infuses his dash. So, I think that there's a lot of flexibility with somebody like Doctrine." Asked specifically what meta niche is being filled by a highly-adaptable hero like Doctrine, Keller says he's "not exactly sure who he's going to replace or what the best synergy is here," but "he's going to be versatile and powerful enough to where he gets incorporated into the meta."

Not another Jetpack Cat

Keller says it's a dangerous game, predicting how a new hero will be perceived – balanced, underpowered, or overpowered – because while the dev team tests out roster additions "a lot," it's still "just a team of a couple hundred people" all operating at "different skill levels."

Still, he insists players will grapple with Doctrine's "high skill cap" and strategic design, hopefully preventing all-out support meta dominance similar to Jetpack Cat at launch. "There's aim skill, and there's a lot of strategic decision-making that you need to do with how and when you're going to use Infuse," he explains of Doctrine's playstyle. "It'll be interesting to see if this becomes one of those heroes that is just played a ton at the high level and maybe played a little bit less at lower levels, or if he's played all over the place," Keller tells me.

If Doctrine really is the easy-to-learn but tough-to-master hero Keller says he is, that's terrifying. In other words, if a scrub like me was able to become a respectable, even valuable, team-player in my very first games as the new hero, imagine his potential in the hands of someone who actually knows what they're doing after six months in Ranked queues? That's why a nerf feels all but guaranteed once Doctrine officially joins the Overwatch roster on October 6.

If Overwatch isn't your thing, be sure to check out our ranking of the best FPS games to find your new obsession.

• Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave is perfect if you want hours upon hours of grid-based tactical combat, plenty of role-playing game elements like levels and classes, and so very many different characters.

Here's the 60-second pitch for why you should play Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave this weekend: Fortune's Weave has consumed my life. While that might at first sound hyperbolic, please understand that I nearly completed three out of four protagonist routes before the Nintendo Switch 2 game was even released. I'm not even close to done, either. Between the multiple protagonists, lengthy combat cycles, RPG elements like levels and classes, and multitude of recruitable characters, there's still so much to see and do that I can't wait to experience.

Why play it today?

• Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave feels like a long time coming. It marks the first true sequel (prequel?) to Fire Emblem: Three Houses, the SRPG with a new Fire Emblem continuity that absolutely blew me away back on the Nintendo Switch. It takes all of the elements that I loved so much and enhances them in ways I'd not expected.

My Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave preview gets into it at length, the my biggest problem with Fire Emblem: Three Houses wasn't the length; it was the fact that you essentially committed yourself to a single path several times over. Fortune's Weave gets around this by constructing a narrative reason for you to mechanically swap between different routes at will without making a mess of things. In fact, there's every indication that this might actually be useful to do.

So if you've been looking forward to a meaty, chunky RPG with plenty of combat skills, support conversations, team composition considerations, massive amounts of proper nouns, and a singular conceptually fascinating story told from multiple vantage points, your prayers have been answered in the form of Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave.

Time commitment:

If you're looking for how long it takes to beat Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave, the exact amount of time will vary because of how many different paths you take or want to explore more thoroughly. At 95 hours, I've yet to roll credits myself, so expect to spend several long sessions putting your units through their paces.

Play Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave if you love:

Skip Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave if you want:

One thing to know:

Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave is, to stress again, a game that you'll be in for the long haul. Even if you're looking to put in the absolute bare minimum amount of effort in order to roll credits, you are almost certainly still looking at sinking above 60 hours into it.

A moment you'll remember:

From the moment you begin, Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave absolutely dumps you into the deep end. Between proper nouns, references to events in other games, and a wild pivot from fantasy to something much more heavily inspired by science fiction than might be expected, the game doesn't hold your hand, nor does it hold you back. But it is a lot to take in.

The final verdict:

Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave is really for a particular kind of sicko. The kind of person that happily dumps dozens of hours into moving digital dolls around maps but also goes "and now kiss" from time to time. It's a great RPG with multiple elements from previous Fire Emblem games returning, a smart tactical game with plenty of grid-based combat to go around, and an absolutely massive tome of story and lore for anyone that ever wanted more of what Three Houses was doing. It's not perfect, but I also can't recommend it highly enough.

So, where can you play it?

Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave is now available on the Nintendo Switch 2, and it's an exclusive; you cannot play it on the OG Switch.

How to get started with Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave:

Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave is better off for not immersing yourself in tips and tricks, but if you absolutely must know where to start with Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave this weekend before you begin, we've got you covered.

Have your say:

If you're looking for something in a similar vein, more Fire Emblem-style games appear in our best RPG games ranking.

Mortal Shell 2 is a good game that's fascinatingly bad at specific things. The open world's egregious lack of checkpoints, for example, was hastily fixed in a patch after everyone told the devs that this feels like a prank. The lighting is so dark that I, with mild cornea problems, had to crank up the brightness and gamma to see anything, yet key items are still hidden in a black smear half of the time. And the final boss, even with the secret MacGuffin designed to counter it, is among the worst I've ever seen – buggy, spongey, and spamming a grab attack so bullshit that it could fertilize corn fields.

But the real steel-toed boot to my kneecaps came in the opening hours of Mortal Shell 2. Outliers in player behavior are something that game journalists like to write about, and few are more painful than people realizing a bazillion hours into a game that they've missed a key feature that was signaled by yellow paint, waypoints, and NPC dialogue, and surrounded by neon signs reading, "You're really going to need this." This time, it happened to me, and it nearly made me uninstall Mortal Shell 2. In my defense, it was mostly down to bugs, which are not in short supply here. I did ultimately finish and enjoy the game – beating that awful boss and finding all the collectible Ova in about 22 hours – but the first six hours of Mortal Shell 2 were easily among the worst gaming experiences I've had in 2026.

Fool me once

I began to suspect that Mortal Shell 2's PS5 build might have problems when, minutes into the game, I couldn't use the items I'd equipped during the tutorial section about using items.

To make sure, I consulted the control guide in the options menu. Yep, that sure is a "use" button. And while I was in the options menu, I tried to adjust some graphics settings only to learn that they don't work. At all. I could toggle them, but pre-patch, nothing actually changed on PS5. Luckily, intentionally dying fixed the item problem. I knew it was bugged, because I didn't change anything else, but it suddenly worked. This, I later realized, was foreshadowing.

A bit deeper into the tutorial, I was introduced to the tiny dungeons found inside checkpoints called beacons. Like the dungeons dotted around the world, the layouts are pretty similar, with the beacon dungeons frequently opening with a circular room of alien, off-white marble. In the center of one of the first of these dungeons sat a strange, grayish stone altar, almost bench-like in its proportions.

I do have mostly functional eyeballs, so I did notice and investigate the obvious gray box in the giant white room. But my probing, from all sides and distances, turned up nothing. "It must be decorative," I thought; I couldn't move the altar, destroy it, or interact with it, so like a man blissfully locking his keys in his car, I moved on and forgot all about it. My memory of game environment decor lasts about as long as an ice cube on a sidewalk in Louisiana – or, roughly one paragraph.

An exciting new bug appeared shortly after I left the tutorial. Suddenly, I couldn't interact with anything, including the strange, grayish stone altars, which are apparently chests. There's a village right outside the first checkpoint, and for whatever reason, both the prompt and ability to open the chests inside of it had vanished for me. Reloading the game fixed this, and so I pressed on, losing even more trust in the game.

The other shoe

Six hours in, after clearing the first main dungeon and boss of Mortal Shell 2 as well as much of the surrounding map, a thought occurred to me: "Man, usually a Soulslike lets you upgrade weapons pretty early on. What gives?"

My sword was stuck at level one, and it was starting to feel pretty puny. I had found two of what I'd assumed to be three pieces necessary to repair the blacksmith's forge and upgrade weapons – game doohickeys work in threes, after all – but I couldn't find the third, and the smithy himself had no helpful advice for me. For reasons known only to Satan, even if you have some of these key items in your inventory, the blacksmith's dialogue doesn't change and is about as helpful as those graphics settings.

Suspicious, I spoke to a friend who'd started playing Mortal Shell 2 a few days before me. He assured me that I should definitely be able to upgrade weapons by now. Alarm bells start ringing. What did I miss? Something was stuck in my brain like a fish hook through a worm, but I couldn't place it.

I avoid looking up tips for games until I finish them (see: my 46-hour 100% Silksong journey), so I revisited the early areas of Mortal Shell 2 with a fine-toothed comb. Still brandishing a base sword, I re-explored multiple dungeons and points of interest, but I came up empty. At this point, Google was calling to me like the Green Goblin mask in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, and I figured that if the game can't be bothered to work properly, then I can't be bothered to work hard. I looked up where to find the blacksmith's thingamajig and my blood ran cold.

It's in the chest in the beacon right at the start of this godforsaken game, flanked by candelabras and framed by a literal spotlight. I missed it because I couldn't interact with the chest due to a bug. I didn't see a prompt showing that you could interact with it, I didn't know that this was a bug at this point, and my brain didn't register that this is what a chest looks like because this is not what chests look like. The two pieces I had found for the smith? They're for your other gear, but you're supposed to start upgrading your melee weapon very early on. I was able to instantly juice my sword to +9, as I recall, and start melting enemies.

As a result of all this, I beat the first 20% of Mortal Shell 2 with unupgraded weapons, unupgraded guns, unupgraded skill stones, and a cluster of bugs bothering me like gnats. Wouldn't you know it: Mortal Shell 2 is a lot better when you aren't accidentally wearing Rock Lee's training weights. It's also much more fun after being patched, and thank goodness for that.

Mortal Shell 2 review: "The best Soulslike I've played since Elden Ring."

In PUBG: Dednet, death is only the beginning, or at least that's the one-liner plastered over its marketing campaign. The new instalment from the creators of the phenomenon that popularized the battle royale genre, Dednet has learned a lot from its predecessors, taking and shaking up lessons from what came before to apply the same chaotic thrill to a multiplayer FPS by leveraging roguelike elements.

Set in the gritty '90s Pacific Northwest-inspired region of Cascadia, one design throughline is clear – this is the PUBG's edgier younger sibling Talking to creative director Dave Curd, it's clear that ethos extends beyond the grungy, graffiti style visuals that make the map pop with color. Curd says Dednet is spreading "the gospel of PUBG," and doing so by providing an "infinite" amount of gameplay opportunities in a distinct form.

I'm in

The best example of this, as Curd explains, is that this game is not balanced fairly by design. In their previous title, a lot of care and attention was given to ensure that all starting players have the same opportunities at the start of a match.

PUBG: Dednet however is not that game. The biggest contributor to this is its roguelike mechanics. It's commonplace in battle royales to wash out and go again. With Dednet, not only is this factored into the game's design, it's encouraged. Each run you're more powerful than the last, regardless of your placing, and with this comes opportunity to tip the scales.

"What if an OK player on a long run crashes into a very good player at the beginning of their run, like what does that do for balance?" asks Curd. We've seen imbalance like this before, as Call of Duty experiments with alternative approaches to traditional skill-based matchmaking, and the infamous XDefiant ditched it altogether.

But, that friction seems to be exactly what Dednet is aiming for, just on a smaller and faster scale.

As Curd puts it, it’s a game for those who are "tired of games being too safe." With each run you earn more ways to gain the upper hand, and with each punishing loss, the urge to jump back in to redeem yourself. "What if you could go on a run where I'm on my eighth game and I catch you on your first game, and hey, if you're still a better gunfighter, you're probably going to win – but I might get you," says Curd, describing the loop as "a chip that's so spicy, you can't just eat one."

It's a risky approach, and sure to turn players not so gluttonous to punishment away, something Curd has already observed in previous builds. "I think early on we had a real big power discrepancy. [...] If you had five powers and I joined as a new guy, I would have zero powers, and we would just smash into each other. It was really tough, and it was a very love it or hate it feature, and I think it really bounced [off] a lot of new users that were just like 'Guys, you're killing me!"

Killing with unkindness

Effort has been made to bring control to the imbalance. Each player has five powers, which activate at intervals during the game. At phase one, all players are roughly equally matched, but by phase five the gloves are off, and the players on their 5th, 6th, or higher runs will have the clear advantage.

This promotes risky aggressive strategies, as the longer the game lasts, the harder it becomes for players on fewer runs to come out on top. "We want them to have fun with the powers. We want them to enjoy the chase and play freely. The second we noticed players stopped taking fights and started hiding, we were like: 'Ooh, ooh, ooh! Don't do this. This is wrong.' There are other games like this. We want to encourage conflict and shenanigans," says Curd.

Dednet is about speed and momentum, extending a gameplay session beyond the usual amount of games, and creating a snowball of a character build, enduring gruelling losses until eventually coming out on top through sheer perseverance and an increase in both skill as well as powers.

PUBG: Dednet looks like an ambitious and chaotic new approach to the Battle Royale formula, but it remains to be seen just how much punishment new players will be willing to take before the new roguelike mechanics sink their teeth in. After all, spicy food isn't to everyone's taste.

Gaming to-be-played hitting a ded end? Unlikely. But, we still have plenty to tempt you for more like this, from our games like PUBG recommendations, to our best co-op games ranking!

Blizzard made the surprise announcement during BlizzCon 2026 that Diablo 5 is officially in the works, with its 2029 release set for six years after Diablo 4. That may seem like a long way off, but it's a huge reduction in the time between entries; Diablo 3 launched 12 years after Diablo 2, and Diablo 4 followed 11 years after.

You might expect that stunted development cycle to result in a sequel that's narrower in scope compared to previous entries. Actually, Diablo 5 sounds like the biggest departure for the series so far, leaving players to navigate a world fallen and enslaved by the series' namesake. That's incredibly depressing – and I think it's the only way to pay homage to the original Diablo just in time for the ARPG's 30th anniversary.

See you in Hell

With its iconic opening cinematic showing a ruined town, bodies swinging from a tree, and a crow pecking out the eyeball of a fresh corpse, 1996's Diablo is still one of the darkest games I've ever played. We see a hero dressed in heavy armor, hopelessly overwhelmed by darkness, and that sense of doom carries over seamlessly into the explorable map. Upon entering the town of Tristram, you're told "dark riders" came and destroyed your village, killing or enslaving everyone who was brave enough to rise up in defense of their hometown.

I was probably way too young to be playing it as a child in the late '90s, but Diablo changed my life. Every day for years, I would saunter over to my neighborhood friend's house to mooch off his coveted internet connection and play Diablo, and it felt like being transported to an entirely different universe.

And in a way, it was. Diablo was a portal to my first-ever shared, online video game world. I remember being transfixed by the idea of playing a game with random strangers from different countries, tackling dungeons before bed with someone who was just waking up and starting their day on the other side of the planet.

I made close friends I would never meet in real life, trudged through vertical layers of progressively bleaker places, and ultimately developed a morbid curiosity for unrelenting horror. It paved the way for me to become a video game journalist who would one day attend BlizzCon in person and watch Diablo 5 be revealed, smiling gleefully as flames engulfed a snarling demon on-screen.

"Sanctuary has been destroyed, and Diablo has won," says senior game director Joe Shely of Diablo 5's central premise. There are no more towns or safe zones, almost every human on Earth has either bowed to the Lord of Darkness or been turned into a demonic follower, and the lone few resistors have been enslaved. Now that's Diablo.

Of course, there's no such thing as a chipper Diablo game, but the visually bright Diablo 3 marked a low point for the series. Diablo 4 turned things around for the better, with a representation of Sanctuary that's much truer to the spirit of the original game. Still, capital cities like Kyovashad are completely shielded from dangers outside its walls; their streets are lively, bustling with players and vendors, and one would almost think humanity is thriving within these safe areas. Everything is pretty awful outside, but inside city limits, you'd be forgiven for thinking good has a fighting chance against evil. Diablo 5 makes it very clear that's not the case by explicitly handing the win to the dark side before the story even starts.

The snapshots we've seen and heard of Diablo 5 so far give little away in terms of gameplay, or major narrative beats. Thematically, though, it sounds like Blizzard knows what we all want: a tortured protagonist fighting back in the face of hopelessness, fire, blood, cracking bones, sons and daughters turned into snarling abominations, darkness, fear, and back-to-basics horror.

What that looks like in a next-gen (assuming 2029 is next-gen) Blizzard release remains to be seen, but I'm hoping it isn't purely a bloodier, nastier, more gruesome ARPG. Don't get me wrong, I want that too, but there's more to good horror than that. In Diablo 1, there's a burdening sense of longing in Tristram hinted at by grassy fields, lights still spilling out of abandoned homes, and even those timelessly haunting guitar chords that seem to vocalize, 'Things were pretty OK here once upon a time, but not anymore.' That adds a weight of real-world human sadness and emotional depth that can't be conveyed by traditional depictions of Hell alone, and we all know from movies like Hereditary and Bring Her Back that sadness amplifies horror.

Assuming Blizzard is walking the walk when it says it's "doubling down on darkness," Diablo 5 is shaping up to be an exercise in doommaxxing, a term that could've spawned out of the original 1996 Diablo rather than 2020s internet culture. And in the wake of Diablo's 30th anniversary, I can't think of a better way to honor the series' roots than by returning straight to them, burrowing ever further into the rotting ground, and bringing players closer to Hell itself than ever. Diablo 5 could be the darkest ARPG since the original, and that's music to my pointy little devil ears.

Only last year, around the launch of the fantastic Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter, did I say I was drowning in gaming remakes. Now, as Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter releases – also a sublime remake that manages to add extra detail beyond its predecessor – we're more inundated than ever. Even so, developers and players alike can't seem to agree on what they most want from remakes: vast reimaginings, or dedicated faithfulness? Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter offers the best approach by balancing both, and other developers – RPG studios especially – should take note. This is how you modernize a classic.

In another year crammed with remakes, Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter sneakily became the highest-scoring new release of 2026 overnight for how it revitalizes The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC. It's starting to feel like Gungho's work on modernizing the Nihon Falcom's PC and PSP chibi-style JRPGs is becoming a barometer for measuring the quality of remakes going forward. The second part of a trilogy (which itself forms the first part of a wider ongoing saga well worth playing), this is a luscious reimagining that feels like I'm being sucked into the more abstracted, top-down world of the original, now with a chance to explore it at a truer scale.

Trail as old as time

While Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter wisely, like the original sequel, sticks closely to the first game, improvements to character animations and a tighter script make this aspect shine all the more. That latter change has also been applied through an update to 1st Chapter, creating goodwill by addressing some weaker moments and ensuring that by the time the whole trilogy is remade, it'll be an impressive, cohesive work.

Unlike the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy, which splits its pseudo-sequel approach across three entries when the original was just one, Trails in the Sky has always been told across three full-length games that have their own complete story and character arcs. In terms of scope, Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter might add loads more detail by bringing the action closer, but it accurately recreates almost every act and scene from the original (while adding some additional bits as well). I'm reminded of Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined from earlier this year which, though we quite liked it, made the baffling choice to cut out a vast amount of its side-stories, which are some of the strongest parts of the PS1 original.

So far, my favorite moments playing this RPG have been playing scenes side-by-side just to revel in how much more personality has been added in 2nd Chapter's renditions of iconic moments. While the chibi-graphics are no more, this JRPG isn't shy about its anime roots, absolutely dripping with vibrant colors and unafraid to still use shorthand anime expressions as characters emote. It gives interactions a lively feeling, even if at times there's an awful lot of yapping between the action as characters constantly re-state the same things. To be honest, they're personable enough here that I mind it less when getting to see full scenes unfold before me rather than watching from above.

Ironically, these also make for some of my favorite moments in the likes of Final Fantasy 7 Remake. The whole Wall Market sequence feels unreal in how large it makes the antics of the original, and my deep knowledge of Cloud's dress-shopping experience made me fist-pump all the harder when it was reimagined in the shape of a musical number.

But, so many other parts of the game diverge so significantly – and feel so split up having been retooled into a trilogy – that while I love Remake as a spiritual sequel, I can still feel disconnected as an original fan. It's one reason I sweat so much whenever Square Enix hints at giving the likes of Final Fantasy 9 or Final Fantasy 6 the same remake treatment across multiple games. They work well enough as one game as it is! Cease this!

On the other end of the spectrum, something like this year's Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, despite offering higher-fidelity assets, can feel so close to the original that it's sometimes uncanny. How you feel about it comes down to whether you like the muckier-looking characters in the original or the 10% more handsomified models. In my Black Flag Resynced review, I called it "far from smooth sailing, even though I love the original" because of how it struggled to find its balance in this regard.

There's no mistaking Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter is a new, distinct take on what I'm already familiar with, while simultaneously having deep reverence for the classic. One of the benefits of remaking an older RPG that's heavy on a birds-eye view perspective and transitioning into random battles arenas is how clear that distinction can be by simply making the world more contiguous.

Still, despite being so respectful of its source material, Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter isn't above making massive changes to how you experience the RPG. To me, that's the core appeal for why this remake works as well as it does. The more abstracted original still exists with its strictly turn-based combat, while 2nd Chapter provides a new way to experience that journey by dashing about its blue-sky, green-grass, gorgeous world.

The biggest change is, of course, hybrid real-time and turn-based combat that offers some of the best battles this surprisingly tactical RPG series has ever had. The original is completely turn-based. Enemies can be battered to pieces on the field, and stance-broken to give you an advantage when you initiate a turn-based battle. This in turn allows for potential bonus strikes like team-up attacks as your party and enemy monsters scrabble into place.

Plenty of foes can be felled purely by cannily dodging and attacking in real-time, though you'll be able to more effectively blast apart health bars by using the command abilities and magic spells only usable while in the turn-based mode. It's a fluid hybrid that feels less delineated than the similar approach in Metaphor ReFantazio (which, for the record, came out after Trails first embraced this system in Trails Through Daybreak).

Several abilities in battle are determined through each character's orbal device. Akin to materia, these are individual powers that, combined into connecting slots, can boost elemental affinities that cumulatively unlock new spells. Connect a bunch of blue ones together and you'll get healing spells, for instance, while red ones (believe it or not) unlock fire spells.

But, plenty of orbments have different amounts (or a mix) of affinities, and can be boosted by character-specific slots. It's easy enough to set and forget tough upgrades, but offers a real chin-stroking layer for those who want to meet Trails' hardest challenges. In recent entries, I've felt this has been flattened down a bit, but Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter manages to embrace the original spirit of this battle system while still remaining friendly to get to grips with.

Despite me constantly saying Final Fantasy 9, with its fairytale art style, doesn't need a remake, that doesn't stop multiple leaks, rumors, and Square Enix themselves from teasing that a proper Final Fantasy 9 remake is seriously on the cards. I'm a chipper sort of fellow, but the prospect has been making me on-and-off grumpy for a while. But, being wowed once again by Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter really does go to show that you can get it right. If Final Fantasy 9 Remake can take some pointers from how elegantly 2nd Chapters modernizes a classic through a remake, by matching it in scope, reviving its spirit, and adding plenty of depth, I can see myself getting with the program.

The real genius of Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter is how it avoids the remake pitfall that lies beneath the tightrope between being so faithful you wonder what the point is, and a reimagining so different it feels off. It accomplishes this by removing my worries entirely. I'm simply whisked away to the world of Zemuria, lost in its vibrant world once again – that's the real magical potential of a remake when done right.

Check out our best RPGs and best JRPGs rankings for more adventures!

Did Dracula ever complain about vampirism? He didn't – and neither will I, after merrily guzzling my way through The Blood of Dawnwalker. In last week's RPG Club, I kicked off our quest with an impromptu training montage, spending our first days in Vale Sangora learning to fight as a vampire on the game's hardest difficulty.

Now, it's time to sink our fangs into the main quest – and a few misadventures. When we last spoke, I was preparing to hike into the mountains with Coen's friend (and, dare I say, love interest?) Anca, chasing a lead on the Font of Life. With three weeks left before the deadline to save Coen's family, I'm keen to make a real dent in vampire sire Brencis' plans – and become the gnarly bloodsucker he dreams of being.

Quest Log

Thirsty work

As part of this month's RPG Club rules, I have to take every opportunity to make Coen a stronger vampire. In week one, that meant fatally draining a bunch of Brencis' soldiers – no non-lethal lunches for me – and raising my vampiric corruption to unlock higher-tier perks. But as we scour the mountains, untangling cryptic riddles to locate buried ruins, my carnal commitment is tested.

It takes a full in-game day to find the Font of Life. The ruins are infested by draugr-like undead and appear to be a sacrificial chamber for Vale Sangora's ancient ancestors, depictions of blood rituals painted on the walls. The process promises to grant the strength of Achilles, which poses a problem: Anca wants to use the Font to heal the glyphs carved into her body, which grant magic at the cost of something from the other side getting a foothold in her mind and spirit. Coen, on the other hand, wants to be as strong as possible to face Brencis – but wouldn't you know it, there's only enough in the Font for one.

As much as I want to give Anca the drink, it can't be. The rules of RPG Club explicitly say to "take every opportunity to make Coen a stronger vampire," and sipping an ancient brew that promises power falls firmly under that remit. Bottoms up!

Good news first: Anca accepts my choice like a champ, agreeing that Coen's plight is the more pressing of the two. The bad news is that the reward, while powerful, isn't exactly fitting for a creature of the night. It's a unique perk that enables passive health regeneration… during the day, which is as useful as suncream on Dracula. Still, power is power, and with my skill points spent mostly in the vampire tree, the Font should help make fighting in daylight more forgiving.

Leaving the ruins at night, I take the opportunity to further weaken Brencis' court by striking at their blood-tithing operation. But my last week of vampire vigilantism hasn't gone unnoticed.

I shadow-step into an outpost ready for a challenge, but behind its wooden palisade, there are only a handful of soldiers still breathing. A message left for Coen directs him to more crucified corpses in a nearby village, where a gruesome invitation is pinned to one of the crosses. Ambrus, the youngest vampire in Brencis' court, has grown tired of my attacks and challenges me to a duel at night, promising to kill more civilians for as long as the challenge is unanswered.

Before I can respond to Ambrus' summons, his reluctant servant Lulian stops me. Ambrus drinks blood before a battle, he reveals, and wouldn't it be a hoot to poison his supper? The ingredients are in a nearby swamp, and so is Lulian's co-conspirator herbalist – or what's left of her, having run into an unseen monster. Not connecting the dots, I help gather the ingredients but decline to wait with the scheming servant until dawn in favor of running off for some last-minute preparation.

I wait as close to dawn as possible before meeting at Ambrus' appointed location and ringing a bell to accept his summons, but when the vampire's entourage arrives, Lulian is nowhere to be seen. Then it hits me: we never did find that swamp monster, did we?

Instead of fighting Ambrus at his lowest, he's hydrated (on another servant's blood) and thriving.

He's quick, weaving shadow-steps and sword thrusts together at a speed that puts Coen to shame. I see a bit of myself in Ambrus' vampiric shithousery – so this is what it's like to fight a teleporting bloodsucker – but not for long. Playing on Duelist difficulty demands needlepoint precision when fighting even the lowliest foes, and the same principle – fight perfectly – works against bosses. Plus, by this point I've heavily invested in the vampiric skill tree. Ambrus' flashy sword techniques aren't enough for my souped-up claws, and after several minutes of trading lightning-fast parries, the first of Brencis' spawn falls.

With Ambrus bested, I choose to drink his blood, rightly seeing it as a way to further Coen's own vampirism. There's just one catch: when he dies, I'm wracked by visions of Ambrus in another realm, where he begs Coen to invite him in – lest the same mysterious entity that Anca fears consumes his soul. I agree on a whim, and when Coen snaps out of his strange blood trance, Ambrus is a permanent (and chatty) passenger in his mind. I'm left with a nagging concern – for all the powers I'm getting from vampirism, is it going to cost me something?

Two fangs are better than one

Having whipped through several days in the blink of an eye, my next stop is the capital city of Svartrau. Ambrus proves surprisingly helpful, tipping me off to a rogue vampire set against Brencis in the city. After exploring last week's corrupted convent, I also want to dig around beneath Svartrau's cathedral to find the sword of Saint Mihai – supposedly a powerful weapon against the undead.

Finding my fellow vampire proves easy. A trail of blood and debris leads me to a safehouse, where Lacra – another of Brencis' spawn – is interrogating one of Brencis' lumbering uriashi soldiers. Stepping in to play good cop, I convince the uriashi to tell us where to find his village, where Lacra believes we'll be able to find Brencis' own sire. I agree to meet her in the mountains at night, and spend the rest of the day investigating Saint Mihai; questioning cathedral-goers to find the hidden catacombs below.

The search is fruitful, leading me right up to Mihai's tomb. There's just one catch: Mihai is a Dawnwalker like Coen, still alive (in the loosest sense of the word) and very pissed. After our clash with Ambrus, Mihai proves simple enough to beat. In his dying breath he points me in the direction of his shattered sword and warns me of the same presence that Ambrus and Anca fear. It's probably nothing!

It's nightfall when I leave the musty tomb, so I transform into a dog (I! Love! Vampirism!) and run full-pelt to meet Lacra.

It takes all night, but we find the uriashi village – doing everything in my power to keep short-tempered Lacra from killing them – and as dawn breaks, I agree to head back into the city to find the village elder's wayward daughter, Ocha. She's made quite the life for herself with humans – hearing her use the word "besties" gives me whiplash" – and I spend most of the day digging Ocha out of trouble with Svartrau's criminal underbelly.

It doesn't quite go to plan as I ultimately kill a crime boss that Ocha wanted to deal with non-lethally, and although we part happily, she decides to adventure instead of going home.

Though I return to her mother empty-handed, she still points me in the direction of Isbrand. Joining Lacra to search a nearby cave where Brencis has imprisoned his sire, we find the vampire chained up; kobolds treating his regenerating flesh as an endless buffet. He's technically our Vampire Granddad, so after clearing the way of Kobolds, we haul him to nearby ruins where Lanca gets to work healing him. There's not much more I can do here, so I leave Lancra with pop-pop and head back to the city.

Prodigal son

Ambrus isn't the only person to notice Coen's chaos. My reputation with Brencis is now 'notorious', which means the rebels I met last week are now open to working with me. It's not glamorous work: while Coen is a bloodsucking killing machine, the resistance is painfully mortal, and my first task is to find out what happened to a slaughtered unit.

In the slums of Svartrau, largely abandoned after being devastated by the Black Plague, I get my answer: a human baked in clay; now a golem-esque monstrosity of grafted flesh and blades. Even after taking down Ambrus and Mihai, I don't fancy my chances if these things become commonplace around Vale Sangora, and make investigating their source my priority.

Our search takes us once more below Svartrau, which is unfortunately where we'll leave this week's journey. I set my controller down with a heavy heart – this week went by far quicker than the last, and The Blood of Dawnwalker's story really has its hooks in me. Next week, I plan to get to the source of Svartrau's clay-monsters, help the Manumit rebels, and hopefully take down at least one more of Brencis' court.

Frankly, I can't afford not to: we're entering the penultimate week, and Brencis still feels untouchable. There's also the small matter of my spiritual corruption to address – but what's an otherworldly entity amongst fanged friends? Catch you next week!

Capcom's long-running Monster Hunter series has seen many changes in recent years that have evolved the franchise in intriguing ways. While 2025's Monster Hunter Wilds was an ambitious swing, bringing a more seamless, systemic open world to explore, it also led to missteps that didn't make for a smooth launch of the franchise's next phase.

Nearly 2 years after release, developer Capcom has been steadily refining its flagship entry with new events and improvements that realign the core challenge of a Monster Hunter game. With the upcoming Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance expansion on the way, the studio aims to upgrade and raise the stakes of its beast-slaying adventure even further with a new super-charged campaign and even spicier battles to dive into. I got some early hands-on time with Ascendance during the week of Tokyo Game Show 2026, exploring the new Skybound Eyrie zone and facing off against new and returning monsters that will shake up tactics and push hunters to adapt.

Back to the Hunt

Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance jumps ahead several years after the defeat of elder dragon Gogmazios in Wilds' main story. The Hunter's Guild faces a new threat with the return of the elder dragon Lao-Shan Lung, who destroys the guild's stronghold. Years later, the guild is more experienced and better prepared to take down the massive monster, they venture to a new region in the forbidden lands known as the Skybound Eyrie. Faced with new monsters to slay and the return of the tar-based affliction spreading through the Windward Plains and its ecosystem, the Hunter's Guild aims to defeat Lao-Shan Lung and stop the corruption's spread.

This first major expansion for Monster Hunter Wilds is very much in the vein of other big updates from previous games – like Monster Hunter World: Iceborne – focusing on adding more locations, gear, and monsters to fight. However, Ascendance and its added scope aim to refresh Wilds by pushing a realignment toward more intense, high-stakes action. For starters, the new Skybound Eyrie location is by far the most vertical zone in the game, even by Wilds' standards. It also boasts the most visually impressive and varied level design that the series has seen yet. I'm immediately taken in by the aerial islands, which remind me of the Avatar films. It's a really exciting change of scenery from the Windward Plains.

But, Ascendance really focuses on updating the core combat. As a post-main story campaign, it's geared toward experienced players, spicing up battles and noticeably increasing battle intensity. I get to play two hunts during my hands-on, with the first focused on defeating the Alpha Araketa, which leads a smaller group of minions that it can coordinate with. This is a great sampling of the upgrades coming to Ascendance. Not only is the new location an interesting battlefield to learn, with Skybound Eyrie's more vertical locations lead to serious pitfalls during fast-paced action – I fell off the map in a couple of instances – but it also showcases how much of an upgrade monster behavior and tactics have gotten.

The Alpha Araketa hunt is incredibly dynamic, requiring a lot of coordination with my team. As both a ground and aerial monster, the Araketa and its minions can attack in unison, group-rushing hunters on the ground and launching into the air to deliver synchronized dive-bombs against the squad. It's impressive to see in action, but it's also quite intense to be on their receiving end. Like other Monster Hunter games, it's all about the chase in these battles, and navigating the dangerous terrain of the Skybound Eyrie adds so much tension. My squad takes two attempts to fell the Alpha Araketa, and during that time we learn its varied attack styles and rhythm – such as one particular combo attack that uses its wings, which have natural gases in them that can create a jet-powered-like impact. It's already one of my favorite new monsters to fight in Monster Hunter Wilds.

Fortunately, Ascendance adds a new edge for hunters to employ in a fight. One of the biggest new additions for the expansion – which will likely inspire some debate among fans – is the Boost Bracer system. Unlocked once you enter the new story, it lets you activate a powered-up state that unleashes a new super attack for each weapon and grants temporary access to powered-up combos during your boosted phase. As you attack foes, you build up a meter with three maximum charges. When you have a charge ready, you can dish out a super attack that's either a combo or a heavy one-hit strike.

I personally find the Boost Bracer to be a really fun and satisfying combat skill to unleash on enemies. My favorite moments come when my squad is unleashing anime-style super moves on a staggered foe, and seeing the chaos of the fight jump up several degrees gives us the shot in the arm we need to keep pushing forward. That said, I imagine this skill might spark debate among long-time fans of the series, especially regarding the perception that Monster Hunter Wilds was already overly generous in its balancing. However, the Boost Bracer takes time to build up, and you can easily waste it if you aren't careful. It's painful enough to miss a standard charged strike, but I actually face-palmed when I whiffed a super attack. Very much like the items in your inventory and the time you have, the Boost Bracer skills are a resource as well, and one that has to be used at the right time.

The other hunt available in my demo is against the elder dragon Teostra – a returning super boss from earlier games that's now powered up in Ascendance. Unfortunately, this hunt doesn't go well at all with my squad. Along with dealing with Teostra's powerful flame attacks and heavy strikes, the battle zone also has quicksand, which makes traversal a serious challenge. I sense a rematch in my future.

So far, Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance makes a strong case for revisiting Wilds. That's not to say Wilds wasn't a worthwhile Monster Hunter game on its own, but this expansion brings a much-needed refresh with a more interesting, better-developed top-level endgame that adds a new skill ceiling for combat. It's been really exciting to get reacquainted with the game, explore its new locations, and get to grips with souped-up weapons that feel fierce and satisfying to use against some of the series' meanest beasts to date.

Hopefully, the full suite of upgrades coming in Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance will make for a well-earned comeback story that can cap off the series' most ambitious entry yet.

Hunting for something else to play while you wait? Our best Monster Hunter games and best open world games rankings have more for you to enjoy!

The first decade of Grand Theft Auto's 3D reinvention, from 2001 to 2011, brought four full-length releases (not counting handheld instalments or DLC expansions) across two console generations: games that reshaped the videogame landscape in their open-world image. In 2023, as GTA 5 enters its tenth year, it remains the series' only release of the period. A single game following in those footsteps couldn't, surely, hope to have the same seismic effect. And yet.

When Sony revealed the PS5 lineup in a 2020 event promising the 'Future Of Gaming', the very first title it showed was GTA 5 – a game that had first released on PS3. This enhanced edition would bring the game to its third generation of consoles, across the span of which it has sold over 170 million copies. Few games have ever remained in the conversation for so long. But for those who haven't held onto their citizenship over that time, what's it like to revisit Los Santos after a few years away?

Old stomping ground

Visually, GTA 5 has grown old with remarkable grace. In close-ups the game occasionally shows its age, but in the sweep of transit, it still convinces. Of course, it's had rather a lot of work done over the years – what else would you expect from a game set, more or less, in LA? The cosmetic enhancements include cleaner textures and sharper resolutions, naturally, while on PS5 these changes also extend to the hands, the DualSense haptics improving the sense of the city beneath our tyres and pulsing in time with the thick bass of a nightclub.

Most startling, though, are the changes to the quality of light itself. From the searing neons of Vice City to the haze of San Andreas, light has always been a tool Rockstar leverages to establish a sense of place, but here the combination of HDR and ray tracing pushes it further than ever before. Brittle morning sunshine at one end of the day; at the other, Pacific sunsets that bleed out into pink; after darkness falls, the twinkle of lights catching in newly reflective skyscrapers and chrome paint jobs. On a gloomy British day, it's truly transportive.

Along with the odd newly introduced detail – including stray cats that scurry into alleyways as you drive past – and a first-person mode to appreciate them better, everything works together to evoke the feel of a real city, in a way that's still unmatched after all these years. Spider-Man's New York may have the edge in fidelity, but it never feels alive in quite the same way Los Santos does. In part, perhaps, because where the former game posits a city that (for all its supervillain inhabitants) fundamentally works, Rockstar's game is more honest.

The enormous wealth disparity of the region makes for a virtual world that can be navigated by a sense of altitude and affluence alone. For all that cutscenes might try to sell the cultural chasm between protagonists Franklin and Michael, it's never realised better than in the climb required to pick up quests from your new mentor, up from South Central's tightly bunched bungalows and scruffy unused lots into the rarefied air of Rockford Hills, with its playgrounds of the rich and famous. And then, eventually, over the spine of the mountains, the sparsely populated back-country that Trevor calls home, every bit as wild as its inhabitant.

The result is a place as beautiful as it is ugly, where rolling vistas are pocked with billboards crude in graphic design and innuendo, where as much effort has been put into rendering the litter as the architecture. This, at least, helps to explain why – for a world that remains so brilliantly inviting to the player – every character you meet seems to hate living in it so much. This aspect of GTA 5 has aged significantly less well: if its caustic nihilism could be a little wearing at the time, it can feel exhausting now, a relic of '00s attitudes that prized saying the unsayable and disdained anyone stupid enough to care about anything.

This seems in part to have been a reaction to the reaction to GTA 4, a game that was stupid enough to care about things. The tale of Niko Bellic, with his regrets and tragic backstory, was an early step towards the kind of more mature, prestige storytelling that characterised The Last Of Us, GTA 5's 2013 contemporary, and then the Red Dead Redemption series.

The early movements of the plot here are roughly in line with those examples. Michael is established as a man out of time, plagued by a kind of American Beauty suburban ennui and a nostalgia for his younger criminal days, while Franklin steps into the classic GTA role of felonious up-and-comer with just a hint of reluctance about that life. Most venom is reserved for what Michael sees as the soft indulgence of modern west-coast American life, and for the supporting cast. Franklin's cohabiting aunt is faddy and promiscuous. Michael's daughter is starry-eyed and promiscuous. His wife is ungrateful, unfaithful and, yes, promiscuous. The limited roles available to women were among the few sour notes raised in our review at the time, and it's only curdled with time. It's no surprise that Rockstar seems set to address this with GTA 6.

But there might be no character for whom the plot has less respect than Jimmy, Michael's son, who is introduced screaming slurs into his headset while playing a Call Of Duty-like shooter. To his father, Jimmy represents the ills of the next generation. To Rockstar, he seems to represent the gamer, the worst caricature of its own audience – the same ones, perhaps, who rejected the more sombre storytelling of GTA 4.

Talking Trevor

The introduction of third protagonist Trevor is held back. When he arrives, though, he's immediately established as an avatar for the player's ugliest desires, and an embodiment of that rejection – something enacted, in his very first mission, through the application of his boot to the skull of Johnny Klebitz, star of GTA 4's The Lost And Damned. Development of the 2009 add-on coincided with the height of media discussions about ludonarrative dissonance, and Trevor comes off as the response: a raised middle finger, sticky with blood.

Which brings us, inevitably, to the notorious torture sequence, in which Trevor aids federal agents in the 'interrogation' of a seemingly innocent man. It's as uncomfortable to participate in now as it was then, choosing between electrocution and waterboarding, then tugging on a thumbstick to enact the torment. This discomfort seems to be the intent, something underlined by the speech given by Trevor – rarely the voice of reason or conscience – which concludes that torture is "useless as a means of getting information". But he also admits to relishing the violence for its own sake. Sometimes it's hard not to suspect the game does, too.

The moment is indicative of GTA 5's approach to satire in general, which is often to take real-world topics and give them the Nelson Muntz treatment: point, laugh dismissively, move on. The advantage of this broad-brush approach, though, is that when it picks a target that resonates, it's easy to give it the benefit of the doubt.

Grand Theft Auto has always been built on a fundamental distrust and distaste for the authorities and the wealthy – timeless themes that have only gathered a wider audience in recent years. We'll confess, too, to finding a little catharsis in the blowing-up of Jay Norris, CEO of Facebook stand-in Life Invader, much as we did in the downfall of Glass Onion's own tech-billionaire analogue. It could be called prescient – remember that this was years before the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and Zuckerberg wasn't quite the public enemy he has become – but for the game mainly being interested in making jokes about hipster workers and offices that look like creches.

Still, it's a little terrifying how relevant its concerns – which stem, primarily, from the ugliest excesses of American capitalism – remain today. Once again, this has only gained from the nips and tucks that GTA 5 has received since launch. In 2022, players noticed that some of the game's transphobic content had been removed, while new radio stations have been accompanied with adverts and talk-radio segments that skewer more recent topics. The biggest additions, though, have come through GTA Online's new story missions. 2017's Doomsday Heist update found a fine successor to Jay Norris in the form of Avon Hertz (an obvious play on Elon Musk, another example of Rockstar being a little ahead of the curve of public sentiment), while in July last year Operation Paper Trail introduced a lethal heatwave and an energy crisis to GTA's world just as real life faced its own equivalents.

Ultimately, most of these are topical reskins stretched across existing mission structures – aspects of the game that have started to creak, as you shuttle between checkpoints and engage in wave after wave of shootouts – but they're indicative of the kind of fuzzy eternal present in which Online allows Los Santos to exist. New music, coming out of the car radio, in nightclub sets from real DJs, and in the form of an entire new Dr Dre EP. Stories of supporting characters from the singleplayer campaign, picked up years along the line.

Nowadays, Grand Theft Auto 5 essentially means GTA Online. It's what greets you on the starting menu, the singleplayer campaign tucked away in a tab. It's what has driven all those sales, and the game's longevity – a second world built atop and now considerably bigger than the one that launched ten years ago. GTA 5 didn't invent the concept of a live-service game or multiplayer concerts or virtual hangout spots, and it might not have remoulded the shape of action videogames in the same identifiable way as GTA 3, but it's hard to deny that it fits perfectly into the modern landscape, even after all this time.

Check out our best GTA games ranking for which to play next!

When Sony announced its plan to discontinue physical games by January 2028, players responded by orchestrating a week-long boycott. Meanwhile, I went out and bought a PS5 disc drive.

Boycotts can and do work, but this one felt futile. An analyst confirmed that the boycott made "no significant change at all" in PSN's player count numbers over the course of the blackout. In fact, Sony's stock price mostly trended upward during the period.

Players' hearts were in the right place, but it's time to accept that we're going to see the end of physical games for PlayStation. But as I move toward acceptance myself, I've decided to return to my hard copy roots in 2026 to see what I've been missing.

Physical upbringing

When we were kids, my brother and I would visit GameStop together. We had no particular games in mind that we wanted to pick up, but the promise of finding something new always drew us back. We almost exclusively played used games, emblazoned with the pre-owned GameStop price sticker. Every game we had was on a disc or cartridge, kept in well-loved cases that were popped open and clicked close so often that I could still recognize the sound from a mile away.

I grew up in the GameCube era, with physical memory cartridges you could swap out, CD-ROMs to play on the family computer, and VHS tapes that required you to be on channel three to watch. I have the majority of The Sims 3 expansions in a box with no disc drive to ever return to, original Xbox games that are no longer backwards compatible with the current generation, and a handful of Xbox One games collecting dust on a shelf. Physical media is in my DNA, but somewhere along the way, I traded it in for the convenience of digital gaming.

Nowadays, the majority of my gaming library is on Steam, and until recently, I hadn't purchased a single physical game for this current generation. I bought a PS5 Pro right after the God of War Laufey announcement; I have no intention of missing out on the next God of War installment now that PlayStation will stop porting PS5 exclusives to PC, and was more than ready to retire my near-obsolete Xbox Series X (the big boy simply can't fit in my room alongside the PS5).

It wasn't until I was in the car, PS5 Pro buckled into the passenger seat, that I was informed of one crucial detail. My friend asked me if I had also bought a PS5 disc drive, to which I responded similarly to Jennifer Lawrence in her infamous Hot Ones meme: "What do you mean?"

I laughed, because the thought hadn't occurred to me that, even in an age where physical media is being pushed out, a current-gen console wouldn't include a disc drive. I bought one a few months later, because I still wanted to use it as a media player – I have the 10th anniversary edition of Interstellar, after all.

When I finally put in that order for a PS5 disc drive, I was excited, and not just because I could use the physical media I already owned. I had just unearthed muscle memory that had been buried in the instant gratification of digital media.

Back to my roots

So I went out and performed my years-old ritual. I found a local used games store, filled to the brim with old and new games, hardware from every generation, countless DVDs and CD-ROMs. The place was a testament to the preservation of physical media. Suddenly, I felt like a kid again.

I walked out of that store with Ghost of Tsushima for $35, as well as two more spontaneous purchases. All said, I spent $79 on three games – just $3 more than what I spent on my pre-order copy of Marvel's Wolverine. As I got into my car, I remembered being a kid in the backseat, opening up the case of the game I'd just purchased just to stare at the disc or cartridge, look through the booklet, anything to keep me satiated until I got home and could play it.

It's a lost tradition nowadays, especially since now I'm the one driving the car and games rarely come with any sort of booklet. But holding a physical game in my hands, I experienced a level of fulfillment you just don't get when you buy digital.

We can't sway a multi-billion dollar company by pointing out that we're losing true ownership, more affordable options for games, and the age-old tradition of sharing copies of games with friends and family. Those responsible for pruning physical media don't measure it by the same values. But we can still embrace collecting and playing hard copy games while they're here. I certainly intend to make the most of the time I have left with physical games, and you should too.

Check out all the best GameCube games to pick up and play while you're reminiscing.

As The Blood of Dawnwalker sinks its fans into the community, I've been keeping an eye on player sentiment. Some, like me, have been transfixed by the plethora of choice available. I love how the vampire RPG's open world unfolds at your own pace despite the 30-day timer – which isn't as punishing as I thought it would be. Others have bones to pick with its design elements, from wrestling with awkward camera angles in combat to the curious lack of proper stealth.

While I find it an impressive effort from a non-triple-A studio like Rebel Wolves and am more than happy to forgive its maiden voyage a few teething problems, there is a more simple reason many players might expecting something different to what they get. Namely, I think some were expecting more than just Witcher 3 vibes in The Blood of Dawnwalker.

Twinsies?

Ever since the game was first revealed in January 2025, discussions around The Blood of Dawnwalker inevitably bring CD Projekt Red into the conversation. Reddit is still awash with very similar questions today: how much like The Witcher 3 is The Blood of Dawnwalker, really, and does liking one mean you will love the other?

Well, the answer really depends. As a project created by ex-Witcher 3 developers – a tagline that, admittedly, has been done to death by myself and fellow games journalists in the leadup to the game's launch – it does share some DNA. By that, I mean both Geralt and Coen exist in medieval high-fantasy worlds, and that dialogue choices shape the story you will experience.

The game director himself is "really comfortable" with the comparisons, but having played both The Blood of Dawnwalker and The Witcher 3 to completion, let's be real. The two RPGs are mechanically and tonally alien to one another.

While playing Dawnwalker for the first time, I thought back to the closed-doors Witcher 3: Songs of the Past demo I was privileged to attend at Gamescom 2026.

Watching Geralt run barefoot through the leafy countryside town of Letten before punching a dude in the face to get his best friend's lute back, all in time to swan into a mansion wearing last night's gladrags – it's the kind of lighthearted opening fodder Coen of Laslea couldn't dream of. We never get a glimpse of a happy Coen; the game starts in a black plague fever dream throwback, and things never get better for the unlikely hero.

Even when Songs of the Past's mysterious drama starts unfolding – companion Dandelion has vanished, and it's up to his sister and Geralt to search for him – there's a warm, almost self-aware familiarity about it. There are tough decisions to be made in The Witcher, but this world is as much a campy fairytale as it is imperiled. Case in point: Geralt gets so stoned in one mission that his horse can converse with him.

That tonal balance can be seen in Geralt's new-and-improved combat capabilities coming in the DLC. Not only does he still have his trusty steel and silver swords at his back, for man and monster respectively, Geralt will have a silver hook on a chain for fancy ranged attacks. It'll be a new stand-in for the crossbow come the expansion's 2027 launch, a throwback to the source novels that gives Geralt even greater combat diversity and shows off his status as a tried-and-true battle master.

But then, there's Coen in The Blood of Dawnwalker. Anyone who comes to Rebel Wolves' RPG expecting a Witcher 3-like combat experience will be sorely disappointed. Without his witchcraft or vampire abilities, Coen is all melee, all the time. The directional blocks and dodges are another fresh challenge, requiring keen reflexes and even greater dexterity since Coen cannot simply dodge-roll around the battlefield and buttonmash to success. So why are we all comparing Dawnwalker to The Witcher 3?

Separate ways

I'd say the exact same thing even with combat put aside completely. Coen has a time constraint. Geralt does not. Coen's actions in the open world get punished by edicts, increasing pressure on the player as you fight back against vamp lord Brencis. Geralt's are not.

When I see prospective Dawnwalker players asking how lively or dense the open world of Vale Sangora is compared to Geralt's Continent, I wince. Coen's world is not the size of a literal country. It does not have the enemy or mission variety of The Witcher 3, which had a book series and two games to draw upon, and as the first game in a would-be saga, nor did I expect it to.

I feel partly responsible for the constant hat-tipping to The Witcher 3 that set The Blood of Dawnwalker up for these comparisons. It was a way into the new IP that, at the time, created an immediate touchstone for players to better understand the overall vibe and style of the game before we knew much about it.

But now that Dawnwalker is out in the wild, hear my plea: It's time to leave Geralt alone and appreciate Coen on his own merit. Comparing the first in a potential saga to a soon-to-be four-part video game series sets up unrealistic expectations for everyone. I wonder if the comparisons will hold up when The Blood of Dawnwalker closes in on its modern day timeline, or if Cyberpunk 2077 will be the new chosen one?

Check out all the upcoming RPGs for 2026 and beyond if you've had your fill of Vale Sangora.

After besting the bad guys once again, our favourite swole savior has exited our screens as Reacher season 4 has come to an end. But not to worry, Reacher season 5 is already on the way and has started filming in Canada. That's right, Alan Ritchson is strutting around a new small town and throwing punches as we speak.

Reacher season 4 saw the ex-soldier face his most violent villains yet in the tense wild goose chase after a mystery hard drive. The fourth outing was packed full of action, one-liners, and even a sneaky Tom Cruise reference. But the fun doesn't stop there. We already know which stars are joining Ritchson next time, and which of Lee Child's Jack Reacher books is being adapted next. If you thought season 4 kicked one of the best Prime Video shows up a notch, stay tuned for season 5.

So what are you waiting for? Scroll on for everything we know about Reacher season 5's confirmed cast list, plot speculation, when we expect the show to hit Prime Video, and more. Then, check out our Reacher season 4 review and keep up to date with other upcoming shows.

Reacher season 5 release date speculation

Reacher season 5 does not yet have an official release date.

Reacher was renewed for a fifth season in May 2026 ahead of Amazon’s upfront presentation, three months before season 4 hit Prime Video. Historically, Reacher seasons have released around 1.5 years apart on average. Season 2 hit Prime Video 22 months after season 1, and season 3 followed just 14 months later, and Reacher season 4 landed around 18 months after season 3. With that in mind, we could expect to see Reacher season 5 as early as December 2027, or early 2028.

However, season 5 has already started filming. Cameras started rolling on July 20 in Ontario, Canada. Star Alan Ritchson has been keeping fans updated since then, posting updates on Instagram. Season 4 started shooting in June 2025, meaning it only took 14 months for the show to land on screen from its filming start date.

Reacher season 5 plot – what book is being adapted?

While Prime Video has yet to release an official synopsis, we do know which of author Lee Child's Jack Reacher books Reacher season 5 will adapt. The series so far has followed Alan Ritchson's bulky hero as he ventures from town to town with just the shirt on his back, taking on bad guys where he can. Reacher season 1 was based on 'Killing Floor,' season 2 adapted 'Bad Luck and Trouble,' season 3 was based on 'Persuader,' and season 4 brought Child's 13th book 'Gone Tomorrow' to life.

At San Diego Comic-Con 2026, the Reacher and Neagley panel confirmed that Reacher season 5 is based on Child's 20th Reacher book titled 'Make Me.' The novel finds Reacher at a remote railroad station in a Midwestern town called Mother’s Rest, hoping to make a quick stopover. However, after expecting to find only miles of wheat fields, he meets a private investigator named Michelle Chang who mistakes him for her missing partner. When Reacher agrees to help Chang, he is pulled into a twisted technological mystery.

Now, this might sound like Reacher's usual stop in a sleepy town, but Make Me boasts global cybercrime. Not only is Mother's Rest home to some of the strangest townsfolk, but the novel dives deep into the dark web, sees Reacher and Chang head to Los Angeles for answers, and totals about 200 deaths. It is important to note that although the series usually stays pretty loyal to its source material, the Prime Video show has been known to shake things up. So we should expect some surprises along the way.

Even though Amazon remains tight-lipped on the finer details, star Alan Ritchson is keeping fans updated on how filming is going. In August 2026, Ritchson posted a video to Instagram from inside his trailer, complaining about the cold and the snow in Canada. This will surely throw the ex-soldier a curveball, as Reacher is used to strutting about in only a T-shirt and jeans. But the weather doesn't seem to be holding the star back, as in another post, Ritchson tells fans that he has to throw himself into the river rapids during one scene.

But it looks like the hero will yet again find himself in a spot of trouble, as in one post, which you can see above, Ritchson looks battered and bruised, with butterfly stitches on his face. When we look closer, we can see that Reacher is wearing a Mother's Rest, ON Volunteer Fire Department T-shirt. This is totally on brand for Reacher, as the series has seen Reacher throw on any piece of clothing he can find, including an 'I Love Maine' graphic tee and a 'Get Cracked in Philadelphia' shirt.

However, the 'ON' on the shirt also confirms that Reacher season 5 is set in Ontario, Canada, rather than in the Midwest (possibly Oklahoma or Kansas) like the book.

Reacher season 4 recap

Reacher season 4 saw the ex-soldier touch down in Philadelphia, where, on a seemingly normal train ride, he encounters a distraught federal employee named Anna Merrick. Assuming she is a suicide bomber due to her clothing and demeanor, Reacher approaches her, but she panics and shoots herself. However, just before doing so, Anna hands Reacher a flash drive that makes him a target for multiple parties. With the local police, the FBI, the CIA, and two Indonesian women known as the Hoths now on his back, Reacher teams up with Anna's brother Jacob Merrick and detective Tamara Green.

As the team attempts to find out what is really on the flash drive and why Anna killed herself, they unravel a years-old military cover-up that leads to a weapon of mass destruction being let loose in Philadelphia. After a few twists and turns, Reacher comes face to face with the season's true villains, who may just be the show's most violent yet. It should come as no surprise that Reacher comes out on top, but not without a few scrapes. You can find a more detailed rundown on those final moments in our Reacher season 4 ending explained guide.

However, as each season of Reacher follows a separate story, we don't think season 5 will include any characters from Philly.

Reacher season 5 cast

Back when Reacher season 5 was announced, Deadline confirmed the four Hollywood stars that will be joining Alan Ritchson as Reacher. This is the End star Jay Baruchel has been cast as Chief Buck Bauer, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes star Kevin Durand will play Nokes, Cross' Amanda Ip is set to play Michelle Chang, and Ciara Bravo, best known for appearing in this year's surprise Netflix hit Voicemails For Isabelle, will play Eunice.

Thanks to season 5 being based on Lee Child's 20th Jack Reacher book, 'Make Me', we already know a little bit about the characters. Chang is an ex-FBI agent turned private investigator who asks Reacher for help looking for her colleague who had been working for a mystery client. Bauer is a local cop in Mother's Rest who sounds a lot like season 4's Jacob Merrick. Funnily enough, Baruchel was supposed to play Merrick in season 4, but after he stepped back from the project, he was replaced by Christopher Rodriguez-Marquette.

It should come as no surprise that Durand is playing a bad guy, as Nokes is this season's physically imposing antagonist, much like season 3's Paulie. However, Bravo's character Eunice does not appear in the book. As for returning cast members, anyone other than Reacher usually doesn't show up again due to each season taking place in a different US state. However, Maria Sten's Francis Neagley has been known to drop in every now and then. But now that she has her own spin-off show, it is not clear if we will see her on Reacher's turf again.

The confirmed cast list includes:

• Alan Ritchson as Reacher
• Jay Baruchel as Chief Buck Bauer
• Kevin Durand as Nokes
• Amanda Ip as Michelle Chang
• Ciara Bravo as Eunice

Is there a Reacher season 5 trailer?

There is no Reacher season 5 trailer just yet, as the season has only just started filming and does not yet have a release date.

However, season 4 started shooting in mid-June 2025, and the first trailer later landed during San Diego Comic-Con 2026 in July 2026. As season 5 started filming in July 2026, this means we could see the Reacher season 5 trailer as soon as August 2027. Or, if Reacher decides to return to SDCC in 2027, Prime Video could release the trailer there.

Is Reacher season 5 the final season?

It is not clear if Reacher season 5 will be the series' final installment. Technically, the show could keep going as long as there are Jack Reacher novels to adapt – and there are 30 books in total. Plus, Lee Child's 31st Reacher novel, 'Chain Reaction,' co-written with his son Andrew Child, is set to hit shelves this October. So, there is no real sell-by date on Reacher, but we all know that TV shows cannot go on forever.

Reacher seasons 1-4 are available to watch on Prime Video now. For more, check out our list of the best action movies.

Wardogs isn't quite like anything else that I've ever played. It is, at first glance, nothing more than your standard multiplayer FPS. It has the same guns that you've seen in Call of Duty or Battlefield. It has many of the same vehicles, even. Then you play it a little bit, and then a bit more, until the differences become entirely obvious.

Above and beyond winning matches or killing foes, your aim in Wardogs is to earn cold, hard cash. You're a mercenary, explicitly so, drafted into one of three Private Military Companies (PMCs) vying for control over the map. There are many different ways to make your daily bread. That's good, since you'll need money for almost everything from progression to buying your loadout each time you respawn. You could opt to go to the frontline along with most people, directly battling your opponents and netting a tidy sum in the process. The gunplay is satisfying, and the time-to-kill/time-to-die is rapid enough to make it an exhilarating experience. You can also make a heap of cash up on the frontline as a medic.

But if you don't fancy that, there's an almost Foxhole-like bevvy of support roles that you can step into.

All about the Benjamins

From flying helicopters full of newly-spawned players to the combat zone, driving trucks laden with supplies to your team's Forward Operating Bases, or putting those supplies to good use by constructing defences, there's no shortage of lucrative possibilities in Wardogs.

You're ranked on the scoreboard by how much cash you've made, so it's not unusual to see top-ranked players with no kills; they're probably working as a dedicated air taxi service and getting paid well for it

The maps are large enough that you really do depend on these non-combatants, too. It reminds me of MAG back on the PS3, or the sprawling landscapes of the Arma/Operation Flashpoint series. You don't always have to wait for a taxi, though, as a vehicle parked in your FOB can be spawned at once your team racks up 20 points. To get those points – 100 of which wins your team the match – you need to have more players in the circular Control Zone than either of the other teams. Every 30 seconds, a point is awarded to the team with the most players in the zone.

It's strange, really, that in two of the best games of Wardogs I've played so far, I've not actually been playing offensively. In one, I was a driver, ferrying supplies back and forth to keep my team stocked up on ammo, building supplies, and fuel. In the other, I was technically playing recon, but spent most of my time with a virtual eye glued to the spotter scope, keeping watch rather than using my rifle.

Scoping it out

There are definitely issues with the game as it stands. The lack of Linux support is a big one, and is particularly frustrating since Linux users are able to play earlier playtest builds from before the anticheat software changed.

Another issue is tied to the game feeling unnecessarily harsh for your first few levels. You can't buy body armor or a helmet right from the get-go, so your lives tend to be as nasty, brutish, and short as any envisioned by Thomas Hobbes. It's immensely discouraging. The fact that your starter weapons, while technically lethal, feel as effective as a peashooter doesn't help. Luckily, you'll likely be able to buy such essentials after an hour or so of play. The vehicles feel pretty wonky on keyboard, too, giving the impression that you're sliding around an ice rink.

Having 100-person servers split into three teams is also a little odd, resulting in two teams of 33 players and one of 34 given that the science of making one person take up a third of a player slot yet evades us. Short of the developer just upping the server count to a number more easily divisible by three, this slight imbalance is just one of the game's many quirks right now.

Playing with friends or a clan is probably the best way to go. But once you dig into Wardogs, especially if you're happy using a mic and joining random squads, you'll find a generally very pleasant community even going in solo. There have been a few of the inevitable exceptions, but I've felt more welcome than not so far.

Players come here for different purposes, because Wardogs really is a mishmash of genres. Depending on your role, you could be playing it like a stripped-back survival game, a truck simulator, flight sim, or an FPS. You could quite easily dedicate your entire playtime to becoming a fantastic driver or pilot, saving lives on the frontline while barely firing a shot. You could also become a saboteur, a sniper, or special forces operator. Whichever roles you choose to take on, there's always a way for you to make money as a mercenary.

Time will tell if its diversity will be enough to keep players coming back for more. But since Wardogs launched into Early Access, I've struggled to play anything else.

Load into the best FPS games to play next if you were hoping for a first-person shooter with, well, a little more shooting...

This is probably the biggest spread of amiibo discounts I've ever witnessed. Nintendo's Customer Appreciation Sale is now live and is Ninty's own way of handing back the tariff refunds to its customer base. While it's disappointing that the refunds haven't gone straight into players' pockets, the sale has brought with it 30% off some of the best Nintendo Switch 2 accessories out there, which I can still appreciate as a collector.

Some of these figures have been far cheaper in the past, like the Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom figures. Those are dropped as low as $10 at other retailers, so listing them for $20.99 at Nintendo isn't a big deal - but the other amiibo included definitely are. Kirby and the Warp Star figure from the Air Rider series is one of the newest releases part of this sale, and it has a whopping $15 off today. Even the recent Super Mario Bros Wonder trio has considerable price markdowns. I've rarely ever seen either discounted, so they're definitely some of the better ones to pick up before Nintendo's appreciation comes to an end.

I've included them, and a whole host of participating amiibo down below that I'd recommend adding to your collection. As a word of warning, I'd recommend doing so sooner rather than later, as plenty have already sold out. While you can still grab the stunning (and surprisingly large) Mario and Luma release for just $24.49 today, the Rosalina counterpart is out of stock. I suspect it won't be long before plenty of these figures I've included below follow suit. You snooze, you lose.

Check out our 2026 amiibo list if you're after the latest NFC collectibles.

PlayStation exclusive games like Marvel's Wolverine and Marvel's Spider-Man aren't Sony's only connection to superhero media. Sony Pictures also produces the Tom Holland-starring Spider-Man movies (and, of course, the likes of Madame Webb). That's created some creative opportunities, as Tom Holland himself has admitted that some of Brand New Day's terrific stunts and fight scenes were inspired by the trilogy of games. Considering the Spider-Man flicks are part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Studios could do worse than taking some similar notes from Marvel's Wolverine.

While the action in Marvel's Wolverine on PS5 is certainly bombastic – expect lashings of blood and gore as Logan pops his adamantium claws to de-limb cybernetic reavers and pounce on ninja hidden in trees before ripping their chests out – high-octane action isn't unusual for the angry superhero. No, I think the most impressive aspect of Marvel's Wolverine, playing it as a long-time comic and movie fan, is how unbothered it is by the long shadow of Fox's iconic X-Men saga, many instalments of which put Wolverine himself front and center.

Suit up

With 10 core movies spanning 2000–2017 (discounting spin-offs like Deadpool), the landmark X-Men films truly define a generation of superhero cinema. Its original two films, alongside Sam Raimi's Spider-Man movies, helped to put the comic book movie on the map and turned them into the audience-pleasers they are today.

Even since Marvel Studios got the mutant rights back from Fox in 2019 with Disney's acquisition of the company, they've so far been unable to resist the allure of playing with pre-existing toys. The past eight years have seen variant timeline heroes such as Professor Charles Xavier in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, and Wolverine in Deadpool and Wolverine being reprised by original actors Patrick Stewart and Hugh Jackman respectively. A core meta red herring twist in Wandavision even revolves around the idea that Evan Peters may be reprising his role as Quicksilver. Following Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Marvel has finally announced a proper X-Men film is on the way in 2028, starring an all-new cast – and it's vital Marvel gets it right in a post Avengers: Doomsday world.

During all this to-ing and fro-ing, Insomniac Games' own Marvel universe on PlayStation has been in its lane, thriving. The Marvel's Spider-Man games kicked off with Peter Parker already active as the web-slinger, reinventing his history with a suite of villains while also coming up with fresh origins for familiar faces to create a world for Peter Parker to inhabit that's both familiar and fresh.

Marvel's Wolverine takes this approach even further. This is also no Wolverine origin story – only a small flash of memory points towards his Weapon X backstory that saw his bones fused with adamantium metal – but this is a universe in which the X-Men don't yet exist as an institution. In fact, the game opens up with Logan effectively coming out of retirement to assist his old crew, Team X, with rescuing their founder Nathaniel Essex from Bolivar Trask's illegal mutant blacksite facility, ending up on the trail of a grander scheme that imperils mutantkind in the process.

Logan is old, but due to suffering amnesia after going feral, he can only remember the last thirty years of his life, even if his skills before then return naturally – like being able to speak several languages fluently. Even while not being an origin story, this still manages to be a tale that juggles Wolverine finding himself and defining his future rather than his past, all while a parallel journey is happening for a dispersed and diminished mutantkind being hunted down by prejudiced forces. A better future is worth fighting for.

Team X is neither quite like the black ops Team X from the comics (formed of Weapon X test subjects) nor the X-Men themselves. They're an off-the-grid group led by Nathaniel Essex, fighting for mutant rights in a world that has forced them to do so with extreme violence. Early chapters where memorials for fallen members loom large make it clear that anything less will see you snuffed out.

There's plenty of blood-spilling from Logan, but Marvel's Wolverine is also home to quieter, bleaker moments of tragedy that are heartbreaking. Especially as – like in Spider-Man – this paints a familiar world that's just different enough from the source material to leave me constantly wondering where it'll go next, and how it can possibly resolve in a way that's not completely devastating.

Jean Grey, too, is a core character (we are living in the year of Jean Grey). Unlike her recent appearances where she's much younger, it's nice to see Jean Grey here as a grown woman fully capable and comfortable with who she is, what she wants, and what she's willing to fight for.

Here, she's grown up alongside Callisto and this game's version of the Morlocks – a found family of unhoused and abused-by-society mutants with nowhere else to turn. It's even neat to see Logan's pining for Jean in other media inverted as Jean herself is clearly won over by the power of PS5 and its ability to render Logan's incredible amount of realistic body hair and big, glistening puppy dog eyes.

Both Liam McIntyre and Krizia Bajos inhabit their roles as Wolverine and Jean Grey fantastically, with direction that makes the most of the gaming medium to give them a wider gamut of emotions through its lengthy runtime than one movie would be capable of. I also have to tip my hat to Troy Baker's turn as Nathaniel Essex, whose British accent is surprisingly good for Team X's morally grey mentor.

Even with these differences, Jean Grey still feels true to aspects from the comics that define her as an enduring character, the same as Wolverine. Plenty of Wolverine easter eggs, teasers, and cameo appearances make it clear where a potential sequel would go while ensuring this version of the world still feels like one lived in by mutants – albeit still different from either of Fox's now-converged X-Men timelines. I actually think it's quite funny that the only movie tie-in suit Wolverine can unlock in the game so far is the yellow one from Deadpool and Wolverine, which is from a character who is decidedly not the one from the rest of the Fox X-Men movies.

I'd been worried elements of Fox's X-Men would be too enduring for this game to escape, and I couldn't have been more wrong. Next up, it'll be time to see the MCU's take on rebooting the X-Men, which promises a back-to-basics team composed of Professor Xavier, Rogue, Storm, Cyclops, and Emma Frost, with Nathaniel Essex also part of the picture. Still, a true back-to-basics approach feels a little obvious. After all, that's what X-Men: First Class already did so well. I want a different take, a fresh take, one that will make me reconsider what I believe the X-Men to be – just as Marvel's Wolverine has done for me in gaming with its own twists on the mutant world.

Logan's latest adventure is definitely not without problems. In our Marvel's Wolverine review, we criticized poor pacing and a choppy structure that feels like it was compiled hastily. But, even days after finishing it a second time through New Game Plus, I'm still thinking about the game's new interpretations of classic characters. I really hope this gets a sequel, purely because I hope this isn't the last time we've seen this take on Wolverine, Jean Grey, and the rest of Team X on PS5. That's exactly the feeling Marvel's X-Men movie needs to give me when I walk out of the theater in 2028. [Pulls out a chess board mimicking the Professor X / Magneto scenes in the movies] – It's your move, MCU.

Snarling for more to play? Check out our best Marvel games ranking. Or, if you'd rather chill, our best Marvel movies list has plenty of suggestions!

There was one thing that we knew for certain going into Insomniac Games' latest title: we'd have a bunch of Marvel's Wolverine Easter Eggs to dig our adamantium claws into. After all, this is Marvel we are talking about, folks, and with that level of history and pop cultural influence, there was no way that we wouldn't get a bunch of references and cheeky little comic book nods.

However, I will say that even as a Marvel veteran, and having played through the entire game (read our Marvel Wolverine review next for a complete deep dive) at this point, some Easter Eggs are tricky to find here. While some are obvious, others rely on optional interactions. There are also more than a couple blink-and-you'll-miss-it kind of moments as you fill the shoes of an amnesiac Logan. So with that in mind, we've rounded up all the references, subtle nods, and direct comic call-outs in a handy guide for you.

Below are all 32 Marvel's Wolverine Easter Eggs that we have found so far, complete with a short description explaining each and where you'll be able to find them if you want to check them out for yourself too. Warning: spoilers ahead!

1. The Daily Bugle

While the Daily Bugle is a New York publication, you'll be able to find an Easter Egg of the front page of an issue during the mission "The One That Got Away" that takes place near Vancouver. Found in Leech's hideout, the front page of the paper has been pinned to the wall. Said front page is about a baseball team winning, a team which seems to be called the Maelstroms. Now, granted, I don't know Marvel's baseball teams off by heart, but I do know about the supervillain called Maelstrom, who tries to destroy the universe, so it looks like we have two Easter Eggs in one here, folks.

2. Gambit's card

Gambit is an X-Men staple, and considering how he doesn't make an appearance in the game (he is probably off with Rogue somewhere, right, gang?) I couldn't help but smile after spotting a Gambit playing card during my playthrough. You can spot this during the mission "One Last Mission" on a side table to Walter's right while you look through records for him. If you need a quick refresher, playing cards are Gambit's weapons of choice on most occasions as he charges them with kinetic energy and uses them as basically explosive projectiles. I would have loved to get a chance to throw some destructive aces myself, but at least the charismatic character got a nod.

3. A Dazzler poster

Dazzler may not be part of Logan's team in the new Wolverine game, but she is at least there in the form of an Easter Egg thanks to a poster in-game. If you aren't familiar with this absolute icon, Dazzler is a mutant who can convert sound vibrations into light and energy beams. She also made her first comic book appearance back in the '80s in Uncanny X-Men #130. She does have a kind of on-again, off-again relationship with the X-Men, as she occasionally joins the team. But considering that she is a big-time singer as well as a hero, it does make sense why we get to see a dedicated poster here vs. another mutant. This poster can be found during "One Last Mission", you'll see it after going up the stairs to the bar Jean is in.

4. A Devil Dinosaur in Tokyo

Stepping through the red gates of Kabukicho in the "Get Angry" chapter doesn't just feel like you're playing Yakuza – this is directly based on Tokyo's real red-light district. The huge tower in real-life contains the Hotel Gracery Shinjuku, and is famous for having a massive Godzilla head on the side. Here, the equivalent is reimagined as a T-Rex with distinctive crimson red skin, which seems like a direct reference to Devil Dinosaur from the '70s comic, who is usually partnered with either Moon-Boy or, more recently, Moon Girl – including as a Marvel Rivals character.

5. Alchemax

What better place to reference the evil, cyberpunk megacorporation from Spider-Man 2099 and the wider Marvel 2099 universe than among the neon lights and bright posters of Tokyo? Several locations throughout Kabukicho advertise the company, hinting that they may have offices nearby. Not only is their illegal drug-testing responsible for turning Miguel O'hara – who you may know from Across the Spider-Verse – into a Spider-Man, but also for creating Degen mutants, who populate the futuristic universe.

6. Sable Security

Sable Security (also known as Sable International) makes an appearance in the game, meaning we have another Spider-Man link here. If you aren't familiar with this already, Sable Security is a security force that is founded by Silver Sable, the princess of Symkaria. It's a group that is meant to help out countries dealing with rising crime rates, but they have a habit of pushing boundaries and often civilians around. Several advertisements can be spotted around Shinjuku, but most prominently this appears near the start of "Bad Blood" as Logan and Jean approach Shiro's building, where Wolverine can comment on her attempt to recruit him.

7. Roxxon

Roxxon is one of the staple villains in the Marvel Universe and is also one of the largest conglomerates in that world, so I was very pleased to see it pop up while playing Wolverine. While this company has appeared in other Marvel storylines like Spider-Man, it is famously very anti-mutant, so seeing it in an X-Men game is very fitting and also serves as a reminder that a ton of people don't like Logan and friends. Signs for Roxxon are throughout Tokyo's urban settings, from "Get Angry" through to "We Were Wrong".

8. Hammer Industries

Iron Man fans may be more familiar with the name Hammer Industries, but I was very pleased to see this Easter Egg pop up on a billboard during the mission In The Shadows. It is a weapons manufacturer that surprisingly has a history with the famous group of mutants. Firstly it's logo has been shown in Marvel Animation's X-Men '97 series, and in the comics, the X-Men saved one of Its weapon manufacturing firms from Magneto. It's also a nice bit of world building to see mention of Hammer Industries in tandem with Trask Industries, and Roxxon being mentioned.

9. Jean Grey's green dress

In Marvel's Wolverine, we see Jean Grey wearing an outfit which is very much reminiscent of her X-Men #39 costume. The comic saw the hero wearing a green mini-dress with yellow accessories and a pointy yellow mask. As you can see from the screenshot above of the outfit sorted in the game, there is a very clear reference being made here as Jean Grey dons this classy outfit to blend into a party in "Death Comes To Death" while Logan sneaks in through the rooftops.

10. Angel, Worthington III

Angel Worthington III is a mutant and the founding member of the X-Men, and also comes from a wealthy background – which makes it appropriate to catch a glimmer of his presence in the "Roll the Dice" mission during the opening section where Logan and Jean infiltrate a classy Uptown Madripoor casino undercover. Near the dance floor which you need to approach to progress the story is a reserved spot at the bar for Warren Worthington III.

11. J Jonah Jameson's autobiography book, 'My Life in Words'

Marvel's Wolverine is set in the same universe as Insomniac Games' Spider-Man games, even if they haven't explicitly crossed over thanks to being in different locations. J Jonah Jameson has wide market penetration, however, with multiple copies of his autobiography, My Life is Words, present in Nathaniel Essex's mutant institute where Team X is based, complete with JJJ's mug on the back – first able to be seen during the "Homecoming" mission. Essex, you need better reading material.

12. Henry McCoy (Beast) research

If you have a poke around Trask's lab, you'll see that on display is Henry McCoy (Beast) research. This is a nice little find considering that we don't get to see Beast otherwise. It is also a fun tie-in for some comic book lore, considering that Beast's backstory did once upon a time involve him working as a researcher for the Brand Corporation, where his research was also the target of thieves. I was personally a bit sad not to see Beast in the fold during the game, so finding at least a mention of his name and history was a nice surprise. The reference appears on one of the monitors Logan can interact with during the "Mutant Detected" mission in Madripoor, after Mystique suggests you nose around while she obtains some data.

13. The obelisk of dead names in the institute

Nathaniel Essex's institute features a striking black obelisk in its lounge area – a reference to members of Team X and fellow mutants who have fallen, and it's sadly not a short list. This can be observed in "Homecoming" and other missions set there. All of these names are references to mutants from the comics, spanning some classics to much more modern additions. Oddly, the obelisk's reverse side repeats a portion of the list.

• John Wraith: Kestrel
• Kodiak Noatak: Harpoon
• Sidney Green: Onyxx
• Myles Alfred: Vivisector
• Michael Baer: Blockbuster
• William H Thornton: Potentially Harry Thornton, AKA Harry Heck, he's in the Punisher 2004 movie, but not a mutant, so we might be missing something here
• Robbie (Prism): Prism, believe it or not
• Carl Aalston: Rain Boy
• Christoph Nord: Maverick
• Trevor Hawkins: Eye-boy
• Lazaro Kotikash: Kidogo
• Benjamin Deeds: Morph
• Sarah Vale: Network
• Roxanne Washington: Bling

14. All the other mutants' gear in the Arsenal from former Team X members

Several of the former members of Team X memorialized on the black obelisk still have space in the arsenal for their gear. Clearly, the team isn't recruiting new members quickly enough to have to hurry up with clearing those up. At various points, Logan can comment on the members here. They include Maverick's mask and pistols; a water tank containing Rain Boy's gear; Eye-Boy's many-goggled nightvision specs; a heap of Vivesector's books; and Onyxx's training weights. Wolverine must walk through this room in "Homecoming", but some of his comments about them come during later sections.

15. Young Dragons in Love book

At the institute (during "Homecoming" and some others), you can find a Young Dragons in Love book, which comic book fans may understand is a reference to the same-titled storyline in Uncanny X-Men 181. That story is set after the events of the original Secret Wars, when the X-Men have returned to Earth; however, they are followed by a kaiju-sized dragon. This is also another Easter Egg about the X-Men's past adventures in Tokyo that we see in the game, so it's nice to see that the game has taken the time to build up a sense of subtle history in the locations you visit here.

16. Along Came a Spider book

Also during "Homecoming" and other missions at Essex's institute, you can spy he has a few copies of a book named Along Came A Spider, though it's harder to get a good look at the full model. Black, with distinctive red linework across it, this is likely a reference to Venom: Along Came a Spider (1996). Though it's not the only Spidey media to use the name, this feels like a reference to the Venom symbiote from Spider-Man 2. A Venom spin-off game has been long rumored. Could this mean anything?

17. Skull and engine motif on Sabertooth's Barbed & Wired poster

OK, so this is an Easter Egg that may be nothing, but it did make me double take so it is worth putting it on this list. In Marvel's Wolverine, you'll be able to see Sabertooth's Barbed & Wired poster as you sneak through his room as part of the main story in "Homecoming", which does feature a skull and engine motif. Now in the Marvel universe, a skull and engine can only mean one thing: Ghost Rider. It is a bit of a reach, considering that Ghost Rider and Sabertooth don't often cross paths, but there is a connection between the two through Wolverine, as Logan and Ghost Rider have teamed up to face Sabertooth in past comic book storylines. I may be reading too much into this, but it would be cool if my hunch is correct, especially as one of Logan's more impressive unlockable skins, earned through surviving challenging combat gauntlets, is a Ghost Rider suit.

18. Osmium

During the mission "The One That Got Away" Wolverine discovers Trask is shipping Osmium to Madripoor. This is a fun Colossus Easter Egg, as the Russian mutant's body is made up of an "organic steel" that is very similar to Osmium. Although we don't know his full body composition, it's pretty likely that Osmium is a big part of it so seeing it pop up in the game is a nice little nod to the missing X-Men member. The next mission, "Raise Some Hell", takes place in a refinery, and the reavers have set up indestructible osmium locks that force you to find more creative ways around the refinery. This is also the mission where you find the head of a prototype Sentinel, which is presumably what all the osmium is for.

19. William Stryker's autobiography

William Stryker is a big name in the X-Men universe as a massive anti-mutant force. In fact, most iterations of the character have him viewing his opposition to mutants as some kind of crusade, as he believes that mutants are the forces of satan trying to kill humanity…very healthy. This warped mindset comes as an Easter Egg in the game, as you can find Stryker's autobiography (titled 'My War') in the Trask power station in the mission 'Knock Knock'. Another fun fact about William Stryker getting a shout-out is that in the movie X-Men Origins: Wolverine's version of Weapon X (which he leads), he convinces Wolverine into receiving adamantium implants and then shoots him in the head, making him suffer from long-term amnesia. A fun similarity to the game's amnesiac hero, isn't it?

20. Trask's cerebro-like tracking device

Marvel Wolverine is missing a lot of familiar X-Men and other mutants. However, even though we don't see them on screen directly, at least we do get some kind of mention of them in this particular Easter Egg. In the game, we see a Trask Cerebro-like tracking device that lists several known mutants indirectly, which Mystique accesses during the "Mutant Detected" mission. For example, there is information about an individual with absorption powers which is pretty much pointing at Rogue since Caldecott Country is also mentioned (aka where she is from). Another example is an entry mentioning very Kitty Pryde-like intangibility, while another mentions optical blasts, which points to the Summers family. I'm sure there is more here that I may have missed, so I highly recommend comic book fans pay attention to this Easter Egg to see if you can pick out any more covert mutant mentions.

21. Princess Bar

The Marvel Presents storyline from the '80s in which Logan goes undercover in Madripoor as Patch, his eye-patch and white tuxedo-wearing alter ego, also features the Princess Bar, where Tyger Tiger works. This is almost too direct to be a true easter egg, but it's worth noting how much Marvel's Wolverine seems to pull from the iconic Marvel Presents 'Save the Tiger' run even in terms of pure aesthetics and tone. It first features in "One Last Mission" as Team X debriefs, and appears in later sections in Madripoor as well.

22. A Angar and the Screamers poster in Madripoor

There is a poster in Madripoor featuring "Angar and the Screamers," which is a very fun little nod to the character Angar the Screamer (aka David Angar). Angar used to be a social activist; however, after he volunteered to undergo some experimental research, he developed a very unique set of vocal cords that allows his screams to have hallucinogenic effects. He is a villain in the Marvel Universe, and often pops up as a baddie for hire in the comic books. You can see this as you explore around the Princess Bar in "One Last Mission" at the nearby theater, and in later missions in the same area.

23. The Crick-Hits

This poster is an easter Egg of an actual band in the Marvel comics (not just a fun parody of a villain). They are a rock band from Earth-1611 and are a Beatles parody in-universe. Considering how Earth-1611 is a divergent of Earth-616 set in the 1960s, the Beatles reference is very fitting. Another fun fact is that this timeline is also where The Age of Sentry storyline takes place. Posters for the band are across Madripoor Lowtown, but feature most prominently alongside other references at the theater near Princess Bar, which you can see earliest during "One Last Mission".

24. Starry

For a while I thought the Starry jewelry ads in Tokyo were just chic designer wear, but the mix of Starry with jewels feels like it could be a nod to the Starry Wisdom Cult from Journey Into Mystery #4 (the same strip that introduced Thor), itself based on the Church of Starry Wisdom from HP Lovecraft's The Haunter of the Dark short story. In the comic, the church believes that gazing into the Shining Trapezohedron could awaken their Old One deity. Given the strangeness of the Helix Engine, it's not off-base. Perhaps there really is more to this seemingly innocuous jewelry brand than it seems.

25. A Backwards Santa ad in Tokyo

Backwards Santa, advertised in Tokyo, and potentially a movie of some sort, could just be a wacky reference to an evil version of the Father Christmas character to fill billboard space. However, it's worth remembering that in the comics Santa is confirmed to be a mutant who uses his powers to deliver presents to children, which is in Marvel Holiday Special 1991. If this were a poster for Backwards Cyclops I'd include this as an Easter Egg, so it's only fair to embrace Santa in the same way.

26. Tokyo kissing toilet

The bizarre kissing toilet in the basement of the bar Wolverine and Jean burst into, which hides a collectible whiskey bottle, isn't just a random invention. No, this is pulling from a real Japanese toilet where a similar mask will make strange kissing noises at you as you do your business. It's just one of many interestingly extra Japanese toilets that continue to prove how advanced their bathroom technology is. Seriously, once you've used a good one in a hotel, you won't be able to forget it – and no toilets back home will satisfy.

27. The Mission select screen

The mission select screen in Marvel's Wolverine has an Easter Egg to the (at this point) iconic meme of a sad Wolverine sitting on his bed and looking at a picture frame. The moment is originally from an episode of the animated X-Men TV series called "Captive Hearts", which had Logan acting all forlorn while looking at a picture of Jean Grey and Scott Summers. While the original source is pretty heartbreaking, the reference is hilarious and a great little addition to see in the game.

28. Archibald Corrigan

The logo for Archibald Corrigan's freight company can be spotted on the side of a building during Way Down Low, which is a fun little reference to the Vietnam War pilot. Archie has a history with the X-Men, having worked for Tyger Tiger and with Patch (Wolverine's alias). A lot of their interactions revolve around Madripoor, so again it is nice that the game gives us a sense of history with that place. Another fun Archibald fact is that Charles Xavier also purchased a plane from him at one point, so the X-Men lore goes deep here.

29. "Where is Baran?" Graffiti

There's plenty of graffiti in Lowtown with the odd bit referencing something appropriately Wolverine-y - during Way Down Low, you can find several instances of 'Bub' sprayed artfully on a wall, referencing Logan's catchphrase. But during I'm Still Here, you can spot a more obscure reference to Prince Baran, a previous ruler of Madripoor who is descended from a long line of pirates. As a key player in Madripoor, he therefore has links with Tyger Tiger and Wolverine in the comics, overseeing plenty of crime, and even dividing the city state's criminal enterprises between Tyger Tiger and General Nguyen Ngoc Coy.

30. Whiskey bottles

All the Marvel's Wolverine whiskey bottles reference something to do with Marvel and Wolverine – most of them nodding to specific Wolverine alternate names or story arcs, such as The Old Man or Patch, and even deeper cuts like Revolto (as in, The Clown, when Wolverine was in Frankenstein's Monster's Murder Circus). Incredible 181 is particularly notable, however, as a reference to Incredible Hulk 181, where Wolverine first made his appearance as a villain of the week hired to take down Bruce Banner as a mercenary. Later, he was retro-fitted to be a mutant, recruited to join the X-Men on an emergency mission in the legendary Giant Size X-Men 1, which introduced many of the core team we know and love today including Storm, Nightcrawler, and others.

31. Wolverine's Costumes

Like the bottles, Marvel's Wolverine suits contain so many nods to Marvel and X-Men lore that we've given them their own deep dive. Stand-outs worth mentioning include a crossover skin with Marvel Tokon, a cel-shaded Animated skin that nods to the legendary '90s TV show, Future Fugitive, which puts a Marvel 2099 spin on Logan's look, and the Ghost Rider-inspired Hellverine. Others spotlight fan-favorite arcs or looks, such as New Leather nodding to Grant Morrison's New X-Men run, and the Midnight look from the original Midnight Suns comics (no, not the tactics RPG Marvel's Midnight Suns – though, please, Insomniac Games, we're begging for the gold all-over look to return).

32. Daredevil's connection to Shiro

The Hand have become a recurring Wolverine threat, but they have their origins in Daredevil 174, and are frequently antagonists for Daredevil, AKA defense attorney Matthew Murdoch. Their New York presence featured in both Netflix's Daredevil TV series, and in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. In Marvel's Wolverine, Shiro is a collector of The Hand artefacts, and helps Logan and Jean track them down, including some crucial clues provided to him by "some lawyer in Hell's Kitchen" just before they take the fight to their base at the end of the Japan section of the game. There's a The Hand reference in Spider-Man 2, as well, which for a while was thought to be a nod towards Daredevil featuring in Spider-Man's future as well. The connected universe continues to grow for Insomniac Games.

For more superhero goodness, we have a list of the best Marvel games that you should play today. Or for more stories, head on over to our list of the best Wolverine comics of all time.

Star Wars Zero Company is a great turn-based tactics game and probably the best way to dip your toes into the genre besides Marvel's Midnight Suns. Moreover, the much-discussed permadeath mechanic isn't as scary as you've been led to believe... if you play your cards right.

By cards I mean operators, the literal lifeblood of Zero Company. While you can get through the game using only authored characters, that's an approach that, at least during a first playthrough, puts them at unnecessary risk. Why not throw some customized redshirts into the woodchipper instead?

Look, I appreciate everyone I recruit and welcome into my scrappy base of operations. I don't want to see them bludgeoned to death like Aurelio. But, if someone's gotta go, you shouldn't hold on. You can repeatedly refresh for new custom operators (or make them yourself) at no cost anyway. Star Wars Zero Company is extremely lenient, actually. And the moment you learn to leave the right folks behind to complete a mission, a lot of the stress and difficulty dissipates.

Lethal playgrounds

Zero Company is not a very long game if you compare it to other giants in the genre. Therefore, you won't be doing countless secondary missions on top of the main story ones.

The cycle system takes care of that, as you're not meant to play everything the game has to offer in a single run. There's momentum and friction to the game's big overarching structure, like in The Blood of Dawnwalker.

This means you shouldn't save custom operators for the ideal random mission. Even a generic attack on a Separatist base can be deadly and yield massive rewards. This might also lead you to think custom operators are B-tier soldiers, but that's not true. They lack the ridiculous passives some authored characters have (turn Jae into a sharpshooter and have fun with her one-execution-per-turn perk), but class skill trees are pretty much the same, and the cool thing about Zero Company is that new operators match your group's level.

Because of the pressure to save everyone, you may overlook that custom operators are cheap (seriously, any Black Market item is more expensive) and quite reliable. Moreover, there are no penalties to taking them in any direction and resetting their focus (perk) points. You're meant to toy around with their builds and throw them into the riskiest secondary missions. What's the worst that can happen?

Rescue and sabotage missions are probably the most "annoying" of the bunch, mostly because you're given a very strict turn limit to complete the objectives, which usually involve legging it across the map to reach a guy (or astromech droid) in danger or an object that must be blown up. Operators in Zero Company can't move a lot every turn while also battling the endless waves of enemies, so success in such missions involves just throwing someone into the meat grinder to at least stop the timer before being told to reach an evacuation zone that's also quite far. The perfect job for the latest hires, no?

Every man for themselves

I'm frankly impressed by the amount of dialogue custom operators get in this game. They feel lively and like "part of the crew" even if you don't have authored chats with them. Great voice acting, too. It's probably for the best that they still fade into the background after a while, though. Sorry, but I'll protect the only Jedi in the game at all costs.

A common scenario in Star Wars Zero Company is getting absolutely pummelled after completing the objectives, as you're trying to evac. It's nerve-wracking, especially when droids won't stop pouring in. Pause for a second and notice the option to extract without getting everyone to the evac zone. If things are very bad for your irreplaceable operators, you can spend their action points to hit the bricks and leave the randos behind. This is why you put those freelancers in front of the greatest dangers. It's just a job, and they're easy to replace.

This coldness actually feels right and permeates much of Zero Company even if there are tales of camaraderie and warmer exchanges to be found. Rogue One and The Clone Wars (or even The Bad Batch) haven't been repeatedly cited as inspirations for the game only because of what goes down with its main players. Those stories are full of sacrifices and grunts fighting for something greater than themselves. By design, you're meant to use those operators as pawns in a larger game.

Dropping the "we don't leave anyone behind" mentality not only makes the game easier, since you're really encouraged to do so. It also makes the connection between the narrative and the systems holding it together tighter and richer. It won't protect the key characters from death if you bite more than you can chew or during their own key missions, but it reinforces them as important assets that are deployed more strategically. You can bet I'll save-scum as hard as possible to save Tel-Rea, though.

Explore a galaxy far, far away with the best Star Wars games of all-time.

Diablo 5 is officially in development, and it promises to usher in the "next era of Diablo" as you step into a fallen world and fight to survive.

Announced during Blizzcon 2026, the team at Blizzard Entertainment celebrated Diablo's 30th anniversary by dropping a hellish teaser for the new game. Not only that, but the showcase also featured a "Forging the Next Era" panel that shed more light on the ambitions of the follow-up to Diablo 4. With details on the new direction for the longstanding setting of Sanctuary, some of its systems and classes were also revealed.

With a rough release date window that places it a little under a handful of years away, there'll be a bit of a wait until it arrives. But since the last Diablo entry is still counted among the best ARPGs of recent times, it's undoubtedly exciting to know an ambitious upcoming game is in the works that's setting out to take the series "somewhere genuinely new". So, if you're looking to catch up on what was revealed, read on as I take you through everything you need to know about Diablo 5, from its launch window, to its story and world, and more.

Diablo 5 release date and platform speculation

Diablo 5's release date is currently slated for sometime in Spring 2029, and no platforms have been confirmed so far.

With a distant launch window, it makes sense that no platforms have been revealed as of yet. It's a safe bet that it will launch on PC when it initially arrives. Of course, it's difficult to know what the landscape of consoles will look like in 2029, but judging by Diablo games in past years, it will likely come to Xbox and PlayStation. And since Diablo 4 officially joined the lineup of upcoming Switch 2 games for September 2026, there's every possibility Diablo 5 will follow suit.

Diablo 5 trailer

Diablo 5 story and setting

Diablo 5 is set to bring you back into the mortal realm of Sanctuary, but as Blizzard revealed, the world is no longer waiting for an apocalypse to happen because it's already going through one when you first step into it. Humanity has now fallen, Diablo has won and rules, and his reign of terror is reshaping the world. As detailed in the panel and on Blizzard's official site, this will be reflected in the game through a procedural landscape where monsters, points of interest, and terrain can change each time you return.

With Diablo at the heart of the story and events of Diablo 5 (having last appeared in Diablo 3 as a final boss fight), narrative director Jennifer Brandes Hepler (who was a key writer on the Dragon Age series) said, "once we decided that this game was going to bring Diablo back, we knew we had to do it right. He couldn't just be a final boss. He needs to be the force that's shaping this game from its opening moments. And that's how we decided that this time, you're not scrambling to protect Sanctuary before Diablo can rise and take it over."

As Hepler explains, other heroes tried to rise up and stop Diablo, but failed. Now, you're venturing into the aftermath of what they failed to prevent. Essentially that means that you're going to experience, as Hepler puts it, a world that "all other Diablo games were trying to prevent from happening".

Senior art director John Mueller adds that the team are "doubling down on darkness" for Diablo 5, which is captured in the apocalyptic setting. But as Hepler notes, they've tried to create a Sanctuary that's still worth fighting for, even if it's fallen to ruin.

As you fight for Sanctuary, you'll be playing as Heir to Westmarch, a continent that now serves, in the words of senior game director Joe Shely, as Diablo's "outpost of Hell". Now entirely overrun, most humans that remain have become corrupted or turned into cultists. Anyone who resists Diablo is put in soul cages or drawn into the Terror realm, which is where the story begins – as you'll discover, you can survive in the Terror realm, and it's here that you'll find out about some powers you have that Blizzard is keeping quiet about for the time being.

Curiously, in your role, you'll have a unique connection or bond with Diablo that you'll learn more about over the course of the game. Hepler says this will put you in a unique position to face him and gain insight into him, but you'll also have a particular vulnerability to the Lord of Terror and what he can do to you in turn.

Diablo 5 gameplay

While it's still early days and it'll likely be some time before we actually see any Diablo 5 gameplay, the team did share some details about certain aspects of the game and its features.

Survival, for example, is now connected to a caravan of allies you work to build up rather than clearing out strongholds or towns. As the team at Blizzard explain, these allies can come in the form of both vendors and companions, and each one has their own stories to tell, with their own "pasts, stakes, and scars from surviving Diablo's Sanctuary".

In terms of companions, we so far know that they will include a former sister of the Sightless Eye, and a stranded Treasure Goblin.

The team is trying to design items that "feel readable, memorable, and worth chasing across hundreds of hours". Gear-based stats will be returning with a deep crafting system that takes cues from Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred's approach, and Diablo 5 will also take inspiration from Diablo 2's Runes and Runewords.

Diablo 5 classes

Some of Diablo 5's classes have already been revealed, including an entirely new class that will be introduced in the new game. The classes are as follows:

• Demon Hunter – A ranged class that first appeared in Diablo 3, Demon Hunters make use of twin crossbows and use the shadows to their advantage to take out foes.
• Monk – Another returning class, the Monk is an agile warrior who uses their fists to fight enemies and holy powers to smite them.
• Plague Knight – A new class introduced in Diablo 5, the Plague Knight is described as "the embodiment of walking death" who can spread disease and pestilence on the battlefield.

Diablo 5 development

Diablo 5 is now in early development, with Blizzard stating that the reveal "marks the beginning of an ongoing conversation" with the Diablo player community. Setting out to take player feedback on board throughout the development of the game, regular updates are set to be shared as of 2027 to offer up a closer look at features, progress, and more.

"Bringing players into the process early gives us the opportunity to listen, understand what excites you the most, and allow that to inform the decisions ahead," Blizzard's official post on Diablo 5 reads. "We want to build a Diablo game that honors what players love while taking the series somewhere genuinely new."

If you're keen to follow the development, you can currently sign up for future updates here.

While you wait for the next Diablo, you can also check out our pick of the best Diablo games if you're looking to revisit or discover the series.

For more on what's next from Blizzard, check out our guide to everything we know about StarCraft, the new open world, story-driven shooter.

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

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

Story time

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

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

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

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

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

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

Card-core

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Legend of Zelda is a video game as ritual. It's enlivened by ingenious variations from one game to the next, but Nintendo's adventures in the land of Hyrule remain absorbed in the pleasures of careful repetition. These games are curated as much as they are designed; they're gardens rather than wildernesses. And so, at the end of Breath of the Wild, the hero in green defeats Ganon, as he always does.

But wait. This is not quite accurate. At the end of Breath of the Wild - delivered via DLC - Link, the medieval adventurer, gets a motorbike. That was how this particular Zelda ended. And so that was the point at which Nintendo's designers had to decide: what comes next?

It's still hard to know what to make of that parting gift. Noisy, gravel-spitting, rebellious – a motorbike would be unthinkable in any other Zelda game. But then the very idea of DLC would be unthinkable too. How could any of these intricate clockwork worlds have room for even a single additional cog?

This was Breath of the Wild, though, the game that stripped away decades of gadgets and structural rhythms. Link may have defeated Ganon, but much of the rest of the tradition was suddenly scrambled. No more predictable plot beats. No more polite trek from one dungeon to the next, growing more powerful with each step.

Here instead was an open-world Hyrule where the dungeons were largely secondary to the one-shot puzzle or combat Shrines scattered across the earth like a dusting of sugar on a pie. Here was a world where weapons degraded, where beloved horses could be lost forever, and where that familiar trickle of cherished items – the boomerang, the hookshot – was replaced with a handful of new powers granted at the start, and which the game would then rely upon for all its subsequent fun.

What did this mean? Up until now, Zelda had been about containment. The first game was inspired by Shigeru Miyamoto's childhood cave explorations, certainly, but it was born in a moment in which the designer was opening and closing his desk drawers and imagining a garden snug within each. Zelda offers adventuring, but always within safe boundaries.

It's dangerous to go open-world

This approach lasted until Breath of the Wild, which left its players startled, unmoored. Then came the motorbike, and then things took a truly bizarre turn. Two years after the release of Breath of the Wild, it was revealed that the follow-up, Tears of the Kingdom, would reuse the same map and the same structure of Shrines, swapping out the older game's powers but otherwise offering what seemed to be more of the same. What should we make of this? Was all that reinvention just a recalibration, and would we now be back to the business of repetition and ritual again?

Tears of the Kingdom's answer to this question is fascinating, and it takes a while to become clear. On the surface, Link's latest adventure follows a traditional approach to sequels: the stuff you loved, expanded and refined. More Shrines, new powers, another, grander threat to Hyrule. But beware that phrase ‘on the surface'. Underground, Tears of the Kingdom is every bit as wilful and singular as the game it builds upon. Maybe even more so.

Trailers for Tears of the Kingdom at first suggested horror and then sun-baked, sky-minded wonder. You would explore Hyrule, but also an archipelago of ingeniously crafted islands floating overhead. This felt like a sensible approach, but there was a lingering strangeness in the trailers that invited conspiracy theories. Were we really playing as Link? Was this really Hyrule once more? Could things be as simple as they seemed?

Within this online chatter, the dialogue that has dogged almost all Zeldas continued. Since the 8bit days, each new Zelda game has been forced into a conversation with all the others: what's new, what isn't, what are the main reference points? Maybe Tears of the Kingdom was simply a chance for the ground to settle after Breath of the Wild. There's still a princess, a young hero, a landscape that extends to the rosy horizon. But there's something else, too. Something waiting beneath it all.

Something lurking down below

In retrospect, those new powers were an early clue to the true spirit of Tears of the Kingdom. Breath of the Wild offered you ways to engage with the game's physics and bodge your own solutions to the challenges you were presented with. At heart, its powers were abilities designed for manipulating in-game objects in thoughtful ways. They opened up a new, more expressive way of playing, driven by everything from mechanical curiosity to bored tinkering.

By Tears of the Kingdom, though, the powers have become a cross between real-world design tools and explicit hacks. Making use of Ultrahand, Fuse and Ascend, you can craft complex machines and ridiculous weapons, or slip through Hyrule's hidden geometries. Aren't these options that come from a sense of polite frustration with what's come before? Aren't these tools enabling a form of escape?

These powers, pushing at the boundaries of everything from the way the world is created to the way a puzzle can be solved, suggest that the problem with Zelda wasn't that it was becoming familiar, because it had traded in familiarity since the SNES. The problem was that its familiarity could make it slightly airless. That's a hard problem to solve. And so Tears of the Kingdom turned its focus somewhere entirely new, on the game's unseen bedrock, and it built something astounding down there. Something entirely unexpected.

Welcome to the Depths, the underside of Hyrule, far beneath the floating sky islands waiting to be neatly solved, far beneath the grass and sands of the open world itself. Accessed via ugly red-rimmed tears in the earth, the Depths are a vast underworld of darkness and danger. If it's hard not to feel that recent Zeldas are the work of a talented team that is quietly weary of the baggage Zelda brings, the Depths are a perfect response.

Granted, the series is no stranger to parallel worlds, yet the Depths remain very different from the puzzle-piece dimensions of Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time. Those were precise additions, printed circuits that slotted cleanly into place. The Depths connect with the land above them, but they're also filled with a sense of chaos, of being half-complete. They're pitch-black and claustrophobic and, tellingly for a Zelda game, they're frequently optional.

Even so, it feels like these spaces were crucial to the people who made them. Why? Because this is the place where this Zelda's eternal conversation with other Zeldas ceases. Immediacy. The chatter and speculation falls silent, and you are left to the unfolding moment.

What a moment. Deep in theatrical murk, the air around you feels thick and treacherous and alive with adventure. There's no vista to draw your eye with distractions, nothing up ahead to plan an idle five minutes around. Instead, you're exploring in order to survive, working to unlock a network of scattered Lightroots, treetrunk nodes that reach down from the ceiling. Trigger them and you get a pool of light and a matching pool of illuminated map. You get fast travel, the slightest sense of your bearings, and the feeling that you're reclaiming a little of this terrifying space.

There's a puzzle down here, and it leads to a useful reward, but for once in a Zelda adventure it's hard to focus on because you're so thoroughly stuck in the present. With the lights off, the landscape ceases to be earth and slopes and trees, instead becoming something mysterious, almost a form of enemy as it occludes the horizon. Actually, forget the idea of a horizon: everything seems to be looming close, tangling underfoot.

Embrace the depths

Life feels clumsy and precarious in the dark. With the lights on, it's often even worse. With crimson pools of heart-sapping Gloom splattered across the ground and up the walls, this is Hyrule as crime scene. There's something gleefully cruel to the design itself: all alone, resources dwindling, unseen enemies pacing around you. Zelda has always made you feel like you're walking in the footsteps of the designers, perhaps to a fault. No more. In the Depths, the designers seem to have moved on far ahead, and they remain out of reach. Instead you must light your own path, all thoughts of the landscape above forgotten.

Endless jostling horror! But it's almost always a choice for you. Above the Depths there's still a story of rescue and reclaiming to be had, albeit one of the oddest the series has ever told. Ancient evil can still be defeated and the land saved. More crucially, Link's story up there is still built of moments of kindness as he explores Hyrule, solving strangers' problems.

But the Depths, that huge, unprecedented, non-understandable id, are down there all the while. Optional or not, it's theme-stating on a geological scale. The Depths are meant to destabilise. Here, at the very bedrock of the game that every Zelda team has to make, is the game they seem to have actually wanted to make this time.

The inchoate nature of the Depths suggests the designers were following their own path in search of what a Zelda game could be, instead of what it should be. And so Tears of the Kingdom advances the eternal conversation about Zelda and ritual and repetition not by upending things like Breath of the Wild, but by having the courage to ignore the conversation entirely. Down here, a new route forward takes shape, one Lightroot at a time. In the shifting darkness, Tears of the Kingdom opens its eyes.

This Tears of the Kingdom article was first published in issue 400 of Edge Magazine. To get more like this delivered straight to your doorstep (or digital device) consider subscribing to Edge.

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

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

StarCraft release date and platforms remain undefined

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

StarCraft reveal trailer

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

StarCraft screenshots

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

StarCraft gameplay

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

StarCraft story and setting

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

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

StarCraft development

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

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

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

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

Discover everything else that was announced at BlizzCon 2026.

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

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

Penitent one

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Parry it!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lighting the spark

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

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

Charity fundraising exists in many forms and serves numerous causes in video games. But Games Done Quick has established itself as a figurehead in a specialist area, more for its methods than beneficiaries.

"[Traditional] fundraising can kind of feel transactional and peer-to-peer," Farkas begins, explaining how GDQ wants to avoid that by creating novel experiences for its community. "You've seen GDQ ambassadors in the past, so that's something that we want to maybe work with more creators [on], and have new things that people can be a part of. I think that's one of the realistic things that we can put some energy and effort towards."

Stronger together

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ma Maegran

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

Gameplay

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

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

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

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

Build

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

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

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

Boss-stompers/Rock-hurlers

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

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

Gameplay

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

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

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

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

Build

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

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

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

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

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

These early samples were provided by Warhammer.

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

• See all Age of Sigmar deals at Amazon

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

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

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

Why play it today?

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

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

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

Time commitment:

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

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

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

Play The Blood of Dawnwalker if you love...

Skip The Blood of Dawnwalker if you want:

One thing to know:

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

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

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

A moment you'll remember:

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

The final verdict:

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

So, where can you play it?

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

How to get started with The Blood of Dawnwalker:

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

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

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

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

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

Claws need laws

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

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

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

Bat among the pigeons

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dead services

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love after death

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

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

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

Striking a power chord

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quest Log

Exit, pursued by a bear

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

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

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

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

Bat-man

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

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

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

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

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

Having fun isn't hard...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not my home but I know my way around

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Those Who Fight Further

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Metroid Ravenous release date

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

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

Metroid Ravenous platforms

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

Metroid Ravenous trailer

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

Metroid Ravenous developer

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

Metroid Ravenous pre-orders aren't live yet

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

Metroid Ravenous screenshots

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

Metroid Ravenous gameplay

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

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

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

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

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

Another day at the office

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Project management

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

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

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

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

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

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

Waxing poetical

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

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

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

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

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

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

Man of the land

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Witching hour

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nomad soul

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eyes wide open

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Befriend 'em all

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TV RPG

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First port of call

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Strange shores

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

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

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

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

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

It's the little things

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

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

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

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

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

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

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